Diolch yn fawr, Llywydd. Well, in introducing this group of amendments, we heard the authentic voice of the Welsh Conservative Party. On the one hand: trade unions needing to be held down and tied up in complex rules and high thresholds to make sure that they do not wreak havoc in the lives of hard-working taxpayers. It’s exactly that sort of distinction—that setting of one group against another—that we are determined to resist in this Bill. Here in Wales, we have developed a social partnership model in which we recognise that the interests of trade unionists are identical to the interests of those people who rely on public services. That’s why we reject this sort of amendment.

Mike Hedges said that it was ironic that someone who themselves arrived in this place on a ballot that would certainly not have met the text set out in this amendment—it was ironic that it should be put forward in that way. I think it’s a bit worse than that, Mike. I think it’s deeply distasteful to hear people make an appeal to democracy and setting up standards that they themselves could not possibly aspire to meet. That’s true of many people in this room; it absolutely is. If the rules that this amendment sets out applied to you, you would not be a Member of this National Assembly. So, where’s democracy in that, I wonder? That’s why we need to reject this group of amendments. We need to reject it as well because of the conclusion that the committee came to: that, actually, when you introduce a spirit of confrontation into industrial relations, when you pit one side against another, then what you do is you make the risk that things will end up in industrial action rather than being resolved around the table—you make that risk more, not less. Here’s what the committee said:

‘We heard about the very real danger that the additional threshold would lead to heightened industrial tensions and have the inadvertent effect of increasing the likelihood and duration of industrial action.’

That’s what these amendments would do. Far from protecting the public, they would increase the risk that we would be unable to conduct industrial relations in the successful way that we have achieved here in Wales. As with the other groups so far, these amendments deserve to be defeated.