I will be voting for the amendment to this motion tabled by Julie James AM. 

The Tory motion is both cynical and politically opportunistic. The Tory motion is also fundamentally flawed. We know, do we not, that since 2009 there have been two National Assembly for Wales elections. Both times the Welsh nation has gone to the polls, and both times democratically following the elections a Welsh Labour Government has been formed. The Welsh people are no fools. They do not support the Welsh Labour Party out of blind obedience. We are talking about a Welsh populace with a great collective memory of their history and our progressive future. The Welsh Labour Party works to renew the immense bond that exists between it and the Welsh people, and we will continue to do so with fresh policies, like disbarring nurseries from business rates and the best childcare offer of the UK.  

The last decade has been dominated by the UK Tory Government's policies of imposed austerity. Purposeful cuts to the Welsh budget, purposeful cuts to the welfare safety net, growing poverty and inequality, purposeful cuts to the public sector, who often deal with the most vulnerable in our society. And austerity—the name itself is actually a stroke of purposeful genius, somehow not a chosen cuts policy, but an inevitable default position of others. Austerity has been a vicious, determined ideological attack on the state's ability to intervene, to support the poorest in society with the levers of the UK, as highlighted by not one but two UN reports on the severe state of poverty inflicted by the UK Conservative Government on its people.

Despite sustained Tory attack, devolution, Welsh Labour and our Government have afforded some protection for the Welsh people from a right-wing Tory Government's policies. In the dark shadow of this inflicted austerity, the Welsh Labour Government has secured 83,000 more people in work since 2010; £1.4 billion of investment via the twenty-first century schools programme; 41 new schools, including the impressive £22 million Islwyn High School in my constituency; the lowest diagnostic waits since 2010; Wales leading the UK on household recycling, and rated in the top three of the world. In the last Assembly, we delivered 10,000 new affordable homes in this Assembly, and we are on target to deliver 20,000 more.

Welsh Labour has done all this in the shadow of a greed-driven global recession, and the longest period of self-inflicted austerity in living memory. And that has been the Conservatives who have propagated that via their weakening of our financial regulations previously, and all against the uncertainty of a Brexit that will also deliver on national insecurity.

The Welsh Government's overall budget in 2019 is down 5 per cent, or £850 million in real terms compared to 2010-11, something not deserved by our people, and also, again, as a result of the Welsh Conservatives' policy. The Welsh Government's revenue budget in 2019 is down 4 per cent, or £650 million in real terms compared to 2010-11. The Welsh Government's capital budget for 2019-20 is down 10 per cent or £200 million in real terms compared to 2010-11. When it comes to leadership, Welsh Labour and our succession of leaders have offered and delivered principled leadership. Compare that to the strength and stability of the chaotic mess that we are seeing in London from Theresa May and the rest of the ragbag UK Tory Government.

I can assure the Welsh people that the next Welsh Labour First Minister will continue to stand up for Wales and deliver on our strong socialist and ethically principled leadership and our sound socialist policy in action. Thank you.