Diolch, Dirprwy Lywydd. I move amendment 1 in the name of Rhun ap Iorwerth. International aid makes a difference. It alleviates human suffering when humanitarian crisis strikes. It saves lives and strengthens communities. By working together, for example, we have halved extreme poverty in the last 40 years, and have halved child mortality since 1990. In developing countries, 91 per cent of children are now enrolled in primary school. Between 2000 and 2014, over 6.2 million malaria deaths were averted, primarily saving the lives—primarily saving the lives—of children under 5. And we can be extremely proud of Wales’s record. Our budget and the extent of our powers may be limited, as usual, and compared to the work undertaken at a UK level by the Department for International Development, but the work done by organisations and individuals to build links with those who need our help around the world shows remarkable generosity and great success. The Wales for Africa project has been running for the last 10 years and during that time has done incredible work with partners across Africa. Each health board in Wales has active links with Africa, helping to train doctors, nurses and midwives to deliver healthcare in their communities and, in turn, developing the skills of workers in the Welsh NHS too.

To take an example from the south-east, Midwives@Africa based in Abergavenny deliver effective, evidenced-based training courses to midwife tutors and midwives in southern Ethiopia. It is a partnership that helps both sides—it’s reciprocal—with health workers in Ethiopia receiving vital training, and the Welsh midwives involved developing their teaching, communication and leadership skills. They’re a credit to our nation and to Ethiopia too.

The next few years will see a fundamental change and reshaping of Wales’s relationship with the rest of the world, of course, as a result of our withdrawal from the European Union, and the rhetoric currently coming from some parts of the political establishment is worryingly adversarial. When the Prime Minister uses language that attacks our closest friends and neighbours, she risks damaging our nation’s standing on the global stage not just in terms of international aid, but in other matters too, and I don’t want to see Wales’s name tarnished at the same time. In that context, Dirprwy Lywydd, it is more important than ever that Wales has its own global brand, that we continue to be an outward-looking nation, to build links around the world, and we cannot let the growing narrow nationalism in parts of British politics diminish our global profile. We need a dedicated international policy for Wales, and it should include a commitment to international aid as well. I am of the firm view that this country requires a designated Cabinet Secretary for external affairs within the Welsh Government to lead that strategy, and I am at a loss to understand why this Government, yet again, refuses to do so.

It should also include in that international policy our intentions on how we wish to build on development links, and we can look to other countries in these islands, even. We can look to Scotland and see how an ambitious humanitarian aid strategy has been effective, even with the constraints they have there. Their £9 million development fund is predicated on a vision of Scotland as a good global citizen as part of a wider international strategy tied to trade and education exchanges as well. So, as we strive to enhance Wales’s standing on the global stage, I hope that international development forms an integral part of that strategy in the future, as it has done in recent years.