Diolch, Llywydd. Well, I'm very pleased that the Government has brought forward this debate today, and I find it difficult to disagree with many of the things that the Cabinet Secretary has said. I was particularly pleased to hear her say, in the course of her speech, that she will concentrate on getting a fairer deal for small-scale fishers and a fairer deal for Wales. That's what we all want in this Assembly, I'm sure. I also agree with her in her unhappiness with quotas, and I also approve of her intention to deal with historical inequalities. Unfortunately, we will not be supporting the motion today, but that's only because of one word in it. Because it says in paragraph 2 that it recognises the distinct challenges of Brexit without making any reference to the opportunities.

Now, I know that the Cabinet Secretary is one of the more open-minded of Ministers and frequently makes speeches drawing attention to the opportunities that Brexit brings, particularly to the fishing industry. There are few industries in Britain that have been more adversely affected by our EU membership over the last half century than fishing, and it's vitally important, therefore, that Brexit is capitalised upon in order to revive our coastal fishing ports and surrounding areas, and to revive the British fishing industry, including, of course, the Welsh fishing industry.

I'm pleased, in reading the report that was commissioned by the Cabinet Secretary, to see that it does actually refer there quite explicitly on page 8 to the fact that the common fisheries policy was cobbled together back in 1973 within hours of Britain's application, along with those of Ireland and Norway, to join the European Union. There was no common fisheries policy in the EU before our application to join, and this was a last-minute addition to the EU, designed purely and simply to enable other EU countries to plunder our waters in the North sea and elsewhere. And in doing so, over the last 40 years, they've utterly devastated the fishing industry of this country and the towns and villages that depend upon it.

Ninety per cent of the EU fish stocks, including the applicant countries in 1973, were in the waters of those applicants, and 80 per cent of the fish were actually in UK waters. This was an act of political piracy by the then common market, as it was called, on a grand scale. But that's all history, and now we have the opportunity to reverse the process. We've lived through the most appalling times in the last few decades of industrial fishing, and I was very pleased that the Cabinet Secretary, in the course of her speech, also referred to her intention to avoid that being repeated in Welsh waters.

Fishing is a very small industry—it's only 0.05 per cent of the UK gross domestic product—and, to that extent, it is in danger of being traded away as part of the Brexit process as well as the process that brought us into the EU in the first place. It's vitally important, therefore, that the UK Government does not sell British fishing industry down the river yet again as part of the process of negotiating our withdrawal, because it is possible that the Government will say that full access to British waters will be the price to be paid for some kind of a free trade deal, or another sort of deal, that is in the process of being cobbled together. The EU has played hardball throughout this whole process because their negotiation is not designed to improve the economic well-being of the peoples of Europe but is designed to keep tottering on with their failed federalist political project.

Now, Wales, of course, does have markedly different interests in fishing from other parts of the UK, not least because of the importance of shellfish fishing, as Simon Thomas frequently points out in his contributions to these debates, but we do have the opportunity in Wales to develop the industry in other ways as well. It isn't good for any industry to be over-dependent on particular forms of production, and diversification is an important part, therefore, of the opportunities that lie before us—