I'll come to my comments about Ms Rudd in a moment, but I would agree with what you've said.

Now, if we put the way that universal credit works together with, for example, housing benefit rules, which will only pay young people the cost of a room in a shared house, which leads to vulnerable young women often being forced to share with entirely unsuitable fellow tenants, and the vile rape clause to which Leanne Wood has already referred, along with many other examples I could cite, it leaves us with a benefits system that is predicated on a myth of the man as the breadwinner and the myth of the lazy, undeserving poor, and it is a misogynistic system and it was always meant to be.

And the politicians who introduced that system should be profoundly ashamed of themselves, but they are not, because the system is achieving what they wanted it to do. And with regard to Jane Hutt's comments and Mark Isherwood's comments about Amber Rudd, I don't think she will be allowed to mitigate in the way that she says she would like to do, because these effects are not accidental. And I have to say to my friends on the other side of that Chamber—and some of them are my friends—that they need to take a long, hard look at themselves if they think that they can support this. I really think: are they really proud of this? I thought better of them.

But the Government has no justification for complacency here, and the rather self-congratulatory tone of their amendment is a bit disappointing. I do not believe that any party or combination of parties that might get elected to govern in this Parliament would treat our poorest citizens in the way that the Tory UK Government is. As we've already heard, Scotland and Northern Ireland have taken administrative control of universal credit, but our Government does not seem to wish to do so. And I found a quote from one of the candidates for the Labour leadership. He says:

'I’m not an enthusiast for the devolution of tax and benefits systems. They seem to me what binds the UK together...If you are redistributionist, the tax and benefits systems are the way to do it. On the key question of poverty I believe that Wales benefits'— benefits—'from a UK redistributive model.'

Well, I have to say to this Chamber that that redistributive mechanism is not serving our poorest citizens very well at present, is it? And I'm not sure that the Cabinet Secretary for Finance, who I was quoting, can really stand here—or sit here—and defend that position.

No-one claims that taking control of the administration of universal credit would solve all the problems that we have in this pernicious system. But what we seek, of course, as Rhun ap Iorwerth has said, is full control of the benefits system. But it could, as the Bevan Foundation has said, make a real difference, particularly in terms of how benefits are paid, and I welcome what John Griffiths said earlier in this debate in this regard.

Dirprwy Lywydd, in supporting the original motion and urging this Chamber to reject the amendment, I urge this Government, our Government, the Welsh Government to show some courage and at least ask for administrative control of universal credit so you can do some of what Northern Ireland and Scotland are doing for their poorest citizens. Our poorest citizens need action now and not unionist dogma.