Cynulliad Cenedlaethol Cymru

I call Members to order and welcome Members back after the summer recess.

It gives me great pleasure to announce, in accordance with Standing Order 26.75, that the Landfill Disposals Tax (Wales) Act 2017 and the Trade Union (Wales) Act 2017 were given Royal Assent on 7 September 2017.

The first item on our agenda this afternoon’s questions to the First Minister, the first question is from Russell George.

We welcome all contributions to this important consultation. We have already received over 700 responses and these will be used to ensure any future legislative change is the most effective it can be for the people of Wales. The consultation will run until the end of this month.

First Minister, I hope you will join me in recognising the important work that community health councils do across Wales. I’ve had the opportunity of meeting Powys community health council on a number of occasions over the summer recess. And one concern they’ve raised with me is the direction that the Welsh Government White Paper seems to be taking, and particularly an issue that they have raised with me is that the White Paper does not contain any recognition of the complexities of cross-border services, and neither does it refer to the important scrutiny role that our community health councils provide on behalf of patients. You’ll understand, of course, that the vast majority of my constituents access services across the border. What reassurance can you provide to Powys community health council that Welsh patients using services over the border have an effective advocate if future arrangements change?

Well, we want that to continue, of course, and that’s why it’s so important that Powys and other CHCs respond to the consultation, so that we can take forward legislation with the broadest consensus possible.

Community health councils have independence, expertise and powers to intervene on behalf of patients in order to uphold their safety and their dignity. So, can the First Minister explain how taking such functions away from the local level and centralising them nationally, and then watering them down, is going to enhance patient safety and dignity?

We have to remember, of course, that CHCs are not an inspectorate. We have a health inspectorate that does that. They have a role, of course, in terms of acting as patient voice and in many other ways. I can say to Members that there has been a very positive meeting with the CHC board. There’s a lot of common ground in the White Paper itself. There are some issues that will need to be discussed further, but the intention is to strengthen the voice of the patient across the whole of Wales, and we look forward to working with CHCs in order to deliver that.

Our £3 million investment in the new hospice in Malpas that opened last week demonstrates our commitment to end-of-life care in the south-east of Wales. The updated end-of-life care delivery plan, published in March 2017, also sets out the actions we are taking to deliver a collaborative approach to improving end-of-life care throughout Wales.

Thank you, First Minister. Last week, along with the Cabinet Secretary for health, I attended the launch of the new state-of-the-art in-patient unit at Malpas. The 15-bedded unit offers support for people with complex symptom-management needs and end-of-life care, and, as you mentioned, the investment of £3 million of Welsh Government money for the St David’s hospice is a good example of how to deliver first-class hospice care and helps to meet the demand of palliative care services in south-east Wales. So, will you join me, First Minister, in paying tribute to the vision of the board of directors at St David’s, particularly the chief executive, Emma Saysell, and the tremendous support of the local community and volunteers, and to show that investment from Welsh Government, in partnership with the health board and local authority, can make a real difference to the lives of people when they need it most?

Yes. It’s an excellent example of partnership working, because the investment has enabled the St David’s hospice care team to deliver a palliative care model that is universally recognised as being a good example of first-class care. Now that the new building is complete and open, the charity, of course, will now be able to support more people who need their help at the end of their lives, and I very much congratulate the charity itself for the work that it has put in to make sure that the opening came about.

First Minister, can I concur with Jayne Bryant’s comments, and also welcome the opening of the new hospice at Malpas? As chief executive, Emma Saysell, has said, this is a landmark development and will hopefully plug previously identified gaps in provision over the last few years, and I’m sure it will go from strength to strength.

You’ll know, First Minister, I frequently raise the issue of motor neurone disease in this Chamber and its devastating impact on sufferers, estimated at up to 5,000 across the UK at any one time. A key finding of the recent Demos report into the financial effect of MND on sufferers and their families has said that services can often be slow to respond to MND sufferers’ needs because of the rapidity of the progress of the disease. So, can you undertake to look again at the provision of services, including hospice and palliative care in Wales, to ensure that—yes, we’ve got a wonderful new building in Malpas, and that’s one part of the jigsaw—the services that are provided are able to keep pace with sufferers of complex diseases such as MND?

The Member raises an important issue. It was remiss of me not to congratulate him, of course, on his recent wedding, and his dedication in coming back here. I believe that was not a choice he faced, but, nevertheless, he is here. But my congratulations, obviously, to him and his new wife.

Motor neurone disease is a devastating illness. It is usually very progressive. Sometimes, it moves more quickly in some people than others. It’s difficult to predict the rapidity of the progress of the illness, but, unfortunately, of course, it’s known what the illness eventually does to the body. We want to work with the motor neurone disease charities in order to make sure that the level of care is right for the individual, because we know that it’s not possible to predict with any accuracy how the disease will progress in terms of its speed, and that is certainly something that we’ve been working with the motor neurone disease charities in order to achieve.

Questions now from the party leaders. The leader of Plaid Cymru, Leanne Wood.

Diolch, Llywydd. It’s almost 20 years to the day since the vote in 1997 to establish this institution, and with a new term must come a new chapter in the Welsh story. First Minister, I personally won’t forget the triumph, where so many of us in this Chamber, and outside, helped to deliver a victory for our nation on that night. Governing ourselves is a victory in itself. No other country has governed another well.

But the Welsh Government is a different institution to the National Assembly. I agree with Ron Davies when he says that Ministers need to ask themselves some difficult questions about delivery. First Minister, do you agree with him?

No. Ron, of course, had the opportunity to shape the direction of the National Assembly, but we know, of course, his unfortunate story. I’m proud of what we’ve achieved over the past 20 years. When I look back at what Wales was like in the 1990s: a country lacking confidence, where young people wanted to leave, a country that really had no strong profile abroad—that wasn’t happening. And the one thing that strikes me is that it was accepted as normal that unemployment should be substantially higher in Wales than in the rest of the UK. That was seen as something that was inevitable. That’s no longer the case; unemployment’s either at the UK average, or below the UK average. I could go on, of course, and she might expect me to do that, but I pick out certain comparisons there with the 1990s, in the way that Wales has changed for the better in the 20 years since the referendum.

Well, people are still leaving, First Minister, as you well know. And, last year, you said that Labour is halfway through a decade of delivery. But, for many people, the current performance of devolved Government is mediocre to say the least, and has been seen as making no difference to their lives or the quality of public services. And those aren’t my words, but the findings of research on attitudes to devolution, which you will have read yesterday. If we are halfway through a decade of delivery, why is it that our health and education outcomes are consistently worse than those in Scotland? Why is our GCSE pass rate this year worse than the Scottish equivalent? Why are waiting lists longer on average? And that’s without even mentioning comparisons to England or to other western European countries. What is the explanation for your Government not delivering on the outcomes that people both expect and deserve?

Well, far from it—I don’t think Scotland is the Shangri-La that is portrayed. There have been real problems in the Scottish education system. There are still issues over the attainment gap, which we have closed and they have not. If we look at health, and we look at the 1990s, it was normal in the 1990s, in the days of a Tory Government, for people to wait two years for an operation. That was normal. People accept that no more—no more. We know that waiting times have been reduced substantially despite having an enormous cut in our budget in that time. We’ve just seen the best GCSE results ever. Scotland has its own education system. You can’t compare their qualification system with ours because it’s so different. We are building schools across the whole of Wales; in England, nothing is being built. We’re proud of that fact. If we look at the economy, our unemployment rate is 4.3 per cent. That would have been undreamt of in the 1990s. We are still attracting excellent investment into Wales—the best foreign direct investment figures for the past 30 years—and that’s because we have a Government that is able to go out and sell Wales. Whatever the politics of that Government, the profile that Ministers have is far, far greater than was the case in the 1990s, and that’s why we’ve been so successful in bringing jobs into Wales.

You sound complacent, First Minister, and your answers here this afternoon seem to suggest that things are already going so well, that this is as good as it gets. Not so much a decade of delivery, but it’s a decade of complacency. We need, First Minister, a country where there is a premium on self-Government. Making our own decisions is an essential first step, and Plaid Cymru is proud that this country has taken that step. But the next step is realising that premium. Being a Welsh citizen should mean that there’s a public service bonus: a devolution dividend, then, if you like. So, I’ll make one challenge to you today, as we mark 20 years since that ‘yes’ vote: by the end of this Assembly term, will the Labour Government have closed the gap with Scotland on health, education and the economy? And if we approach the end of this term and there seems to be no sign of a closing of that gap, will you then accept and admit that Wales needs a new Government?

Well, it’s not me she wants to convince; it’s the electorate, and she’s not convinced them of that. There’s no point complaining to me about the lack of success of her own party. I do not accept there’s a gap between us and Scotland. I don’t accept that there’s a gap between us and Scotland in education. Scotland’s unemployment rate is regularly higher than ours. It’s not as if Scotland, economically, is doing fantastically well, and from our perspective I’m proud of what we’ve achieved over the past 20 years. The electors of Wales have recognised that. They’ve seen that in election after election, and there will be no sign of complacency from us. We know that it gets harder and harder to convince people to vote for us the longer that we are in Government, and we will work harder and harder to ensure that people continue to give us their support.

The leader of the opposition, Andrew R.T. Davies.

Thank you, Presiding Officer. First Minister, in August, the report about Kris Wade was published from the Abertawe Bro Morgannwg University Local Health Board. This was a desktop review into the employment by that health board of Kris Wade, a man who is currently serving a 21-year sentence for the sexually motivated killing of 65-year-old Christine James. In the years leading up to Ms James’s murder, Kris Wade was the subject of no fewer than three separate allegations of sexual abuse amongst vulnerable patients. At the time of the desktop review publication, my party criticised the report for its lack of independence. It is our belief it can never be acceptable for a health board to investigate serious concerns about itself. Following several calls from my party, and indeed the BMA and others in this Chamber, your Government announced Healthcare Inspectorate Wales’s role in reviewing the desktop report that the health board undertook. How on earth can it be acceptable for a health board to investigate such serious accusations of its own failing?

It’s a complicated picture, and I understand the grief that the family has faced. There were three allegations; that’s correct. No action was taken by the police with regard to those allegations, and so no criminal proceedings were taken. That said, it is highly important that there is an investigation by Healthcare Inspectorate Wales into not just the lessons that can be learned, but the lessons that can be learned in order that we can be assured as a Government that any failings that may have been in the system at that time are corrected, and that the family then can be assured that the health board did all that it could have done to deal with the situation. We won’t know the answer to that question until of course we get the findings of the health inspectorate’s report.

First Minister, it’s my understanding that not one patient, not one medical professional and not one member of staff was asked to give a formal interview in the course of the review. That, surely, is unacceptable. Can you confirm that Healthcare Inspectorate Wales will take evidence from clinicians, from patients and, above all, anyone associated with the investigation that allowed the tragedy to unfold and ultimately ended up in this gentleman being sentenced to 21 years in prison?

It is absolutely crucial that the investigation is independent. It’s not for me then to tell Healthcare Inspectorate Wales what they should and shouldn’t do, but I think it’s proper for me to say that I would expect them to gain as much evidence as broadly as possible in order for their final findings to be as robust as possible.

I think most people would say it would be fair for you or your Government, in the shape of the Cabinet Secretary, to set the terms of reference for the Healthcare Inspectorate Wales inquiry report, investigation, call it what you will, because obviously he has asked them to do that. When I found out that not one medical person had been asked, not one patient had been asked, to give evidence to this investigation, that is unbelievable, I have to say. And I do call upon you to make very strict terms of reference for this investigation from Healthcare Inspectorate Wales so that the report that they present to your Government can enjoy the confidence of the Members here, of the wider public, that they are being protected against people like Kris Wade working within our health service. Will you give that commitment that the terms of reference are robust enough from the Healthcare Inspectorate Wales inquiry into this inquiry so that we can have confidence that patients and members of the public are protected from the likes of Kris Wade ever working within the health service here in Wales?

The answer to the question is ‘yes’, of course. We want to make sure that the investigation itself is (a) independent and (b) robust. I’m not sure whether he is saying that, in the past, not enough people were interviewed, or whether that’s happening now, but whichever way, I’ll make sure that that is looked at to make sure that that issue is dealt with. But it is obviously important that the findings are seen to be robust and can be supported by all in this Chamber.

Leader of the UKIP group, Neil Hamilton.

Diolch yn fawr, Llywydd. In the Government’s document, ‘Brexit and Fair Movement of People’, it acknowledges that, in the British social attitudes survey in 2013, 86 per cent of the UK population wanted to see immigration reduced, and yet the policy of the Government here in Cardiff, in this document, is to oppose the introduction of any form of target for a reduction of immigration. The latest figures show a significant reduction on what we’ve seen in recent years, but even at 0.25 million a year net migration, which we currently have, that would add, if sustained, 8 million to our population by 2032, 21 million by 2064, when the population of the UK would be 85 million. That is just not sustainable. Before the First Minister says that, well, immigration is absolutely vital for economic growth, in 2014, the Office for Budget Responsibility did a study of the effects of immigration at current levels, 0.25 million net a year. That adds 0.4 per cent to GDP but also 0.4 per cent to population, so that GDP per capita wouldn’t improve; it’s neither here nor there. Isn’t it time that the Welsh Government woke up to the realities of life in modern Britain?

Immigration should be tailored according to the needs of the UK. Targets—. It is artificial. What is the point of targets? Let’s examine that situation. Let’s say, for example, we wished to recruit more doctors to the Welsh NHS but were told, ‘Sorry, we’ve reached the quota for this year’. That’s nonsensical. Why on earth would that be a sensible policy for any Government to adopt? So, we have offered a view on migration. We don’t know what the UK Government’s view is yet. This is our offer in terms of what we think the system should look like, but it’s absolutely crucial, of course, that policy is tailored to what the UK actually needs, not an artificial target.

The First Minister knows that that is not the only way in which targets can work. In particular, the problems that we have for the levels of immigration that we currently suffer are not in the field of professionals, like doctors and nurses, where they will always be able to qualify for whatever the skills needs of the country are. But at the bottom end of the income scale, in particular, for those who are on low skills or unskilled, there are very significant factors at work that push down the levels of income that people are likely to get. Given that Wales is a low-wage economy, and we’re at the bottom of the income scale for the nations and regions of the UK, shouldn’t we be more concerned to reduce the inflow of unskilled and low-skilled migration in order to protect those who are most vulnerable in Welsh society?

I think the game was given away by the leader of UKIP when he said that immigration is something that we suffer. I have to say to him that the proportion of EU citizens in Wales is very, very low—well below 5 per cent of the population. It is the case that people work in Wales; that’s true. But he needs to speak to businesses, who will tell him that they need to be able to recruit people in many, many different jobs, some of them highly skilled, some of them not so skilled, but those people are needed. What I say to him is that we should suffer immigration, as he would put it, on the level that is appropriate to the needs of our economy. I have to say to him: he talks about a low-wage economy; he is complicit in driving down wages. Did he support the minimum wage? No, he didn’t support the minimum wage. Of course he didn’t. Is he supportive of ways of enforcing the minimum wage to stop anybody being exploited, regardless of where they are from? No, I doubt that is the case. He cannot, on the one hand, complain about the driving down of wages when his own record shows that he was against the minimum wage and therefore happy to see wages driven down when he was in another place.

The First Minister knows that the policy of my party was in favour of the minimum wage. In the days when I was a member of the Conservative Party, the Conservative Party was against the introduction of a minimum wage, but UKIP has always supported the introduction of a minimum wage, and, of course, there hasn’t been a single prosecution in Wales for breach of minimum wage legislation, even though we know that this is occurring. So, the Welsh Government, for all the protestations of the First Minister, does absolutely nothing to make its own policy work. When I used the word ‘suffer’ in terms of immigration policy, what I meant there was that the scale and speed of this immigration is imposing massive strains and stresses upon not just public services, but also on the incomes of those who are at the bottom end of the income scale. At the moment, we are in a period of economic growth, but of course the problems really become apparent when the economic cycle is on a downswing. There’s a wealth of academic studies, some of which are referred to in this document, which shows—. Such as the study of the Bank of England, for example—it showed that a 10 per cent increase in the proportion of migrants working in particular jobs in particular regions leads to a 2 per cent fall in wages. This is a serious matter in an economy where the average earnings in Wales are only 75 per cent of the UK’s.

First of all, I am surprised to hear him say that he did not stand as a Conservative candidate in 1997 on a manifesto commitment not to oppose a minimum wage. I seem to remember that that was the case at that time, conveniently forgotten now. Secondly, as he knows full well—or is being mischievous—the Welsh Government is not the prosecuting authority when it comes to minimum wage legislation. It’s not devolved. It’s a matter for the UK Government to target resources towards the appropriate authority in order for those prosecutions to take place. He talks of evidence that shows that wages are being driven down. Where is that evidence? I see no evidence that that is the case. I see evidence of wages being driven down by some employers who are unscrupulous. I see wages being driven down by people who are working on casual contracts in the private sector. I see wages being driven down by the policies of the UK Government removing things such as tax credits that help the low paid while, of course, putting in place tax cuts for the highest paid. None of use wants to see low pay; I understand that. But can I suggest that he targets his guns at the true problem here, which is the policy that was put in place by the current UK Government?

They have not wished to have any discussions, though we have sent them the document.

The First Minister has, though, it seems, had discussions with the First Minister of Scotland and development of joint strategy and approach with the Scottish Government. Does the First Minister not appreciate that Wales voted ‘leave’ in the referendum? He said himself that had a lot to do with free movement of people, yet his document here is supporting free movement of people in all but name. Instead of continuing to import people to run our NHS, should we not be training up people here in Wales, and why, after 20 years of Labour-led Government, does this document say that substantial work is still needed to do that?

Why have we got foreigners in our NHS? That’s what he’s saying, in effect, isn’t it? That’s what this is about. The national health service, like the health service of any other country in the developed world, always relies on doctors from other countries. I don’t care where doctors are from as long as they’re good and they deliver services for our people. That’s what counts at the end of the day. I’m not interested in where they were born; I’m interested in their medical skills. That’s what I have to say to him.

Yes, I’ve spoken to the First Minister of Scotland on this issue. Again, I say to him the interpretation that he and his former party put on the vote last year is not an interpretation I share. All we know is that people voted to leave the EU. They did not vote for a hard Brexit. They were given the opportunity to vote for a hard Brexit in June; they did not vote for a hard Brexit, and so it falls on all of us in this Chamber to try to interpret the viewpoint that people had on that. But I have to say nobody said to me on the doorstep—not one person, even people who were the hardest supporters of Brexit imaginable—‘What we need are fewer doctors from abroad in this country’. Nobody said that. And so, this is, in this document, an attempt to put forward a viewpoint on how migration can be made to work in the future. We’ve heard nothing from his current party or his former party to add to that debate.

First Minister, when I recently met with farmers in Rhymney—yes, there are farmers in Rhymney—we discussed many issues relating to Brexit and its potential impact on the rural economy, and, contrary to the implications in Neil Hamilton’s question earlier, one particular concern that they had was their inability to be able to recruit labour locally—casual labour, seasonal labour—resulting in their reliance on a steady stream of EU migrant labour. Would you agree with me that the availability of regulated seasonal labour from the EU is necessary in any agreement on the movement of people post Brexit?

Well, it is hugely important. We know, otherwise, that there will be serious labour shortages in the agricultural industry, and that is something that has not yet been properly addressed by the UK Government. It comes back to this point again: we need an immigration policy that’s sensible, that’s fair, that’s balanced, and we believe, in the document that we’ve produced on Brexit and migration, that we’ve done just that. I don’t accept that people voted to leave the EU and then decided to build a metaphorical or real fence around the UK while at the same time, of course, incidentally, keeping the open border with the EU in the Republic of Ireland, which is something that has never been resolved. So, this is a way forward that we believe is sensible, fair, and meets, of course, the wishes of the people of Wales that were expressed in the referendum last year.

Does the First Minister not see that perhaps the reasons we seem to be reliant on migrant workers are twofold? Firstly, there’s little incentive to train local people for jobs when they can simply import ready-made, qualified workers. And, secondly, pay and conditions are so poor that it’s often only a migrant worker from a country with living standards that are worse than ours who is prepared to be exploited in this way. What are you going to do to reverse the reliance on EU workers and migrant workers?

Well, first of all, we all want to see improved pay and conditions, and it’s hugely important that we see the introduction of a proper living wage across our economy, in the private sector as well, and important that we have a UK Government that recognises the importance of that. But I am not obsessed with the idea that what we have to do is to chuck out as many foreign workers as possible, which is effectively what she is saying. And that interpretation is not shared by the people of Wales, as shown by the fact that her party—I don’t know if she’s still in the party or not—received such a low percentage of the vote in the election. Does it not tell you something that the kind of Brexit that you support is not supported by the people of Wales, and we saw that in June?

Yes. We’re committed to working with police and crime commissioners and partners to tackle slavery, which includes forced labour. In March, we launched our ethical employment in supply chains code of practice to make supply chains transparent and prevent exploitation of workers—a first, indeed, for Wales and for the UK.

I thank you for that answer. The National Crime Agency recently said that modern day slavery or forced labour is now so widespread that ordinary people are likely to come unwittingly into contact with victims every single day, and those victims will be found within the key industries, particularly highlighting agriculture, domestic and social care, fishing, food processing, car washing, and construction. Currently, under the Modern Slavery Act 2015, only companies with an annual turnover of £36 million a year have to declare what steps they have taken to stop slavery within their supply chains. I think you will agree that most companies in Wales do not reach the threshold. So, First Minister, what discussions have you had with the anti-slavery co-ordinator from Wales about his proposals for a code of practice that companies could sign up to voluntarily?

Well, we did launch the code of practice on ethical employment and supply chains in March. That was aimed at supporting businesses to make supply chains transparent and to prevent workers from being exploited. As I said, that’s a first for both Wales and the UK. I know that the Wales anti-slavery leadership group is raising the issue of slavery through training and awareness raising, because—and I know she is passionate about this—we want to make sure that Wales is hostile to slavery.

First Minister, the anti-slavery co-ordinator for Wales, Stephen Chapman, has admitted that there could be cases of modern-day slavery within the Welsh social care sector. He’s actually stated that, somewhere down the line, this is going on. Across such a large sector in Wales, problems may well be further down the public supply chain. What action are you taking to ensure that, where services are provided by our public bodies in Wales, there is a distinct and robust measure to prevent any form of modern-day slavery in Wales?

Well, through the training, of course, that I’ve already indicated that the leadership group has taken forward, and secondly, of course, through the code of practice itself. I know that the co-ordinator is passionate in terms of ensuring that we drive slavery out, even where it is hidden, of course, in some organisations. She mentions the social care sector. She wasn’t claiming to have evidence, in fairness, that that happened, but she was quoting what might be happening in Wales. We work very closely with the co-ordinator to make sure that Wales, as I say, becomes hostile to slavery.

First Minister, some time ago I brought to your attention the plight of those immigrants who are forced to work in the car valeting trade. I highlighted that they were working for less than £3.50 an hour, 10 hours a day, seven days a week—in effect, under slave labour conditions. Your reply at the time was that this did not fall in the remit of the Welsh Government. Well, given that the problem of slave labour in Wales in a growing one—47 cases reported in 2014, 71 in 2015 and 124 cases in 2016—is it not now incumbent upon the Welsh Government to use all its powers to intervene, including levering local government to explore the possibility of closing down these iniquitous facilities?

Well, local government already has that power, of course, in terms of its trading standards obligations. If the Member has evidence that that is happening, I’ll be pleased to look at that evidence and then pass it on to the appropriate prosecuting authority. What he describes is unacceptable, but it’s hugely important that there is evidence to be able to take this forward, eventually, or hopefully, of course, to a successful prosecution.

I know that a meeting was held on 22 August where Government officials joined with the Neath Port Talbot council to consider the way forward. We as a Government will consider anything that the council suggests when they make representations to us, as was agreed in that meeting, as I understand it.

Thank you for that response. Some of us participated in those meetings too. But it’s true to say that this incident, this landslip, has been quite a blow to local families, and created a great deal of uncertainty in the Ystalyfera area. As this is a very unusual event—unprecedented, in fact—will you as the Welsh Government make a public commitment today to provide additional financial assistance to Neath Port Talbot council to deal with this issue, as well as any European funds that may be open to us in dealing with this unique situation?

Of course, I can understand how the families feel as they have to face such a situation. At the meeting held in August, the agreement was that the council would come back to us with the details. That hasn’t happened as yet. Once that does happen, we can then consider the issue further.

I thank Dai Lloyd for bringing this question to you this afternoon, First Minister. There’s been a history of landslides in that particular part of my constituency. The new hazard stems from landslides arising in previously thought to be low-risk areas. You’ll understand the anxiety of the households who’ve been asked to vacate their properties, and the anxiety felt by the broader community, not least as the council reassesses the hazard in the area generally. We would welcome any support that the Welsh Government can give, both to the community and to the council, in resolving this issue, and also, perhaps, given that a number of Government portfolio interests are engaged in this, for there to be a joined-up approach in the support that the Welsh Government is able to provide.

It’s not yet clear what the nature of that support would be, which is why we look forward to receiving the representations from the council, in order for us to look at this further. But as far as the people there are concerned, I can well understand that they want to have certainty as quickly as possible. We’re keen to do that and we’ll continue to work with the council in order for that to be delivered.

Perhaps there is an area where Welsh Government can give immediate support, and it’s this: you may remember that, in the meeting that was referred to earlier, an independent report came to light that suggested that the affected area was the least likely to experience landslide or slippage, and nature defied that report. So, there may be space here for Welsh Government to be able to help Neath Port Talbot define the terms of reference for the new report that’s being commissioned, in order to establish whether the 150 homes now potentially at risk are at risk, and that’s something that’s in addition to the financial support that Dai Lloyd has suggested. So, that’s very specific support I think you can give early on.

We’re content to work with the council, of course, to see what support we can provide in terms of the commissioning of any new report. And again, we await the council’s representations in that regard.

We have funded development work on the outline concept of a metro for south-west Wales in his financial year, via the local transport fund. Swansea county council—I should say the City and County of Swansea—is co-ordinating this work in partnership with the other local authorities in the south-west and the project is progressing well.

Thank you, First Minister. Since Theresa May’s Government reneged on their promise to electrify the railway line to Swansea and the west, this has thrown into sharp relief the connectivity of the whole Swansea bay city region. I welcome the support for the concept for a modern, joined-up public transport network. I think what we need to see now is a detailed feasibility study so we can properly understand how communities in the Llanelli constituency can link up with other communities right across the city region by rail, bus and active travel.

The project has begun well. A workshop was held with regional planning officers in May. It provided the framework for the emerging concepts. That work is ongoing. But yes, I share the Member’s disappointment at the breaking of a promise by the UK Government to electrify the main line as far as Swansea. I well remember the then Secretary of State, Cheryl Green—. Cheryl Green? Cheryl Gillan. Cheryl Green is the leader of the Lib Dems in Bridgend—there we are. Cheryl Gillan. She won’t forgive me for that, Cheryl Gillan—neither of them, I suspect. But I well remember her saying that it was beyond question that the line would be electrified as far as Swansea—and the money has gone. The people looking for it, I suspect, will find it in Belfast.

I’m pleased that there is growing support for this idea. It’s something that Mike Hedges has raised in the Chamber previously and something that I’ve spoken on as well. When we met the shadow board as a group of local Assembly Members last December, they said that transport infrastructure was not part of their thinking on the city deals. I’m pleased that things have moved on on that. But it’s something I’ve also mentioned to the Association of British Ports, which affects a number of the constituencies within the deal area, who have a strong record on logistics and who seem to be playing no part in the city deal discussion at all. So, I’m wondering, if a feasibility study were to be commissioned, will it include a space for the ports within the deal area, and will there be space within the city deal for any findings of that report, even accepting that the financial support for the city deal is pretty generous?

