There has been a lot of analysis of the JMC process over many years. The House of Commons Justice Committee, the House of Commons Welsh Affairs Committee, the House of Commons Scottish Affairs Committee, the Calman commission, the Silk commission, the Smith commission, the Institute for Government and the House of Lords Constitution Committee—to name just a few—have all examined the JMC process, and they have all said that it is not fit for purpose. We have a process that does not really work and has never worked. Nonetheless, that process is all we have got at the moment and we think that it could be improved in the particular circumstances in which we find ourselves, because it is important that there is such a mechanism.
The terms of reference for the JMC(EN) are clear, and it is not us who have breached them; we have not had a willingness from the UK Government to live up to them. Indeed, the Prime Minister has described the JMC(EN) in terms that do not appear in the terms of reference, speaking of the devolved Administrations having the opportunity to “make representations” to the UK Government, which is not what we are talking about.
We need to work out whether the process can still operate effectively. If it cannot—the view of all those who have been involved is that there are huge difficulties with it—how would we move to something else? That is a little bit like some of the issues that we might come on to in a minute, regarding frameworks. You can proceed by negotiation and discussion, accepting that all parties are equal and that we are going to find a way forward, or you can just tell people what you are going to do.
We have a structure, and that structure should be used to ascertain whether we can find a better structure. In other words, the first task is to bring the JMC(EN) back together to consider, for example, the proposals that Mark Drakeford and I have made and other proposals, and then to take things forward. That is what we should be doing.
I am ready to take part in those discussions, and so are the Welsh. There is the issue of the Northern Irish situation. We will know tomorrow—I think 4 o’clock is the deadline—whether there will be an Administration set up in Northern Ireland. If there is one, we will move forward with that. We will then talk about the process’s weaknesses and how we can make it work. It is unbalanced—asymmetrical is a generous way to describe it. There is a large UK presence and the rest of us sit around it.
The arrangements were shambolic in terms of meetings and agendas. There needs to be a recognition that we must make progress on individual items. Now that negotiations are under way, the JMC process needs to slot into the four-week negotiating cycle. We can all see ways in which that could happen. In the negotiating cycle as described by both sides—Barnier and Davis—there are specific purposes for each of the weeks. We will inject ourselves into the four-week negotiating cycle at the point of most relevance and we will meet in each of those weeks. The opening round began on 19 June, the second will begin on 17 July, the third will begin on 28 August, the fourth will begin on 18 September and the fifth will begin on 9 October. We will have those meetings, we know what each is meant to produce and we can fit into those slots.