When the UK coalition Government came into office in 2010, the need to rescue the economy was urgent. Britain had suffered the deepest recession since the second world war and had the second biggest structural deficit of any advanced economy. Unemployment had increased by nearly half a million. Keynesian economics advocates deficit spending when an economy is suffering, but it also advocates cutting back on Government outlay in the boom times. But Gordon Brown had broken the cycle, pretending there was an end to boom and bust. After all, borrowers borrow, but lenders set the terms: the lesson facing countries that thought they could borrow their way out of bust.

When Gordon Brown opened Lehman Brothers London headquarters in 2004, he said:

‘I would like to pay tribute to the contribution you and your company make to the prosperity of Britain.’

Of course, their 2008 collapse triggered credit crunch.

The National Audit Office reported that Mr Brown’s Treasury was warned three years before Northern Rock nearly went bust that it needed to set up emergency plans to handle a banking crisis but did nothing about it.

Before the credit crunch, the International Monetary Fund said that the UK banking system was more exposed to sub-prime debts than anywhere else in the world. After credit crunch, the Financial Services Authority reported sustained political emphasis by the then Labour Government on the need for the FSA to be light touch in its approach, and we are all, of course, still paying the price.

Austerity is defined in my dictionary as not having enough money. It is, therefore, an inheritance not a choice. Realistic assessments about the state of the UK economy involve taking difficult decisions to reduce the deficit and control spending. In the real financial world, the solution is to reduce overspend and then generate budget surplus, providing security now and insurance against future down-turns.

If faster deficit reduction had been pursued, cuts would have been higher. If slower deficit reduction had been pursued, interest rates and cuts would have been higher. Thanks to the hard work of people in Wales and across the UK, the deficit is down by two thirds, there are almost 2.9 million more private sector jobs, and there are over 900,000 more businesses. In response to both this and recent developments, we’ve had the classic Carwyn cocktail of bunkum, bluster, bully and blame, when, instead, we need to work together to achieve the best possible outcomes, embrace opportunities and deliver a new and more suitable way of tackling Wales’s poverty, worklessness and prosperity gap with the rest of Britain.

We must tackle the barriers to opportunity and, at the heart of the Queen’s Speech are major changes to help spread life chances to everyone. The Digital Economy Bill, as we heard, will give every household the legal right to a fast broadband connection. The requirements in the neighbourhood planning and infrastructure Bill, relating to the national infrastructure commission to deliver jobs and growth, will apply to Wales, as will provisions applying to adoption in the Children and Social Work Bill. The prison and courts reform Bill will bring about the biggest reform of our prisons since Victorian times, ensuring they’re not just a place of punishment, but also rehabilitation, so that everyone has the chance to get back on the right track. The lifetime savings Bill will help people to save and make plans for the future, especially the young and those on low incomes.

The counter-extremism and safeguarding Bill gives law-enforcement agencies new powers to protect vulnerable people, including children, from extremist propaganda and to promote shared values of tolerance and respect. The criminal finances Bill will include a new criminal offence for corporations that fail to stop staff facilitating tax evasion.

Although the Policing and Crime Bill relates mainly to non-devolved matters extending to Wales, the Welsh Government has laid a legislative consent memorandum in relation to clauses of the Bill that it considers do relate to devolved matters. This includes strengthening the protections for persons under investigation and further safeguards children and young people from sexual exploitation. I therefore hope the Assembly will support that. The Bill also provides the police with powers to remove a person who appears to be suffering from a mental disorder to a place of safety and prevents the use of police cells as a place of safety for any person under 18 years. Thankfully, however, it does not include the devolution of policing. As former Labour UK Government Minister Kim Howells said on Monday, the idea that Wales is isolated from Britain is nationalist claptrap, and Carwyn Jones is out of touch with how most people in Wales think.