THE involvement of the Welsh Government in the Brexit process has improved, but work remains to be done to ensure Wales’ interests are taken into account, Carwyn Jones has said.

With less than five months to go until the UK leaves the European Union, the first minister appeared before the Assembly’s External Affairs and Additional Legislation Committee on Monday to discuss the current state of Brexit.

He said, when Theresa May triggered Article 50, beginning the process of the UK leaving the EU, in March 2017, the UK Government showed little willingness to involve the Welsh Government in negotiations. But he added this had improved over the past year-and-a-half.

“The engagement has improved since March last year, that is true,” he said. "At that point it was very poor indeed.

“But it does need to improve further.

“The UK Government sometimes takes the view that international relations are not devolved, so we do not need to be consulted.”

He added: “Could it be better? Yes. Has it improved? Yes.”

But Mr Jones said his government remained in the dark around the state of negotiations and the ultimate outcome the UK Government is working towards, making it difficult to plan for the future.

“At the moment we have no real understanding of what the final deal might look like,” he said

“We don’t know if it will be a no-deal Brexit, we don’t know what the nature of the deal will be, if there is a deal.

“It’s difficult to put in place a comprehensive set of measures to deal with Brexit until we know what Brexit is.”

He added “Brexit done badly” could lead to the “disintegration” of the UK.

He added: “The quicker we can understand what a deal will look like the sooner we can put the legislation we need in place."

Mr Jones has stopped short of calling for a second referendum, saying instead he would prefer a new General Election is held, with the winning party taking control of the process.

And he said he was sceptical about recent reports that negotiations with Europe are nearing a conclusion.

“I am very wary of people saying we are 95 per cent of the way there,” he said.

“It’s like saying we are going to fly to Germany, but we are only going 95 per cent of the way there before we land.”