I remember a priest writing a little snippet in a parish newsletter, and it said, 'The church is not a museum for saints, but a hospital for sinners.' That's always stuck with me—that these religious buildings we have in Wales were constructed not just to the glory of their God, but as a balm for the congregation, a place of solace, worship and peace. These buildings are to be found on nearly every street in Valleys towns, as in the old joke that each village in Wales will have the chapel you go to as well as all the chapels you don't go to, though more and more these days, they're the chapels very few attend.

These buildings—the point has been made—are more than masonry; they're cathedrals of our collective memory, our connection to our past. There's a church in Partrishow with a fifteenth-century rood screen. In the churchyard a cross marks the place where Gerallt Gymro preached the third crusade. When you stand there, you can imagine that you hear the words. The synagogue in Merthyr shows the tell-tale fairytale architectural tenets of nearby Cyfarthfa castle and Castell Coch, a building that reflects our more recent history and the face it gives to the world. If buildings like this were lost, how much of our history would be buried with them? Only the foundations remain of Abaty Ystrad Fflur, where legend has it Dafydd ap Gwilym was laid to rest. Of Abaty Cwm Hir, nothing remains almost at all. Too many grand, illustrious spaces call to mind the Harri Webb line that 'nettles grow on the altar where the saints fasted and the pilgrims prayed.' 

These buildings are not only important to our past. They play a central role in community life as hubs for coffee mornings, bazaars, collection points, foodbanks. Throughout COVID-19, chapels, churches, synagogues, mosques, gurdwaras and temples have been used for outreach, connecting members of the community, organising food runs, Zoom choirs, buddy schemes. They offer a lifeline for residents of all faiths and none. I'd love to see more religious buildings getting support, getting guaranteed funding so that they can keep their doors open and heating on. I know the Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales has written to Members ahead of today's debate to point out that funding, be it from the National Lottery or the cultural recovery fund, will vary year on year, and less funding is available in Wales as compared with England.

Lots of dioceses and lots of congregations do rely on donations from the people who go and are associated with their congregations, and this will be true of all faiths. But, because of the pandemic, fewer people attend services or mass or prayer. They aren't there to put the money in the basket. What more certainty can the Government, I wonder, give to religious communities in Wales that their buildings can be not just protected, but strengthened and supported? Because I'd repeat again that they are not just monuments to the divine, but a living testament to the goodwill of residents in our communities—those of all religions, those without any religion, those who come together to support people who need it, to provide solace to strangers and, to those needing it, peace.