Diolch, Lywydd. Ymhen dros wythnos, fe fydd gan bobl Cymru gyfrifoldeb anferth: cyfrifoldeb i benderfynu pa fath o ddyfodol maen nhw ei heisiau i’n gwlad. A ydym ni eisiau byw mewn gwlad fewnblyg, gul neu a ydym ni eisiau gwlad sy’n edrych allan a gwlad sy’n deall, os ydym ni eisiau dylanwadu yn y byd, mae angen inni gydweithredu gyda’n cymdogion agosaf? Fe fydd y penderfyniad yma’n effeithio ar ein dyfodol am genedlaethau i ddod. Rwyf eisiau tanlinellu heddiw fy mod i’n credu ein bod ni’n elwa yng Nghymru yn fwy nag unrhyw fan arall o’r Deyrnas Unedig o’n haelodaeth o’r Undeb Ewropeaidd. Rydym ni’n fwy llewyrchus, yn fwy diogel ac yn fwy dylanwadol oherwydd ein haelodaeth o’r Undeb Ewropeaidd.

The Wales football team gave us great pride last week. They’ve also reminded us that together we’re stronger. We’re stronger on the football pitch together and we also need to understand that we’re stronger when we act together with our nearest neighbours. The fact is that Wales is better off financially thanks to our membership of the European Union. We receive much more back than we put in: £79 per head according to a recent report. Our infrastructure has been rebuilt thanks to European money. People have been trained—200,000 of them—thanks to European funding and jobs have been created by the thousands thanks to EU cash.

Theoretically, we could continue to receive this highest tier of funding until 2020. We’ve already earmarked the money to regenerate our communities, to support the unemployed and to rebuild our infrastructure, including transport links like the metro. We have no idea if this funding will be honoured. These projects could be in jeopardy and I, for one, have no confidence at all that a right-wing Government in London who is short changing us already through the Barnett formula will make up for what’ll be taken from us if we were to leave the EU.

Some on the ‘Out’ campaign are making promises to farmers that would not be in their gift to determine. Agriculture, they clearly haven’t worked out, is a devolved area. But this funding is not the key economic reason for us to remain in the EU. We should try and improve our wealth so we don’t need this funding. But the security of belonging to the biggest economic market in the world—500 million people—giving us opportunities to sell our goods and giving us opportunities that haven’t begun to be realised in the service sector yet, are things that we should not put in jeopardy.

This week, we’ve heard that Wales again has reached record levels of inward investment. These companies are choosing to base themselves here because it gives them a platform to enter that single market. We know that 150,000 jobs are dependent on that relationship. Now, nobody’s suggesting that those jobs are going to disappear overnight, but if you are sitting in Ford’s headquarters then you need to make a decision in future years whether you’re going to base yourselves in Spain, where they also have a plant, or here in Wales. If you look at the mark-up you need to enter that market—almost 10 per cent if we were outside the single European area—then you’ve got to ask, ‘Which choice are they likely to make?’ How many of our own export companies can really remain competitive when their mark-up is almost 10 per cent more than their European rivals?

Ninety-four per cent of Welsh lamb is exported to the European Union. And you know what? A lot of farmers I know have said, ‘Look, let’s ditch the European Union, let’s ditch the red tape’, but they’re living in cuckoo land if they think that they’ll be able to continue to export and tear up the rules and regulations that they need to adhere to if they want access to that market. The big difference is that they will have no say and no voice on what those rules will look like.

Our universities would suffer grievously from the absence of research and development funding. These are creating the jobs of the future, the jobs that will be paying for our social model, paying for our pensions and our health systems. And there will be an immediate price to pay. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has suggested around £30 billion could be wiped off the economy if we leave—£30 billion that currently is being spent on our health and education systems. And it won’t be the likes of Boris and Gove who’ll suffer; it’ll be the most vulnerable and the poorest in our society who will bear the brunt of these cuts. The ‘Leave’ campaign even at this late stage has given us no idea of what their vision of ‘leave’ looks like. You wouldn’t swap your house for another without seeing it first, without being sure of the location and the amenities where it was appropriate. This leap in the dark I think is madness.

And the idea of any individual country being able to call the shots in today’s globalised world is a fantasy. When the planes ploughed into those Twin Towers, it took minutes for it to affect our stock market. Already the insecurity of not knowing what’s going to happen next week has wiped billions off the stock market; it’s reduced the value of the pound. We are not controlling that. Sovereignty in today’s globalised society is an illusion. It’s like imagining Tim Peake boasting up there in his space station, independent, making his decisions, but the reality is he wouldn’t be there without a whole load of different communities and countries co-operating together, making sure he’s able to do his job.

Now, the EU is far from perfect, but, having sat in a gilt-clad chamber where people were there purely because of an accident of birth, I can tell you we should not be throwing stones. Labour, of course, wants to see an EU committed to social justice, protective of people’s rights as workers, as citizens, as consumers, an EU that understands the need for environmental protection, the need to tackle climate change and the need to respect sustainable development. We’ve benefited from a host of European laws. We have some of the cleanest beaches in Europe. We have high standards for recycling rates. We’ve got cleaner air. Would we be allowed to pursue criminals abroad, monitor extremists and work with Europol? The fact is nobody knows.

And today’s Tory cry of ‘red tape’ is our cry for protecting workers. The think tank Open Europe, on which much of the ‘Out’ campaign’s figures have been based, have calculated the costs of this so-called red tape. Let me just give you one example. They say that the working time directive, which limits working hours to 48 hours a week, costs the country £4 billion. They say the benefits are zero. Well, tell that to the cleaner who has no say over whether she’s allowed to do overtime. Tell that to the overworked mother who wants to go and see her children. Tell that to people like my husband who, when he was a trainee doctor, had to work 110 hours for the NHS. I for one am happy to relinquish a degree of sovereignty to give us the protection we need that we know we won’t receive from a Government hellbent on reducing workers’ rights, as we’ve seen in their introduction of the Trade Union Bill. But I think we’ve got to remember that, in this talk of markets, of rights and of the environment, the EU is the most successful example of a peace-making institution in history.

You know, 75 years ago, about two miles away from this very spot, my father’s house was totally obliterated by a German bomb. Who can imagine the terror of that poor child and other children around him? They thought they were safe and secure in their homes here in Wales and they became the target for an enemy. In this world full of instability, of threats, of new global challenges, we take that peace for granted at our peril. I hope that next week the people of Wales will think very carefully and chose to vote for prosperity, for peace and security and to remain a part of the European Union.