Diolch yn fawr, Dirprwy Lywydd. It gives me great pleasure to respond to this debate. A short debate is one of our more creative pieces of Standing Orders, in that it allows Members to choose a topic and then it falls to any appropriate Minister that is available to respond to the debate. But I'm particularly pleased to be able to do that today because, I believe, by choosing to celebrate internationalists from Wales who have made an undoubted impact on the international scene, you have made a significant contribution to the rewriting of the national curriculum for our own country.

Because I do think that it is part of the process of greater autonomy that the nations and regions who achieve that autonomy will seek not only to rewrite the present and the future, but also to rewrite the past; understanding it in a way in which what would have appeared oppositional or marginal or even extreme in some other perspective does in fact represent a tradition that we need to celebrate as we galvanise our own resources of thought for what faces us, as you described so well at the end of your remarks.

That's why I think you're absolutely right to say that Welsh achievement has in the past been camouflaged by 'overbearing UK or British identity', to quote your own words, and I think it is time that we reasserted the distinctiveness of our heritage, in particular to redefine the contribution that Wales has made to internationalism. That includes the legacy of the peace movement and the support for the League of Nations, and going back to the establishment of the Temple of Peace here in our own capital, through to the long history of the peace movement, of the anti-nuclear movement, of the women's movement. All these are aspects of our history that have international significance.