The fact that we're having this debate today is proof, if ever proof was needed, that this Labour Welsh Government is out of ideas, out of its depth and out of its mind. Here we are, sitting here six months on from the Senedd elections and I can count the number of Welsh Government debates on my fingers. Are we debating the big issues facing Wales and how are we going to solve them? No. Here we have yet another distraction tactic—'Look over there, the UK Government is bad'—hoping the Welsh public will forget about your failures: you failure to tackle the waiting list backlog; your failure to tackle the social care recruitment crisis; your failure to hold a Welsh COVID inquiry. If you keep talking about constitutional issues, maybe voters won't notice their public services crumbling around them—'Let's focus on what the UK Government are doing to elections. If we tell people that the evil Tories are trying to stop them from voting, maybe they'll vote for Welsh Labour instead'. 

The trouble is, it's not true. The UK Government are trying to secure our elections, elections that are wide open to fraud. That's the view of the Electoral Commission and multiple international organisations. It was the Electoral Commission that recommended the introduction of voter ID. The Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights within the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, an organisation that observes elections across the world, raised concerns about the vulnerabilities to fraud that they have seen in the UK's voting systems. Their concerns were realised in Tower Hamlets during the 2014 mayoral elections, and the High Court found evidence of widespread voter fraud. This is what spurred the UK Government to take action, action that was well thought out and widely tested. They tested different systems of voter ID during elections in 2018 and 2019. They established a system of providing free voter ID for those who had no form of identification, slaying that straw man for good.

Why is it that the left fear voter ID so much, and why do they continue to roll out spurious arguments against holding free and fair elections? Surely they don't condone voting fraud. The one argument I hear time and time again is that there is no evidence of such fraud happening in Wales and we therefore don't need voter ID for Welsh elections. Well, this place has never suffered a terrorist attack, so why do we bother having security and armed police? It's a ridiculous argument. We put measures in place to deter such attacks and to prevent such attacks, and just as we defend our democratic institutions, so should we defend our democracy. But let's be clear, the UK Government is not introducing voter ID for Senedd or local elections, because that's not within their remit. Those proposals are for UK Parliament elections and English local elections, and I would like this place to follow suit to secure our Welsh elections. But let's face it, it will never happen as long as we have a Welsh Government happy to make it easy for unscrupulous people to subvert the will of the electorate. Thank you very much.