I have to beat that. [Laughter.] Diolch, Dirprwy Lywydd. How do you beat that?

This week marks another anniversary—the seventieth anniversary of my home town, the designation of Cwmbran as a new town, the first and only mark one new town to be built in Wales under the New Towns Act 1946.

Growing up in the 1980s in the Llanyrafon area of the town, on the western edge of the Monmouth constituency, I was very aware that the place I called home was somehow different and became fascinated by the vision of a brighter future that had inspired the postwar urban planners. That vision had itself grown out the ideas of Ebenezer Howard, the founder of the Victorian garden city movement and author of To-morrow: a Peaceful Path to Real Reform. It espoused new communities, benefiting from clean air, open space and good-quality housing, all in short supply in postwar Britain.

In Cwmbran, it also included the innovation of a fully pedestrianised town centre, with free parking, which would eventually, upon the winding up of Cwmbran Development Corporation, become the first privately owned town centre in the UK. Originally envisaged as a community of 35,000 people, Cwmbran has actually grown to nearer 50,000 people. As a result of this expansion, there are now many more people who have made the new town their home.

It has been 70 years since the then Minister of Town and Country Planning, Lewis Silkin, said to the chair of the committee of the Cabinet, Herbert Morrison:

'I think we can build a very good new town here'.

Many would say that history has proved him right. Happy birthday, Cwmbran.