Well, there's much in this motion that I can agree with, in particular the importance of the arts. Having been a performer myself and appeared in shows at the Grand Theatre in Swansea and the New Theatre in Cardiff, as well as, I think, having had four sell-out shows at the Edinburgh festival, nobody needs to tell me of the importance of support for the arts in this country, and it is a tragedy what is now happening to it. But we also have to recognise that this is fundamentally, of course, ultimately, the result of COVID-19, but more immediately it's a result of the policy choices that have been made by the UK Government and the Welsh Government in how to deal with COVID-19.

It didn't need to be like this. The problems of the arts could have been so much more manageable but for the lockdown policies that have been imposed upon us all. Things like a maximum of 50 people in an auditorium in earlier times, and so on—no, sorry, this is something that is not found in other countries, like Sweden, for example, where a maximum of 50 people in a theatre was imposed, but nevertheless their industries have survived. The Swedish cinema chain Svenska Bio has remained operational and, as a result, has become Europe's biggest operator by box office revenue. And the latest figures for Sweden are that the number of people suffering critically or seriously from COVID in hospital has gone up from 15 to 20 in the entire country, whilst ours has been going up very rapidly because what we did as a result of the lockdown measures was not to stop the spread of the virus, but only to delay it. And the consequence has been vast economic damage as well as artistic damage done widely throughout the country. 

Of course, I agree entirely with what Leanne Wood said—it doesn't happen very often, but there was nothing in her speech that I disagreed with. Wales's social history, in all its diversity, does need to be commemorated, and I certainly do think that the role of ethnic minorities is a part of our history that we need to recognise and learn about, because that is part of Wales's history, but I don't believe that we should see everything through the prism of a kind of Black Lives Matter-skewed vision. Black Lives Matter, as I pointed out yesterday and as Mandy Jones has repeated, is actually a violent group, evidently anti-British and anti-Welsh. Their activists have desecrated war memorials, memorials of people who've given their lives to fight against racism and fascism, and they want to tear down statues like that of Sir Thomas Picton or the obelisk in Carmarthen. Picton, as David Melding has pointed out, was a flawed man but a man of his time, but, nevertheless, his military achievements were absolutely essential in winning the Napoleonic wars, and therefore keeping this country free from the clutches of a megalomaniac dictator who wanted to impose his rule on the whole of Europe and, in the process, re-impose slavery in the French West Indies.

So, yes, history is a checkerboard with black and white squares on it, and we should recognise them all. Black Lives Matter policies are open Marxism and Leanne Wood did refer to a Marxist philosopher in the course of her speech, but I don't know how many people who vote for Plaid Cymru actually believe in the kind of Marxist ideals that Black Lives Matter stands for—defunding the police, scrapping the army, opening the prisons and so on and so forth, dismantling capitalism, et cetera. Nobody in Wales beyond a few crackpots wants that.

I think the motion is spoilt by these kinds of references, because otherwise there's much at a practical level in this that I could vote for: for example, recognising the role of freelancers and properly supporting them; using the planning system imaginatively to enable arts institutions to survive; introducing statutory protections to avoid the loss of Welsh language place names—I can agree with that, and I can agree on the importance of preserving and developing and enhancing the Welsh language. But we have to recognise ultimately that the arts are going to be permanently damaged by the overall legislative scheme that all the people who are going to vote for this motion today have voted through this Senedd. I know these are hard policy choices to make but, fundamentally, the overreaction to COVID and, instead of concentrating on protecting the vulnerable, imposing a sledgehammer lockdown on everybody, has done enormous damage to our economy, enormous damage to our social life and, ultimately, to the mental well-being of the people of Wales.