We have to remember, of course, that the city deal is driven by local authorities and not by us. It’s a partnership between the UK Government, the Welsh Government and local authorities, but it’s for local authorities working together to prioritise and to engage. What I will do, however, is pass her comments on to the local authorities and ask them what they’re doing to engage with ABP particularly—she’s asked about that—and I will, of course, share that response with her.

Further to the principle of establishing a metro, would you agree that this is an opportunity for us to create, as a starting point, a bus system that is managed and delivered by local councils, rather than private bus companies?

Yes. Of course, the powers will be coming to us over the ensuing months and there will be an opportunity for us to consider how the buses are managed. We know, of course, that there is a strong argument for ensuring that a system is re-established where it will be possible for the councils to run those services ultimately, either themselves or via a franchise. But it will mean that they will have greater control over local bus services than has been true in the past years.

I echo the comments Dai Lloyd made about the importance of buses for those of us with constituencies which are not realistically going to be served by any feasible rail-only solution. Would he commit that any feasibility study commissioned also considers the use of modern technology? I know the Cabinet Secretary for economy has been looking in his bus congestion work at the use of technology to ensure that buses can operate in a really properly integrated system. Would any feasibility study reflect those principles as well?

Yes, it will need to. There are a number of ways in which you can deliver a metro: some as heavy rail, some as light rail, fast buses and the possibility of dedicated bus lanes. There are any number of ways where a metro system can be delivered and it’s hugely important that any study is able to look at emerging modern technology, particularly in order to facilitate quicker transport options for the public.

Our framework for action on independent living is currently being reviewed. We have worked closely with disabled people and disability organisations across Wales to ensure we’re making tangible progress in promoting and protecting the rights of disabled people and, of course, that is something we will continue to do in the future.

Thank you, First Minister. Theresia Degener, the chair of the United Nations Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, has called it a ‘human catastrophe’, following their inquiry into the way that the UK treats its disabled citizens. Atos and Capita, who are tasked by the UK Government with carrying out with personal independent payment assessments, have earned over £0.5 billion of public money since 2013, while over 61 per cent of those who appealed against their PIP assessments in their tribunal have won their case. Will the First Minister outline what the Welsh Government is doing to support disabled people in Wales during the unprecedented reductions in their incomes by the UK Government?

Well, we cannot reverse what the UK Government has done. I can’t disagree with the use of the phrase ‘human catastrophe’. There is something wrong with the system where 61 per cent of cases are appealed successfully. There’s something wrong with it. That appeal rate is far, far higher than you’d get in the criminal courts and far higher than you would find elsewhere. That is a sign that the initial assessments, bluntly, are mainly wrong, and if the assessments are wrong the system is broken. This is something for the UK Government to deal with. We’ll continue to work, of course, with disabled people, as I said, and disability organisations, to act as their advocate in overturning a system that’s clearly not working.

Clearly, that’s a matter the cross-party group on disability has also been taking evidence on. I think 80 per cent of appeals by people with sensory loss are successful, indicating the problem that stands before us. So, we do share your concern on this matter. But at a meeting of the cross-party group on disability in north Wales in June, and similarly in a meeting of the cross-party autism group in north Wales in September, concerns were raised with us by representatives of local disabled people and local disabled people themselves about the Welsh Government’s proposals for the Welsh independent living grant. As you know, since it was transferred to the Welsh Government from the UK Government, you had a temporary scheme with local authorities. You announced that with effect from 2018–19 responsibility and funding will be transferred to local authorities. Disabled people are concerned that that will remove their ability to live independently and support their high level of care and support needs. What assurance can you give to them, therefore, that safeguards will be in place to ensure that the funding goes where it’s intended, that assessments will still be done on a person-centred basis with the recipients of the grant, and that disabled people themselves will be the lead voice with authorities in establishing their needs?

We would expect local authorities, of course, to fulfil their obligations to disabled people and to put sufficient funds aside in order for their financial needs to be recognised and satisfied. Of course, local authorities are answerable to their electorate if they pursue policies that the electorate deem to be unacceptable.

Small sums of money can make a very great difference to some families who have a disabled child or disabled children. I’ve mentioned specifics in this Chamber in terms of families in my constituency who have benefited from small grants assisting in improving the quality of life of disabled children, including improving mental health, strengthening family relationships and increasing leisure opportunities. Do you agree with me that the funding that the Government provides to the family fund is a valuable source of support and that it should be maintained over the ensuing years?

We understand, of course, that there are funds that can make a great difference to the lives of people. I’m not talking about this fund directly, but, unfortunately, we’ve seen cuts in our budget, and there are difficult decisions that will have to be taken during the financial year, but we wish to be able to prioritise what gives optimum benefit to families and what works, and that is what will steer us as a Government over the next few months before the final budget is published.

It’s making good progress, developing the proposals that will unlock Government funding.

Thank you for that answer. Later today, of course, we’ll be debating the parliamentary review on health and social care, which has already identified the underexploited potential of information technology and other life science technology in the reformation of those services, and for me, this has got Swansea bay city deal written all over it. What recent discussions have you had with the local government leaders about pinning down the governance structure, with balanced representation from the private sector—you mentioned the ports earlier—so that we can see some accelerated activity on the deal?

These are issues ultimately, as I say, for local authorities, but I’m confident that the governance structure that they have in place is appropriate and effective, and we will work with them, as will the UK Government, to continue to deliver the city deal. I have to say what will be immensely important in terms of delivery for Swansea will be the delivery of the Swansea bay tidal lagoon. And even though we know that an independent review has said it should move forward, we still have no action from the UK Government. I’m sure she shares this frustration as well. This has been months and months and months and months when no—. I mean, this is not an isolated example, is it, when no decision has been taken on a project that would deliver 1,000 jobs and that would help to revitalise many of our ports? That would help immensely the Swansea bay area, working, of course, in tandem, with the city deal itself.

Just on that point, the tidal lagoon development will also enhance opportunities for ports in the Swansea bay city region, and I was pleased to attend a reception last week in Westminster with the Minister, Ken Skates, discussing the opportunities for our ports. How important is it that marine energy, however it’s developed, is part of enhancing the opportunities for ports and also opportunities to enhance the Swansea bay deal?

It’s vital, because we know, of course, that if energy is created in the sea, we have to have places where we can produce the machinery and to ensure that the machinery is also maintained. And, of course, there are opportunities for ports such as Port Talbot, to create jobs and to rebuild some parts of the docks there. But we don’t have any answer from the United Kingdom Government, because it’s definitely the way forward to create green energy, and it’s the way forward on job generation here in Wales, but we have to have a positive answer from the UK Government.

Thank you, First Minister.

The next item on our agenda is the business statement and announcement, and I call on the leader of the house, Jane Hutt, to make the statement.

Diolch, Llywydd. As Members will see, I’ve several changes to today’s agenda. The First Minister will shortly make statements on ‘Prosperity for All—The National Strategy’, and following that a statement on the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill. The Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government will then deliver a statement on the Welsh Government’s policy paper, ‘Brexit and Fair Movement of People’. Finally, the Minister for Social Services and Public Health will make a statement on the tobacco control delivery plan 2017-2020. And business for the next three weeks is as shown on the business statement and announcement found among the meeting papers available to Members electronically.

Leader of the house, is it possible to have a statement from the Cabinet Secretary with responsibility for transport about the improvements on the Heads of the Valleys road, and I use the word ‘improvements’, because obviously when the work is completed it will be a radical improvement on the transport opportunities that businesses have in that particular part of the world. But businesses from my own region recently have been coming to me highlighting severe roadblocks, road tailbacks, traffic jams et cetera in this part of the road network in Wales. This has had a direct impact on their profitability and, indeed, their ability to expand because they are led to believe that there’s been a considerable overrun in the construction, and the time now to finish the work will be considerably longer. I’ve heard examples of between 12 and 18 months longer, and hence that’s why I’m looking for a statement so that we can clarify exactly how the construction work is progressing. Has the project stayed within budget? And, importantly, what confidence can the Cabinet Secretary give to businesses in south-east Wales that work is progressing as scheduled, and that, whilst there’s short-term pain, it is to be endured to a point and the long-term gain will be worth it over time? But, at the moment, many businesses in south-east Wales, and in particular in South Wales Central, feel that they are experiencing the pain factor without any light at the end of the tunnel. If the Cabinet Secretary could give a statement in relation to the progress of the work, that would be hugely appreciated.

The Cabinet Secretary would be happy to write to Members to update on the timetable. Certainly, having travelled, indeed, on the wonderful new stretch that takes you right beyond Ebbw Vale and seeing again how the investment of European funds—you see the big notice, ‘Funded by the European Union structural funds’, and it is clear that, already, the improvements are making a great difference. But in terms of the last stretch, which was always going to be the most difficult one in terms of engineering, the Cabinet Secretary will update on the latest timeline.

Can I ask for a statement from the health Minister about any progress that’s been made on setting up the public inquiry into contaminated blood and whether there’s been any contact between the Welsh Government and the Westminster Government about this issue?

Earlier in the month, I was pleased to attend the all-party Westminster group on contaminated blood, chaired by Diana Johnson MP, in order to see if there was any way of getting any unified position between Wales and the MPs in Westminster. In Wales, certainly, the cross-party group, Haemophilia Wales and the Welsh Government are basically all singing off the same hymn sheet: that we want a judge-led public inquiry—a statutory inquiry—under the Inquiries Act 2005, but it seems to be uncertain as to what is actually happening in Westminster. So, I wondered if there could be a statement from the health Cabinet Secretary to tell us what the position is as far as he knows.

I thank Julie Morgan for that question, and also for updating us in terms of her very active engagement attending the cross-party group meeting in London where, of course, Haemophilia Wales has been very influential in terms of working with organisations that are representing people who have suffered as a result of the contaminated blood. The Cabinet Secretary has made it clear that the inquiry must leave no stone unturned in getting to the full truth of what happened. Vaughan Gething has written to the Department of Health supporting the call for an inquiry under the Inquiries Act 2005, to inspire confidence in those it is seeking to serve. I understand that the UK consultation has been extended to 18 October to unable all those affected to express their views.

I am aware that there is a debate tomorrow, or a policy discussion around getting rid of the community health councils, but the point that I want to raise refers more specifically to the broader consultation processes of this Government. I would be pleased to have a statement from the Cabinet Secretary with responsibility—the finance Secretary, as far as I can see, is responsible for dealing with the public and performance management—just to understand exactly what the formal regimes this Government has adopted are when it comes to various kinds of consultation. What are the standards that the Government expects to meet in such processes and what monitoring measures are in place to ensure that those standards are met?

We have heard, for example, that the community health councils weren’t informed that the White Paper was going to suggest scrapping those bodies when it was published. And when it was asked why there wasn’t a large series of consultation events around the White Paper, they were told that many of those had been held in relation to the Green Paper, but, of course, the Green Paper didn’t propose the abolition of the community health councils, so, clearly, there are questions there about the consultation process. Now, of course, we understand that events have been arranged, but they were arranged at the very last minute, with all sorts of claims or suggestions as to how those have been organised, and all that does is undermine the public’s confidence in the consultation process, but it also undermines the public’s confidence in the final decision when it is actually made.

Now, last year, the north Wales community health council held over 500 no-notice visits in wards in north Wales—far more than any other body doing anything similar. And if Wales is to move towards a model similar to Scotland, which, by the way, has been called a ‘toothless hamster’, then the least we can expect is a thorough consultation, and a considered and fair consultation, and not what has been described to me as what we’re having now, which is a hurried and amateur consultation.

Well, I think it’s very important, and of course ahead of the debate tomorrow, that we say very clearly—and I know that the Cabinet Secretary would want to say—that all contributions to the consultation are welcomed. It is a White Paper. Consultations will ensure any future legislation is the most effective that it can be, and of course it is important to recognise that proposals in the White Paper are not just about CHCs, although focusing on that, but looking as well in terms of how you can strengthen the voices of people who use health and social care services, which obviously is a key issue in terms of those service users, and also to improve the quality and governance of those services in Wales.

I’m just aware of the fact that an open letter to party leaders has come from the chair of the board of community health councils, and I’m sure many Members have met with community health council representatives over the summer. I think it’s very clear that the response that’s coming ahead of the end of this consultation is that we do need to learn how we can take this forward to ensure that future bodies are independent and can hear directly from people, including hearing directly from people whilst accessing care. These points are being made, of course, by the CHCs themselves. And it is those proposals where those relating to the public voice in the White Paper—those responses are at a high level and we want to ensure that any body that’s set up really represents citizens in health and social care. So, again, these points are all helpful.

Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. Can I just ask for a statement from the Cabinet Secretary for health, please? The first concerns the availability of Orkambi to treat cystic fibrosis sufferers in Wales. In his reply to my written question on 15 August this year, the Cabinet Secretary said this medicine was not available routinely due to its high costs and modest clinical benefits. He went on to say that the All Wales Medicines Strategy Group had not received a response from the manufacturers, Vertex, about a further appraisal. I am now advised that Vertex have made a submission, which is being reviewed by the group. Can I ask for a commitment from the Cabinet Secretary for health that he will make a statement as soon as possible after this review has been concluded so that sufferers of this pernicious disease are kept fully informed about the availability of Orkambi?

Secondly, could I ask when the Welsh Government will be in a position to say whether funding for the Welsh ambulance service’s falls response team initiative will continue, since the pilot scheme ended on 13 March this year? Thank you.

Thank you for those questions. I will ask the Cabinet Secretary to clarify the position regarding the availability of the funding of the drug, which, of course, is for people with cystic fibrosis, and you’ve had a response in August and I will clarify the position. And also, to look at the outcome, of course, the Cabinet Secretary will want to acknowledge not just the success of the outcome of the pilot in terms of the Welsh ambulance services, but the fact that that now is being taken forward in other parts of the UK.

Leader of the house, during the summer I was pleased to visit the lunch and fun club based at Penywaun Primary School in my constituency. I was really impressed to see the positive benefits the scheme was having on the pupils who took part, not least in tackling the problem of holiday hunger. Could we have a statement from the education Secretary reflecting on this summer’s scheme, and also updating Members on what lessons the Welsh Government will take forward in future years?

In addition, September is Sepsis Awareness Month, and with sepsis killing 2,500 people in Wales each year, could the health Secretary give us an update on what the Welsh Government can do to make sure that people are aware of this life-threatening condition?

Thank you, Vikki Howells, for both those questions. On the first question, I think many people have seen the very positive publicity, not just in Wales, but further afield, in terms of the importance of the lunch and fun clubs that have been set up and the investment that we made throughout the summer in terms of administering that scheme. Of course, the focus of the scheme also is about the enriching and educational activities that it offers learners who attend. We piloted that last year. That was published in 2017, in January of this year, and the findings are very encouraging in relation to health, social and educational outcomes. And I know the Cabinet Secretary will want to update on that in terms of this summer’s school holiday enrichment programme.

I think your second point is very important in terms of sepsis. Since 2013, the Welsh Government has and continues to make the reduction of the avoidable harm and mortality caused by sepsis a high priority for the NHS in Wales. We have much more that we want to achieve in terms of the whole-system approach, and we’re pleased that the Wales rapid response to acute illness learning group is looking at how we can introduce systems within our primary and community care settings, as well as our hospital settings, to further enable much earlier potential recognition of symptoms to ensure that we can intervene in the timeliest way possible.

As we’ve heard previously today, last week, we all know that the Cabinet Secretary for health released a written statement announcing a Healthcare Inspectorate Wales assessment of the lessons learned desktop review by Abertawe Bro Morgannwg University Local Health Board. I’m not going to go into the detail again, but this was a major breakdown of patient care and protection, and the consequences were severe. Failings were at every level, from the top down, and no-one so far has been held to account for those failings within ABMU. Many of us across the political divide, as well as the British Medical Association, and family members of the lady who was killed by Kris Wade, have asked for an independent inquiry looking at every aspect of this matter, not just an assessment of this flawed internal desktop report by the ABMU, which has already had a conflict of interest in this regard.

The remit that I’ve seen—. Although the First Minister says today that there was no remit, the remit I’ve seen from the health Secretary does not go far enough. We need to ensure that everybody who made complaints at the time are heard, that the victims are heard, and that the family of those who were affected are heard also. We need to find accountability in this process, and we have to have more information to hand as Assembly Members. So, I was very, very disappointed when, over the summer, this news broke. The report came out from ABMU, yet we were not afforded a written statement at that time. But the week before we came back, we had a written statement. We need to have an oral statement from the health Secretary on this, so that we can ask him pertinent questions as to what Healthcare Inspectorate Wales will do now, because if Healthcare Inspectorate Wales are not looking at this report, and not taking their own evidence, then it will not be good enough and we will need to raise these questions again. But I would urge the Government, for the sake of open democracy, when we’re celebrating devolution, in the name of open democracy, for us to be able to have an oral statement from the health Secretary.

The second question I wanted to ask was with regard to young carers. We had a very positive debate before the end of term, and the Minister said that she was talking to young carers groups. I’ve been told since that many YMCAs across Wales don’t feel that they’ve been engaged, or they would like to be engaged with that process. So, I was wondering if we could have a statement updating us on what the Minister is doing on young carers, so that we can all be involved in that particular process.

Thank you for those two questions. Just following up and adding to the points that the First Minister made in response to this review: of course you will have seen the written statement issued by the Cabinet Secretary on 15 September, and I think it’s important just to refer to that statement that he made. As he says in the statement, ‘I want to be satisfied’, in terms of ABMU specifically, because this is lessons to be learnt wider than that,

‘I want to be satisfied that appropriate actions have been identified by the health board and that their response is sufficiently robust. I also wish to be assured that there are effective arrangements in place across the organisation to monitor the implementation and embedding of any changes in policies and procedures.’

And, of course, as you know, Healthcare Inspectorate Wales has been asked to undertake an independent assessment, and he will update Members when that report is received.

On your second question, yes, clearly, we had a very positive debate. I know that the Minister will want to engage with Members and the appropriate committee in terms of taking forward positive actions in terms of supporting our young carers.

Leader of the house, following on from the joint statement from the Welsh Government, Flintshire County Council and Flint Town Council earlier this month that proposals for an art installation at Flint castle will not be proceeding as previously planned, can I ask for a statement in this place from Welsh Government, updating plans for going forward for future investment in Flint castle, and also that that gives an absolute guarantee that investment earmarked for Flint still goes to Flint, and that the community of Flint are actively involved in determining the future nature of that investment?

Thank you, Hannah Blythyn, and I think you can be assured on all those points in terms of the Cabinet Secretary’s support for this. We’ve acknowledged that the proposal for the iron ring sculpture at Flint castle isn’t appropriate to go forward. And there’s been extremely constructive and productive meetings with local people and stakeholders about this, in terms of cancelling the project. The investment is going to be used and I’m assured that it’s ring-fenced for the art work, to help develop a wider master plan for the foreshore, taking into account, of course, the views of local people. This will include a range of capital investments for the area, holding events and activities, to increase the understanding of the history of the castle, and the significance of the foreshore. But, of course, Flintshire County Council and Flint Town Council will be involved in that, seeing this master plan is a high priority.

Can I ask for a response from the business manager on two items of Government business? First of all, can I ask whether the Welsh Government intends to produce a statement on the situation in Catalonia at the moment? The Scottish Government produced a statement two or three days ago. The situation in Catalonia is looking very fraught.

The background is that the Catalunyan Government, with the support of the Catalunyan Parliament, has called a referendum on independence for 1 October. The Spanish Government has not engaged with this process at all, and has sought to undermine the process at every step. And I think for those of us who are in this place because of referenda—who had the agreement on the future of the UK, a referendum last year, and, two years ago, a referendum around the future of Scotland, all agreed through the Edinburgh agreement, and other agreements, as part of the way a parliamentary democracy takes the way forward—it is extremely worrying to hear the news from Catalunya now. There are things like the physical and obvious movement of armoured vehicles up and down the roads in and around Barcelona, the capital city, and immediate threats to prosecute over 600 town and city mayors who called for a referendum. We’re not talking about people who are calling for independence here; we’re talking about people who simply say they should have the right to self-determination according to the UN charter, and some of them have said, ‘We’ll have a referendum, but I’ll be voting “no”, but they’re still threatened by prosecution by the Spanish state. And a particular threat, only this week, to withdraw funding from the Catalunyan Government—directly withdraw the funding that allows devolution to work within the Spanish state. This is not, I would suggest, how we deal with challenges around identity and independence and referenda in the EU, or indeed the history of the United Kingdom—our recent history on this has been very obvious and clear for everyone.

So, I would hope that the Welsh Government would issue a written statement in support of what’s been said by the Scottish Government; other parliaments and governments have said similar statements within the EU as well. I think the people of Catalunya would very much welcome that support. And I would remind Members of the important role that Catalunya played in the Spanish civil war, and the strong attachments many of us have, as Catalunya was where a lot of the Welsh fighters went and fought at that time.

I also hope that we as a parliament can come together—. It’s a separate issue. I know that she’s the business manager for the Welsh Government, but I hope that we as a parliament can also sign a letter of support to the principle of making these decisions—not ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to independence as such, but the principle of allowing a parliament and a government to make a decision to take cognisance of its people’s views through a referendum. So, I very much hope that the Government can be really positive around that call.

If I can now turn to something much more parochial, Presiding Officer, and just remind the Chamber that on 11 July, just before we broke up, the education Cabinet Secretary, Kirsty Williams, made a statement here saying that she intended to raise tuition fees in Wales and that was a signal that she’d persuaded the Labour Cabinet, of course, to adopt the very successful Lib Dem policy on tuition fees. So, I would now like to know from the business manager, because I fail to see it in the next three weeks, when we will be discussing and voting upon the statutory instruments that will bring in the rise in tuition fees in Wales. I really look forward to her other role, as whip, to see her dragoon her backbenches to vote for a tuition fee rise here in Wales when, of course, they so successfully opposed it with the DUP’s support in the House of Commons only last week, and had Jeremy Corbyn and all his supporters dancing on the street at this great victory for holding down tuition fees in England. So, let’s see if we can replicate that victory here in Wales. Will she have the courage to bring a statutory instrument to this Chamber so that we can all vote upon it? And perhaps some of us can vote in line with Labour Party policy.

Well, I think, on your first question, Simon Thomas, indeed, of course, Wales does have very strong links—historical, cultural and economic—with Catalonia and there are no plans at present for a statement. I think you read the point well in terms of the development this afternoon. I also think that we note your points in terms of what are our pioneering higher education and further education funding policies. We note your point.

I’m sure the business manager is aware of the private Member’s Bill going through the House of Commons at the moment in the name of the MP for Rhondda, Chris Bryant. It’s based on the Protect the Protectors campaign, looking at increasing—strengthening—the legislation, the education, the workforce protection for not only members of the police services dealing with emergency incidents, but also those fire services, paramedics and others. I declare an interest as well, as my wife works as an accident and emergency department radiographer on busy nights. Too often those also see the evidence of violent assaults within their work and it shouldn’t be acceptable.

The reason I ask for a consideration of a written statement by the relevant Cabinet Secretary on this is that it would enable the Welsh Government to show its support for the principles behind this, but also to outline, should this Bill fail, because there have previously been attempts to bring through, in effect, a protect the protectors Bill within Westminster—. The first attempt was by Holly Lynch under the guise of a ten-minute rule Bill back in February this year, and now it’s proceeding—and we hope, successfully—under the MP for Rhondda’s name. But if it isn’t to succeed, I’m sure there is scope for the Welsh Government and the Welsh Assembly, within its devolved competences, particularly in the areas of public services, to look at what we could do if the UK Government and the UK Parliament were not willing to give good passage to the Bill being taken forward in the MP for Rhondda’s name. So, I ask for a consideration of a written statement in due course by the Welsh Government about how they could support the principles and possibly look at our alternative within Wales.

Well, I thank Huw Irranca-Davies for bringing that to our attention. We know there have been some very pioneering backbencher Bills, some of which—. Julie Morgan took one through in terms of sunbed legislation when she was a Member of Parliament. I think we need to look at this—it’s very relevant, obviously, to our workforce here in Wales—and look at the protect our protectors private Member’s Bill and I’m sure the Cabinet Secretary will want to see lessons to be learnt or what we take forward if it doesn’t succeed.

I thank the leader of the house.

The next item is the statement by the First Minister on ‘Prosperity for All: the national strategy’. The First Minister to make the statement.

Llywydd, yesterday of course we celebrated the twentieth anniversary of the ‘yes’ vote that brought devolution to Wales. It was an opportunity to look back and reflect on how far we have come since the days of the Welsh Office, a time when Wales was just another Government department. It is also an opportunity to look forward to the next 20 years.

The establishment of this Assembly and, of course, the establishment of this Government, has been a journey of political maturity and also a story of growing confidence and a firm determination on all sides of this Chamber to deliver for Wales. The next stage of that journey is marked today by the publication of the national strategy designed to bring together the efforts of the whole public sector towards this Government’s central mission of delivering prosperity for all.

Dirprwy Lywydd, mae ffyniant yn ymwneud â llawer mwy na chyfoeth materol ac ni ellir ei bennu, na'i gyflawni, yn wir, gan dwf economaidd yn unig. Mae'n ymwneud â phob person yng Nghymru yn mwynhau ansawdd bywyd da, yn byw mewn cymuned gadarn, ddiogel, ac yn rhannu yn ffyniant Cymru. Mae'n amcan syml ac un yr wyf i’n siŵr na all neb dadlau ag ef. Fodd bynnag, er mwyn ei gyflawni bydd angen i bob rhan o'r Llywodraeth a'r gwasanaeth cyhoeddus gydweithio er mwyn ceisio cyflawni'r nod hwnnw.

Hon yw’r strategaeth gyntaf o’i math i'r Llywodraeth, sy’n casglu ynghyd mewn un man y modd y bydd meysydd niferus y Llywodraeth yn gweithio gyda'i gilydd tuag at nod cyffredin, gan roi anghenion pobl Cymru yn gyntaf. Mae’r uchelgais syml y gallwn ni i gyd gydweithio er budd hirdymor Cymru wrth wraidd Deddf Llesiant Cenedlaethau’r Dyfodol (Cymru) 2015, ac mae hwn yn gam pwysig wrth wireddu ein gweledigaeth.

Mae'r strategaeth hon yn rhoi sylw i’n hymrwymiadau yn ‘Symud Cymru Ymlaen’, yn eu gosod mewn cyd-destun hirdymor, ac yn nodi sut y byddant yn cael eu cyflawni mewn modd mwy craff, mwy cydgysylltiedig sy'n croesi ffiniau traddodiadol, y tu mewn a'r tu allan i'r Llywodraeth. Mae’n cydnabod na ellir mynd i'r afael â'r heriau sylfaenol yr ydym ni eu hwynebu fel gwlad dim ond trwy roi pobl cyn systemau a strwythurau a chael mwy o bob punt y mae'r sector cyhoeddus yn ei wario. Mae'n weledigaeth feiddgar ar gyfer cyflawni ein huchelgeisiau i Gymru. Ein huchelgais yw i Gymru fod yn ffyniannus ac yn ddiogel, yn iach ac yn weithgar, yn uchelgeisiol ac yn dysgu, ac yn unedig ac yn gysylltiedig.

Gan ddechrau gyda'r gyntaf o'r uchelgeisiau hynny, ‘ffyniannus a diogel’, ein nod yw economi Gymreig sy'n cynnig cyfleoedd ac sy’n mynd i'r afael ag anghydraddoldeb, gan ddarparu ffyniant unigol a chenedlaethol. Byddwn yn galluogi pobl i gyflawni eu huchelgais a gwella eu lles trwy gyflogaeth ddiogel a chynaliadwy.

