Diolch yn fawr, Lywydd. Can I thank those Members who have brought this important debate to the floor of the Assembly this afternoon? My job is to set out the position of the Welsh Government, and that position is absolutely clear. Our continued membership of the European Union is pivotal to our future in all its fundamental dimensions.

Now, we’ve heard a series of contributions this afternoon that set out just that case in criminal justice, in environmental protection, food security, employment rights and protection from discrimination. I want to begin by just reminding us of the cultural case: Wales is a European nation. The fact that two languages are in daily use in Wales puts us firmly in the European mainstream. The fact of being Welsh means to be comfortable with multiple identities. ‘O ble ti’n dod?’ ‘Where do you come from?’—the first question we ask each other. We understand that that answer can be the town or the village, the nation or, indeed, the continent to which we belong. We understand that we can belong to more than one place at one and the same time.

As well as those cultural affinities, as we’ve heard, the European Union brings us advantages that are social, economic and political. Socially, we on this side believe in a Europe of solidarity, a Europe of protected and extended rights for working people and the strong defence of the socially vulnerable. We heard from Dawn Bowden and others of just the practical way that those social rights bite in the lives of working people here in Wales.

Economically, as many people in this debate have said, the European Union is fundamental to us in Wales—in agriculture, in industry, in structural investment, in university research. Eluned Morgan began by outlining them all, and others, such as Huw Irranca-Davies, have gone on to place those practical economic advantages directly in the communities that we represent.

The direct funding to Wales from the European Union is worth more than £500 million every year. Over 500 companies from other European countries have their operations here in Wales, and those operations provide more than 57,000 jobs. A vote to leave the EU would inevitably cause major concerns about that sort of international investment. It is absolute nonsense to suggest that leaving the European Union would have no impact here on the economy of Wales. It would. It would begin to happen the day after such a decision was made, and the impact would be deeply damaging.

But, Llywydd, perhaps politically—and this is a political forum, after all—the case for the European Union is the most powerful of all. All of us in this Chamber are hugely fortunate to have lived for more than 70 years without a war between the nations of Europe. Just as we heard from Eluned at the start, I think of my own family. Both of my grandfathers were combatants in the first world war. I vividly remember, as a child in primary school, being told by eyewitnesses of the sight of Swansea burning from Carmarthen, 30 miles away. When I heard that story fewer years had gone by since those awful events than have gone by since the first opening of this National Assembly. The notion that conflict is a matter of the distant past, that 70 years of peace is somehow more typical than 1,000 years marked by warfare, is simply to fly in the face of history. The European Coal and Steel Community, the precursor of the union today, was set up in 1951 explicitly to ensure that the sinews of war, as they were called—coal and steel—would never again be used for wars between European neighbours. Today’s Europe, with its guarantees of shared democratic values and fundamental human rights is also our guarantee that differences are solved by politics not by force. It is unfathomable that we should be at a moment of risking that advantage in the pursuit of some embittered turning away from the world.

Llywydd, campaigns reveal character. I bring no advice for the Welsh working class from the freshers’ fair at Oxford. [Laughter.] But, I do know that the group of right-wing zealots who lead the campaign to take Wales and the United Kingdom out of Europe are gathering around the gambling table. It is our futures—those of our children and our country—that they are prepared to gamble away. Let the message go clearly from this Assembly this afternoon: Wales is better in Europe. Wales belongs to Europe, and that is the choice we need to make next week. [Applause.]