An excellent introduction by Jack, and a really interesting debate by people from all parties, and that's how it should be. It seems to me that the COVID pandemic, and the collective action that has been required to beat it, is what has propelled radical responses into the spotlight. Who would have thought that a Chancellor of the Exchequer, in one of the most right-wing libertarian Governments the UK has had in living memory, would agree to pay 80 per cent of all this country's wages in order to save people's jobs?

I've long supported the principle of a universal basic income. I was an early adopter of Wages for Housework, long before many Members, including Jack, were born. We need to remember that the original family allowance, which then became child benefit, was intended to recognise the important work of bringing up the next generation. Sadly, it's been allowed to wither on the vine and is a completely insufficient contribution by society to the cost of bringing up our children. But until recently, I didn't feel that now was the time to be pushing for a UBI, because I thought, in the middle of a pandemic, there were just far too many other immediate problems that Governments needed to deal with. And in addition to that, Welsh Government neither has the resources nor, indeed, the powers to make it happen. But I think the depth of the crisis we are now facing, that are coming together, make this something that we really, now, urgently need to look at, because we are not just facing a pandemic, we are also facing the real possibility of the UK severing its ties with our European neighbours after 40 years without achieving a workable trade deal. And in addition to that, we have the gathering climate crisis, which, if we do nothing about it, will simply get much, much worse very, very quickly.

So, I am convinced that this is what we now need: a universal basic income to protect our country from the level of economic and social disintegration that is far greater and more devastating than anything we saw in 1973, 1982, 1989 and 2008. Above all, we have to avoid the violent political upheavals that are often triggered by the failure to manage economic shockwaves. Goodness knows what would have happened in 2008 if Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling hadn't managed to prevent the complete collapse of all our banks.

So, before COVID, Wales was already suffering from very high levels of insecurity, as others have already said. We know that one in eight people have insecure employment, and Wales has one of the highest levels of zero-hours contracts, which is probably the most insecure way in which anybody is forced to try and juggle home and work responsibilities. But underpinning that disgraceful statistic is the fact that one third of children in this country live in households that struggle to put sufficient food on the table without skimping on other essentials like heating and school trips, and this in the sixth richest economy in the world.

We also have this punitive and wasteful benefits system, designed to punish people for being unable to find a job, even if none exists. As Mick has already pointed out, universal benefit could have been, if properly funded and implemented differently, the reliable safety net that any civilised society needs when people get into difficulties, but it wasn't, and it isn't. It's just increased the misery and impoverishment of the most vulnerable. You can read on social media some of the appalling things that happen to people as soon as they have any change in their universal benefit. Simply forcing people to wait five weeks for any money on universal benefit is just a calling card for loan sharks and spiralling debt. Universal benefit is costing—