Gan droi at yr ail uchelgais, ‘iach a gweithgar', rydym yn dymuno gwella iechyd a lles yng Nghymru ar gyfer unigolion, teuluoedd a chymunedau, gan ein helpu i gyflawni ein huchelgais o ffyniant i bawb, a chymryd camau sylweddol i newid ein dull o fod yn canolbwyntio ar drin i fod yn canolbwyntio ar atal.

Yn drydydd, rydym yn dymuno cael gwlad sy'n seiliedig ar y cysyniad o fod yn uchelgeisiol ac yn dysgu. Rydym am feithrin angerdd pawb i ddysgu trwy gydol eu bywydau, gan eu hysbrydoli gyda'r uchelgais i fod y gorau y gallant fod. Mae ar Gymru ffyniannus angen pobl greadigol, hynod fedrus iawn sy’n gallu addasu, felly addysg o ansawdd da o’r oed cynharaf fydd y sylfaen ar gyfer oes o ddysgu a chyflawni.

Yn olaf, Cymru unedig a chysylltiedig. Byddwn yn adeiladu cenedl lle mae pobl yn ymfalchïo yn eu cymunedau, yn hunaniaeth ac iaith Cymru, a'n lle yn y byd. Rydym yn adeiladu'r cysylltiadau hanfodol sy'n ei gwneud hi'n haws i bobl ddod at ei gilydd, er mwyn i'r economi dyfu, ac i ddod yn wlad hyderus sy’n gysurus â'i hun.

Dim ond trwy wneud cynnydd ym mhob un o’r meysydd hyn y byddwn yn gwireddu ein huchelgais o ffyniant i bawb. Fodd bynnag, roedd yna faterion oedd yn codi dro ar ôl tro: adegau neu sefyllfaoedd ym mywydau pobl pryd y gallai cymryd y camau cywir yn gynnar, yn aml wedi’u cydlynu ar draws gwasanaethau, newid rhagolygon unigolyn yn sylfaenol. Rydym wedi nodi pum maes blaenoriaeth—blynyddoedd cynnar, tai, gofal cymdeithasol, iechyd meddwl, a sgiliau a chyflogadwyedd—lle gallwn gael y cyfraniad mwyaf posib i'n ffyniant a'n llesiant hirdymor.

Dirprwy Lywydd, mae profiadau unigolyn yn ystod eu blynyddoedd cynnar, yn chwarae rhan arwyddocaol wrth lunio eu dyfodol, ac maent yn hollbwysig i'w siawns o fynd ymlaen i fyw bywyd iach, ffyniannus a bodlon. Sylfaen byw'n dda yw cartref fforddiadwy, o ansawdd da, sy'n dod ag ystod eang o fanteision i iechyd, dysgu a ffyniant. Mae gofal tosturiol, urddasol yn chwarae rhan hanfodol mewn cymunedau cryf, yn sicrhau y gall pobl fod yn iach ac yn annibynnol am gyfnod hwy, ac mae'n sector economaidd sylweddol yn ei hawl ei hun. Bydd un o bob pedwar o bobl yng Nghymru yn dioddef salwch meddwl ar ryw adeg yn eu bywydau, felly gall cael y driniaeth gywir yn gynnar, ynghyd â mwy o ymwybyddiaeth o gyflyrrau, atal effeithiau andwyol hirdymor mewn sawl achos.

Dirprwy Lywydd, pan fo sgiliau pobl yn well, mae ganddynt siawns well o gael gwaith teg, sicr sy’n rhoi boddhad iddynt. Ac os yw’r sylfaen sgiliau yng Nghymru yn gryf, mae gennym fwy o siawns o ddenu busnesau newydd a thyfu’r rhai sy'n bodoli eisoes er mwyn gwella ffyniant.

Byddwn yn gweithio gyda'n partneriaid i ddarparu gwasanaethau gwell, mwy di-dor i bawb yn y meysydd hyn. Uno gwasanaethau yw nod eithaf y llywodraeth ers tro byd. Er ein bod wedi cael peth llwyddiant nodedig, yng Nghymru mae gennym gyfle i wneud llawer mwy, a bydd nodi'r nifer bach hyn o feysydd yn caniatau i ni ganolbwyntio ein hegni ni ac eraill ar sbarduno gwelliannau mawr.

Yr hyn sy'n bwysig nawr yw gwneud i hyn ddigwydd. Byddwn yn rhoi ‘Ffyniant i Bawb’ wrth galon y Llywodraeth a bydd yn dylanwadu ar ein holl benderfyniadau. Byddwn yn cwblhau cyfres o gynlluniau dros yr wythnosau a'r misoedd nesaf, gan nodi'n fanwl sut y byddwn yn cyflawni ein huchelgeisiau. Bydd hyn yn cynnwys cynllun gweithredu economaidd cynhwysfawr, dan arweiniad Ysgrifennydd y Cabinet dros yr Economi a’r Seilwaith, gan drefnu adnoddau'r Llywodraeth mewn modd sy’n rhoi pwyslais ar seilwaith a thwf economaidd cynaliadwy a chynhwysol, yn unol â'r strategaeth.

Bydd iechyd yn parhau i fod yn flaenoriaeth allweddol i'r Llywodraeth hon, a byddwn yn cyhoeddi cynllun gweithredu ar gyfer iechyd y flwyddyn nesaf. Bydd y cynllun hwn, wrth gwrs, yn ymateb i'r adolygiad seneddol, ond bydd hefyd yn nodi sut y gallwn ni gyflawni ein huchelgeisiau iechyd cyhoeddus ehangach a sut y gallwn ni ddefnyddio’r holl gyfleoedd sydd ar gael i’r Llywodraeth newid y pwyslais o drin pobl pan fyddant yn sâl i helpu pobl i fwynhau gwell iechyd. Ac mewn addysg, bydd Ysgrifennydd y Cabinet dros Addysg yr wythnos nesaf yn cyhoeddi cynllun gweithredu newydd ar gyfer ysgolion, gan sicrhau y gall ein holl blant a’n pobl ifanc gyrraedd eu potensial.

Dirprwy Lywydd, mae ein rhaglen lywodraethu, ‘Symud Cymru Ymlaen’, yn nodi'r hyn y byddwn yn ei gyflawni ar gyfer pobl Cymru yn ystod y tymor hwn. Mae'r strategaeth genedlaethol hon, ‘Ffyniant i Bawb’, yn nodi sut y byddwn yn cyflawni hyn mewn modd mwy craff a manwl gan sbarduno cyflawni'r gwaith yn ystod y tymor hwn, ond gan osod y sylfeini tymor hwy ar gyfer Cymru fwy ffyniannus. Mae gennym ni weledigaeth uchelgeisiol ar gyfer dyfodol Cymru ac rydym ni’n cymryd camau pendant i'w gyflawni.

Thank you. Andrew R.T. Davies.

Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. First Minister, thank you for your statement this afternoon. One thing both you and I must be contributing to the local economy is buying our suits in the same shop. I notice we’ve got the same suit, but you extended to the waistcoat, you did. [Laughter.] I won’t expect any quips.

I welcome the statement. Obviously, it’s a progression on from the programme for government that the First Minister put down last year, and, as the First Minister says in the statement, to a point, how can you disagree with many of the points that are within the statement and the document that he’s brought forward, because a lot of it is the motherhood and apple pie that traditionally comes out with these types of announcements? I noticed in the closing remarks from the First Minister that, over the course of this term—I’m assuming—more meat will be put on the bones of some of these announcements by various Cabinet Secretary statements in their particular portfolio areas. So, I suppose it is fair to expect, obviously, to receive more information as the term progresses.

But at the start of the statement, the First Minister does identify the need for greater working in the public sector to make the public pound go that much further, and one of the things constituents get driven to the extremes over is how they can’t get various parts of the public services that are meant to be there to help them to work in their own interests—and I use health and social care as an example—and they come to their Assembly Members. I’m sure many AMs in this building have had the experience, and they just can’t work through why these services will not work to enable them to get the treatment or the services they need in the right place. So, what I would ask the First Minister, given the experience and that he was the First Minister that put in place the Williams commission, about local government reform, in the last Assembly, where a huge amount of effort was put by the then Government into reforming local government to try and make a better way of working, as they saw it at the time, and to work on the proposals of the Williams review, how he believes this Government will be any more successful in driving reform of the public services here in Wales that will create, as he says in his opening remarks in the statement, a more collaborative way of working to deliver public services across Wales that benefit the user as well as the service itself.

I also take the four points that he highlights here—a prosperous and secure Wales, which obviously no-one could disagree with—but actually, when you do look at the economic numbers over the last 18 years, because he has been part of the Government that has been in power here in Wales for the last 18 years, in that particular section if you look at the economy, for example, where we all remember the target that was set in the early years of devolution of a 90 per cent target for GVA, today that figure has shrunk to 71 per cent of GVA. How on earth can we have any confidence that this is not just another cut-and-paste exercise and that we will see the improvements we want to see in the economy of Wales to put us on the way to becoming the powerhouse I know Wales can be if it was afforded the right leadership.

We have heard this time and time again. We have had had four different economic strategies coming forward from the Welsh Government: ‘A Winning Wales’ in 1999; ‘Wales: a Vibrant Economy’ in 2005; ‘Economic renewal: a new direction’ in 2009; and now, we are going to get the new direction of travel from the Cabinet Secretary when he makes his statement around his vision for the economy. And yet, as I said, when it comes to GVA, for example, the figures are painfully stubborn, lagging well behind other parts of the United Kingdom. If you look at regional inequality when it comes to GVA, Anglesey, for example, stood at £13,411 of GVA. In the Gwent Valleys, it was £13,681. Yet in Cardiff and the Vale, for example, it stood at £22,783. Again, after 18 years, how can we have confidence that the Government will be able to move the needle so that these inequalities across Wales will be levelled out and you don’t get such great differences in our communities—north, mid and south Wales?

And then you look at our exports, for example, which the First Minister has talked about very often—about the exports and the importance of promoting Wales abroad. This is something we agree with him on, and we offer our wholehearted support. But if you look at exports to the United States, they have fallen by 13 per cent. If you look at exports to India, they have fallen by 22 per cent. If you look at Japan, they are down by 55 per cent. Again, how will the Government be reversing these negative numbers when we need, with the Brexit process, to be looking more globally at the trade we want to encourage so that our economy can pick up and real take-home pay can increase here in Wales?

Then, he talks of a healthy and active Wales in the second segment of the statement he has made today. We know that one in seven people in Wales are on a waiting list, regrettably. We heard over the summer recess that there has been a 400 per cent increase—and that is worth repeating: a 400 per cent increase—in people waiting 12 months or more for a procedure here in Wales. In the health board that the Welsh Government have direct control over—Betsi Cadwaladr—it has gone from zero to a 1,250 per cent increase in the people waiting 12 months or more. So, again, when you read the rhetoric in the document that’s launched in conjunction with the statement he has made today, how can we have confidence that the journey the Government is undertaking—this Government that he is leading today—will start tackling these huge inequalities in our society?

Then, the ‘Ambitious and Learning’ chapter of the document that he launched today, and the third part of four that he has addressed in his statement talks of, on page 15:

‘Still, there is too much variation in the attainment of school leavers’.

I see the Cabinet Secretary for Education agreeing with that and shaking her head in agreement. This is coming from a Government that has been responsible for education for 18 years—and I hear the Cabinet Secretary say, ‘But not me’. I take that point, in fairness, but I did believe that it was collective responsibility, and so it is one Government. How are we to believe that the bold and fine statements in this document will actually improve the attainment levels of children the length and breadth of Wales when, after 18 months—18 years, sorry, not 18 months—your own document says that there is, and I will repeat that again, still

‘too much variation in the attainment of school leavers’?

Finally, in the ‘United and Connected’ segment of the four that you identified in your statement, it is important that all parts of Wales feel that the Government is governing for them. Irrespective of whatever colour that Government might be, that is what we are celebrating at this moment in time: 20 years of devolution and 20 years of local decision-making. But it is a fact, historically, that some Governments that the Labour Party has led here have sought to drive nation building ahead of what is best for that particular part of Wales. I well remember, when I first came into this Assembly, in particular in the field of health, there was this drive to send patients from north Wales to south Wales for treatment, when there were good cross-border links already in place for north Wales patients to access that treatment in Manchester, in Liverpool, where the natural alliances and the natural flow of people over the years had built up. I do hope that the First Minister will support my call, in the devolution of responsibilities to whatever regions that require them to increase their economic footprint, but, above all, the delivery of public services, that this will be best delivered locally, rather than the centralised Cathays Park model that we have seen time and time again, historically, being looked at as the more favourable option when it comes to decision making here in Wales. There are many, many—

Are we winding up, please? You’ve had longer than the First Minister took to introduce the statement.

I will wind up.

Sorry. First Minister. Sorry.

I thank the leader of the opposition for his comments. I suppose the question he didn’t ask, which I’m sure will be asked, is, ‘What is the point of this document?’, which I understand. Well, he is right to say that the document itself will of course be fleshed out. The point of this document is it provides Members of this Assembly and the public with the framework within which decisions will be taken. Of course this will guide Ministers. All decisions that will be taken by Ministers will be measured according to what’s in this document, and the ambitions in this document and the five priority areas. As I mentioned in the statement itself, there will be further action plans that will be developed in the course of the next few months.

He talked about how to work across the public sector. We will, of course, be looking to introduce a local government Bill that will help to drive greater consistency in local government.

Coming to the point he made last, he is right to say that we wish, as a Government, to have decisions taken as close to people’s communities as possible, but we have found in the past—this drove the previous legislation that was not successful—that that leads to massive inconsistency, where some councils are unable to deliver services in the way they should. One council, Anglesey, was taken over because it failed so completely. At one point, six councils—six local education authorities—were in special measures over education. Now that can’t possibly be right. How, then, do we resolve that? The local government Bill will seek to do that in order to drive greater consistency, to help councils to deliver better, and to deliver consistent delivery across regional footprints. I don’t think anyone can pretend that we’ve had a robust system of local government for the past 20 years where every single council has always delivered to the level that people would expect. That clearly isn’t so. So, whilst it’s important have local decision making, we must guard against there arising, because of that, huge inconsistency, and the Bill will help to ensure that doesn’t happen.

He talks of economic statistics. We can trade this back and fore. As I said earlier on in First Minister’s questions, the unemployment rate now is 4.3 per cent. That is not the full figure; there are still too many people who lack security of employment. That I understand. But we’ve been successful in drawing investment into Wales that we’d never have had before. Aston Martin is one example. We’ve managed to save our airport; that would have closed, bluntly. In the days before devolution, nobody would have saved that; now it’s prospering. Our steel industry—we were able to act as strong advocates for our steel industry in order to make sure that those jobs remained in Wales. ProAct and ReAct: they were world-leading schemes, and they helped to keep people in jobs when the recession started to bite at its strongest—jobs that would otherwise have been lost.

He makes reference to the fact, and it’s there, that there are regional differences in GVA in Wales. One of the problems in the areas close to Cardiff is that so many people live in other counties but work in Cardiff. Now, I live in west Wales and the Valleys. Because I work in Cardiff, I’m counted as an economic drain—some people might say that’s true anyway, but an economic drain on west Wales and the Valleys, because I’m paid in Cardiff and I work in Cardiff, and that’s part of the problem. So many people come in to Cardiff to commute it depresses the GVA of the areas around it in a way that doesn’t really exist elsewhere in other areas that previously had Objective 1 status. That’s not the whole explanation, of course, because the other way of driving up GVA is simply skills. Now, one of the issues we get asked by potential investors is, ‘If we come to Wales, have your people got the skills that we need to be successful?’ And that increasingly can be answered positively. In the past, skills were not seen as important; it was low pay: come to Wales because pay levels are low. Well, those days are finished. Now we want to make sure we draw in investment on the basis that our skill levels are high.

But, of course, the great challenge for us is that our biggest export market is the European single market: 67 per cent of our exports go there. We can’t replace that. It’s impossible to replace that. And why would we want to replace it in any event? It’s an enormous market on our doorstep. The US cannot replace it; it’s smaller and it’s further away. Japan cannot replace it—again, further away and smaller. And so the challenges of Brexit—and we’ll come on to them; this will be a debate we’ll have, of course, for months and years in this Chamber—have to be examined through the telescope of ensuring the best possible access—participation in the single market, full unfettered access to the single market, but the easiest access to the single market that we can have for Welsh businesses, because that is their biggest market and cannot be replaced easily.

He mentioned ‘healthy and active’—there are challenges in every health service. England has just registered the highest number of people on waiting lists ever, and there are challenges that England faces as well. We know in Wales that we’ve seen improvements in some areas where waiting times have come down. In other areas, there is work to do. We’ve always acknowledged that. But we know that independent reports have shown that the health services across the UK are roughly on a par.

‘Ambitious and learning’—he mentioned that. Well, I’d argue that we see the difference now. Our GCSE results are the best ever. I was looking at the graph for GCSE results in the days before devolution, when less than half of young people got five A* to Cs at GCSE, and that figure now has climbed well beyond that. There’s been an enormous difference in that time. GCSE results are the best ever. We’re seeing reductions in the attainment gap. The pupil deprivation grant has made differences across Wales and that is something that is working for so many young people.

Finally, on ‘united and connected’—. Well, the answer I always give when people say, ‘Well, the Assembly’s in Cardiff; what does it mean for the north of Wales?’—I say, ‘Well, there are three Cabinet Secretaries in the Government who come from north Wales constituencies’. That is an enormous level of representation. There’s nobody in the UK Government from a north Wales constituency. But the voice of the north is very, very strong. It has to be. There are 60 of us here. At least a quarter of the Members, as I count it, come from the north. Of course that voice is strong; the same for rural Wales, the same for the mid and west of our country—a much stronger voice than ever existed in the days before devolution. I hear what he says about devolving to the regions. Again, I suspect the Secretary of State’s view and way of doing that is a little different to his. I think the Secretary of State’s view is, ‘Let’s bypass the Welsh Government and talk to councils directly’. That is not a view, obviously, that we share, even though we accept the principle of devolving as much as possible.

As a Member of this National Assembly, and being frequently on the receiving end of Government strategy documents—and they do come thick and fast—you’re often oscillating between a state of confusion and a state of despair. I have to say, having speed-read this document this afternoon, I feel a mixture of both. Confusion because I think I was under the misapprehension that this was going to be the date of the publication of the new economic strategy. I’m not the only one, because I notice Lee Waters tweeted yesterday:

‘Ahead of tomorrow's launch of a new WG economic strategy I've set out some thoughts in today's Western Mail’,

and a very good article it was, too. And here we come to the despair, because there were better, more interesting, more original ideas in that single-page article than there are in this document.

What, actually, we’ve got here—. Remember that we were—[Interruption.] And if I was there, I’m sure the same would be true of Hefin David’s business briefing next week. ‘Ahead of the publication of the Welsh Government economic strategy’—you need to improve your internal communication at the very least.

What we’ve got, actually, is a kind of beefed-up version of ‘Taking Wales Forward’, published last year. It’s kind of ‘Taking Wales Forward’ on steroids, really, isn’t it? It’s gone up from 15 pages to 27, so nobody can accuse the Welsh Government of not making progress. That’s a 100 per cent increase in Welsh Government productivity.

We had four cross-cutting strategies. Now we have—what is it—five cross-cutting priorities, and four key themes and three action plans. You certainly can’t accuse them of not being comprehensive.

I don’t have the time to go after all of those, but I’d like to concentrate on one, and, seeing as we have been celebrating 20 years since 1997 and devolution, let’s concentrate on the economic, because that was meant to be the big advance, the devolution dividend. As has already been referred to, really, of course the progress there has been limited. Looking at the 18 bullet points—that’s all it is, if you’re looking for the contours of the new economic strategy, 18 bullet points across two pages—I’m trying to understand, therefore, what that tells us about the content of the new economic strategy. Maybe the First Minister will be able to help me. The first question is: is there a real acceptance of the scale of the challenge? I think there is on the backbench on the governing side. I’m not sure there is on the frontbench. Because, as was already referred to, in 1997, where were we? Seventy-four point one per cent of GVA per capita. Where are we now in the latest figures? Seventy one per cent. We’ve gone backwards. We were seventh overall, by the way, in terms of the 12 standard UK economic regions. Even on the Welsh Government’s favourite economic indicator, which is gross disposable household income per head, we’ve also gone backwards—87.8 per cent to 85.3 per cent. So, is there an acceptance of the scale of the challenge? The First Minister, in his remarks earlier this afternoon, said that in the 1990s we were a country that young people wanted to leave. Well, actually, we saw a report over the summer from the Resolution Foundation showing that Wales has a brain drain. More graduates lost to Wales between 2016—a net loss of over 20,000 graduates during that period. We’re tenth of the 12 UK standard regions in terms of the extent of graduate loss.

Secondly, are there going to be targets? We’ve had appallingly poor progress. How can we actually measure whether we’re going to have a better record of delivery in the future? Because, as Chris Kelsey said, there are few details and few specific targets in this strategy. And where is the desire, the appetite—which I do sense, to be fair, on the Labour back benches—for radical change in terms of strategy? We’ve basically followed the same strategy for 40, 50 years, which is, essentially, reliant on foreign direct investment. That’s it. We’ve ploughed that furrow. And where has it got us? Where is the appetite in these 18 bullet points for accepting that that strategy will not serve us well in the future, therefore we need radical new ideas?

Finally, on the last day of term, the Cabinet Secretary said that you were going to publish this cross-cutting strategy and then there would be an extensive stakeholder engagement programme. I think that’s jargon for ‘talking to people’. Well, I did a little bit of talking over the weekend, because I wanted to know what was going to be in this economic strategy that didn’t appear, and I spoke to some leading business people that I know and will be known to many people here; I spoke to some leading Welsh economists. Not one of them knew what was going to be in the economic strategy or in the bullet points because nobody from the Welsh Government had spoken to them. So, on what basis have you come up with these 18 bullet points? Who have you spoken to? Because I fear that what we’ll get when we finally see the economic action plan is, once again, an empty vessel with no substance.

Well, let me try to assist the Member in his confusion and lift him from his despair. First of all, I thank him for his acknowledgement of the consistency that exists between the two documents that he’s referred to. They’re meant to be consistent. They’re meant to illustrate a common direction.

Now, the first thing that he referred to was, he described, appallingly poor economic performance—not so. He also said that, effectively, for the last 50 years, economic strategy had been the same—again, not so. Because I well remember in the 1990s—the late 1980s and the 1990s—the Government of the day decided that the way to, as they saw it, relieve unemployment in Wales was to reduce employment in well-paid jobs like steel and coal and replace them with badly paid jobs in unskilled sectors. That’s when our GDP started to slide, because, although unemployment seemed to be lower or getting lower, people’s wage rates were getting lower as well. We’ve rejected that. We don’t accept that Wales’s economic model is based on being the lowest-wage economy in western Europe. That’s exactly what was happening in the late 1990s particularly. We made sure that we went after high quality investment. We have Wylfa B, we have Surf Snowdonia, we have Airbus, we have Raytheon, and Cardiff Airport—we saved that, that would have closed—Aston Martin, CGI; the list goes on. We have attracted investment into Wales at a skill level that would have been unthought of in the 1990s. In time, that will see the raising of GDHI, it will see more money into people’s pockets, and that is something that we are not going to change.

He expressed regret at a reliance on foreign direct investment. We’re not going to be an autarky, we understand that. Foreign direct investment will be hugely important for us in the future; the US is by far our biggest investor. Yes—though he didn’t make the point, I suspect he wanted to make this point—we want to make sure we encourage more young, local entrepreneurs. And we see there are more businesses in Wales now that are being set up and are successful than before. I meet with young people and they are encouraged in a way now that they never were many years ago, when I was the same age as them, and they do set up in business, they have the confidence to do it, they have the confidence to grow and to work with others. I see our universities, who for a long time didn’t work with business, they didn’t see it as part of their remit—. They now are able to work with their talented graduates and researchers to set up spin-off businesses, and we see them around Swansea and around Cardiff—not exclusively, but particularly there.

Of course, we need to make sure that we are flexible, and, yes, if it’s the case we’ve produced a number of economic plans over the years, I plead guilty to that; that’s because circumstances change. The biggest challenge that we faced was the crash of 2008. That was an enormous challenge for every single economy in the developing world. With ProAct and ReAct, we made sure (a) that people kept their jobs, and (b) they were trained whilst they were in those jobs. Otherwise, unemployment would have been a lot, lot higher. We work with our businesses in order to deliver the best for our people. Now, in time, of course, he’ll have the opportunity to look at the economic action plan. I’m sure he will joust and cross swords with the Cabinet Secretary. But when it comes to comparing Wales now to what Wales was like in the 1990s—a country with high unemployment, low prospects, very low wages, a deliberate policy to bring in low-skill, low-wage jobs—we’ve come a long way since then, and we intend to go a lot further.

As usual, by the time I get my opportunity in these statements, almost every decent point has been made, and Adam Price has well said that—

I could say, ‘We’ll move on, then’.

Well, you could. I’m sure you won’t, Deputy Presiding Officer, being a fair-minded president of the Assembly. But, as Adam Price has effectively pointed out, as the document itself is merely a repetition and a rehash of material that’s been well cooked before, a repetitious criticism of it, perhaps, may not be totally out of place. When I used to go to Sunday school as a small boy, one of my favourite hymns was ‘Tell me the old, old story’, and, of course, that is what we’ve got here. I think the First Minister has, in a sense, been kind enough to admit that that is the case. Because when I went through this document and asked, ‘What’s new?’, and went through ‘Taking Wales Forward’, I struggled to find anything that was new at all. And, of course, we can all laugh at the various platitudes that are in it; all governments produce documents of this kind. I’m far from saying that the Welsh Government is responsible for everything that’s wrong with Wales and has totally failed in the course of the last 20 years, but the main point which arises, I think, from our experience of the last 20 years, is that the Welsh Government’s failure, relative to what’s been going on elsewhere in the United Kingdom and the rest of the world, is very apparent indeed. And we’ve had the various statistics bandied around by the leader of the Welsh Conservatives and by Adam Price a moment ago. It is true that the Welsh people are poorer today, relatively, than they have been for many, many years. It’s correct, as the First Minister said, that, to an extent, because of industrial change—coal and steel were well-paid jobs and those industries could not be sustained at the levels that they used to employ—we haven’t managed to attract into Wales the higher-paid jobs that should have replaced them, and that’s the key challenge for the years ahead.

The only thing that really matters in this document is the bit about building an entrepreneurial culture, because if we can’t raise the capacity of the Welsh economy to create wealth, we can’t generate the tax revenue that pays for all the public services that are the good things that we want to see and that are well set out in the rest of the document. Here, I don’t think that the Welsh Government’s story is impressive at all. Most recently, we’ve seen the fiasco over the Circuit of Wales. Here was a massive private sector project that, had it been given the go-ahead, would have brought in a very substantial amount of capital for that particular enterprise, but on the back of that, much else might have been attracted. The approach of the Welsh Government on that was so myopic I could hardly believe it, as we’ve been led up that path for the last year, or 18 months, only to be dropped off the edge of a cliff into the drain the First Minister referred to in his remarks a moment ago. That is symptomatic of the problem: a lack of vision in the Welsh Government, as Adam Price has passionately pointed out.

I can’t help reflecting, as I have reflected previously, on what’s going on 60 miles away from Cardiff to the east with James Dyson’s technology park. Why aren’t we attracting such things to Wales? It’s because the attitude of the Welsh Government is wrong. For the future, it should realise that governments can’t create an entrepreneurial culture. The Government is part of the problem here. If Wales is to become more competitive, then the regulatory burden has to become more proportionate; the tax burden has to become more proportionate. Here we do have an opportunity, and here the document is totally silent. Now that we’re getting these tax-raising and tax-varying powers, what we should be seeking to do is to make Wales more attractive than other parts of the United Kingdom to help to redress the balance that we’ve inherited from the past and the mistakes of governments of all parties, whether it be at the UK level or, indeed, here in Cardiff. On business rates, again, why is there no long-term thinking about how we can lift this burden, which is such a block upon new businesses—small businesses—getting off the ground in the first place, because the cost of premises is artificially increased by a business rates system that is antiquated and inappropriate for the modern world?

