Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 5:40 pm on 27 March 2019.
Thank you very much. I would say that our democracy demands a number of things. It certainly demands the honesty and transparency that Adam Price described, but it also demands respect for other people's points of view, and that is a fundamental part and tenet of our democracy. It's also a recognition that nobody owns our democracy; we all do. But there's also a recognition that democracy didn't end in June 2016, and there is no such thing as a settled will of the people. It is up to us to invent and to reinvent our institutions and our constitution as we ourselves determine, and that's why I support a people's vote. It's why I support a final say for the people on the agreement—whatever agreement is finally reached—because we cannot here overturn a referendum, and neither should we try, although the Conservatives have tried, of course, on numerous occasions, to overturn the devolution referenda. What we have to do is to go back to the people.
We have to go back to the people and argue our case. We have to go back to the people and demonstrate that the points made by David Rowlands in opening this debate are largely erroneous and wholly wrong, both in fact, in substance and in interpretation. By doing that, I hope that we will do two things—and I'll finish on this point, Presiding Officer. We will certainly start to return the humanity to the debate in Wales and the United Kingdom; we will certainly begin to rebuild our democracy and the trust in the institutions that some people claim to want to strengthen. But we will do more than that. I hope what we will do is to start rebuilding a society that I would be proud to call home, a society where my son will grow up, not pointing at people and screaming at them, not threatening them because we disagree with them—