Diolch, Gadeirydd, a diolch i Blaid Cymru, for bringing today's debate. The Abolish the Welsh Assembly Party will not be supporting the motion today. This motion by Plaid purports to be about giving young people in Wales a better future, but what its outcome would be if Plaid got their way could be precisely the opposite. I have seldom seen a motion whose outcome would so transparently and so obviously negate the purpose of that motion. Whether this is just Plaid's crass stupidity or whether the atrocious effects of their aspirations are actually entirely deliberate, I do not know.

The obvious thread running through their various points is the downgrading of education standards in Wales. It is so obvious that I almost suspect that it is being done deliberately. A consistent theme is that they want us to have different exams and standards from those in England, so the outcome would be that the attainment levels of Welsh school pupils cannot be measured against those in England. Therefore, as Welsh standards continue to go down, as they have been going down over the past 20 years, we won't be able to see that they're going down because we will no longer be able to measure how our school pupils are doing against how school pupils are doing next door in England. This will let Welsh education Ministers off the hook, as they can make false claims that Welsh standards are in fact going up, but the truth will undoubtedly be the opposite.

The proof of the pudding is in the eating. If English universities cannot easily measure the ability of Welsh pupils against English ones, then are we going to get more of our bright pupils into the top English universities, or fewer of them? If employers at big companies in England—in London, in Manchester and other major cities—if they are not going to be able to easily measure the qualifications of young Welsh people against their contemporaries from England, then are more Welsh youngsters going to get into these well-paid jobs in England, or fewer? I think I know the likely answer.

This idea of a new Welsh curriculum diverging totally from that in England is simply a ruse so that Welsh education Ministers are less accountable to parents in Wales and so that falling standards can be more easily disguised. The obvious clue to Plaid's intentions lies in their opening point, where they ask the Welsh Government to guarantee that exams won't be held next summer. Any sensible party would be asking the Welsh Government to do their utmost to make sure that exams do go ahead, but Plaid want the opposite. In Plaid's ideal world, there would be no exams at all, it seems, and all pupils would be graded according to what teacher says. But we know that, back in the real world, most students are desperate to sit exams next year, because they don't want to go through the utter fiasco we had this summer, when grades were given out according to teacher assessments and those awful algorithms that have been referred to. But Plaid today want to condemn more pupils to go through a similar shambles again.

Can I state a few simple facts of political life to Plaid Cymru? Wales has always benefited economically from its close relationship with England. Most of the economic development of Wales has been through interaction with England, through trading with England, through English investment into Wales, and through generation after generation of Welsh people trying to better themselves by seeking opportunities, sometimes in England. But Plaid want to close all this off. They want an independent state, based on what kind of economy God only knows, in which the key to attainment is that everyone in Wales will eventually speak Welsh. The rest of the world is desperate to learn English because of the obvious economic benefits of learning English. One advantage we have in Wales is that we have the English language, but Plaid want to downgrade the importance of English so that we can all speak Welsh.

After more than 20 years of devolution, Wales suffers from relatively low wages. Welsh Labour Governments have done absolutely nothing to change this. We now have the weakest economy of the UK's four nations, but Plaid aren't even trying. They want to wall us off from England and condemn future generations of Welsh people to poverty and lack of career prospects. But it will be okay, because all the poor people of Wales will be able to speak Welsh. You couldn't make it up. Diolch yn fawr iawn i chi i gyd.