Part of 1. 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:46 pm on 21 March 2017.
Carwyn Jones
Labour
1:46,
21 March 2017
Well, first things first, I should thank the leader of UKIP and, indeed, the leader of the Welsh Conservatives for their good wishes, from different perspectives, indeed, in that regard. But my view is, and I’ve said this publicly, that if the Scottish Parliament votes to hold a referendum, the UK Government should not stand in the way of the Scottish Parliament, any more than the European Commission or Parliament should have stood in the way of the UK holding a referendum on Brexit. I think it’s right that if the Scottish Parliament supports a referendum and looks for a particular date, that the views of the Scottish Parliament should be respected.
Ministers make up the Government and almost all are members of the House of Lords or the House of Commons. There are three main types of Minister. Departmental Ministers are in charge of Government Departments. The Government is divided into different Departments which have responsibilities for different areas. For example the Treasury is in charge of Government spending. Departmental Ministers in the Cabinet are generally called 'Secretary of State' but some have special titles such as Chancellor of the Exchequer. Ministers of State and Junior Ministers assist the ministers in charge of the department. They normally have responsibility for a particular area within the department and are sometimes given a title that reflects this - for example Minister of Transport.
The European Commission is the politically independent institution that represents and upholds the interests of the EU as a whole. It is the driving force within the EU’s institutional system: it proposes legislation, policies and programmes of action and it is responsible for implementing the decisions of Parliament and the Council.
Like the Parliament and Council, the European Commission was set up in the 1950s under the EU’s founding treaties.
The Conservatives are a centre-right political party in the UK, founded in the 1830s. They are also known as the Tory party.
With a lower-case ‘c’, ‘conservative’ is an adjective which implies a dislike of change, and a preference for traditional values.
