I'd like to thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak today on what is such an important and significant time in our country's history, and indeed for recalling the Senedd today to give Members the chance to pay their tributes to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. And on behalf of the people of the Vale of Clwyd, I'd like to pay tribute to Her Majesty and thank her wholeheartedly for her 70 years of stoic service to the people of Wales, the United Kingdom, and indeed the world. She wasn't just the Queen of the United Kingdom, 14 Commonwealth countries and a global figure, she was also a family figure, a mother, a grandmother and great-grandmother, who will be sorely missed by those who knew her intimately, and by people both near and far.

I was born in 1988, which means that my memories of the Queen are mostly of her advancing years, but many people will remember a beautiful young princess who declared in Cape Town in 1947 that no matter how long or short her life may be, she would dedicate her life to serving the Commonwealth, and, my goodness, has she achieved that. Times were different in the 1950s, very different, and indeed they have changed a lot over the decades. We were still recovering in the wake of world war two back then. But what the Queen has demonstrated is an amazing sense of versatility and moving with the times. She sent her first e-mail in 1976, filmed her annual Christmas message in 3D in 2012, and sent her first tweet in 2014, and most recently attended Zoom meetings during the COVID-19 pandemic. Not too bad for somebody in their 90s, I must say. 

Fifteen Prime Ministers have served the Queen over her 70-year tenure. Presidents, Prime Ministers, First Ministers and politicians come and go, but what she has demonstrated is being a constant figure in people's lives, no matter what the politics of the day are, and being a safe and reassuring pair of hands that people could rely on whatever was happening in their lives. 

Like most people, I never thought I'd have the chance to meet the Queen, but the opportunity presented itself in this very place in October 2021, during the opening of the sixth Senedd, which turned out to be her very last visit to Wales. She asked me what I did before I became a Member of the Senedd. And when responding to Her Majesty, I was struck by how engaged and interested she was in what I had to say, which showed me that, still, after 70 years of public duty, she was as enthusiastic as she had been all those years before in Cape Town. And that was a quality that never eroded over the years, which is why she will always remain a deeply iconic figure.

And I would like to conclude my contribution today with a short, but well-known poem, written by a bard of her beloved Scotland. 'An honest woman here lies at rest, the friend of man, the friend of truth, the friend of age, the guide of youth; few hearts like hers, with virtue warm’d, few heads with knowledge so inform’d; if there’s another world, she lives in bliss; if there is none, she made the best of this.'