Brexit does offer challenges, obviously, and the First Minister is always talking about the challenges. What about the opportunities? The First Minister is an accomplished advocate. He defends the indefensible in a very persuasive way very frequently in this Chamber. He is an advocate for Wales in other parts of the world. But his constant jeremiads about how it’s the end of the world if we leave the single market—. The single market is not the be-all and end-all. There is no single market, actually, anyway, because as James Dyson himself—who sells manufactured goods within the European Union—pointed out only the other day, there’s a sequence of segmented markets. Yes, there is a single system of regulation, very often, and that is often misused to the disadvantage of industry. But if the First Minister could offer some sort of ray of sunshine for the future and hope and optimism for exports, not only to the European Union, but also to the rest of the world—. Of course, as he rightly says, we export more from Wales to the European Union than other parts of the United Kingdom and we’re not going to replace that overnight. We’re not going to have to replace it overnight. Exchange rate movements in the last year have more than offset any putative increase in tariffs that are likely to be imposed if there’s no deal with the EU. Real businesses in the real world are nimble and flexible. They have to be or they don’t survive, and this is the problem with Government today. It is not nimble, it is not flexible, it has no real vision for the future, and that’s why this offers us no more than any of the previous documents that it adds to—the huge pile that no doubt we’ll be adding to on an annual basis in the future.

Let’s try and deconstruct a stream of consciousness. Well, let’s start with the industrial change that he said occurred, under his watch, actually, a lot of it. In a sensible country it would have been understood that there were going to be job losses in coal and steel. Steel employed a lot of people, probably more than was needed. But in a sensible country, plans would have been laid out to re-employ people in good jobs, but that’s not what happened. What happened was that people were laid off in their thousands on a single day and told, ‘That’s it, there’s no job for you’. That’s why unemployment went up and that’s why our GDP declined, because of that double whammy. That wasn’t to do with industrial change on its own. That was a deliberate policy by a Government that didn’t care if people were made redundant and where they went after that.

I agree with him about the need to create an entrepreneurial culture and that’s what the document shows. But it’s hugely important—he mentioned the Circuit of Wales—that we don’t repeat the mistakes of the past. You know, LG was one of the greatest mistakes that the WDA actually—. They’d had a good track record until then, but it was one of the greatest mistakes, in hindsight, that happened. And we’ve got to be very careful about what we support and what we don’t.

He talks about what’s happening 60 miles to the east with James Dyson, of course. His argument about the EU seems to be about the regulation of vacuum cleaners, as far as I can tell. It quite clearly is a single market. Where does he manufacture? He doesn’t manufacture in the UK does he? So, there are issues there. If he is that patriotic, perhaps he should base everything that he does within the UK itself.

With regard to the regulatory burden that he talks about, what is it? If he says there is a regulatory burden, it would be interesting to know where he sees those burdens are, because he gives no examples. He talks about a tax burden. He gives an example of business rates. We are, of course, looking at how we can put in place a permanent system of relief in terms of small business rates. We are looking at how that can be done with a view to implementing that. He says that our attitude is wrong. Well, I can only refer—. I could go through a whole list of things, but I will refer him to the words that were used by Aston Martin. They came to Wales not because there was more money on the table but because of the pride and professionalism of the Welsh Government. That’s why they came to Wales and that can be repeated up and down Wales in terms of the jobs we have brought to Wales.

He talks of Brexit. He recognises there are challenges. Indeed, there are challenges that Brexit brings. The single market undoubtedly does exist, because it employs a common tariff, and as a result of that, in order to get into that market, we all have to pay the tariffs or find a way of agreement to avoid those tariffs being paid. And besides, if you have tariffs, you have a hard border in Ireland. There’s no avoiding it, because you cannot have a system of tariffs and then say, ‘Incidentally, we have a land border with the EU where there are no customs controls at all and no tariffs are payable.’ So, he doesn’t want a hard border—fine, I accept that—but you can’t have tariffs and not have a hard border; the two run together with all the consequences—tragic consequences, actually—that that might potentially bring.

If I can just deconstruct an argument he used as well early on. He said, ‘Well, it doesn’t matter about tariffs because the exchange rate has resolved that issue’. Well, of course, the drop in the pound means that goods from the European Union are now more expensive in the UK. Put tariffs on top of that and they’re even more expensive and they’re paid for by the consumer. One of the things I could never work out in the conversations I had with David Davis some months ago was that he kept on saying, ‘Well, tariffs can provide us with a pot of money that we can use to support business.’ Yes, but they’re paid by the consumer. It’s Joe Public that pays the tariffs, not businesses. Ultimately, the cost is passed on to those who buy the product that carries the tariff upon it. So, it’s hard to see how exchange rates can overcome the problem if tariffs are imposed. Surely we want to see a world where, instead of seeing the UK taking a market of 400 million people and wanting to see tariffs imposed on its goods going into the market—surely nobody wants to see that happening. So, there’s much about what he said that I cannot accept. He says that I defend the indefensible. I have to say to him I’m more than happy today to defend and advocate the very defensible.

I’d like to thank Adam Price for the lovely, kind words. I’m sure they’ll do me the absolute world of good; much appreciated. But I think, actually, it’s something to be celebrated, the freedom of expression on these Labour benches. We have been actively encouraged by the Government to have an input into what they are trying to do, and I’ve never been so encouraged to have a voice as an elected politician.

With that in mind, I’m going to have my voice. I’ve got a couple of questions with regard to the national strategy. First of all, page 25 with regard to social care: it says that the Welsh Government plans to invest in a new innovative care delivery model in the community. Would the First Minister directly answer this question? [Interruption.] Is he trying to find the document? I quote page 25:

‘invest in a new innovative care delivery model in the community’.

Would the First Minister consider the public sector creating care homes from either existing buildings or new buildings, and allowing small local not-for-profit operators to run them, therefore bringing a foundational focus to social care in our communities?

With regard to planning, on page 5 it says

‘The right planning system is critical to delivering our objectives in this strategy’.

I would argue that in the current planning system, in spite of the Planning (Wales) Act 2015 that welcomed the creation of strategic development plans that are yet to operationalise, local development plans are a manifestation of regional inequality; they are broken. We see through LDPs the overdevelopment of the south, particularly in my area along the M4 corridor, and the underdevelopment and depopulation of the north. I would argue that LDPs are totally beholden to what is viable, and by viable we mean profitable. We need to look at that and how we change that. And I was encouraged by page 24 of the document, which said that the Welsh Government will

‘unlock the potential of SMEs to build homes’.

That is a very encouraging action, but one of the things that will help SMEs is the remediation of brownfield sites. Would the Welsh Government therefore consider revisiting a policy of providing support for remediation, which would enable SMEs to develop brownfield sites, particularly in the northern areas of the areas that I represent?

And finally, a regional approach is very welcome, particularly if it’s a place-based approach, and I look forward to seeing how that may be done in the economic plan that is forthcoming. What will those regional footprints be and has the First Minister got the confidence that local government has not just the structure, but also the skills and knowledge to deliver local economic strategies? Yes, the local government Bill will develop structure, but can he be confident that skills and knowledge will also be developed alongside that, particularly with regard to procurement, for example?

First of all, the Member’s absolutely right to say that we do encourage that kind of thinking. As he knows, we’ve discussed many times how important it is to be able to harness new ideas from outside Government, and I very much welcome the comments that he made. He asked me a direct question and the answer is ‘yes’. We want to consider all potential structures in terms of running care homes, and that’s an idea that certainly can be looked at to see how viable that is.

In terms of LDPs, he is right to say that LDPs on their own are no longer sufficient. Regional planning has to become much stronger, and that is something that we intend to continue to progress with as part of the local government Bill. He’s absolutely right to say that we live in a world where, in reality, local government boundaries are not actually respected by planners, or by nature, or by geography, and it means that where one particular local authority will look at its LDP purely in the context of what happens in its own area, there can often be a knock-on effect elsewhere. And so, seeing regional planning in the future will be hugely important. The regional footprints issue is something that will be looked at as part of the local government Bill. We want to encourage local authorities to work together in order to put in place regional planning structures.

He asks me the question: do I have confidence that every local authority is able to deliver in terms of local economic strategies? The answer to that question is: no, they can’t on their own. That’s where they need to work together. I don’t believe that there’s sufficient depth in every single local authority in Wales to develop the kind of economic strategy that’s needed, but by working together on a regional footprint, that depth can be created. And, of course, we know that, again, economies don’t respect local government boundaries. It’s hugely important that Heads of the Valleys authorities can work together for the common good, rather than thinking, ‘We’re only going to look at what happens in our own area.’ We know the world doesn’t work that way. And that is something that we’re keen to do. I know that the Cabinet Secretary has worked very closely with local government leaders, and that message is understood. We can’t carry on in a way that sees Wales as 22 different areas that operate almost entirely independently of each other, and that’s why regional planning will become more important as part of that Bill.

Finally, he mentions brownfield sites. Yes, we want to see more remediation, but there’s a substantial cost to this. I know of at least one example that I dealt with when I was Minister for the environment, where just on one small site the remediation cost was £20 million. That was then, 10 years ago, because the original owners—the business no longer existed. And as a result of that, the liability ends up in the hands of the Welsh Government. It’s the same with opencast. Now, there are real issues with the remediation of opencast sites, which some of us in this Chamber will be more than familiar with, and what happens if the business that owns the site no longer exists—it goes into receivership or disappears completely. And so, these are issues that we wrestle with, but in principle, of course, we want to see more brownfield sites remediated, but we have to do that on the basis of an understanding that there is a limit of what we can afford to pay for them in the financial year.

First Minister, can I genuinely welcome the attempt to try and join up the different areas of Government activity? Governments are often criticised for silo thinking, and I think the Government deserves some credit in this document at the way that it’s tried to bring together the different strands of its programme and strategy. And I look forward, when the action plans are published, to take forward the detail of this, to seeing how that will work in practice.

The one area in particular I wanted to focus on was around automation, which does cut across a range of portfolios and areas, and will profoundly impact everything that we do. And I sense that the Government at all levels is not quite ready for the storm that is being unleashed around us. We’ve already seen the impact of the closure of the Tesco call centre in Cardiff and its move to Dundee, which I’m told was almost entirely motivated by considerations around automation. There is an acknowledgement in the strategy that the best defence will be people with the ability to work better and smarter than machines and able to solve the problems that they can’t. And, of course, skills is an important part of dealing with automation. But that does miss out the opportunities as well.

Yes, it’s right—the Bank of England formula suggests that some 700,000 jobs in Wales could be under threat, but if we harness automation, there are opportunities for us too, in terms of the manufacture, the design and the roll-out of the robotics. I had a fascinating visit to the College of Engineering at Swansea University last Friday, where there is very innovative work taking place in Wales on this agenda, and a visit the week before to EBS Automation Ltd in Dafen, who are doing some remarkable work. So, there is a positive story to tell, but the point the First Minister made just a moment ago was striking, in criticising the failure of previous Governments to respond to the anticipated job losses from the coal and steel industries in the 1980s, and the failure to plan for what they knew was likely to be an adjustment in the economy. And I think we face a similar generational shift. We know there are going to be significant disruptions to the way we organise public services and the economy, and we must get ready for it, and it must be across all Government. And I hope that he will lead that work in Wales.

The Member’s absolutely right. The big change, I think, that’s occurred in the past few years is the rapidity of change. It wouldn’t have been difficult to predict in the 1970s that coal—particularly coal—was on a trajectory downwards. I mean, no-one could have predicted the sudden job losses that occurred, but that had been the trend since 1914. What we see now is a rapidity in change that just would have been unthought of in the 1970s. Ten years ago, the pressures on the retail sector were not what they are now, in terms of competition from online sources, and that is something that the retail sector has had to adjust very painfully to, in terms of doing. Call centres are under pressure now in a way that they weren’t 10, 12 years ago, as technology has improved. The challenge for us, and other Governments, is to make sure that if job losses occur in those areas, others are created elsewhere, obviously, and that’s something we’re very much aware of.

One of the industries where we are genuinely world leaders is insurance—not just in terms of individual companies, but comparison websites. One of the challenges that insurers face is driverless cars—cars that are able to drive themselves. What does that mean in terms of assessing insurance risk? How do you calculate the premium? Who has liability? But these are things that are being looked at now, because we know that, in 10 years’ time—probably quicker than that—this will be a real issue. So, he’s absolutely right to say that there are challenges there, probably that are not even foreseen yet, which have to be recognised as quickly as possible—some that seem remote, but will be upon us in no time. We’re very much up for that challenge, to make sure that, where we see change occurring, we know that Wales is ready for that change, and we upskill our people, in order to make sure that they’re able to take advantage of those changes, in what is a rapidly changing world.

Like Adam Price, I also did some speed reading—I managed to read the document during one of the questions in First Minister’s questions earlier. And there were points in the document that I was pleased to see there. But I am disappointed that, today, we haven’t seen a comprehensive economic strategy. Like other Members across this Chamber, of all parties, that’s what I was expecting. But can I ask why there has been a delay in receiving this document? In July, you committed that we would see the document before the end of term. And can I ask you to provide a specific date of when we will see the specific actions for ‘prosperous and secure’ and the economic strategy? And when we do see that document, will that be a comprehensive document?

In the preparation of this strategy, can I ask how has the Welsh Government ensured that its economic policies complement the UK Government’s industrial strategy? You’ll also be aware that the industrial strategy puts great emphasis on addressing the regional disparity in the economic prosperity and skills shortages that exist across the UK. Now, I very much welcome in the document today—I note that you intend to target intervention to the economic needs of each region. That’s something I very much welcome, and I also welcome the reference that you will focus on each region’s strengths—that’s to be welcomed as well. So, how will the Government’s strategy specifically address these issues, to drive increases in productivity in north and mid Wales in particular? And can I ask in that regard what consideration the Government has given to developing an economic strategy for mid Wales in particular, and a mid Wales growth deal?

Also, there appears to be less of a focus on encouraging inward investment in this strategy. Will you, First Minister, confirm that your Government is moving away from inward investment as a key pillar of the Welsh Government’s approach to developing the economy of Wales? And if so, how will the strategy ensure that Wales takes advantage of the investment and export opportunities that will arise as a result of Brexit, in boosting trade links with other partners from all over the world?

A number of questions there, and specific actions, particularly, were asked about. First things first: the economic action plan will be published during the course of the autumn and that will be available for Members to see.

The UK Government’s industrial strategy is unclear. It’s not the most detailed strategy. We look forward to seeing that develop over time. The big question that’s not answered over that and the shared prosperity fund is how it’ll mesh with the work of devolved Governments. A shared prosperity fund will not work if the UK Government decides its priorities alone. It won’t mesh properly with what’s happening in Wales and what’s happening in Scotland. We wait to see how that will work out.

He talks about the mid Wales growth deal—that’s something, of course, that we would want to look at over the course of the development of this document and beyond. We’re not moving away from inward investment. Inward investment is hugely important to the Welsh economy and, in keeping with that, I have, for some months, been looking at how we can boost our overseas presence given the fact that Brexit is happening. Where else can we look? What new markets can we look at? Where should we put Welsh Government officials working, usually, with officials in what was UK Trade and Investment in offices around the world? This work is important to raise Wales’s profile. We understand that and that work is ongoing, but he’s right to say that raising Wales’s profile is massively important—we know this—in terms of attracting investment. I’d argue that we’ve done that. We’ve had the investment from Qatar Airways coming in, of course, to the airport, along with many, many others from other countries, and it’s hugely important that momentum continues in the future so that the success we’ve had over the next few years is replicated when it comes to attracting foreign direct investment.

First Minister, I’d like to welcome the commitment in the national strategy to a new regionally focused model of economic development. I think that’s particularly important in the face of Brexit and the loss of regional funding that we’ll experience as a result of that. However, in recent announcements on the development of a network of regional growth hubs, these seem to be primarily located in the southernmost reaches of our Valleys—places like Pontypridd, Treforest and Caerphilly. So, my question is: how will the new regional focus assist the economic development of the northernmost reaches of our Valleys—places where we know that poverty, worklessness and ill health remain stubbornly high?

Secondly, in addition, as a passionate advocate for the foundational economy, I’m pleased to note the strategy’s mention of support for local businesses and the diversification of supply chains. What additional information can you give on how the Welsh Government will enable small businesses to grow and flourish, to fill the missing middle and create sustainable, good-quality and, above all, local employment?

First of all, the issue of where growth hubs can be in the northern part of the Valleys is a matter that’s being considered by the Valleys taskforce. So, that is not lost; it’s something that’s still in development. We understand the importance of being able to look at growth hubs, especially around the Heads of the Valleys road, which we know has been hugely important to unlocking economic development in Merthyr, as one example, but other communities as well.

Secondly, of course, we know that more and more people are self-employed, so them being able to access advice is hugely important. We have in place, of course, a suite of measures that are able to assist people to look for financial support where that’s appropriate, to look for advice where that’s appropriate, and one example of that is making sure that people can access fast broadband speeds. I’ve said this before in the Chamber: broadband in the twenty-first century is the equivalent of the railway lines in the nineteenth. If you’re connected, then you’re connected to the world and that’s why, of course, we’ve invested so much money in Superfast Cymru: to bring superfast broadband to so many communities that otherwise would never have it—some urban, some rural communities. We know that it’s hugely important that our communities are connected, because it means that people can set up businesses there rather than having to move down to the southern part of south Wales in order to access the speeds that they need.

Thank you very much, First Minister, and apologies to those Members who we couldn’t call in that statement.

We move on to item 4, which, again, is a statement by the First Minister—the EU (Withdrawal) Bill. I call on Carwyn Jones to introduce the statement.

Thank you, Dirprwy Lywydd. I would like to update Members on matters relating to the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill, and in particular, the set of amendments that the Welsh Government and Scottish Government jointly published this morning.

Members will be aware of our legislative consent memorandum that was published last week. That memorandum sets out in detail those aspects of the Bill that require the Assembly’s consent, and describes very clearly why we don’t accept the Bill in its current form. I don’t propose to rehearse those arguments in detail again. Rather, I’d like to focus on the constructive solution, which the amendments published represent, a solution to a problem entirely of the UK Government’s own making, and one which could have been avoided had there been any genuine attempt to engage with the devolved administrations on the content of this Bill. We don’t bite. It would have been much easier for us to have had this discussion some time ago.

Let me first be very clear about our overall approach to the matters that the Bill seeks to address. To make the first and obvious point, bringing forward these amendments is not about challenging the principle of Brexit. They don’t challenge the referendum result, but we must have a Brexit that respects devolution and these amendments are designed to secure that. We’ve always recognised the need to prepare our laws for EU withdrawal, and agree that legislation is necessary to provide clarity and certainty for citizens and businesses as we leave the EU.

We agree that it makes sense for EU law to be converted into the various laws of the UK at the moment of withdrawal, and that the legislation to enable this to happen is best enacted for the whole of the UK in the Westminster Parliament. And we agree that Ministers need delegated powers to make the very many technical amendments that will be necessary to ensure that the law continues to work properly. We’ve always accepted there will be areas of policy that will require agreement across all four Governments to ensure that, when we’re outside the EU, we do nothing to inhibit the free flow of trade within the UK. And we explained how this matter should be approached in our policy document, ‘Brexit and Devolution’, which presents a clear and workable approach, which both respects devolution and answers the questions of how to ensure a level playing field across the UK in respect of policies where, to date, EU regulatory frameworks have provided this.

But, the Bill as it currently stands simply isn’t fit for purpose. It wouldn’t secure the transfer of all EU law onto the UK statute book: the exclusion of the charter of fundamental rights is a glaring and politically driven omission. It would give UK Ministers extraordinarily sweeping powers to amend primary legislation, and it represents a fundamental assault on devolution. It would replace current constraints on this Assembly’s legislative competence, which will fall away as a consequence of the UK leaving the EU, constraints that, it should be noted, apply equally to the UK Parliament, which no more than we can legislate in ways that are incompatible with EU law, with a new set of constraints that would apply only to the devolved institutions and would be controlled by the UK Government.

So, we’ve worked with the Scottish Government to develop a set of amendments that will seek to address the Bill’s shortcomings as they relate to devolution. I’ll describe briefly what these amendments seek to achieve, but before I do so I need to say yet again that this is not about seeking in any way to frustrate or reverse the process of EU withdrawal. To those who continue to peddle this canard, I simply extend an invitation to identify which of our amendments would, if accepted, have such an effect.

Llywydd, the amendments we’ve published seek to achieve four objectives. Firstly, they remove the new restriction placed on the competence of the devolved legislatures and Governments that puts beyond our powers all of the retained EU law being converted into domestic law. This is a wholly unnecessary provision that cuts across the principles of the devolution settlement. As I’ve already highlighted, the Welsh Government has put forward a constructive alternative to this restriction, with the UK and devolved administrations agreeing common frameworks where needed in the interests of the UK as a whole. Had they chosen to engage with us on this, the already infamous clause 11 might not have been necessary.

Secondly, the amendments prevent the wide-ranging delegated powers given to UK Ministers from being used to amend the Government of Wales Act 2006 or the Scotland Act 1998, or require the devolved administration’s consent to do so. It can’t be right that Acts of such constitutional significance should be amendable by UK Ministers without the agreement either of the devolved legislatures, nor indeed the UK Parliament itself, under the existing well-established rules and conventions.

Thirdly, they require UK Ministers to seek the consent of the devolved administrations if they use their delegated powers in areas of devolved responsibility. We recognise that there may be circumstances where, for practical reasons, it makes sense for UK Ministers to use their powers in this way, but we cannot accept that they should be able to do so without our consent.

Finally, the amendments remove restrictions on the delegated powers granted to devolved administrations so that they’re brought in line with those granted to UK Ministers. There is no basis for placing limitations on the powers of devolved administrations that do not also apply to UK Ministers. Let me be clear, however: this doesn’t mean that we want the sweeping powers contained in the Bill as currently drafted. Like many others, we’ve got concerns about the breadth of the powers and the limited scrutiny of their use that the Bill provides for, and will willingly give our support to amendments brought forward in Parliament to ensure that the powers given to the UK Government and ourselves as Ministers are appropriate.

Llywydd, yesterday I spoke at an event arranged by the Institute of Welsh Affairs to mark the twentieth anniversary of the devolution referendum. There’s a bitter irony in the fact that I stand here today making a statement on a UK Bill that represents the greatest threat, I’d argue, to our devolution settlement since the day that referendum was won. I very much hope, then, that the UK Government will think again about its approach to the devolution aspects of this Bill.

I hope that they, and all Members here, will recognise that these amendments represent a constructive contribution that would deliver the clarity and certainty that we all agree is necessary, whilst respecting the hard-won devolution settlements of the UK. It’s not about stopping Brexit; it’s about protecting the interests of the people of Wales. We are ready and willing to work constructively with the UK Government to reach agreement on the Bill, but if they continue to plough on regardless, they’ll spark a constitutional crisis that they don’t need and we do not want.

As I said in the debate on the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill here on 18 July, the Bill is needed to ensure that the statute book is able to function on the day we leave the EU. It’s technical in nature, making inoperable legislation operable, giving both UK and devolved Governments a time-limited power to correct laws by secondary legislation that would otherwise not function properly once we left the EU, thereby ensuring that Welsh businesses, including farmers and steel producers, can continue to trade with the EU immediately after the UK leaves the EU. I therefore very much welcome your agreement that it makes sense for EU law to be converted into UK law on this basis and that legislation to enable this to happen is best enacted for the whole of the UK in the Westminster Parliament. We also, like you, have always accepted that there will be areas of policy that will require agreement across all four Governments to ensure that outside the EU we do nothing to inhibit the free flow of trade within the United Kingdom.

But then you move on to say, however, that the Bill

‘represents a fundamental assault on devolution’,

which very much reflects the comments you made on the day the Bill was published, when you described it as a, quote, ‘naked power-grab’. Why did you say that at that point, given that the next day you stated that the Welsh Secretary had assured you that you and he would work together to make the situation acceptable, and that assurance had actually already been given to you before you’d issued your ‘naked power-grab’ statement?

You state that a constructive alternative would be for the UK and devolved administrations to agree common frameworks where needed in the interests of the UK as a whole and, of course, we agree with you very strongly on that point. Clause 11, you’ve referred to, will freeze the Assembly’s current powers to pass laws after exit day, but the Bill also provides a mechanism for unfreezing or releasing these powers to the devolved legislatures at a later stage through Orders in Council. However, it doesn’t—[Interruption.] That’s a statement of fact; I’m simply giving a statement of fact. However, as I’m sure you will also agree, it doesn’t include what has become to be called—[Interruption.] That’s what it says. It doesn’t include what has become known as the ‘sunset clause’, and that’s something we also regret because we believe that we do need agreed, UK-wide frameworks that respect the devolved settlements in devolved areas such as agriculture, fisheries and environment, and also potential areas of dispute, such as areas of competence over trade, employment and, of course, areas such as state aid. Therefore, I proposed in July that we could look at a model that stated the restriction on devolved competency could end when common agreed frameworks came into force. What is the First Minister’s view on that as a model, given both his concern about the absence of, quote, ‘a sunset clause’, but also the risk that this could lead to imposition rather than agreement of the frameworks that we all apparently seek?

As I stated at the end of the July debate, let us responsibly go through the Bill, identify the amendments we can all agree upon—and clearly there are some—and engage with the UK Government and Parliament to introduce them at the Second Reading. My party’s heard nothing from you since then, First Minister. Could you tell me why we haven’t engaged together where there is some common ground and perhaps useful joint working might have helped take things forward?

I’m also advised by the Welsh Office that the issues I’ve raised with them, which reflect the comments I’ve already made and reflect key topics raised by the devolved administrations and key stakeholders in Wales, will certainly be fed into the next stages of the Bill, but they also told me there’s been a significant amount of engagement with officials in the Welsh Government and UK Government over the summer. Could you give us a little bit more detail on that engagement and the extent to which it is related to the concerns you’ve highlighted and the movement that apparently has existed between the two sets of officials, to seek a way forward on this? Thank you.

A number of issues there. Can I thank the Member for putting forward a view that is different to the view that we’ve heard from his party in Westminster? The Scottish Conservatives said the same thing, actually, in their debate, and I think that is an important development in terms of the way this is seen in this Chamber. The key principle here is that we believe that the way forward is through agreement not by imposition. That’s it; that’s the fundamental principle. The destination may well be the same, but there’s a fundamental disagreement here as to how that should be arrived at.

It is true to say that it has been said that the powers that will not come here and be taken to Whitehall will only rest there temporarily, but there is no sunset clause, as he said. I have no faith that those powers won’t rest there permanently. For me, at this moment in time, to introduce an LCM to this Chamber and ask this Chamber to support it would mean that I would have to stand up and ask Members to support a motion that would prevent powers coming here from Brussels that would automatically come to rest here, and accept that, instead, we should allow those powers to go to Whitehall and stay there indefinitely. No First Minister, surely, could possibly accept a situation like that. The UK Government would never accept that themselves, so why on earth would they expect that of us?

He talks about the need for common frameworks; we are agreed on that. We’re also agreed on the need for nothing to change until common frameworks are agreed. I’m with him on that, but the way it’s being done is that basically the UK Government dictates when it thinks a common framework should be produced and what it should look like. That’s the problem. If there are going to be restrictions, let there be restrictions on UK Ministers as well—not just on devolved Ministers. It surely must be one rule for everybody or no rules, and in that sense there would need to be an agreement for nothing to change until there was an agreement for a common framework on, let’s say, agriculture or fisheries in the future. That is the problem here. The Bill, as it’s drafted, intercepts powers on their way to Wales and drags them off to Whitehall for an unlimited period of time. That’s the problem on the face of the Bill, and that’s why the Bill needs to change in order to provide the kind of comfort that we need and the people of Wales need.

