One reason that strike action in the public sector in Wales is comparatively rare—and I will make a very rare comparison with England here, because I don’t usually do that. But we have seen in the last few years high-profile disputes in England within the public sector, like the one the junior doctors staged, and it was bitter and it was vitriolic. We haven’t had that here in Wales, and we haven’t had that in Wales because we have the social partnership that has just been described. That works extremely well, and I for one am really proud that we do operate under a social partnership, and a partnership that is clearly understood between those working in the public sector and for the public bodies.

Both sides—the employers and the trade unions—understand that that actually is to the benefit of all. Facility time—that is, let’s be clear, the time permitted to employees for carrying out trade union duties—is crucial in the success of that partnership. I don’t know, actually, where Janet Finch-Saunders was, but she certainly didn’t hear the evidence in the same way that I heard it, and that others heard it, when it was given to us at committee stage. We heard time and time again both from the employee and the employer about the benefit of that facility time. We also heard, as she must have, that very often that time is actually given free of charge, and some of the reasons have already been alluded to by full-time trade union officers, but also by people who actually represent their colleagues in their own time, not in their work time. And I’d like to ask you how you think you might account for that under your freedom of information. We heard evidence from the Welsh NHS Confederation and NHS Wales employees. In their evidence to committee, and I’ll quote:

‘Facilities time provides significant benefits to industrial relations, as well as providing savings and benefits to the organisation and the service as a whole.’

And it would be extremely difficult, wouldn’t it, to quantify that. I think it’s a very odd situation for the Conservatives to propose that we add in more red tape. That’s what they usually call it, don’t they? Anything you have to account for is red tape. But facility time is actually used to keep people safe in work. It’s also used to make sure that the terms and conditions, on both sides, for the employee and the employer, are to the satisfaction of both. The only conclusion that I can reach is that Janet Finch-Saunders has put forward these amendments today driven on pure ideology, because it certainly wasn’t driven in any way at all by any of the evidence that we were given. And, when we talk about a cost, there is a cost that was put forward to actually reporting on facility time, and the Wales Trades Union Congress did point out that disapplying the 2016 Act provision requiring all Welsh public employers to report on facility time would save money. And they did put a cost of £170,700 in reporting costs. You all know, because you tell us very often from that side of the Chamber, that red tape costs money. This red tape will also cost money, and all it will do is destroy everything that we have built up over the years in Wales in those social partnerships. It is pure ideology, absolutely nothing else.