So, Llywydd, the mover of the amendment says that there’s been no in-depth analysis that lies behind this Bill. Let me just remind Members here of the whole debate that took place in the last Assembly; the efforts that the First Minister made to persuade UK Ministers not to press ahead by trespassing into devolved responsibilities; the LCM that was passed here on the floor of this Assembly, seeking to deny the UK Government the power to act in areas for which they have no responsibility. Let me remind Members here of the manifesto commitments of more than one party here in this Assembly, both at the National Assembly elections a year ago and at the recent general election.

We’ve heard the usual Tory attempt this afternoon, Llywydd, to imply that somehow the motivation behind this Bill is simply the relationship between my party and the trade union movement, a relationship of which we are immensely proud. But what actually lies behind the Bill is the manifesto commitments that we stood on, that were endorsed by people here in Wales, that are shared by more than one party in this Assembly, and which give us the democratic mandate and the authority to put this Bill before the National Assembly. What about the evidence from the public consultation on agency workers? What about the consistent evidence provided to the committee during its Stage 1 consideration? What about the information set out in the explanatory memorandum and the regulatory impact assessment provided and revised ahead of the Stage 3 debate? And more than all of that, Llywydd, what about the evidence of how industrial relations have been successfully conducted here in Wales?

It takes a lot of gall to be a Conservative Member of this Assembly when you ae prepared to argue that the record of industrial relations here in Wales—no firefighters on strike; no teachers on strike; no nurses on strike; no doctors on strike; no physiotherapists on strike; no occupational therapists on strike, all those people that their party have succeeded in driving into industrial action in England and our record here in Wales provides every bit of evidence that any reasonable person would need to show that the approach we have taken here in Wales not only is the right one, but it is the successful one as well. Llywydd, I have tried, during this afternoon, to respond to the substance of the amendments put in front of the Assembly in previous groups, but let me say, for this group, it is simply an attempt to wreck the Bill. It’s simply an attempt by the back door to make sure that the things that have been argued for on this side, by others in the Assembly, consistently supported during the passage of this Bill—at the last minute, there will be an attempt to overturn all of that by a device that is transparent to anybody who cares to look at it. It’s a final attempt to try and make sure that we are unable to carry on doing things here in Wales in the way that this Assembly has endorsed and that trade unionists and employers have come in front of the Assembly to tell us has been one of the successes of the devolution era. Let’s defeat this amendment as well and get this Bill onto the statute book.