Why is that important? Because the UK Government has a conflict of interest in so many areas. If we take agriculture and fisheries, the UK Government has for many years been, in effect, the English Government, if I can put it that way. It’s been in charge of English agriculture, English fisheries. How does it resolve that conflict of interest? For years, we have had a dispute over quota when it comes to a certain section of our fisheries, where it is argued by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs that they should have a larger slice of the quota and that we should give them part of that slice. Who resolves that now? They do, in their own favour. How on earth do you resolve that conflict? We have to have a way of being sure that we will not see a situation where—I put it bluntly, but it’s the only way I can express it—England can do what it wants and Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland can’t. That’s the problem that we face here, that conflict of interest.

Yes, officials have engaged with the Wales Office. And there’s no problem, no reason why we shouldn’t engage with them, but what influence does the Wales Office have, I have to say. We need to be talking to the Prime Minister on this. This is a serious issue that goes to the very heart of the UK and its future that is resolvable, and resolvable, to my mind, fairly easily. But is the Wales Office a lobbying organisation or is it able to take decisions itself? I suspect it’s not the latter, unfortunately.

Yes.

I actually—

This—

It’s a statement, isn’t it?

This is a statement. It’s not intervenable.

[Interruption.] Discuss. Discuss. So, it’s hugely important that we have that level of engagement from the UK Government. We have not yet had a Joint Ministerial Committee plenary. It’s right to say that other JMCs are planned, but, on this most important issue, nothing—no agreement to a meeting, even. Now that, clearly, is not helpful as far as the future is concerned, particularly as we look to develop structures that will enable us to agree common ways forward in the future. On a side issue, but just to give Members a flavour of the difficulties we’re facing at the moment, ourselves and the Scottish Government have argued that there is a dispute that needs to be resolved between us and the UK Government over the financial settlement to Northern Ireland. We argue that it drives a coach and horses, we think, quite reasonably, in terms of the argument, through the Barnett formula, in providing extra money, extra revenue funding, for health and education for Northern Ireland outside of that formula. We argue there’s a dispute. The UK Government does not accept there is a dispute, and so the dispute resolution process, they argue, can’t even be triggered. So, if we have a dispute with the UK Government and they disagree there’s a dispute at all, they win every single time. Now that can’t possibly be right. That’s why we need to put in place a structure that’s more robust, a structure that recognises the fact that there are four nations within the UK. We need to see more engagement from the UK Government to make sure that we are able to protect the interests of Wales. The offer is made by the Member for there to be cross-party engagement. I have no difficulty in working in that way with him. I’ve seen that that’s happened in Scotland. I see no reason why we shouldn’t move ahead with this in Wales. There will be disagreements—of course there will—over certain aspects, but, when it comes to the fundamental rights of this institution, elected by the people of Wales, I believe that there really should be common ground between us, and that is that powers should rest where they’re meant to rest, and that means those powers coming back to Wales without the need for interception from Whitehall.

Today’s statement represents another important update on the EU withdrawal Bill and the Welsh response. We, in Plaid Cymru, have had a consistent position since the EU referendum was announced that the Welsh national interest must be defended. That means an ‘all hands on deck’ approach from those committed to protecting the powers of this Assembly and this country, and I say that regardless of disagreements between our parties on what specific action must be taken.

In January this year, I urged the Welsh Government to work with the Scottish Government on a joint approach, in line with our common interests, and I’m glad to see that the development of joint amendments has taken place, fulfilling what Plaid Cymru has called for. We, of course, intend to support those amendments at the appropriate stage. Plaid Cymru will also be tabling our own amendments throughout the passage of the EU withdrawal Bill at Westminster, and I can assure this Chamber that our MPs, and Dafydd Wigley in the second Chamber, will use every opportunity that they have to push amendments that prevent a future Westminster power grab. We’re also tabling amendments that aim to protect our membership of the single market and customs union, and which aim to prevent deregulation and a race to the bottom when the UK leaves the various EU regulatory agencies.

I’ll repeat something that I’ve said in this Chamber in the past. The EU withdrawal Bill and the attempts to improve it will be highly technical, and we wouldn’t expect it to be the talk of the pub or the workplace, but, 20 years since the first ‘yes’ vote, there is one thing that people do understand and that they are talking about. They know that there have been two votes to confirm the powers of this Assembly, and citizens of Wales don’t support those powers being constrained or reduced. So, I’d like to ask the First Minister if he’s given any thought to that LCM process in the Assembly and exactly how it’ll work. Would he agree that the UK Government should make a commitment to accept the outcome of an LCM in this place, as well as in any other parliament? There is, of course, a precedent from the LCM on the Wales Bill, which the UK Government committed to recognising. I wonder if he will outline what steps can be taken if a vote to deny consent is ignored by the UK Government.

First of all, we’ve been working with the Scottish Government now for many months, and that work has resulted in the amendments we’ve seen today. Also, of course, we’ve talked to Governments such as Gibraltar, who are in a slightly different position in the sense that they are in the EU but outside of the customs union, but, nevertheless, very concerned about Brexit and what it might mean for them. The Isle of Man, Jersey and Guernsey—we’ll see them at the British-Irish Council. Again, they’re in a position where they’re outside the EU but inside the customs union, and they will be taken out of the customs union without their consent if the UK does choose to leave the customs union. We argue, of course, as she does, that that is not actually necessary.

In terms of the LCM process, David Davis has said that he wants the consent of the devolved legislatures. That consent cannot be on the basis that it can only be consent the UK Government agrees with. It must be a fully informed consent, and they must accept that, if this Assembly does not consent, they will have to accept that. What we’ve offered, of course, is a way to try to avoid that—to talk and to get to a position where the obstacles that prevent us from giving consent from a devolution angle are removed, and so the LCM becomes more palatable to Members than it is now. So far, those discussions haven’t taken place and there have been—well, they have taken place, but no progress has occurred as a result.

If this Assembly decides to refuse consent, well, the UK Government could override it. That creates a severe constitutional crisis in my view. How can it be possible to respect devolution on the one hand, and to say to us, ‘Well, we want your consent, but, if you don’t give it, we’ll ignore you anyway’? There are many in the House of Commons in all parties who will take a view on that; I’m sure the Scottish Conservatives will take a view on that. And I’m sure there’ll be many in the Lords who will view with grave concern the idea that constitutional change should be—no, not constitutional change, but the removal of powers from Wales and Scotland should go ahead despite the opposition of the democratic parliaments of Wales and Scotland. So, there is much here that can lead to a crisis. It’s a crisis that I’m particularly keen to avoid. It’s a crisis that can be avoided. I don’t think that the current UK Government strategy, it seems to me, of fighting as many people on as many fronts as possible, is the sensible way of dealing with Brexit. We have offered a way of looking at these issues, coming to an agreement on the journey and the destination, which I believe can be done, whilst protecting, of course, the devolution settlement. That is an important principle as far as I am concerned, as far as she is concerned, and, I’m sure, all Members are concerned. Brexit’s going to happen; we know that. But it was never intended, surely, that Brexit would interfere with the natural movement of powers between Brussels and Wales, and that’s exactly what we are trying to avoid while, at the same time, of course, creating the certainty that we understand that businesses and citizens need.

I’m broadly in sympathy with what the First Minister wants to see achieved at the end of the day, but I do think that this is making a mountain out of a molehill. I find it quite extraordinary that the leader of Plaid Cymru should be talking about the powers of this Assembly being constrained or reduced. The powers that we are talking about here we don’t currently enjoy, and there was no complaint whatsoever from Plaid Cymru or most of the Labour Party, the SNP, and certainly not the Liberals, when powers that used to reside in the popularly elected United Kingdom Parliament were sent to Brussels to be decided upon by unelected commissioners, over whose power there is very little democratic control at all. So, what Brexit for me is all about, and has always been about, is actually the recovery of democratic control over technocratic decisions that are taken by people whom you very often can’t even name, let alone elect or dismiss.

So, we should embrace this as a reinvigoration of parliaments, this one included. And, yes, I strongly agree with the First Minister that all the powers that currently reside within our devolved areas, but currently reside in Brussels, should come to the Welsh Government and to this Assembly. I’ve said that many times here, and he’ll have my strong support for ensuring that that does happen. But there is, of course, in other parties, explicitly Plaid Cymru and the Liberals, and, indeed, the SNP as well, a policy of wanting to reverse the entire Brexit process. And to create a new weapon whereby this could be frustrated, despite the outcome of the referendum in June last year, is, for me, completely unacceptable. Although I don’t think that Theresa May has handled relations with the devolved administrations in a very sensible way, and I agree with the First Minister that there has been too much of a dictatorial attitude and not enough attempt to engage and persuade, I don’t think that it’s worth paying the price that we might have to pay if we were to engage in a kind of trench warfare in Parliament over the process by means of which we recover powers that currently we don’t have. So, I don’t see this is in any way an assault upon the devolution process.

In the statement, the First Minister referred to the exclusion of the charter of fundamental rights. I well remember, in the year 2000, when this was being discussed, the Blair Government at the time said that it would veto any attempt to legislate for that, and Keith Vaz, of course, very famously said it had no more legal power than a copy of the ‘Beano’. And yet, now, this is being elevated to something of supreme importance. And, yes, I understand why Members say that things like employment rights are vitally important, but, at the end of the day, if we believe in democracy, we have to accept that parliaments ought to have the right to do things that we don’t like. We may not think they’re very sensible to do so, but, ultimately, the test is: can you get the people at the ballot box to support you in your policies? It’s not, I think, for judges or civil servants, or, indeed, corpuses of law, to remove from the people their power to decide what legislative changes should or should not take place, and I believe that the attempt, described by the leader of Plaid Cymru a moment ago, to try to mark out areas of law that can never be changed, because they become fundamental, is quite contrary to the entire democratic process. So, I’d say to the First Minister that, yes, I do sympathise with him in what he has said. I think he’s quite right, actually, on the objective, but I am very wary about the means whereby he seeks to obtain that objective, and so we will look very carefully at these amendments before we decide whether we’ll support them or not.

Well, I cannot surely be blamed for the UK joining the European Community in 1972, given that I was five years old, in the same way as I was asked which way I’d voted in the 1979 referendum. Clearly, I need to look a little younger, because I was only 12. Nevertheless, we have to remember that the UK joined the EEC because it was desperate to do so. But that is perhaps for another day.

This is not about reversing Brexit. I’ve said that many, many times. Surely, it is not a case of ‘Brexit has to occur only on the terms put forward by the UK Government’. Because that is what they are saying: ‘Our Brexit or tough luck’. Now, that is not a sensible way of dealing with issues when it comes to devolution. The UK is not what it was in 1972. It’s not a unitary state with one Government. It is a partnership of four nations where there are different responsibilities allocated to different Governments according to whether they’re devolved or non-devolved.

I come back to the point I made earlier on, just to remind the leader of UKIP. What I am being asked to do here as First Minister, if the UK Government has its way, is to stand up before the Assembly and say to the Assembly that powers that would automatically come to the Assembly should instead go to London for an unlimited period of time and that we as an Assembly should support it. I mean, surely, nobody would want to support a scenario—well, some might, but nobody here would want to support a scenario like that, where powers that would come to us are intercepted. Yes, they’re not powers we exercise at the moment, but they will be if they come naturally to rest here. What difference does it make—he complains about Brussels—if they then go and disappear into the Whitehall machinery, and then we find ourselves in a situation where we find it difficult to shape agriculture, to shape economic development, to shape our fisheries policy in a way that we would want? Of course it can’t be a free for all. I understand that. We’ve got to make sure that there’s a single market within the UK, and that we don’t not have any control at all over how subsidies are paid. We can’t win that battle. England is very big. We can’t win that battle. So, there have to be rules. We understand that. But this should be done by consent and not by imposition. That’s the key.

This Bill—the offending clauses of this Bill that deal with devolution can be removed. That removes an obstacle, as far as devolution is concerned, in terms of this Bill moving forward. There are other issues that will be debated in Parliament, I’m sure, and within this Chamber. There is no penalty to the UK Government for this. It doesn’t cost them anything. There’s no downside to it at all. All they have to do is to work with us to come to an acceptable agreement, and it removes a problem for them. I just cannot understand the strategic sense in saying, ‘Let’s fight a battle with everybody we can’, rather than saying, ‘Let’s focus on the issues. This is a problem for Wales and Scotland. It’s not really a problem for us. Let’s come to an agreement on it and that matter is dealt with’. So far there’s been no suggestion that they’ve been able to do that, but it is something that we want to see in the future, and that’s the fundamental issue here. In some ways it’s not about Brexit. It’s actually about powers resting where they’re meant to rest, and the principle of consent when it comes to creating common frameworks in devolved areas rather than the imposition that this Bill, on the face of it—. I hear what’s said by UK Ministers, but what’s on the face of the Bill is quite different. What the Bill would do would be to deprive the people of Wales of powers that they are entitled to for an indefinite period of time, and in no way could I suggest to the Assembly that the Assembly should vote in favour of that.

Could I just begin by welcoming the, I believe, genuinely constructive way in which the First Minister has laid out the amendments he’s put forward, and the way in which he’s willing to work with the UK Government not to thwart the voice that was clear within the referendum, nor to thwart the EU withdrawal Bill, but to make it fit legally and constitutionally as well?

The First Minister may be aware that yesterday a large group of cross-party Assembly Members constituting our two committees—the committee of David Rees, the External Affairs and Additional Legislation Committee, and my Constitutional and Legislative Affairs Committee—sat for many hours with over 60 eminent authorities, both from a UK perspective and a Welsh perspective, looking at the legal and constitutional issues. It will probably come as no surprise to find that the shape of the amendments put forward by the First Minister reflect and respond to many of the concerns that were picked up by those people, and these included people from the Hansard Society and the Institute for Government in Westminster as well as Welsh authorities. There was no voice of dissent that there are genuine threats. To respond to Neil’s point, they recognise that this is indeed a mountain, not a molehill. It’s not technical issues that we are dancing over, but fundamental constitutional issues that should concern—and I think do concern, with some thought—all of us here within the Assembly.

So, the question I’d like to ask the First Minister in the amendments that he has put forward—. By the way, before I ask that question, it was interesting to note that, at one point, with no dissent, it was put forward by one participant yesterday that there would have been a different way to do this Bill, which would have been to actually shape it in a way recognising that there was no legal impediment to a very different EU withdrawal Bill—one that gave to Wales fully and clearly that which, on withdrawal from the EU, lies within our existing competence. It was seen that there was no legal impediment to doing a very different Bill. But let’s put that to one side. What it’d like to ask the First Minister is: does he feel, having said already that he cannot recommend an affirmative response to an LCM on the Bill as it currently is—does he regard it as essential that all of the amendments that he has put forward must be accepted, or brought forward in some shape by the Government, satisfactorily, all of them, in order to make, in the First Minister’s opinion, this EU withdrawal Bill fit for purpose? Secondly, does he also think that those additional mechanisms, both to resolve disputes in future and to seek agreement in future, are also essential as part of saying yes to this EU withdrawal Bill.

First of all, we’ve tabled all the amendments with the objective of having them all accepted. We believe that they deal with the issues that affect devolution particularly and they would remove the obstacles with regard to devolution that the Bill currently represents.

He asked the question: is support for the LCM dependent on a mechanism? At this moment in time, I would say ‘no’. I think the acceptance of the amendments might represent sufficient progress, but there’s no doubt that the adoption of a mechanism is now imminent. It’s needed. If the principle is accepted that it is a matter for the Governments to agree a common way forward, then it also must be the case that it’s accepted that a mechanism must be created in order for that to happen, and that means creating a UK council of Ministers.

The difficulty, I believe, is that there are many in Government at present in London who take the view that that would put the UK Government on a level of parity that they don’t want to see. They do not see themselves as being on a par with the devolved Governments, even in devolved areas, and find that difficult to accept. But, we live in times where we need new solutions and new approaches.

The reality is, when it comes to devolved areas, we are equal governments in reality. We would never accept the scenario where the UK Government, even though legally they can do it, would have some kind of right to interfere or change Welsh law and Welsh policy. That’s not the job of the UK Government in devolved areas and the Welsh people have decided on two occasions that that’s not their role either.

But I think the establishment of a mechanism is a natural corollary of an acceptance of the amendments. And this can be done quickly. The structure is there already. It wouldn’t take long to change the JMC into a proper council of Ministers. All of this could be done pretty easily before the UK finally leaves the EU, whatever date that might be.

The first job of the council of Ministers would be to agree what to freeze, jointly; there’s sense in that if you look at farming and fisheries. The second job would be to look at how to develop a system of state aid rules within the UK that affect the UK and an independent adjudicator to police those rules. That, I’d argue, is pretty easy: you say it’s the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court acts as the adjudicator of the single market, as the ECJ does in the European single market, as the US Supreme Court does with inter-state commerce in the US. That’s not difficult to do.

The question of state aid rules is more difficult. There are different views on whether there should be any at all among some of the administrations—or one of the previous administrations, anyway—within the UK. But that’s the forum where these things should be decided. I accept the amendments, but to my mind it leads on naturally to a much better way of working together to develop common frameworks within the UK and to produce that certainty that we accept that businesses want.

May I thank the First Minister for his attempt to explain to this Assembly and to the people of Wales what the UK Government have been endeavouring to do? But could he just assist me a little further? Can he tell this Assembly how soon was he given notice of the intention of the UK Government to legislate in this particular way? Because what bugs me—as we say in Llanrwst—is why the legislation of devolution is placed in European legislation, rather than being dealt with as devolved legislation. After all of the time that we wasted on the Wales Act, as it is now, in endeavouring to develop a new structure of powers, then all of that is pulled from under us—the devolved map—because of the UK’s modus operandi in legislating here. Now, I believe that they failed to draft this properly, and that is the fundamental weakness here.

Well, the sensible way of doing this would have been to talk to us early on in the process, before drafting the Bill itself, to see whether we could have any kind of agreement about the way forward. But that wasn’t the way it happened. We did receive some parts of the Bill a few weeks ahead of time—not everything, but some clauses, ahead of time—but not enough to have any kind of idea or sense of what the full picture was. So, that wasn’t helpful. And, of course, we said at the time, ‘Well, the Bill as it’s currently drafted isn’t something that we can agree to.’ But, even though they knew that, and they knew what our stance was as a Government, they went ahead with publishing the Bill itself. It’s a shame that this hasn’t been done in a way where we’ve worked in partnership. I don’t know whether they were afraid of what was going to happen in Scotland or what Northern Ireland would do, but now we’re in a situation where the opportunity has been missed—not entirely, because there is still an opportunity to act. But it’s important now that the opportunity is taken by the UK Government so that we can work on what we can agree on, and I’m sure that there is much that we can agree on about the structure of the United Kingdom, ultimately, and the way that the decisions are made and the devolved areas. Now, the proposal is still there. We’ll see what the response will be.

Would the First Minister concur with many, including the stakeholders highlighted by my colleague Huw Irranca, that an unamended European withdrawal Bill would be an unequivocal and fundamental assault on devolution, and further, that UK Ministers, post devolution, could enact, and therefore fundamentally destabilise hard-won democratic devolution of 20 years, and, like Neil Hamilton, understand that this Bill is therefore of very great constitutional significance to Wales, and therefore the Welsh people?

It is. I mean, from the UK Government perspective, this is seen as a minor issue. From our perspective it’s a very major issue. As I say, there’s no—. An agreement on their part doesn’t cost them anything at all; there’s no penalty. But there’s an enormous penalty as far as Wales is concerned.

Part of the difficulty here lies in the fact that there’s a difficulty on the part of the UK Government at the moment in understanding how important this issue is to us and Scotland. I don’t think they get it, but, certainly, we get it, and the people of Wales get it. That is the fundamental principle that powers should come to rest in those places that are appropriate when it comes to devolved areas: in the devolved institutions. From our perspective, it cannot be right that UK Ministers can interfere with or change Welsh law passed by this Assembly, potentially, without reference to this Assembly, nor, indeed, to the UK Parliament. I well remember some of the arguments that were being rehearsed during the referendum to bring powers back to—they said ‘parliament’ as if it was one: ‘to Parliament’. Then, of course, the first thing that happens as part of the repeal Bill is that Parliament doesn’t get those powers; it just sits in the hands of the Government. There are issues for us as a Welsh Government, because as powers return to us, it’s hugely important that those powers return, as far as they possibly can do, to this institution, and not to Government, as the elected institution. The Government’s powers necessarily need to be as limited as they can be, given the fact that the institution here, of course, is elected. But the opposite approach has been taken by the UK Government, where it went to court to fight on this point. But the powers should rest with the executive and not with the legislature. That, surely, must be wrong in principle as well.

One of the themes that has arisen today from so many speakers is that there were many better ways of doing this than the way that has been produced currently by the UK Government. It’s fair to say, I think, that there are many on the Conservative benches who recognise that. I can understand that there’s a time and a place for saying things; I understand that. This is an issue that can be resolved, but we need the UK Government to get engaged, and that does mean the Prime Minister, it does mean those people who are taking these decisions. The Welsh Office is not the decision taker in this regard; the Welsh Office, effectively, is—I’m saying it myself; it was the Welsh Office 20 years ago—The Wales Office itself is a kind of advocate in that sense. If this was in the hands of the Wales Office, then perhaps we could have better engagement, but it isn’t. This is a fundamental junction in the journey of devolution. Either we move to a situation where powers are kept by the UK Government in areas that we currently control, or we move to a situation where powers come to rest where they should and we have a better structure, not just for Wales, but the whole of the UK, that represents the partnership of nations that exists within the UK.

Thank you, First Minister. Now a statement by the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government on Brexit and fair movement of people. Mark Drakeford.

Llywydd, two weeks ago we published ‘Brexit and Fair Movement of People’, the latest in a series of policy documents examining in detail the implications for Wales of leaving the European Union. In our document, we explore the role of migration in Wales, focusing on migration from Europe. We analyse the potential models that the UK Government might adopt for a future migration system, and we consider what impact these could have in Wales.

We propose a flexible but managed approach to migration, where people from Europe would be able to move to the UK if they had a prior job offer, or if they have the ability to find a job quickly. Coupled with this, there needs to be stronger enforcement of legislation to tackle exploitation of workers.

Llywydd, rydym ni wedi cyhoeddi'r ddogfen hon i roi mynegiant eglur, sy’n seiliedig ar dystiolaeth, o fuddiannau Cymru, er lles ein pobl a'n heconomi. Gyda 18 mis yn unig ar ôl tan y dyddiad y bydd y DU yn ymadael â'r Undeb Ewropeaidd, nid yw Llywodraeth y DU wedi nodi ei chynigion hyd yn hyn ynglŷn â sut y bydd mudo o Ewrop i'r DU yn cael ei reoli yn y dyfodol. Amserwyd ein dogfen i sicrhau bod barn a buddiannau Cymru yn hysbys ac yn ddealladwy yn y drafodaeth honno. A, Llywydd, mae'r safbwyntiau hyn yn bwysig.

Mae’n ofid i gyflogwyr yng Nghymru a fyddan nhw yn gallu recriwtio a chadw gweithwyr o'r Undeb Ewropeaidd. Mae cynaliadwyedd eu busnesau yn dibynnu’n aml ar y gweithwyr hynny o'r UE, yn union fel y mae diogelwch swyddi gweithwyr Cymru yn yr union fusnesau hynny. A, Llywydd, maen nhw’n iawn i ofidio, o ystyried y cynnydd diweddar a welwn yn nifer dinasyddion yr UE sy'n ymadael â’r Deyrnas Unedig. Mae'r ystadegau diweddaraf ar fudo, a gyhoeddwyd ym mis Awst, yn dangos bod mudiad net wedi gostwng ar gyfradd o 81,000 o bobl o'i gymharu â'r flwyddyn flaenorol, a bod dwy ran o dair o hynnny yn sgil gostyngiad ym mudo net yr UE. Cafodd hyn ei achosi gan gynnydd yn nifer y bobl sy'n gadael y Deyrnas Unedig, yn arbennig felly o wledydd a ymunodd â'r UE yn 2004. Nawr, gallasai Llywodraeth y DU fod wedi rhoi gwarant unochrog o hawliau i ddinasyddion tebyg o’r UE sydd yn y DU. Er mawr siom, ni wnaeth hynny. Nid oes rhyfedd fod dinasyddion yr UE yn gadael y Deyrnas Unedig pan nad yw Llywodraeth y DU wedi cymryd y camau angenrheidiol i greu’r ymdeimlad eu bod yn cael eu gwerthfawrogi a bod croeso iddyn nhw yma.

Yng Nghymru, rydym yn dathlu'r cyfraniad y mae dinasyddion yr Undeb Ewropeaidd yn ei wneud i economi a chymdeithas Cymru, a'r ffaith bod llawer o ddinasyddion yr UE wedi dewis adeiladu bywyd iddyn nhw eu hunain yma yng Nghymru. A, Llywydd, oherwydd bod y mewnfudo hwnnw yn effeithio'n uniongyrchol ar lawer o'n cyfrifoldebau datganoledig, staffio ein gwasanaeth iechyd a'n prifysgolion a llwyddiant ein heconomi, dyna’r rheswm dros gyhoeddi ein papur. Mae'r dadansoddiad a'r dystiolaeth yn ein dogfen yn dangos yn glir bwysigrwydd dinasyddion yr UE i weithlu Cymru. Yma yng Nghymru, mae 7 y cant o feddygon y GIG, 5 y cant o weithwyr y diwydiant twristiaeth, 27 y cant o weithwyr mewn gweithgynhyrchu bwyd a diod a 7 y cant o'n staff prifysgol i gyd yn dod o'r Undeb Ewropeaidd. Dyna pam mai ein blaenoriaeth ni yw system fewnfudo yn y DU sy'n cefnogi ein huchelgais o gyfranogiad llawn a dilyffethair yn y farchnad sengl—marchnad o 500 miliwn o bobl, yn rhydd o rwystrau tariff a rhwystrau nad ydynt yn rhai tariff, sy'n hanfodol bwysig i fusnesau a swyddi ledled Cymru. Ni fydd yr uchelgais hwnnw’n bosibl oni bai i’n system fudo fod yn ddigon hyblyg yn y dyfodol i ganiatáu i bobl symud, at ddibenion cyflogaeth, rhwng y DU a'r Undeb Ewropeaidd. Hwn, yn anad dim, yw’r rheswm y credwn y dylai ein perthynas arbennig ag Ewrop yn y dyfodol gynnwys dull gwahaniaethol a ffafriol o ymdrin â mewnfudo o ran trigolion yr Ardal Economaidd Ewropeaidd a Swistir, gan gadw’r ardal deithio gyffredin â Gweriniaeth Iwerddon a gweddill ynysoedd Prydain. Ac rydym yn croesawu’r ymrwymiadau o du Llywodraeth y DU a'r Undeb Ewropeaidd y dylid cadw'r man teithio gyffredin.

