Let’s try and deconstruct a stream of consciousness. Well, let’s start with the industrial change that he said occurred, under his watch, actually, a lot of it. In a sensible country it would have been understood that there were going to be job losses in coal and steel. Steel employed a lot of people, probably more than was needed. But in a sensible country, plans would have been laid out to re-employ people in good jobs, but that’s not what happened. What happened was that people were laid off in their thousands on a single day and told, ‘That’s it, there’s no job for you’. That’s why unemployment went up and that’s why our GDP declined, because of that double whammy. That wasn’t to do with industrial change on its own. That was a deliberate policy by a Government that didn’t care if people were made redundant and where they went after that.

I agree with him about the need to create an entrepreneurial culture and that’s what the document shows. But it’s hugely important—he mentioned the Circuit of Wales—that we don’t repeat the mistakes of the past. You know, LG was one of the greatest mistakes that the WDA actually—. They’d had a good track record until then, but it was one of the greatest mistakes, in hindsight, that happened. And we’ve got to be very careful about what we support and what we don’t.

He talks about what’s happening 60 miles to the east with James Dyson, of course. His argument about the EU seems to be about the regulation of vacuum cleaners, as far as I can tell. It quite clearly is a single market. Where does he manufacture? He doesn’t manufacture in the UK does he? So, there are issues there. If he is that patriotic, perhaps he should base everything that he does within the UK itself.

With regard to the regulatory burden that he talks about, what is it? If he says there is a regulatory burden, it would be interesting to know where he sees those burdens are, because he gives no examples. He talks about a tax burden. He gives an example of business rates. We are, of course, looking at how we can put in place a permanent system of relief in terms of small business rates. We are looking at how that can be done with a view to implementing that. He says that our attitude is wrong. Well, I can only refer—. I could go through a whole list of things, but I will refer him to the words that were used by Aston Martin. They came to Wales not because there was more money on the table but because of the pride and professionalism of the Welsh Government. That’s why they came to Wales and that can be repeated up and down Wales in terms of the jobs we have brought to Wales.

He talks of Brexit. He recognises there are challenges. Indeed, there are challenges that Brexit brings. The single market undoubtedly does exist, because it employs a common tariff, and as a result of that, in order to get into that market, we all have to pay the tariffs or find a way of agreement to avoid those tariffs being paid. And besides, if you have tariffs, you have a hard border in Ireland. There’s no avoiding it, because you cannot have a system of tariffs and then say, ‘Incidentally, we have a land border with the EU where there are no customs controls at all and no tariffs are payable.’ So, he doesn’t want a hard border—fine, I accept that—but you can’t have tariffs and not have a hard border; the two run together with all the consequences—tragic consequences, actually—that that might potentially bring.

If I can just deconstruct an argument he used as well early on. He said, ‘Well, it doesn’t matter about tariffs because the exchange rate has resolved that issue’. Well, of course, the drop in the pound means that goods from the European Union are now more expensive in the UK. Put tariffs on top of that and they’re even more expensive and they’re paid for by the consumer. One of the things I could never work out in the conversations I had with David Davis some months ago was that he kept on saying, ‘Well, tariffs can provide us with a pot of money that we can use to support business.’ Yes, but they’re paid by the consumer. It’s Joe Public that pays the tariffs, not businesses. Ultimately, the cost is passed on to those who buy the product that carries the tariff upon it. So, it’s hard to see how exchange rates can overcome the problem if tariffs are imposed. Surely we want to see a world where, instead of seeing the UK taking a market of 400 million people and wanting to see tariffs imposed on its goods going into the market—surely nobody wants to see that happening. So, there’s much about what he said that I cannot accept. He says that I defend the indefensible. I have to say to him I’m more than happy today to defend and advocate the very defensible.