Perhaps I can tell you, Deputy Presiding Officer, that I spent part of the Easter recess lecturing at the College of William and Mary on the subject, 'Britain after Brexit'. I have to say, the title was chosen in December, when it didn't seem so wildly improbable. I visited the National Library of Wales earlier in the year, and they knew of my connection with the college. They dug out from the archive a letter from Goronwy Owen, the great eighteenth century poet, about his preparations to take up a post teaching at the grammar school attached, then, to the College of William and Mary.

It strikes me that there are many astonishing connections that we should be keen to follow up on. In fact, at the library, they said, 'Did you know that there is a commemoration of him on the college campus?' I was slightly surprised at this, and so, during my visit, I did try to find out where this commemoration is. I went to the Swem library—the main library at the university—and they told me that, actually, the plaque is in the library. They told me where it was, and I went up and there's this magnificent plaque to Goronwy Owen. It commemorates his transformative work, really, in the eighteenth century for Welsh literature and celebrates the connection. It just reminded me of how wonderful it would be if we could do more with that. His famous poem, 'Hiraeth', for instance, has had a big, big impact on our culture, but the fact that he spent so much time in Virginia is something we should build on.

It wasn't an entirely happy episode. As poets are wont to, he was a little fond of electric soup. After a few years, I'm afraid the college moved him on, and he was moved on to Brunswick county, also in Virginia, and was curate there, which is rather a curious, perhaps, position to recover from a drink problem, but he was. He spent another 10 years there—in fact, he's buried in Brunswick county. I understand that a steady flow, if not a vast flow, of pilgrims make their way to his grave to this day. So, that's a great example of someone, I think, who connects us deeply.

It's possible that Goronwy Owen met Thomas Jefferson and that they overlapped—Owen was about 20 years older than Jefferson, and Jefferson was at the College of William and Mary in the late 1750s. Jefferson, famously, thought he was Welsh, or of Welsh ancestry. It's very unlikely that he was—modern scholarship really eviscerates all our myth making, doesn't it? We now think it's unlikely that he was of Welsh descent, but Jefferson lived all of his life thinking he was, and if you can't build on that connection then, again, there's a poverty of ambition there.

Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio and several other states had very significant Welsh immigration into those states in the earlier colonial years and then in the early industrial revolution just after the republic was established. It's something, again, we can really, really build on. 

It's interesting that it's later waves of immigrants, particular the Irish and Italians, that really embedded this concept of 'Italian-American' or 'Irish-American', but we should remember the significant part that Welsh men and women played in the history, particularly the early history, of the United States. So, I think the Welsh diaspora, and trying to tap into that, is really, really important.

I think this naturally leads on to all sorts of concepts of soft power. And can I commend the British Council's soft power barometer for Wales, which compares us with Scotland, Northern Ireland and other places like Catalonia, Flanders and Quebec, amongst others? I think that's a good indicator, because there's good and not-so-good news there, but there are some really interesting insights. We are rated sixth out of those 10, so we are behind Quebec, Flanders and Scotland, but ahead, for instance, of Northern Ireland. We do particularly well on the sports barometer, where we are second, behind Catalonia. I suppose they've got Barcelona and football, but we do well obviously with rugby and other sports. We're also second on digital technology, and I think that's something we should really build on. We don't do so well on education, but that is something we can aspire to.

I would, if I had time, also talk about inter-governmental mechanisms, but can I just say that the UK Government—and this is an important recommendation in the report—should publish as soon as possible its review of inter-governmental mechanisms? Whilst I do not think we should have a veto, or that the Minister should, on trade negotiations, it's very important that our Minister and our scrutiny of our Minister—that there's a direct mechanism so that we can influence, through the Minister, trade policy. Thank you for your indulgence.