Llywydd, gadewch i mi fod yn gwbl eglur : nid ydym yn credu bod system sydd wedi ei seilio ar dargedau mudo net mympwyol o fudd i Gymru, nac o fudd i weddill y DU ychwaith. Mae system o'r fath yn arwain at ffolineb cyfrif myfyrwyr yn y targed mudo net, yn seiliedig ar yr hyn y gwyddom bellach sydd yn amcangyfrif wedi ei orbwysleisio’n fawr iawn o nifer y myfyrwyr sy'n aros y tu hwnt i gyfnod eu fisâu. Rydym wedi dweud yn gyson nad ydym yn cytuno â'r polisi hwn, ac mae ein dogfen tegwch o ran symudiad pobl yn nodi'r dystiolaeth a'r dadansoddiad sy'n ein harwain at wrthwynebu’r dull o gyfyngu ar niferoedd a sectorau o ran mewnfudo o'r UE a gweddill yr AEE. Ond os bydd Llywodraeth y DU yn dewis llwybr tebyg i hwnnw, bydd Llywodraeth Cymru yn pwyso, fel y nodwyd gennym yn ein dogfen, am gwota mudo llawn a theg yng Nghymru er mwyn i ni allu pennu ein blaenoriaethau o ran mudo i Gymru. Mae ein tystiolaeth yn dangos bod y sectorau yng Nghymru sy'n ddibynnol ar weithwyr mudol yn wahanol i'r rhai yng ngweddill y DU. Mae yna berygl mawr na fyddai ein hanghenion mudo ni yn cael sylw pan fyddan nhw, er enghraifft, yn cael eu gosod yn erbyn y galw yn ne-ddwyrain Lloegr.

Yn awr, Llywydd, wrth gwrs, rydym yn sylweddoli bod llawer o bobl yng Nghymru adeg y refferendwm yn pryderu am rai agweddau ar fewnfudo a’r hyn y gallai hynny ei olygu i'w cymunedau nhw, o ran rhagolygon eu cyflogaeth ac o ran cyflogau ac amodau gwaith. Credwn y bydd mwy o gysylltiad rhwng mudo a chyflogaeth yn helpu i liniaru'r pryderon hynny a chreu hinsawdd lle gall y ffeithiau gael gwrandawiad, oherwydd, Llywydd, mae’r ffeithiau hynny a'r dystiolaeth yr ydym wedi ei nodi yn amlwg yn dangos mai cadarnhaol yw effaith gyffredinol mudo yma yn Nghymru. Mae'r Sefydliad Astudiaethau Cyllid, er enghraifft, yn dweud bod mudo yn creu budd net i gyllid cyhoeddus. Mae data gan yr Adran Gwaith a Phensiynau ei hunan yn dangos bod 4 y cant o fewnfudwyr o’r UE o oedran gwaith yng Nghymru yn hawlio budd-daliadau oedran gwaith, o'i gymharu â 17 y cant o’r rhai sydd wedi eu geni yn y DU.

Llywydd, mae hi hefyd yn ffaith, ar ôl wyth mlynedd o lymder gyda pholisïau diffygiol ac ofer, fod gormod o lawer o ddinasyddion Cymru wedi colli camau diogelwch cyfunol y wladwriaeth yn sgil toriadau i gymorth cyfreithiol, ymosodiadau ar undebau llafur a gorfodaeth lem y system fudd-daliadau sy'n fythol grebachu. Pa ryfedd fod y rhai y mae eu hamgylchiadau beunyddiol mor enbydus yn cynnwys camfanteisio yn y gweithle at eu hofnau ynglŷn â’r dyfodol? Mae ein papur ni yn mynd i'r afael â'r mater hwn ar ei ben, gan hefyd herio'r syniad peryglus mai mewnfudo sy’n gyfrifol amdano mewn rhyw ffordd. Mae camfanteisio yn cael ei achosi gan arferion cyflogaeth diegwyddor, nid gan fewnfudo, ond mae gweithwyr mudol yn arbennig o agored i gyfryngau camfanteisio—llety ynghlwm â gwaith, cludiant ynghlwm â gwaith, hunan-gyflogaeth ffals ac yn y blaen—sy'n arwain wedyn at y risg o fanteisio ar eraill. Mae'r dystiolaeth a gyflwynwyd gennym yn dangos nad yw Llywodraeth y DU, ers 2010, wedi gwneud digon i orfodi'r deddfau sydd wedi eu bwriadu i warchod gweithwyr rhag dioddef camfanteisio. Mae’r cyfrifoldeb arnyn nhw i sicrhau bod yr holl weithwyr yn ymwybodol o'u hawliau, a bod ganddyn nhw gefnogaeth yr undebau llafur, fel y gall y gweithwyr hynny adnabod camfanteisio a chymryd camau pan fydd yn digwydd iddyn nhw, heb ofni’r canlyniadau.

Ac mae rhagor y gallwn ninnau yn Llywodraeth Cymru ei wneud i adeiladu ymhellach ar ein polisïau caffael moesegol, drwy wneud Llywodraeth Cymru ei hunan a GIG Cymru yn gyflogwyr cyflog byw a phasio Deddf yr Undebau Llafur (Cymru) 2017. Byddwn yn parhau i ddod o hyd i ffyrdd, gan weithio gyda phartneriaid yr undebau llafur ac eraill, i nodi a mynd i'r afael â chamfanteisio ar weithwyr a chreu mwy o gydymffurfiaeth ymysg cyflogwyr yng Nghymru.

Felly, Llywydd, rydym yn cynnig system deg a realistig ar gyfer mudo rhwng yr Undeb Ewropeaidd a'r Deyrnas Unedig. Nid yn unig y bydd hynny’n gyfiawn i Gymru, ond, yn ein barn ni, yn gyfiawn i'r DU. Ac yn dyngedfennol, mae hyn yn sail adeiladol ar gyfer trafod telerau'r DU gyda'r UE-27. Rydym yn gobeithio, wrth gwrs, y bydd Llywodraeth y DU yn ystyried ein cynigion yn ddifrifol, ac edrychaf ymlaen at glywed barn Aelodau'r Cynulliad y prynhawn yma.

I’ll avoid an attempt to enter into a debate on economics; I’ll wait for the next economy debate in order to give in to that temptation. But as a UK Government Minister said last week, we’ll have an immigration system

‘that suits the UK, not slamming the door—but welcoming the talent we need, from the EU and around the world. Of course we will make sure that business gets the skills it needs, but business will no longer be able to use immigration as an excuse not to invest in the young people of this country.’

And they’ve said that they’ll be setting out their initial proposals for a new immigration system in the autumn of this year.

Given, as I referred earlier that confirmation by the Wales Office that there’s been a significant amount of engagement with officials in Welsh Government and officials in the UK Government—and I stress UK Government and not just the Wales Office—over the summer, as to what, other than this paper, has been subject to discussions, what developments, if any, have resulted thus far from that?

Like you, we support action to ensure payment of the minimum wage and to enforce legislation to tackle exploitation of employees wherever they come from. Much of that, clearly, is non-devolved but there’s much that might fall within areas of devolved responsibility, not least intelligence gathering. What role, or greater role, whatever the outcome of the future model of immigration adopted may be, do you feel the Welsh Government might play in taking that forward?

This statement, clearly, is around migration, not about the entirely separate issue of refugees and asylum seekers in Wales, as I know you strongly understand and believe. Will you make a clear statement, for public understanding, that that is the case and that we all support Wales becoming a nation of sanctuary—a separate matter from the issues of migration being discussed today?

You state that your proposal links migration to work and supports your ambition for full and unfettered access to the single market. However, as the Prime Minister said in January, this would, to all intents and purposes, mean not leaving the EU at all, which is why both sides in the referendum campaign made it clear that a vote to leave the EU would be a vote to leave the single market. She said:

‘Instead, we seek the greatest possible access to it through a new, comprehensive, bold and ambitious free trade agreement’.

How, therefore, do you respond to the statements last week by the Labour mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, that Labour risks losing touch with northern Brexit voters if the party fails to crack down on freedom of movement and risks an angry backlash from northern ‘leave’ voters who may feel ignored? Although he supported ‘remain’ in the referendum, he said he was worried about Labour’s proposals to stay in the single market, stating this would almost certainly stop us controlling immigration policy. He said this would become very divisive if it looks like there’s backlash from the establishment, to almost deny the referendum result and warn against a London-centric Brexit. So, do you believe, like I do, that Wales should stand with northerners or with Londoners? Although, clearly, I have great affection for both.

You state that the UK Government could’ve provided a unilateral guarantee of rights for such EU citizens in the UK and it lamentedly failed to do so. In fact, only last Thursday, for example, UK finance Minister Philip Hammond said that Britain is very close to reaching an agreement with the EU on how to protect the rights of EU citizens in the UK and UK citizens in the EU after it leaves the bloc. Negotiations are maybe on a four-weekly cycle, but discussion and dialogue is continuous, and fortunately the positions taken by both sides are moving towards agreement on a resolution within the so-called divorce settlement.

We share with you the recognition of the need to preserve the common travel area with the Republic of Ireland and the rest of the British isles, and welcome the commitments of the UK Government and the EU that the common travel area should be preserved. You say you’ve pressed for a full and fair Welsh migration quota, where you could determine your priorities for migration to Wales. Is this not completely unworkable without installing border controls at, metaphorically, Offa’s Dyke? And finally, noting of course that Schengen in the context of Ireland means there is—. Ireland and UK exclusion by choice from Schengen means that there is an external border from Ireland, if that’s what you might be saying, but internally within the UK, quotas would be impossible to enforce.

And finally, given that Wales has the lowest employment rate in Britain, and the latest figures showing an increase of 18,000 in economic inactivity to 460,000, meaning that 525,000 working-age people in Wales are currently unemployed, many of whom want to work but are facing cultural and physical barriers, after 18 years, what can the Welsh Government do differently to tackle those high levels of economic inactivity and help those people remove the barriers to work so that the skills and strengths they have to offer can also help contribute to filling the skills gap?

Well, Llywydd, let me begin by trying to find some areas of common ground with the Member. I’m very happy to put on record, as he did, that this is not a paper about asylum seekers and refugees, and the strong support of the Welsh Government to asylum and refugee policies that welcome people to Wales who have faced such awful experiences elsewhere in the world and who come here for sanctuary. Let me say as well that we are proud in Wales of our record post devolution. We have had a faster drop in economic inactivity in Wales than across the United Kingdom as a whole, and of course there is nothing in our document at all that suggests that we will not go on doing everything we can to build up the skills of people who live in Wales already, to create new opportunities for people who have been outside the workplace and who wish to return to it. But we do not for a moment align ourselves with those people who, as Mark Isherwood began, suggest that somehow immigration and the presence of people from the European Union in our midst is because employers have used that as an excuse not to invest in young people.

The employers that I have met over this summer have gone out of their way to explain to me the actions that they take, working with their local further education colleges and so on, to try and prepare people who live in their communities to take up job opportunities that are available. But even when they have done that to the maximum extent, they still need to be able to attract people from beyond their own boundaries in order to secure the continued employment of people from those local areas. Llywydd, the First Minister gave a very telling example when he introduced this paper a couple of weeks ago, of a hotel in a part of rural Wales that employs 100 people: 80 of those people come from the local community already, and 20 people come from other parts of the European Union. And the person who runs that hotel said absolutely clearly, ‘The jobs of the 80 people depend on my ability to be able to attract the 20 people to come in to support this business. If I can’t get the 20 people, then the 80 people who live here already won’t have jobs either.’ That’s why our proposals are proposals that are right for Wales, and this Government and our responsibilities are the focus, not what might be right in other parts, but what is right for Wales. And we believe that this paper, which is in the pragmatic mainstream of proposals, we believe, provides a blueprint to do exactly that.

Is there more that we can do as a Government to ensure the rights that ought to be there to protect people who come into the workplace through entry-level jobs and so on? Well, I said in my statement that there is more that we can do and intend to do, building on our success, with a code of practice on ethical employment, on the two-tier code on our social partnership model, and I can say to the Member that our actions in this area are very carefully observed and challenged where necessary in the workforce partnership council and other places where people who work with us on this agenda come to advise the Welsh Government.

Finally, in relation to the migration quota issue, let me say again, Llywydd, that is not our preferred policy. It’s absolutely set out in the document. That is not what we think would work best for Wales or the United Kingdom, but if the UK Government is determined to put migration controls ahead of the needs of the UK economy and does decide to do this by net migration quotas, then we are convinced that a system in which we have a quota for Wales will be in our best interests. It’s the policy advocated by the City of London Corporation for London and by the all-party parliamentary group on social integration at the House of Commons. It can be made to work if we have to make it work. It’s not the approach that we would choose for Wales or for the UK.

I thank the Cabinet Secretary for his statement today and the publication of the fair movement of people document, which, of course, elaborates on the joint White Paper that was published between Welsh Government and Plaid Cymru recently. I, like him, perhaps in vain, look forward to a time when we can have an honest and serious debate on immigration that considers the facts and the true impact that migration has had on our community and our economy. And safe to say that Plaid Cymru again reiterates its appreciation to those who come from all over the world to contribute to Welsh communities and Welsh businesses and to Welsh public services, and they are welcome here and they are cherished here.

The model suggested in this publication would allow Wales and the United Kingdom to continue to participate in the European single market, which is a vital consideration for Plaid Cymru, linking work with movement of people for EU nationals and Swiss nationals. I agree with the Cabinet Secretary, of course, that this is a pragmatic approach, and as we see the British negotiators unravel at the negotiating table in Brussels, goodness knows we need pragmatism at this crucial point. Just 18 months away from separation day and what a shambles the British Government finds itself in.

In terms of the specifics of the publication today, I’d like to ask two questions to the Cabinet Secretary. Firstly, the First Minister, I think, suggested during First Minister’s question time this afternoon that a copy of this document had been sent to the British Government, but there was a reluctance to meet with the Welsh Government to discuss it. I wonder if the Cabinet Secretary can elaborate further on that—whether this is a diary issue or whether it is a case of us Welsh people knowing our place in this wonderful family of nations and how dare we suggest a way forward for the UK as a whole on a policy matter that we shouldn’t dare discuss.

But secondly—and the point of disagreement between the Cabinet Secretary and myself and between Plaid Cymru and the Government—is the question of a quota or work permit system that is regionalised or nationalised across the United Kingdom, because I think we can see, as the Cabinet Secretary himself mentioned in his statement, the trend that is happening now, because of the signal being sent out from the UK Government to the rest of the world, that we are struggling to attract the numbers of people into our economy that we need. And he mentioned in his previous answer to a previous question the work of the City of London Corporation in modelling the way that a work permit for London could operate post separation. We can well imagine, I think, with the experience that we have in Welsh politics, a situation where we get to separation day and the British Government, in its desperation to keep the City of London afloat as a global financial centre and as the only geographic bit of the UK that provides it with just enough income to sustain itself, will permit London a special status within the UK, but no-one else. Again, I go back to this. I don’t mean to gibe at unionist Members of this Chamber, but you are unionists and this is something that perhaps you need to consider over the coming period: if this is truly a family of equals and a family of nations, then it will not be acceptable, surely, for London, the one region of the UK that already gets an enormous economic and political advantage over everyone else—. The entire economic construction of the United Kingdom is based upon that one corner. If they’re allowed to have work permits of their own, and not the rest of us, that will be devastating for a country like Wales that is already approaching full employment and will not have the ability, then, to meet shortages in its public or private sectors whilst London can boom even further forward. That would be unacceptable. I’m disappointed that the Welsh Government is not modelling now, and publishing now, the impact on the Welsh economy of the London city state having preferential treatment in terms of regional work permits and not Wales. And actually, even if we were to get to a position where EEA nationals would have the right to come to the UK to work, I still believe that might not be enough to sustain the needs of the Welsh economy in terms of the skills shortages that are already now being exacerbated by the separation process that has only just begun.

So, I would ask the Cabinet Secretary to take time, perhaps, to reflect a little more on publishing further information and modelling on not just how a work permit system among the nations and regions of the UK could function—. Because we don’t suggest that it can’t function; we know it functions. Every federal state you can think of—. With some exceptions, but many federal states you can think of already have different quotas and work permit systems. So, it can function—it does function—but not only that, let us not lose sight of the opportunity we have to make the case for it now, in the next 18 months, before it is too late and before, yet again, the British state sells Wales down the Swanee.

Steffan Lewis was absolutely right to start by saying that the proposals in this document are an elaboration of the basic position that we set out in the document that we published jointly between our two parties. I wanted to make sure I’d acknowledged that.

There were two specific questions that Steffan Lewis raised. Copies of our document have been sent widely to the UK Government and shared with colleagues in the Scottish Government as well. Sometimes you have to ask more than once to make sure that you get to discuss the content of these documents with people to whom you think it would be of interest. I have by no means given up the effort to secure such a discussion, both with the Home Secretary and with other Ministers in the Home Office, but also with the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, and if we succeed in getting a meeting of the Joint Ministerial Committee on Exiting the European Union, then I’d certainly expect to see this document on the agenda there so that it could be properly shared and discussed with the component parts of the UK.

On the second question, I don’t think we are so very far apart. It’s a question of what you think you should put first, and it still is the clear priority for this Government to have a single migration system that works for all parts of the UK, and we think we outline one that could achieve that here. If that is not to be the preferred option of the United Kingdom, then we’re very much in the same position that Steffan Lewis outlined. Of course we would not want to be in a position where the needs of the City of London were put ahead of the needs of the economies in other parts of the UK, or where a sectoral approach to quotas meant that economic needs of other parts of the economy not reflected in the nature of the Welsh economy would get preferential treatment in the way that quotas were dispersed. If we are in that position, we argue for the Welsh Government to have a quota for Wales that we could disperse.

This document is a work in progress. There is more to be done to elaborate some of the practicalities of that, and we will continue to give thought both to what’s been said this afternoon but to other things that we need to do in order to help shape the future.

Well, this is a useful document and a valuable contribution to this debate, but, from the way in which the finance Secretary and others talk about immigration and its importance to the economy, I wonder how on earth we ever managed to survive before the year 2004, when restrictions on movement for eastern European countries were substantially relaxed or removed. The fact, which is inconvenient to their argument, of course, is that, for many decades up to the millennium, average net migration into the United Kingdom was about 50,000 a year. Since 2004, the average has been 225,000 a year for net migration. Now, that is a massive annual increase over and above what we’ve experienced throughout the rest of our lifetimes. I think nobody can credibly deny that immigration on such a scale and at such a speed is bound to create stresses and strains on public services, on land use, on transport, on jobs. At the moment, we’re in a relatively benign economic period, but, when the cycle turns, as inevitably it will, perhaps things will turn again. With the collapse in the exchange rates in recent months, that has already had a decisive impact upon these net migration figures, which were last, a few months ago, at a third of a million or more—now down to 0.25 million, but they’re still at 0.25 million. When the Office for Budget Responsibility did a study only three years ago, that was the figure they chose for the long-term future for net migration into Britain. It’s a fallacy to say, as the Cabinet Secretary said in his statement, or, not in a statement, in response to somebody earlier on, I think, that immigrants make a great net contribution to economic prosperity in Britain. That can only take a short-term view. Because migrants tend to be young, they tend to be at the earning part of their lifetime and they don’t make as much use of public services, particularly health services, as when they get older, and they certainly, of course, don’t qualify for pensions. If you discount the cash flow over an immigrant’s lifetime, we know from other studies that have been done, and I referred to one earlier on in my question to the First Minister by the Office for Budget Responsibility, that 225,000 net migrants a year, that adds 0.4 per cent to GDP but also adds 0.4 per cent to our population, and so there’s no net contribution at all in GDP per capita.

So, I’m not saying that immigrants are a cost to the country over the long term, but I am also saying that they aren’t actually a measurable benefit. So, in terms of national well-being there is no argument either way. But to ignore the scale and speed of current immigration, I think, is to risk instability in politics, which we’ve seen in other parts of Europe in a rather unpleasant way, and that’s the principal reason why I believe that we do need to have a proper system of immigration control. The paradox is that, of course, we do have this for the rest of the world that isn’t part of the European Union. Now, if the argument is, as I infer from what Steffan Lewis was saying a moment ago, that immigration is good, we should have more of it, and we shouldn’t put restrictions on it from the EU, why don’t we just open the floodgates to the rest of the world? Because the same arguments that apply to Europe will apply to the rest of the world too. Europe is 450 million people, taking the United Kingdom out of it. We’ve got billions of people around the world who could come and make contributions to the British economy if we had the same system of non-control that we have within the EU extended to the rest of the world. You can’t have it both ways. Either you’re in favour of control or you are not in favour of control. If we are in favour of control from the rest of the world, why should we not extend that to the European Union in a sensible way? I’m not entirely opposed, in principle, to having regional and national quota systems if they can be made to work. The complication is, of course, that we have a shambles of an immigration control system in this country. We’ve no idea who is coming into the country or, even more so, who is leaving it, and we can’t control movements within the United Kingdom. So—[Interruption.] Well, of course it’s true; we have no means of knowing where people are. In the last census just a few years ago, well over 0.5 million more people were found than the Office for National Statistics was expecting, and the census itself is not foolproof. So, until we have administrative systems that are capable of coping with the complications that this would bring in, I need to be convinced.

But I do think that this is a valuable contribution to debate, and I do think it’s something that the United Kingdom Government should consider. If it says that this can’t be made to work and explains why, then I will be opposed to this. But, if it can be made to work, and without undermining the fundamentals of what we need to achieve by controlling our borders, which I would have thought is the very essence of nationhood, independent nationhood, being able to control and decide who comes into your own country and on what terms. Otherwise, if you open the floodgates to the rest of the world as well, by having—[Interruption.] Well—

Come on. The mask is slipping again.

No, it’s nothing to do with a mask slipping at all, Llywydd. If we’re in favour of immigration control for the rest of the world, why are we not in favour of it for Europe? Why do we want to discriminate against the rest of the world? I’m not the one who is racist. The current immigration policy that we have is a racist one, because we apply restrictions to those with different colour faces that we don’t to those who are overwhelmingly white.

Well, let me start with the final point, because I set out very specifically in my statement the reasons why we believe that our future special relationship with Europe should include a differentiated and preferential approach to immigration for EEA and Swiss nationals. We do that because of the 40-year history that we have with the European Union. It is possible—it is possible intellectually and in policy terms—to differentiate between a policy that you would wish to have in relation to those countries and the policy that you would have with the rest of the world, and we do that in our paper.

Let me say, Llywydd, that our paper does not for a moment ignore the stresses and strains that some communities feel that the scale and speed of immigration has created. We try to take that head on. We try to set out the facts of the matter. We try to explain why, in our view, people from the rest of the world make a substantial net contribution to life here in Wales. They do so economically, and I thought that the Member had to work incredibly hard to try and find an argument that tried to undermine that proposition. We’ll all be older one day, Llywydd, and not making the economic contribution we make. But, here and now, people from the European Union who are here today undoubtedly make a net contribution to our national wealth, and they do far more than that. It’s not just the economic contribution they make; it’s the contribution they make in all sorts of other ways. But we don’t ignore the anxieties that people have faced, even when you set out the facts, which is why we put such an emphasis in our paper on making sure that the protections that ought to be there for people who do live precarious economic lives and have anxieties that freedom of movement has been too easily turned into freedom to exploit—. We say that the safeguards that those people need and deserve and ought to have need to be strengthened and made more effective.

I thank the Member for what he said at the end about hoping that the UK Government responds seriously to this paper. I believe that if they do, and if they are interested in putting the needs of the United Kingdom’s economy at the very top of their list when it comes to negotiations as we leave the European Union, they will find much in here that allows them to secure that outcome.

And, finally, Julie Morgan.

Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. I welcome this statement. I think it is good that it does celebrate the contribution made by European workers here in Wales. I think it’s a positive statement and, as many have said, a real, practical contribution to the debate that is going on.

Personally, I think the debate so far in Westminster does look as if the Westminster Government is putting the aim of bringing down immigration beyond the economic needs of the country, and I think that this all relates to Theresa May’s disastrous time at the Home Office, when she totally failed to bring down immigration in the way that she pledged to, and that has carried on until now. I think it would be unfortunate if we had to follow any types of quotas, but I understand why the Cabinet Secretary is putting forward the possibility of regional quotas if we did reach that situation where it was needed.

I think that the documents that the Welsh Government has produced are very valuable documents to the debate, and I think there is a lot of really interesting information in here that is very important for us to learn from. I thought one of the very important points coming out of this document is the figures that show that the vast majority of EU citizens are not young, single people, but are part of a family unit. I think it did say in there that there were more than 20,000 children resident in Welsh households where at least one parent is an EU citizen. I might declare an interest, because three of my grandchildren are in that position. But I think, you know, we are discussing the debate about Brexit and the fair movement of people largely in economic terms and, obviously, I think we have to look at the big social impact it is having on the lives of families where there is an EU member who is uncertain of the future. I wondered whether the Welsh Government is doing anything in relation to that. I don’t think it’s surprising, as the Cabinet Secretary said in his statement, that many EU citizens are now leaving the country, because they don’t feel welcome.

One of the things I wanted to ask him was about the process of producing these documents, because I know that one of the groups that have felt very strongly about all these issues are young people, and I know that, in the Eisteddfod, I think, the Cabinet Secretary made a commitment that there would be consultation with young people about these documents and about how they could fit in, and obviously the Welsh Government has a duty to consult with young people. So, I wondered if you could tell us whether young people have been involved in the production of this document. I mean, they didn’t have a chance to vote, the 16 and 17-year-olds. We hope we may be able to do something about that in the future, but, obviously, that is what the position is at the moment.

And, finally, I think it’s a very important point that the document is making, that immigration is not responsible for driving down wages; it is unscrupulous employers who do exploit vulnerable people. And so I support the commitment in the statement.

The process of producing the documents, the series of documents, is one in which we do our best to include the views and perspectives of a wide range of people who have a particular interest in this field. This document is particularly influenced by views from employers, from trade unions and from the university sector. It was discussed at the European advisory group that I chair. I know that the programme monitoring committee that Julie Morgan chairs has also contributed to the development of the suite of documents that we are producing, and I was very grateful for the chance to be able to speak at the Eisteddfod at an event chaired by Llyr Huws Gruffydd to an audience of young people and young people’s organisations about Brexit, and Carl Sargeant, my colleague, has committed to fund a series of events, with the help of Children in Wales, at which the views and perspectives of young people can be more directly fed into the process of the Welsh Government’s thinking on Brexit as a whole.

I’ll end just by echoing what Julie Morgan said: it’s just not good enough for the Government, as we were told by Mark Isherwood, to be saying now that we’re not very far off concluding an agreement on the status of people from the European Union in the future. We’re well over a year after the referendum. It would have been possible—. I was told by David Davis, the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, many, many months ago that this was one of the easiest things to agree with the European Union, and here we are, all those months later, and still no agreement on the ground. That means that people who are living in families, trying to shape their lives, trying to find a future for themselves, have lived with that uncertainty, and it is no surprise that people who have skills that are highly sought after and are very mobile are deciding that they’d rather go somewhere else where the ground is firmer under their feet and they know that the welcome is properly there for them. The UK Government could and should have made sure that we were not in that position here in the United Kingdom.

Professor Jonathan Portes, the leading expert in this field in the whole of the United Kingdom, said on the day that our report was published that

‘Welsh govt immigration paper everything Home Office paper wasn't: positive, constructive, evidence-based’,

and that’s why we hope that it will have an impact on the debate here in Wales, but more widely in the United Kingdom.

I thank the Cabinet Secretary.

The next item is the statement by the Minister for Social Services and Public Health on the tobacco control delivery plan. Therefore I call on the Minister, Rebecca Evans.

Thank you. I am pleased to launch our tobacco control delivery plan for Wales 2017-20. The actions contained in this plan have been developed to address tobacco use in Wales, and will ensure our work remains on track to reduce smoking prevalence levels to 16 per cent by 2020.

Cigarette smoking is the greatest single cause of premature death in Wales, causing around 5,450 deaths a year. Smoking-related disease is preventable, and costs the NHS in Wales an estimated £302 million every year. Smoking is also one of the main causes of inequalities in health, with smoking rates in poorer areas more than double those in affluent areas.

