Wales is a community of communities. That was the decree of some of the foremost leaders of the national movement, as it has been over the past 100 years, and I and others continue to share that message today. So, I am grateful for the opportunity to discuss this issue before us today. But the truth is that it isn't the Labour Party in Wales, or indeed the Conservative Party in the United Kingdom, that is letting the communities of Wales down, but rather the neo-liberal ideology that dominates their thinking—that's what lets us down. This is the ideology that led to that noted Conservative, Norman Tebbit, saying, 'Get on your bike', without any concern at all for the people in our communities. In the same way, in discussing second homes and the right to live at home campaign, members of the Conservative Party opposite have asked, 'Well, what right do people have to live in the communities where they grew up?' 

So, what is a community? According to this ideology, community doesn't mean a thing. It's a collection of buildings alone, with people coming and going. We see this increasingly today, don't we, as villages and small towns develop into no more than satellites for larger towns: commuter towns, where people sleep at night to travel back and forth to the workplace. But it's people who make a community, be that a small geographical community or a nation, or an online community. It's people and people's relationships with each other that should be at the heart of everything we discuss here: those little conversations between parents at the school gate at 3.00 in the afternoon, the children playing in the park on a sunny day, that question, 'Well, how's your mother? How's your father?' when you bump into someone when you buy bread in the shop, the celebration or the commiseration when you see the boys or girls succeeding on the playing field, the chapel or the church, the pub, the public meeting, the bingo, the concert, the ramblers group. All of this and much more is the rich social fabric of a community. But, without this, without the community school, without the local pub, without the chapel, without the hall, the playground, the park, the shop, the bus, the bingo, without all of these things, it's not a community that we have, but a mental health crisis as people live in lonely silos. This neo-liberal regime treats our communities like quarries, to be exploited in order to extract wealth and then abandoned when that wealth comes to an end.

Every element of public policy or private investment depends on the numbers of people, not their needs and requirements, and this is neo-liberalism at its core. Because, at the heart of this, the yardstick is value for money, not the quality of life, not the quality of a community's life. That's what drives society today unfortunately; that's neo-liberalism. 

There are several examples of this, but I want to refer to one specific example. Consider planning: today, a major construction company can apply to build a large estate of homes. That estate doesn't have to include a school or a surgery. The planning department can try to enforce the presence of a some park or a link road and ask for pennies to be contributed to the local school, but fundamentally a developer can have a major project with huge profits at the expense of the community.

If an application is rejected then the developer can appeal to the planning inspector. But, if the development is then allowed, where is the right of the community to appeal? There is no right of appeal for a community. This is one example of the neo-liberal system putting profit and capitalist needs ahead of community needs, and it shows that it's the current neo-liberal system that militates against communities.

That's why I ask you to vote against the motion—[Interruption.] Well, as I conclude, of course, Sam.