Diolch yn fawr iawn, Lywydd. I too welcome the Secretary of State here, possibly for the last time before he returns to the oblivion of Westminster. He did his best to present the Queen’s Speech as being something significant, whereas, in fact, everybody knows it’s just a rag-bag of relatively trivial and insignificant measures, because the Prime Minister wanted to clear the decks of anything that could possibly be controversial in advance of the referendum. The commentary at the time was virtually uniform in its excoriation of the Queen’s Speech. ITV’s website described it as

‘eyecatching but wholly uncontentious stuff: who could object to spaceports, tighter control of drones or faster broadband?’

Well, I’m sure we’re all in favour of faster broadband considering that most of Wales proceeds at a snail’s pace in this respect. But, spaceports and drones, apart from some of the Members in this house, don’t actually figure very much in people’s imaginations. ‘The Daily Telegraph’ said of the Queen’s Speech that:

‘Traditionally-minded Conservatives packed into the House of Lords for the Queen’s Speech…could be forgiven for thinking they are in the wrong room…. To some Tories, it will sound like a programme the last Labour government could have conceived.’

Iain Duncan Smith accused the Prime Minister of deliberately avoiding controversy ahead of the vote on EU membership, saying:

‘Many Conservatives have become increasingly concerned that in the Government’s helter-skelter pursuit of the referendum, they have been jettisoning or watering down key elements of their legislative programme.’

Well, far from it for me to intrude further upon that private grief. But, the Secretary of State in his preamble to his speech today said, rather surprisingly, and here I agree with the leader of the opposition, that the delays to starting the article 50 negotiating process was somehow going to instil confidence and bring about more stability to the process. That’s the last thing that this will do. Actually, we need to get on with this process in order to resolve such uncertainties as there are. My experience, having been a member of the Council of Ministers—the internal market Minister—for two and a half years is that Parkinson’s law certainly applies and work expands to fill the time available. So, the shorter the time frame the more we are likely to achieve. I personally don’t see what difficulty there is about designing proper successor arrangements to our trading relationship with the EU. The EU has managed, in the course of 50 years, to negotiate only two proper free trade agreements—with Mexico and with South Korea. I can’t see why we can’t use those as templates for our own relationship with the EU in the future. There’s been much talk in this place of the various models that exist for relationships—the Norway model or whatever; these are all totally irrelevant, because there is no way, following the referendum result, that we could accept total free movement of labour within the EU. That’s the whole point of the referendum—we’d never have had one but for concern about the uncontrolled nature of our borders. And anything that is going to prevent us from having complete control of our own immigration policy is going to be rejected by the public at large.

Again, I agree, in the spirit of cross-party agreement, with what the First Minister said in his remarks—and, indeed, the leader of the opposition—about an agreement on a fiscal framework to surround the Wales Bill. I can’t see how it could possibly be acceptable to the people of Wales to have this Bill imposed upon us unless we can be absolutely certain, and it’s there in hard fiscal fact, that Wales is not going to be a penny worse off after the Bill passes than before. And in that respect, of course, the EU compact is subject to the same demand that every penny that the EU currently spends in Wales must come to Wales after we leave the EU.

So, consequently, this Queen’s Speech takes us so far, but actually not very far. I really can’t understand why something like the sugar tax, which the leader of the opposition highlighted in her speech, should be regarded as an advance; it’s an absurd measure, actually, when you look at the nature of the tax. First of all, it’s badly targeted because fruit juices and milk-based drinks are excluded, so that means that some of the most sugary drinks on the market actually escape the proposed levy. For example, a standard Starbucks extra-large hot chocolate contains 15 teaspoons of sugar, which is double the recommended daily maximum for an adult, but because it’s a milk-based drink it’s exempt from the levy. And the same could be said for other kinds of milkshakes, coffee and yoghurt-based drinks.