Reducing smoking levels in Wales remains a priority for our Government. In 2012, we published our tobacco control action plan for Wales. The plan set a target to reduce smoking levels from 23 per cent in 2010 to 16 per cent by 2020. It also expressed a vision of a smoke-free society for Wales in which the harm from tobacco is eradicated. I am pleased to say that our 2012 plan has resulted in a range of health improvements for the people of Wales. These include a reduction in exposure to second-hand smoke, increased support for those wanting to quit smoking, and action to help prevent the uptake of smoking amongst young people. The smoking prevalence rate has fallen to 19 per cent. This is encouraging, but our work does not end there. We need to ensure that we take the steps we need to take if we are to maintain this momentum if we are to achieve our 16 per cent target in just three years’ time.

With that in mind, a tobacco control strategic board was established last year. The board, chaired by the chief medical officer, and its sub-groups for cessation, prevention and reducing exposure to smoking, have worked hard to develop and finalise this delivery plan, which will guide action up to 2020, and I would like to thank them for that work.

The plan I am launching today sets out the individual actions the Welsh Government and our stakeholders will take to invigorate activity and help us achieve the target and vision set out in the 2012 plan. It builds on the progress to date and will be supported by new powers contained in the Public Health (Wales) Act 2017 to enable us to extend the smoking ban to certain outdoor settings such as hospital grounds and places where children play. It will also enable us to introduce other measures to discourage tobacco use and improve health outcomes, such as the introduction of a register of retailers of tobacco and nicotine products. It will also make it an offence to hand over tobacco or nicotine products to those under 18 when using home delivery and collection services.

The actions in the delivery plan will support people to give up smoking and help to prevent people from taking up smoking in the first place. There are also a number of actions included to reduce exposure to smoking so that it’s not perceived as a normal, everyday behaviour. These actions and the new regulations to extend the smoking ban to areas that children frequent are intended to protect children and young people. This will help give them the best start in life.

Our intention is for people to choose smoke-free living as their aspirational goal and the plan is launched today under our overarching brand Choose Smokefree. The brand has been developed as one that will be recognised and used for all strands of tobacco control work in Wales. Its name is very clear about what it stands for. This will ensure consistency and signposting to cessation services for those who seek it. Earlier this year, I was pleased to launch our Help Me Quit cessation service, which is the first service to sit under our new brand. The service is designed to make it easier for smokers to access help to quit smoking. Over 40 per cent of smokers make at least one quit attempt every year, so it’s important that as many of those as possible seek help to quit as this significantly increases their chances of a successful quit attempt.

This delivery plan is consistent with the goals of the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015 and was developed by adopting the ways of working underpinning the Act. It’s also one of the responses to our national strategy, ‘Prosperity for All’. It aims to improve the health and well-being of people in Wales and to provide a greater emphasis on prevention.

During the lifetime of the plan, our tobacco control strategic board and its sub-groups will remain focused on progress and be alive to new and emerging tobacco products that threaten what we have worked so hard to successfully achieve in Wales since the introduction of the smoking ban 10 years ago. The board will ensure that we continue to plan beyond 2020 and will set further goals to achieve a smoke-free society.

Minister, thank you for your statement today. I welcome the delivery plan. I’m pleased that it continues to set out a number of ambitious targets to cut smoking rates. I think it does remain shocking that up to two thirds of long-term smokers will die from smoking-related diseases, and I think it is worth reminding ourselves that the US Food and Drug Administration actually summed it up by saying cigarettes are

‘the only legal consumer product that, when used as intended, will kill half of all long-term users’.

So, I do congratulate you on achieving the target of getting down to 19 per cent. I would like to understand, Minister, a realistic assessment from you as to whether or not you believe the 16 per cent target will be met by 2020, because I do note in your plan that you say that it’s going to be a very challenging target. And off the back of that, I’d be very interested to hear your opinion as to whether you consider the Cancer Research UK aim of seeing a less than 5 per cent smoking rate across all socioeconomic groups by 2035 in Wales achievable, because there’s no point in setting a wholly unachievable target, but maybe it’s something we can get towards.

You talk in your statement of the Help Me Quit programme, and yet in 2016-17 only 2.9 per cent of the smoking population was seen by a smoking cessation service and no health board met the target. Indeed, in Cardiff and Vale university health board, only 1.3 per cent of the smoking population made a quit attempt. Minister, I would be interested to know why you think it has taken so long for the health boards to get on side with this. Do you have any plans again to look at the targets or to provide extra resources to ensure they are achievable?

I understand that mass media campaigns are very effective and you talk about it quite a lot in the delivery, but with figures from the Public Health Wales Observatory showing significant differences in smoking rates across Welsh counties, can you tell us what is being done to ensure that the resource is targeted at the areas where it can make the most difference? Whilst it’s very fashionable, and I know some of the population are very much into social media, a huge number of the people who smoke are not social media savvy, they’re not necessarily having access to computers, or they live in areas of poor internet connection. So, I wonder if you can let us know how you’re going to ensure that those sections are not being ignored.

Two final areas. People with mental health issues smoke significantly more than the general population. What plans do you have in place—because I couldn’t spot it in the delivery plan—to try to educate those people as to the need to give up smoking or to try to cut down on their smoking? Because it is a significantly higher number of people who smoke who have mental health issues. And the other figures that really shocked me were the figures available for expectant mothers who smoke during pregnancy. The delivery plan says that the data isn’t available for this sub-group, but the Public Health Wales Observatory did publish data last year that showed over 18 per cent of mothers smoked during pregnancy, and there were disparities across the health boards and across the socioeconomic boundary. So, I wondered, Minister, what plans you might have to tackle those two groups.

And finally, Deputy Presiding Officer, over the summer, Minister, I backed calls for UK health officials to consider new rules enforcing a reduction of nicotine in tobacco products to non-addictive levels following an announcement of a landmark consultation in the United States by the US Food and Drug Administration. I think we have to do something radical to try to stop the curse of smoking, and I would like to ask for your thoughts on that kind of initiative. If you think it is worth taking forward, would you be able to try and liaise with the health department officials at Westminster to see if we can actually look at some comprehensive legislation that might try to make some of these toxic products less toxic to those who do choose to use them? Thank you.

Thank you very much. I thank you very much for your welcome for the plan, but also for those important questions as well. You began by talking about how shocking it is that so many people are still smoking and the impact that has on families. In my statement, I said that smoking kills over 5,000 individuals every year. So, that’s 5,000 families impacted terribly by smoking. It is the main cause of preventable death and, of course, that keeps driving us forward to reach our targets. Actually, one of the facts that drives me forward on this particularly is that it really is an issue of health inequalities as well, because we know that people in poorer communities are much more likely to smoke, and, as a result, are much more likely to have those poor health impacts as a result of it. So, it really is an equalities and a social justice issue as well. So, this really does drive us forward in pursuit of those targets.

You asked about the 16 per cent target. I will put my neck on the line and say that, yes, I think we will be able to achieve that target with the help of the various new actions set out in our plan, and also with the help of our public health Bill—or public health Act now—which was passed recently by this Assembly. It is a challenging target; there’s absolutely no doubt about that. But, equally, I think that there is the drive to get there. You asked about future targets, and, of course, our ultimate ambition is for a smoke-free Wales. It will be something that I will be asking the tobacco control delivery board to look at setting new targets when we look to review things in 2020, when this plan comes to an end. So, I would certainly want to have continuous targets to take us to our smoke-free place where we want to be.

You’re absolutely right to say that we need to redouble our efforts within the NHS in terms of the support that’s offered through the NHS to people to quit smoking. There are some really important actions within this particular delivery plan, one of which, actually, is improvement against those cessation services by the design and development of an integrated ‘stop smoking’ service. Now, we’ve started that with our new brand, and the new service that I described that has been launched, Help Me Quit. But actually, there’s a lot more that we need to be doing there. One of the things we’re doing will be strengthening the referral pathway for maternity services to include referrals for all women who smoke to cessation services—who are pregnant—and also strengthening referral pathways to include referral to smoking cessation services for all smokers who are either preoperative patients, because we know the impact that that will have on the likelihood of a positive outcome after surgery, people with lung disease, and also people who have mental health conditions as well. So, that’s a specific action here. There are also actions in here for primary health care clusters in terms of defining how many referrals they will need to make in order to see a year-on-year reduction in smoking as well. So, we know primary care has a very important part to play in this. And actions for pharmacy as well. So, we’ll be looking to ensure that all pharmacists are able to offer smoking cessation services as part of their training pre-registration. So, this would be a new development as well. And, again, we’ll be looking to enhance the role that dentists play in terms of offering smoking cessation services as well. So, lots of work in development and lots of new approaches within the NHS as well.

You referred specifically to the fact that social media is fantastic in terms of getting the message out, but not everybody is able to access social media. So, as part of our Help Me Quit campaign we did have some television advertising and also some billboards as well. Going on a visit to stand by a billboard was one of the strangest things I’ve done as a Minister, but that’s where we launched the campaign because we felt it was important to have a very, very public and visible presence in communities as well.

We will be consulting with mental health service users, staff and stakeholders on the removal of the exemption in spring 2018 for those smoke-free places within mental health units. And I’m really keen that we have the views of people who have experience of stays in mental health units for that. Those are the people who more than anyone else I need to be listening to in these circumstances as well.

Lastly, and I did refer to it briefly, but you did mention support for pregnant women. The results from our smoking in pregnancy pilot, models for access to maternal smoking cessation support, which rather conveniently can be shortened to MAMSS, has shown that pregnant women are more likely to engage with smoking cessation services when using support that is embedded within those maternity services. And it’s also important to know that children are 70 per cent more likely to smoke if their mother smokes and actually three times more likely to smoke if both parents smoke as well. So, these are the kind of short interventions that healthcare professionals, both midwives and healthcare workers, can be having with families through the work that they are doing as part of the Healthy Child Wales and 10 Steps to a Healthy Weight schemes as well.

I’d like to welcome the publication of this delivery plan, and I’m sure that we can all welcome any commitment to continue to try to reduce the smoking rates, and especially those steps to try to prevent people from starting smoking in the first instance, because I do believe that that is the most significant element of the battle to reduce smoking rates in the long term.

If I can look specifically at some points that arise in step 2 in this new strategy—it talks about looking at the use of technology, for example, social media, in steps taken to prevent smoking amongst the young, and also looks at international evidence with regard to targeting younger people and people who are at risk of starting smoking. In both examples there, it is talking about starting this work by April or March of next year. I wonder whether the Minister would agree with me that there’s no time to waste here and that those kinds of steps should perhaps already be being taken.

In terms of this new brand, ‘choose smoke-free’, I look forward to seeing whether that does reach its aim. I hope that it very much does that. I wonder how much funding—. Are there any details about how much funding will be available to market that scheme and the new steps that are part of that strategy?

I was also eager to make the point about smoking rates amongst those who have mental health issues. I understand that 36 per cent of people who have mental health issues smoke, as compared to 19 per cent of the general population. The evidence shows that smoking cessation can be a very effective part of treatment for those conditions. So, even though the Minister has made comments on this already, I would encourage the Government to do more work in that particular area.

Finally, targets. I welcome the comments that the Minister made in response to Angela Burns’s questions with regard to her willingness to look at adapting and strengthening the long-term targets for the reduction of smoking rates. She mentioned this target that Cancer Research UK has of aiming for 5 per cent of the population by the year 2035. Has the Minister considered already, even though she’ll be looking at this further, whether this could be a target that she would be willing to adopt, because it is a target that Cancer Research UK certainly hopes that we can consider as a realistic one, and an ambitious one? And that other target then of treating 5 per cent or offering services for 5 per cent of those who do smoke, whilst we reach less than 3 per cent at the moment—by when is the Government confident that it can hit that target?

Thank you very much for those questions, and particularly for the focus that you gave at the start in terms of what we can do to prevent children and young people from taking up smoking in the first place. And our recent public health Act, as you know, extends the smoking ban to places where children and young people often frequent. And there’s a commitment within that Act that Ministers will be able to add other places to the list of smoke-free settings in due course as well. So, there’s a commitment within our plan to consider what other settings can be added to that as well, and I’ll be looking in the first instance at the tobacco control delivery group and its sub-groups to advise, although I was very aware that there were lots of ideas that came forward during the scrutiny of the Act. And, of course, we talked a lot about how we’re essentially banning a legal act in a public place, so there are lots of human rights considerations to be taken into account. But, of course, this is about the health of the children and young people of Wales.

There are some actions that have already started in terms of our action plan that we launched today, one of which is reviewing the tobacco criteria within the national quality award for the Welsh network of healthy schools scheme, and that’s to ensure that it does reflect the best practice and the best evidence that we have about young people and tobacco. That also includes other tobacco products such as e-cigarettes as well. We know that we have to be very responsive and agile in terms of the new ways in which tobacco is able to be administered to people, and we’re very clear within the action plan that our tobacco control delivery board and its sub-groups are going to be very active in terms of monitoring the latest trends, the latest technologies and the latest use and so on.

We’re also keen to be using the curriculum to see what we can do to further ensure that correct messages are getting through to young people about the dangers of smoking. And also within our action plan we have actions for further education and higher education settings because these are times when young people might think about starting smoking, but also times when it’s actually a good opportunity to reach out to them and provide the information that they need and the support that they need in a different setting to give up smoking as well.

I share your concerns about the high level of smoking amongst people who are experiencing mental ill health, and again this comes back to that social justice issue that we shouldn’t be accepting worse for people who are suffering from mental ill health, we shouldn’t be accepting worse for people who are living in poorer communities—we should be expecting good health and good services for all of these people. So, I’m pleased that this is addressed in the plan but, again, I would say the tobacco control delivery board as well is very open to any further ideas that people might have in terms of how we can strengthen our approach, and I’m keen to talk, as we go about looking again at the regulations on smoking in mental health units, to have a wider discussion, really, with people with mental ill health and the organisations who represent them as well.

And on that, I should have at the end of my comments in response to Angela mentioned the issue of the nicotine levels. And I’d be keen to have a meeting with you to further discuss that, if that would be helpful as well.

There are lots of targets and lots of opportunities to monitor the delivery of the plan. You’ll see that within it we have indicators from the national survey of health behaviour in school-age children, School Health Research Network studies, Public Health Wales’s maternity indicators, other Public Health Wales indicators, and other performance targets as well. So, it should be very clear to people as to what extent we are meeting our targets and our aspirations within the plan.

In terms of that longer term plan and that longer term aspiration for a smoke-free Wales, I’m aware of the Cancer Research UK and World Health Organization aspiration for a smoke-free society by 2035, and this will certainly be something that the tobacco control delivery board thinks about when advising on the next targets. Although, I would imagine that they would want to set a closer target. So, if we were republishing a new plan in 2020, then I imagine that we’d be looking towards, say, a 2025 target and so on. But, ultimately, obviously, our vision is for a smoke-free Wales.

Thank you for your statement, Minister. I welcome the delivery plan. Since the implementation of the smoking ban, it is good news that smoking in the home has reduced from 80 per cent to 46 per cent. ASH Wales says that this suggests that there is a better understanding of the dangers of second-hand smoke, especially around children and families. Therefore, although we look at this as a 34 per cent decrease in smoking in the home, we must remember that the other people in the home are benefitting from not being exposed to this second-hand smoke also.

As mentioned, smoking is one of the main causes of inequalities in health, and smoking rates in poorer areas are more than double those in affluent areas. So, I wonder how we are going to deal with this inequality aspect.

Whilst visiting hospitals within my region, I was alarmed by the amount of people outside of the hospital, but in the public area, who are still smoking. So, I am pleased that the statement acknowledges this and plans to extend the ban to include areas such as these. It would seem that all the information in the world would not help some people beat this addiction, and I’m not criticising, but trying to understand that when people become hooked on cigarettes, it must be awful if you cannot beat the addiction. Despite knowing the dangers of smoking, and that, in Wales, it contributes to 5,450 deaths per annum, people are still smoking. So, this is a concern and we must do all that we can to combat this and help people more.

My concern is the second-hand smoking surrounding babies and children. I have watched programmes on television about how an unborn baby reacts to smoke, and this is very disturbing to watch, but I’d like to, sort of, see more of it advertised. Parents who smoke are highly likely to influence the children who live with them, so it’s disturbing to read that 64 per cent of secondary school pupils reported being exposed to second-hand smoke. So, I wonder if you agree with me that this area does need consideration.

As 19 per cent of Welsh adults are still smoking, what research and information has the Welsh Government undertaken to assist with reducing this number? Also, ASH has stated that in prisons the ban has been 100 per cent successful, but I understand that since this ban, the number of self-harm incidents in prison has increased among prisoners, as has violence, prisoner on prisoner and prisoner on staff. Is this due to frustration—the improvisation of a cigarette through trying to smoke teabags in order to make up for the non-access to a cigarette? So, these people have mental health issues, and, coupled with being locked up, it is adding stress. So, I wonder if we could ask that some research is undertaken regarding the above statement—that ASH states a 100 per cent compliance to this—and whether we can re-evaluate, if necessary, the success claims regarding these prisons.

The banning of smoking anywhere near playgrounds and children’s areas is a must, and I’m pleased to see that the plan is making provisions to stop this. I’m pleased that the statement acknowledges the harm that second-hand smoking has caused and the plans to deal with it. Also, I’d like to ask about the collaboration with other services, such as Cancer Research, ASH and other areas. Thank you very much.

Thank you very much for those questions. I’ll begin where you finished in terms of talking about collaboration with other organisations with a keen interest in this area. ASH Wales have been funded for three years to support us in the delivery of our plan, but they play a really important role as well in terms of having wider discussions with all of those people with an interest in tobacco control in Wales—across the third sector as well. So, there is good dialogue, I think, in terms of all of those organisations who have an interest. And also, at the back of the delivery plan you’ll be able to see a list of all of the members of the tobacco control delivery board, and also the sub-groups that support that work, and I hope that you’d agree that they are a diverse section who do capture the views of our society in that regard.

You were right to remind us, actually, that smoking is an awful addiction because, I think, as a non-smoker it’s often quite easy to forget that actually it is a real addiction. It’s an extremely expensive addiction, and six out of 10 smokers actually at the moment, today, would like to give up. So we need to be there to support those six out of 10 and also to provide the right messages and education for the other four in terms of helping them understand the damage and then make choices in that regard.

You did mention the work that’s going on in prisons; it has been very successful in terms of the fact that prisons now in Wales are all smoke free. I’m really keen to ensure that, when Welsh-domiciled prisoners are released from prison back into the community, that they actually still have support to stay on that smoke-free journey, and that’s reflected in our action plan as well.

You mentioned, as others have done, the importance of supporting parents to give up smoking. We know that, as I mentioned earlier, children who see their parents smoke are much more likely to take up smoking themselves, and the latest research shows that most adult smokers actually start smoking before the age of 18. So, the parental role and the parental role models are a really important factor in this as well.

Second-hand smoke is an extremely important issue as well, and you did talk about the danger that that can pose to children and young people. One of the big successes, I think, has been the ban on smoking in cars with children. I think it has been well observed as a ban because it’s a difficult thing, as you can imagine, in terms of policing that ban, but it has been well observed. And I suppose those kinds of culture changes, you know, it takes a while to change culture, but actually I think we are getting there now with a multipronged approach, with many partners working together.

And if you can just ask a question very quickly and the Minister can answer it very quickly, I’ll allow it. Russell George.

Thank you. Minister, can I ask: have you given any consideration, and if not will you, to banning smoking in all hotel rooms in Wales?

I thank you for that question. Under the current smoke-free premises regulations 2007, managers of hotels, guest houses, bed and breakfasts, inns and members’ clubs with residential accommodation are allowed to designate bedrooms for smoking. There’s no legal obligation for them to do so, as it’s up to the manager to decide whether or not smoking rooms are to be allocated. But, when taking forward regulations under the Public Health (Wales) Act 2017, all of the smoke-free provisions will be reviewed in line with good practice, and a full consultation will be held on those draft regulations. So, in terms of what does that mean for hotels, bed and breakfasts and so on, as I say—I think I’ve done a written answer to you very recently on this issue as well—currently it is a choice for the hotel or the business manager, but they have to be absolutely confident, and it has to be demonstrated, that the smoking room doesn’t have any effect on the surrounding rooms, for example, from vents and so on as well.

Okay, thank you very much, Minister, for that.

We move on to the next item, which is the debate on the parliamentary review of health and social care, the interim report. I call on the Cabinet Secretary for Health, Well-being and Sport to move the motion. Vaughan Gething.

Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. I’m happy to formally move the motion before us today. To go back to where we were in June, I’m still pleased to have received the interim report of the parliamentary review of health and social care in Wales that we shared with Members, sorry, in July, not June, this year, but I tabled this debate today to allow more discussion now that Members have had further time to consider the interim report.

There is, of course, a political reference group that is regularly briefed on progress with the review, and will meet again this month, but this is an opportunity for all Members to comment directly. The independent panel we’ve put together has looked at data, taken evidence and drawn on extensive international experience to develop its own view on health and social care here in Wales. The interim report defines key issues facing health and social care. It sets out the case for change, and identifies areas where improvements are needed. The report signals areas the panel wants to explore further over the next few months before concluding the review and delivering a final report with recommendations to me by the end of the calendar year.

I ought to say that the interim report sets out that there is a compelling case for change, with a general consensus among stakeholders and the people who have given evidence to date on the need for further integration and services that are more available within the community. The report is also clear that inaction is not an option going forward, and the report challenges all of us: are we prepared to support change and to meet those difficult challenges? That requires us to make choices for health and care services in Wales or we will simply allow choices to be made for us. So, the future is a collective effort across political parties and it will require a continuing level of maturity and leadership across parties that led to this review being established in the first place.

Wales, of course, is not alone in facing the challenges set out in the interim report. We need to look at how we can design a way of working in the future that is both sustainable and continues to deliver good outcomes. The report provides us with a renewed urgency for discussion and decision, a need to engage citizens and the workforce in deciding the type of services that will be available in communities in the future. The national strategy launched by the First Minister today, ‘Prosperity for All’, aligned with the direction for travel set out in the parliamentary review and its interim report. It commits us as a Government to respond to the review and publish a long-term plan for health and social care next year.

The panel, though, in their report, have recognised the important legislation that Wales has already developed—the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015 and the Social Services and Well-being (Wales) Act 2014 being two particular Acts that, taken together with prudent healthcare, offer us a powerful set of principles that can apply equally to NHS Wales and social care, and they do enjoy a high level of support. Widespread and comprehensive use of these principles should help us to transform health and social care in Wales, however the scale of the challenge means concerted action is required and at some pace. The messages in the interim report are frequently repeated back to me as I move around the country listening to both staff and patients, and especially the point about the voice of the patient and the service user, because the report recognises the need to involve staff, service users and carers more in the design, implementation, evaluation and subsequent development of new models of care, and to ensure that there are clearer, shared roles and responsibilities.

I recognise that the best results frequently come through active co-production and it’s something that I want to see more of. One of the key interim review proposals focuses on developing new models of care to be trialled, evaluated and then scaled up rapidly. The references to local citizens’ needs are of course important in this, and I know from speaking to the chair of the review that the stakeholder forum that has been established to help progress this work aims to frame the principles and standards that characterise successful models that can then be used to develop and test newer models of working. That should give us some assurance about our consistency at a national level with the freedom and space to adapt to local needs, especially in rural and/or urban contexts.

I note that the review has now been working over the summer recess to gather examples of successful models of integrated care, and I understand there has been a good response to continuing engagement from stakeholders across the country, but they are also looking at examples from outside Wales too. The models, of course, are just one element to this. I do look forward to recommendations that will be framed around the triple aim of improving population health, improving the quality of care and, of course, improving the value and productivity.

The workforce will of course be key to making the changes needed, so it’s good to see a reference to large-scale planning for the skills and career paths required for the health and social care workforce to deliver these new models—these new ways of working. The report states that the current workforce shortages inhibit change and need to be addressed, and that’s something that I recognise. In particular, there are some medical specialities and some geographical areas of Wales where there are particular struggles and, again, we can recognise a similar pattern in other parts of the United Kingdom. That’s why we remain committed to continuing to take action to attract and to train and to keep more GPs, nurses and other healthcare professionals here in Wales.

We launched a campaign to encourage doctors, including GPs, to come to Wales to train, work and live and, as I’ve said previously, that’s had a significant and positive early impact, with a 91 per cent GP trainee fill rate compared to 68 per cent last year, and that includes a 100 per cent fill rate in some of our hardest-to-recruit areas, in particular more rural parts of Wales on GP training. It’s also important that we’re running the Train, Work, Live campaign not just for doctors, but for nurses, and later on this year there will be further campaigns for therapists and pharmacists as well.

The report signals for us the need for the streamlining and alignment of governance, finance and accountability arrangements across health and social care. Closely linked to that is the drive for a more systematic and effective approach to continuous quality improvement and how we encourage and develop a culture that creates a supporting and engaging environment for our staff and, of course, the Government shares that ambition; you would expect us to. That helps to underpin our approach to our White Paper ‘Services Fit for the Future’. It’s framed around how we unlock the potential for local health boards to demonstrate that they govern and behave strategically with quality at the heart of all that they do.

The interim report also highlights for us the need to spread innovation and to make better use of data and information to design and monitor the progress of change. This is a crucial area for us, and I look forward to seeing how this can be supported further. There is, of course, a balance to be struck between national direction and local autonomy in generating change, and that is part of our challenge of continuous improvement, based on outcomes for citizens across the whole health and care system, and within that the pace of change that is needed, with clear and accountable decision making.

The report again rehearses for us the drivers for change: advances in healthcare, rising public expectation despite the reality that there is reducing public expenditure as austerity continues—that is an unavoidable challenge regardless of our party political positions. In addition to that, though, we know that demand continues to rise. Part of that is because, unfortunately, we have a less healthy population than in decades past, and that is not a cause for celebration. What is, though, a cause for celebration is the fact that we can all expect to live longer, but that provides us with different challenges and different additional demands coming into our system. That does, though, mean that we can’t pretend to ourselves or the wider public that simply carrying on with the health and care system that we have today will do for the future. If we allow that to happen, our system will become overtopped and we will allow real harm to be done to our citizens before then having to change our system at a time of crisis, rather than trying to plan a way forward to develop and deliberately deliver a changed, reformed and improved system that is genuinely sustainable.

But we should take comfort from the fact that there are genuinely talented people in Wales already delivering change to improve services and offer better care, because I regularly see local innovation that makes a real difference for patients. I’m sure Members do in their constituencies and regions as well. For us, it’s imperative that we understand what could and should be scaled up quickly so that benefits are delivered system wide, and we need leaders with local health and care to be champions for improvement—not just with the public, but with their peers as well.

So, the message of the interim report, I believe, is clear: we cannot make the improvement in quality and experience that we all want to without seeing change in the way our service works. The interim report, I believe, is balanced, and it’s an independent assessment of where we are now. I recognise the progress that we have made, but a faster change is needed so our health and care system is sustainable in the future. I look forward to receiving the final report before the end of this calendar year, and to continue to work constructively with all parties to help implement as many of its recommendations as possible, and I look forward to hearing the views of Members in today’s debate.

The Welsh Conservatives will support today’s motion to note the interim report by the parliamentary review of health and social care. The interim report makes for thought-provoking reading. It lays out, with a degree of frankness not often allowed, the scale of the challenge that faces our country in terms of how we sustain and renew both the Welsh national health service and the care sector.

The panel have made great strides in talking to users, patients, clinicians, experts, management and—for this I’m most grateful—us politicians, but it is only an interim report, and we have discussed this interim report in committees and in a Plenary statement, so I don’t want to rehearse all my previous commentary. The reality is that we need stage 2. The final report will, I hope, give suggestions as to how we might resolve some of the more intractable challenges. Some of these challenges are self-evident, and I am concerned that we may not strive to meet those challenges because we’re waiting with bated breath for the concluding document.

