Diolch yn fawr. Well, I have to say that much has been said in this Chamber about the necessity to keep confidence in both the Welsh and the British economy. Well, over the last two weeks since Brexit, anybody who had been listening to the comments in this Chamber would have no confidence whatsoever in our ability as a nation to run a good, confident, expanding economy.

It goes without saying that we all regret the instability with regard to the Tata Steel plant in Port Talbot and the consequences that would arise were it to close, not only for employees and their families, but for the wider economy of Port Talbot as a whole. But I feel a point has to be made here that the Labour Party are coming very late to the table in the fight to save jobs in the steel industry, both here in Wales and in the UK as a whole. Under the Labour Government and, of course, whilst we were in the UK—the EU—the UK lost around—[Interruption.] The UK lost around 33,000 jobs in the steel industry, falling from 68,000 when Labour came to office in 1997 to around 35,000 when they left in 2010, including falling from 17,000 to 7,000 in Wales in the same period. [Interruption.] No, I’m sorry. [Assembly Members: ‘Oh.’] I put it to you that, far from helping the British steel industry, our presence in the European political project has been a massive disadvantage to the industry.

Under EU procurement rules, for instance, 100 of the British Army’s new Ajax fighting vehicles will be built in Spain using Swedish steel. This was at the request of Brussels, who used EU grants in order to support Spanish jobs. [Interruption.] I could enumerate—[Interruption.] I could enumerate many such instances. Since joining the European Union we have all but lost vast areas of our manufacturing industries—shipbuilding, train and rolling stock construction, the chemical industry in terminal decline, textiles in crisis, the fishing industry and farming all but decimated.

The First Minister has cited several times, if I recall, how clean our rivers and beaches are as a result of EU environmental legislation. Well, I’m sorry to inform the First Minister that it’s got nothing to do with EU regulations; it’s because we no longer have the industries to pollute them. [Assembly Members: ‘Oh’.] We have heard ad infinitum from Members of this Assembly of the catastrophe that will befall the Welsh economy if we do not receive grant money.