Diolch yn fawr, Llywydd. A gaf i ddechrau trwy gydnabod y ffaith bod Plaid Cymru wedi cefnogi’r Bil trwy’r broses ac wedi bod yn help mawr yn y broses o graffu arno ac o ddod â’r Bil i rym?

Llywydd, I haven’t taken up with Janet Finch-Saunders in previous debates her repeated assertion that this is the first piece of legislation to have made its way through the Assembly during this year. Now, I’m sure I was here when the land transaction Bill completed its Stage 4. I was almost certainly here when the landfill disposals tax Bill completed its fourth stage. Many of us were here when the public health Bill also made its way onto the statute book earlier this year. I’m afraid Janet’s grasp of arithmetic is every bit as secure as her grasp of Welsh priorities and preferences, and I probably wasn’t surprised at that. I was much, much more disappointed that her grasp of democracy turns out to be as faulty as her grasp of simple arithmetic. This Bill has now come before this Assembly in every part of its process. It has been voted on here at Stage 1. It has been voted on at committee at Stage 2. It was here again for voting at Stage 3, and it’s to be voted upon by this National Assembly again at Stage 4. And yet, we hear from the Conservative Party that its weak and failing Government at Westminster, which secured as many as eight seats in Wales in the general election barely a month ago, is going to find time on the floor of the House of Commons to try to overturn the democratically asserted will of this National Assembly. Well, I really, really hope that they know better than to try to do that. It would be both a democratic outrage as far as the National Assembly is concerned and it would be a terrible waste of the very small political capital that that failing Government still has in its locker. We shall put this Bill on the statute book today confident in the belief that we are doing the right thing and that people with more sense than we’ve heard this afternoon will know better than to try to overturn it elsewhere.