I would like to know what areas, if any, that were identified by the interim report have already been taken forward by the Welsh Government. For example, we all know that the Welsh care sector is very fragile. The employed care force are not always paid fairly or treated well; training is not always available or is minimal; the turnover of staff is high; we have a high reliance on temporary workers; there is little or no career progression available to the employed carer; the unpaid care force is exhausted and often ignored; there’s no cavalry coming to rescue the desperate carer at home who longs for support, for respite, for recognition. It’s a profession that’s often deemed as semi-skilled or unskilled, which is the unkindest cut of all when, actually, to care for another human being goes to the essence of our humanity.

The interim report recognises this fragility and lack of skill base. The report heard that informal carers need to be involved in planning and developing the workforce, that we need to increase skills and develop a career path. These conclusions simply reinforce a situation we’re aware of and that we could start addressing now. I’d be interested to know, Cabinet Secretary, what can be taken. Of course, in the NHS, the position is, if anything, more difficult. We all know of the recruitment issue that is hindering the delivery of first-class care consistently and comprehensively across Wales. We know that we need more doctors and nurses and more allied healthcare workers. But let me give you yet another example where lack of staff is proving problematic. I have an e-mail from an eminent consultant and he says,

‘The difficulty now is that I have no secretary for the foreseeable future, meaning that I cannot organise appointments or tests. I’ve been without a functioning secretary for one and a half years, and I’ve exhausted what I can do to get them to sort this out.’

So, because he doesn’t have his own secretary, he can’t get on and do his job to the top level. He’s unproductive and costly. Therefore, we pay intelligent people lots of money to perform complex tasks and then render them unproductive. This individual is from a health board in south Wales, but I’ve also had this complaint from clinicians across Wales. So, for me, the real strength of this report lies in the recognition of the commitment and intent of the individual within the NHS and the acknowledgement of the difficulties within the system, of which this is a prime example.

I’m pleased that the panel have identified that one of the key barriers to the successful implementation of change is centred around the how. How do we fill the gap between good policies and outstanding local initiatives? How do we ensure that the green shoots of success in local areas are scaled up and applied coherently and with consistency? How do we look at users holistically from illness to housing to end-of-life care? The history of the Welsh Government is littered with reports and policies that have not translated successfully to the front line, and why? It’s because of the how. We need to change some of the culture as well as some of the practices. We need to understand that successful transformation cannot sweep through everything and all at once, but that it needs to be measured and tested. We need a coherent framework and skilled people. Yet the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, in a recent report, identified that Wales lacked the capacity to exploit the innovative practices that we have developed.

The health debate is usually framed around numbers of front-line staff, hospital locations or where the services are. So, I was relieved to find that the interim report challenges culture and process. It identified issues with maturity and flexibility, and skills and training. It’s not all about new policies, new programmes and new initiatives, Minister. I believe this report lays out a vision and a canvas, but stage 2 must now sketch in the details. We need a clear identification of the barriers to change and imaginative proposals to bridge the gap between idea and action.

May I first of all welcome the interim report, as it is very thorough and shows a great deal of research and consultation? It gives us a great deal of detail on the state and challenges facing the NHS and the care sector in Wales today, but we must also say that the findings aren’t ones that should surprise us too much. What we have is a picture of financial pressures, demographic pressures, mixed with poor workforce planning, underperformance and a lack of integration between health and social care. We see clearly the excellence that exists among the professional staff of the NHS and the care sector but also see the stress and pressures they face as they try and work to the greatest of their ability.

Now, the evidence is already clear, therefore, although this is an interim report, that we cannot continue as we are. That also means that we should cease saying that the UK Government can continue with austerity policies whilst the Welsh Government continues to put pressures on local authority funding and social care and that that isn’t going to have a truly detrimental impact on the ability to provide health and care services as people would expect and would deserve.

It’s clear from the report that health service funding needs to increase as needs increase among the population, but that we also need to invest more in social care, and we do know that the demands on the services are going to increase, although the scale of that increase will depend on how this Government responds to these various challenges—obesity, for example, and the need to encourage healthier lifestyles. There are other elements too: the quality of housing, the environment and, of course, cuts in the welfare state, when the weakest in our society are being squeezed by the cruellest policies. We know that homelessness is on the increase, that suicide is on the increase and that the use of health services is also on the increase. Therefore, the case for change is strong and a change in the way that Governments, both here and in London, look at and support the whole ecosystem surrounding health and care services and social support services.

I could refer to some specific elements that are highlighted in this report—workforce planning, for example. Improved workforce planning is attainable if we see the Government taking the appropriate steps, such as introducing a centre for medical education in Bangor and encouraging more young people from Wales, from various backgrounds, including the more disadvantaged backgrounds, to study medicine. It does mean that those necessary steps have to be taken to increase the number of nurses that we train and to provide the support that those trainee nurses need to make this a profession that remains attractive to them.

The report highlights the scope to use technology to provide alternative ways—better and, very often, cheaper ways—of treating patients, but that does mean having services and health and care institutions that are flexible and can respond to new developments. Some of those developments, which are emerging very quickly, will be truly revolutionary, and we in Wales cannot be left behind. So, there are significant challenges, but also significant opportunities.

Mae gennym ni heriau sylweddol o'n blaenau, ond mae cyfleoedd gwirioneddol hefyd, os oes gan Gymru yr uchelgais a’r meddylfryd cadarnhaol i fanteisio ar y cyfleoedd hynny, yn hytrach nag esgus mai ein gwaith ni yw rheoli dirywiad a chwyno am bethau na allwn ni wneud unrhyw beth yn eu cylch. Mae a wnelo hyn, yn fwy penodol, â Llywodraeth Cymru, yn dangos ei bod yn barod i dderbyn yr her. Problem graidd, yr eliffant yn yr ystafell yw hyn: Mae Llafur mewn Llywodraeth wedi rhedeg y GIG byth ers i bobl Cymru benderfynu ei ddatganoli bron yn union 20 mlynedd yn ôl. Ni all Cymru fforddio bellach cael Llywodraeth sy’n gwrthod cyfaddef dyfnder rhai o broblemau'r GIG a'r sector gofal, oherwydd byddai gwneud hynny yn cyfaddef mai nhw sy’n gyfrifol am y problemau hynny. Mae angen i bobl Cymru weld newid gwirioneddol ynglŷn â sut mae Llywodraeth Cymru yn rhedeg gofal iechyd a chymdeithasol yng Nghymru ac yn meddwl am ddarparu iechyd a gofal cymdeithasol yng Nghymru. Mae gennym ni adroddiad interim nawr sy’n tynnu sylw at rai o'r prif heriau. Bydd gennym ni adolygiad cyflawn yn fuan a, gobeithio, cyfres o argymhellion a all ysgogi rhywfaint o weithredu o ddifrif.

We welcome the interim report and the frankness of it, and we will support the report today. As the NHS is a major employer in Wales and therefore plays a significant role in the Welsh economy, it is important that this budget is spent wisely, so that patients can, in their time of need, receive care and support that will be delivered in a confident, efficient and caring manner. With wise spending comes the opportunity for change and innovation. We must look at how the demand for our services is changing and how we can best meet this demand. Therefore, the issues facing the NHS must now be identified and a clear vision on how solutions and changes can be met effectively—changes that are sustainable, and changes that we will receive in more detail in the second part of the report.

Wales has the fastest and largest growing proportion of older people in the UK, and so there is a greater emphasis on care. The demographic change has been under way for some time, and my question here is: how will this change be met? Perhaps through the reinvention and reformed version of community hospitals. In contrast to this increase, it is anticipated that there will be a decrease of working-age adults in the same period, and the knock-on effect of this is a potentially shrinking tax base. So, taking into consideration these factors so far, how will care be provided and by whom? We often forget the unpaid carers in our communities and the massive contribution they make. So, it is fair to mention them today.

With people living longer, we are expecting people to work longer, but look at the Women Against State Pension Inequality situation, which has caused much anxiety and uncertainty, with Guy Opperman, pensions Minister, offering people of 64 to retrain for new skills, to enable them to gain employment. As many of my constituents have told me, at 60 plus, you can attend interviews, but there is a 99 per cent chance of no job.

Patients’ involvement and feedback randomly taken is of paramount importance. How can this be achieved in the most cost-effective and efficient way? There is much talk about elderly and frail patients being kept in hospital when they could be discharged but have no persons to look after them. And in these circumstances, integration of services is essential to provide the best outcome for the individual. However, my recent experience of integration between health and social services has left me with mixed feelings as to the care and support we give to our elderly and our vulnerable. There is the case of a constituent who is known to me, who, at the age of 83, went into hospital for a triple heart bypass. He was placed in the hands of a wonderful surgeon who successfully operated. He was then cared for by two hospitals. One hospital was well organised, with staff who were mostly happy, with good humour, clearly enjoying their work. The second hospital exhibited low staff morale and discharged the patient knowing he lived alone and needed just a couple of days or weeks of TLC to get him over this operation. I asked why he had not received a care package upon being discharged, and the answer was that he could walk up some steps, was compos mentis and didn’t ask for one. He was discharged without the supposed phone call to the person he had put to be contacted on his discharge, but simply was taken home in a car, asked if he had some food and then was left. There was no-one to take him to subsequent appointments, and he was left with a huge number of tablets to work out for himself.

His GP, he says, is wonderful. The surgeon he cannot thank enough. His immediate aftercare in hospital was wonderful. And he says he now has a new lease of life, and in six months he’s off to Benidorm. My concern is that aftercare, I feel, was not forthcoming for this person, and the difference in care from one hospital to another has to be highlighted. We need to look at best practice and ensure that it is carried out in all hospitals. A care package would have made a lot of difference in this case, and we need to ensure that all staff are properly trained. Communication between services is important, and the ability to deal compassionately with our elderly or vulnerable patients is a must.

If we are to adopt a change, we need to look at recruitment and retention of front-line staff, the issues of which have been well documented in past years. Staff shortages have led to increased workloads, which become unmanageable for many staff. This has led to stress-related illness and low staff morale. We must remember that support and administrative staff need also to have full complement to carry out, as Angela Burns said, diagnostic tests, nurse people back to health, and ensure surgeries are run efficiently. My question is: how can we incentivise clinicians to train and stay in Wales? Some aspiring clinicians are falling just short of the entry qualifications to become a GP, and we are turning away good people for this reason. It is time to review this aspect.

Finally, we know there is a need for change, but how can we best achieve this? Prevention before cure: how do we tackle social detriments of health, which affect people of all ages? How can we ensure that, as life expectancy is increasing, so too is quality of life? The more information we give people on healthy living, which may involve lifestyle changes, and must be easily accessible and available to all—. People are then free to make informed choices about change. Therefore, our infrastructure and future technology must be fit for purpose and in tune with our future needs. Diolch, Llywydd.

I was delighted to hear the Cabinet Secretary say that inaction is not an option, and I absolutely agree with that, because there’s rising demand for primary care particularly, and clear evidence that there is a bit of strain in the system, with a significant number of GPs handing in the keys, but also rising public expectations that health services should operate just like any other service that people want to have immediate access to. But I think that there is a need for a shift in the relationship between the citizen and the service to ensure that it is a real partnership, which—. It isn’t about a demand service. It’s not like going into a shop and saying, ‘I want this’; it is a partnership.

Often, people on the Conservative benches—. I have in the past heard them say that this is all because the Welsh NHS is underfunded, but the facts contradict that. The public expenditure statistical analysis for 2015-16, published by the UK Treasury, shows spending on health and social care per person in Wales is 6 per cent higher than in England, and spending on health alone in Wales is 1 per cent higher than in England—so, that’s £21 more per person. So, it is not about money. It is about the way we organise the services, and, in my view, it is important to see a shift in resources away from secondary care, which we constantly talk about, to primary care, which is where 90 per cent of all NHS services are delivered.

It’s good to see there’s a lot of agreement on the direction of travel. Last week, I chaired a meeting about the shape and services that need to go into a new health centre in Llanedeyrn. The building is clearly in need of replacement, as the cladding is falling off the walls and it has a disastrous energy rating. But some of the points that citizens made were really clear about what people ought to expect, as well as some of the things that we need to do in collaboration with citizens.

I think that one of the reasons that GPs are under such stress is because the access to your GP is, if you like, the last open-door service. Many other public services have shrunk, and the GP is the last place you are entitled to go. Often people are going for entirely the wrong reasons to see a GP about something they could be seeing other people for, whether that’s a simple remedy for a minor health problem that could easily be responded to over the telephone, or whether it’s through the pharmacist, who is obviously available during shop hours. We have to see the GP as, if you like, the co-ordinator of primary care, and ensure that they’re using the other members of the multidisciplinary team in a way that will enable them to free up their time and ensure that, for example, working people can actually get a standard appointment with their GP without actually having to take time off work.

I was struck by the—. The Socialist Health Association have written a paper recently suggesting we should trial different models of GP services—on the one hand, independent contractors, on the other hand, salaried GPs. I’d be interested to hear what the Cabinet Secretary has in mind for possibly looking at different models of primary care where things are breaking down.

I think co-production is essential, because it’s completely pointless offering a liver transplant to an alcoholic unless they’ve got their addiction under control. I think one of the greatest roles for government is ensuring that citizens are enabled to get food that is not going to poison them, and contribute to their health. Over the weekend, I was reading a book called ‘How Not to Die’ by Michael Greger, and the chapter on Parkinson’s, something that a friend of mine has, makes you realise that it’s all too late for those of us who’ve already been consuming these toxic substances in our diet. But it is our job as legislators to ensure that the poisons that eventually end up in the sea are not going to contaminate the next generation. Our diet is the No. 1 cause of premature death and disability, he asserts, and that brings me to, obviously, the very important issue of ensuring that we’re tackling health inequalities. It’s completely shocking that less than 3 per cent of all children bicycle to school, which would seem to me a basic right of all children, whereas over a third are taken to school by car, which means they are completely disempowered, unable to choose who they go to school with, what time they go to school, and they’re just dependent on an adult to take them anywhere.

Like others, I welcome the interim report and the opportunity to speak on the hugely important issues that are identified in it. I do hope that the final report of this parliamentary review provides a basis for this whole Assembly to find some fresh political consensus that helps us to deliver the continuing changes that we need to make in order to deliver the ever-improving health and social care across Wales in the future. It’s what people will expect of us and I include in that those staff who are central to delivering those vital services on a daily basis for 365 days of the year.

In spite of the challenges that we face, and many of them are described in the interim report, there are still so many experts who acknowledge that our NHS remains the shining example of the best healthcare system in the world. But I acknowledge that sections of this important review do highlight the significant shifts that still need to be made in the ways that we deliver services, in the places that we deliver services, and in preparing and leading staff to make those changes.

So, I wanted to direct my specific comments today on the issues of workforce planning, on skills gaps, on staff engagement in the future of these services. I’m pleased that the interim report’s recognised the importance of effective workforce planning, interdisciplinary training, and engagement with staff, because I know from personal experience that we have made some progress in these areas but we still have a long way to go, and I know how long these changes can take to bed in. It’s only when some real values on social partnership working are adopted that we see people embrace an agenda for change and actually welcome the opportunity to become part of the solution.

As I’ve said, change takes time. It takes sensitive leadership, and it requires effective workforce planning to deliver those solutions. It also remains a constant case of work in progress, because, by the very nature of the demands on these services, it means ongoing change across all the disciplines and all the service areas in both health and social services will be required in the years ahead.

So, the recognition in this report of a need for stronger strategic and integrated workforce planning is very welcome. It will also become increasingly necessary as technological change drives the need for the reskilling of the workforce and presents opportunities for the upskilling of staff that will also help to deliver the integration process that we wish to see.

In making my second point, I would echo the comments of the Cabinet Secretary on the need for more consensus as we face some of these fundamental challenges. So, in the spirit of constructive debate, I will for now put to one side the debate around austerity budgets that have marked the last seven years. But all of us as AMs, taxpayers, and the users of these services, need to reflect on how we can best meet the service demands of the future and whether that is to overcome staff and skills shortages, to face the shortages that many colleagues raise about services in our rural communities, or to meet the complex health and care demands in many Valleys communities, which I am more than familiar with.

We must ask ourselves how will we overcome these challenges if we find, for example, that staff in social services can find better paid and probably less demanding employment, for example, in the local retail sector. So, I continue to advocate that ongoing engagement with staff and their trade unions is vital to address these challenges.

The final point I want to make today is about the information exchange and best practice. I can only imagine, Cabinet Secretary, that it must drive you just a little bit mad when you see in these reports examples of best practice that we don’t seem to learn from. In spite of all the technological changes, and in spite of the speed at which news can travel, it remains frustrating that we cannot get best practice adopted quickly across our services. That’s not a new thing, but I do hope that we can look to this review to help speed up that process in Wales. Of course, we already know about a number of the issues that were identified in the interim report, and they were clearly also a feature in the final report at the end of the year. So, I hope we continue pushing forward and strengthening those actions we are already taking in order to secure progress in these important matters and not let the grass grow under our feet in those areas where we know that we can take action now.

Ten per cent of all healthcare interventions are associated with harm; 20 per cent of all work carried by the health service has no effect on outcomes—this is a quote from the review, and, while that review might be ducking the rather difficult question of how we fund health and social care in the future, it is pretty straight up on showing that we, as a nation, are spending half our block grant on a system that produces these statistics. And I want to stress here that I do mean a system, not the individuals, because, like Dawn, I don’t want this to become a political football in the future; it is far too important. But I think Welsh Government needs to recognise now, actually, that principled and constructive scrutiny of what we’ll be talking about in these next few years can only be a help in this huge policy issue. Good faith is going to be essential in this debate, and I think the parliamentary review—I have to commend the Cabinet Secretary on this—has been really helpful in setting the scene for that, because, in my view, it’s not going to be Brexit, it’s going to be the speed and the bravery of our response to the demands of health and social care, that will define this fifth Assembly. And the fact that that response needs to be both speedy and brave will be a test of our maturity as an institution, certainly, as we consider ideas that may be difficult to discuss, but also as a nation, as we consider ideas that might be difficult to hear. So, I think we need to start preparing the people of Wales for radical change, in which they will be playing the leading role.

Calls for culture change are seeded throughout this report. There’s much in there about changing the balance of responsibilities, but the big one is the balance between the person and the state, as Jenny mentioned, and that is never a comfortable conversation in this place. This report majors on co-production. That’s what I’m talking about, and it is, as Jenny says, a partnership that, in itself, needs culture change within the population, a population that, by and large, is at the moment used to abdicating decisions for care about themselves to healthcare professionals. Now, the king of co-production is sitting behind me—Mark Isherwood—and I know that some of you who have been here for some years will be gracious enough to acknowledge his championing of this principle well in advance of it being captured in legislation. It is a real thing, and this report points us in the direction of models where the individual has more control over the type of intervention they get and responsibility for decisions affecting them.

Our population is getting older, and more of us will sadly reach a stage where we no longer have mental capacity, and then we will need care over which we personally exercise very little control. For the rest of us, citizen-directed services means getting used to making decisions and taking steps for ourselves and for our loved ones, without that being characterised as being refused help by the state. This report is clear: there was a desire to reach an explicit agreement with the public on the respective roles and responsibilities of services and individuals, but there is no point in 91 per cent of people believing that they have responsibility for their own health unless they are, in reality, confident and informed enough to exercise that responsibility without fear of being abandoned. And it certainly applies in terms of making healthy choices, I completely agree, but it also applies to the means by which individuals understand their needs and how they become confident to make decisions about their care, because there is no point recalibrating our system towards co-production if, as a population, we are still programmed to respond to any questions about our care with, ‘Whatever you think, Doctor’.

No national system can offer a personalised service, but we get much nearer to it in a system that facilitates, not blocks, a person who has the confidence to say, ‘I’m getting my check up from a high street ophthalmologist at my convenience, instead of waiting in a consultant’s outpatient clinic’, and, equally, which facilitates, not blocks, a GP who has the confidence to say to somebody, ‘Why are you here? Go to the pharmacist’. Citizen responsibility works both ways and Jenny is right there. We get much nearer to it, as well, I think, when we have an elderly person who has the confidence to say, ‘Do you know, I don’t want to pay a care worker to make me a cup of tea; I want to pay for community transport so that I can go somewhere and have company’.

This report says we don’t have time to go slow on co-pro. Now, brave and speedy culture change on Welsh Government trusting people, on silo mentality, on processes, on staff expectations and leadership is one thing, but I don’t think we can neglect either how we help our constituents to become confident decision makers, because without them the changes that this review is pointing towards will die at the interim stage. If we’re going to look at this as a serious way forward, we’ve got to help our citizens trust themselves. Thank you.

Thank you. And, finally, Eluned Morgan.

Diolch yn fawr, Dirprwy Lywydd. I would also like to welcome this work done by Ruth Hussey and the expert team. I think it’s clear that, if we look at the ageing population, more of the same is simply unsustainable, and I think that’s what really comes out in this report. That further integration of health and social care is something I think that most people now accept. It has simply got to happen.

It’s clear that prevention has got to take centre stage, and we’ve all got to be encouraged to take more responsibility for looking after ourselves. I’m delighted that the report asks for new models to be trialled across Wales. There’s already great work being done and I think it’s really important that we recognise that. I went to an extra-care home in Newtown in Powys recently, partly financed by the Welsh Government—an excellent example. More of that is the kind of thing we want to see. That’s an expensive model; there will be other models that we need to look at. But it’s an opportunity for us to road test some radical new ideas.

Can I welcome the fact that the review is also sensitive to the fact that delivery will be different in different parts of Wales, and that the Welsh language needs of older people in particular need to be taken into account?

Dawn has talked a lot about the need for skills in the workforce, and for that workforce to be recognised and appreciated. Unless we really address that issue I think we are going to see that continuous revolving door of unskilled workers in our care service, and that is not something either that is sustainable. So, at some point we have to talk about financing those people properly.

The key thing to remember is that it’s got to be people centred. The end user has got to be centre stage here. We heard this afternoon of the national strategy ‘Prosperity for All’, and the need for an innovative care model in the community. There is one area that I think is missing from the report—and I understand why it wasn’t part of their remit—and that is housing. Unless we get the housing right, I think it’s going to be really difficult for us to look after the care needs of our public. So, we need to somehow, at some stage, pleat housing into this discussion, and then we can build an economic development strategy on the back of that as well, with the whole skills agenda to go behind that. I think that’s really important for us to keep an eye on.

But at some point we have to have a conversation with the public about, actually, first of all, what is the current situation. Because most people walk into a care home and are quite surprised to find a £700 a week cheque being demanded of them. They’re not aware of that. We have to tell them what the current situation is and then have a conversation about what they’d like it to look like in future. We’ve got to be brave about this. We’ve absolutely got to be brave. And one of the things that’s really heartened me this afternoon is the fact that, actually, we’ve heard really constructive suggestions from all parties. Unless we work together on this, I think the people of Wales will not forgive us, because if we get this wrong, if we don’t address this, it’ll be our neighbours, our family, our friends who will pay the price, and they won’t forgive us. So, we’ve got an opportunity here to take a lead in Wales, to do something before the rest of the United Kingdom, but the only way this is going to work is if we work together and that we’re brave and we’re honest with the people of Wales about what needs to happen. At some point, that conversation needs to be also about what they can contribute. It’s partly about carers, and us helping carers, but it may be at some point a financial discussion that we may need to have. We started the NHS; it was in Wales that that was started. My dream is to see a national care service developed in Wales as well, and I think together we can make that happen.

Thank you very much. Now I call on the Cabinet Secretary to reply to the debate. Vaughan Gething.

Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer, and also thank you to all Members who have contributed in today’s debate. I don’t think I’ll be able to cover all the points, but again, part of the point of having this debate today is for Members to put on the record a range of views as we go forward to the next stage of having the final report and then still having to make some choices. And I think that some of what we’ve heard—it’s been interesting in the debate to hear from a number of people, from Jenny, Caroline, Eluned and others, about the determinants of health and about the social determinants of health as well. And actually, the service, in terms of our health, only contributes a fairly small amount to our health outcomes. It’s actually those other, wider choices that we make and are made for us that contribute to our own health outcomes and the impact that has upon our care needs as well. That’s recognised in ‘Prosperity for All’, the whole-Government approach we’re taking. We recognise it isn’t just about saying the health service could and should do everything in that sense. It’s recognising there’s a relationship with other services, yes, but also that our economic prosperity and future matter so much as well.

I’ll go into some of the specifics that people have mentioned as well. I’m grateful to Angela, Rhun and Caroline as spokespeople, but also the constructive approach they’ve taken to today’s debate and the broad welcome for where we are, and again, highlighting this has been a genuinely independent review where the terms of reference have been agreed and people have had to make compromises and choices about what goes into the terms of reference to make sure we have a manageable piece of work to give us something to come back to that we can then make choices on to help determine the future of our whole system.

On the points made about staff across our whole service, the Minister Rebecca Evans already made some statements about the future for social care staff, career progression and the skill mix in the social care workforce. So, we are going to hear more from the Government on that. We won’t just wait for the report to be published. But there is definitely something there in terms of, in particular, some of the comments that Dawn’s made about needing to make sure that our staff are engaged in the conversation in the here and now, and not just for workforce planning but for determining some of those models for the future and making sure that the wider trade union will be involved in doing that as well.

What I wanted to pick up on, in terms of the comments that Rhun and Angela made as well about needing more doctors, nurses and other healthcare staff as well, is that this is perhaps the only area where we still expect the public sector to expand and for more staff to be available year on year on year. The demand is never, ‘How can you make do with less?’ in terms of staff; it’s always, ‘We need more doctors, more nurses, more healthcare professionals.’ There’s something about the honesty in the debate we need to have about this, because every group will come and make a demand for more of them. That’s understandable. Even as we talk about having a different spread of healthcare professionals delivering services, whether it’s in a hospital setting or within a community setting, we still need to have that honesty about, ‘There is a limited sum of money that all of us have to spend here’. And it doesn’t matter what your position is on austerity, it’s a fact of political life that we need to take account of in making our choices in the here and now and in the short and medium term.

Thank you for taking an intervention. Just very briefly, it’s not always about more and more staff. It’s making sure, for example, that where we train doctors in Wales, we keep more of them in Wales, because far too many medical students who are trained in Wales end up working outside Wales, and we want to train more of our own students here in Wales, including in Bangor.

Well, we don’t disagree about the fact that we want to train more people from Wales in Wales and keep them. We also still need to make sure that the international reality of recruiting healthcare staff is effective in who we get and why. There’s something here about how competitive we are with the rest of the world—the rest of the developed world—still competing for those same staff, and the review gives us an opportunity to recast our system to make it more attractive for people who are already here and those we want to attract in the future. I’m pleased to hear something that Suzy Davies said. She was quoting from the report but actually that sets out the prudent healthcare approach that my immediate predecessor set out in recognising the harm that is caused by some interventions in the service, when some things don’t actually do any good. There’s something here about the conversation with the public to understand that we need to fundamentally recast the way we deliver our service to deliver not just high quality and high value, but actually we could do so much more if we took out that unnecessary intervention.

I just wanted to say something before I finish on the comments that have been helpfully made about citizen voice and personal responsibility. I was interested to hear about Jenny’s conversation that she would have had in the Maelfa about the future of local healthcare and about people being properly engaged now about making choices and the level of pragmatism that many of our communities have about what they want and why. And this report gives us a staging post to try and continue that conversation about personal responsibility. So, what is the deal from the health and care system’s point of view? What will we provide? And then, what do we expect the citizen to do and how do we empower them to make more of their own choices? Because, typically, citizens who make their own choices—active choices—tend to make better ones, and it’s really important for the future health of our nation that that isn’t something that we allow to happen by accident. It’s something that we want to encourage positively, and that’s why the review has such an important function.

I’ll come to a conclusion now, Presiding Officer, because I see I’ve only got about 30 seconds left. I really do look forward to the independent review’s final report and the debates that we will then have to have, but also the choices that we will then have to make—difficult but necessary choices about our future. I do remain optimistic about our willingness to choose a plan path for the future. Because it isn’t just that the alternatives are awful if we allow things to happen to us, but there’s a real prize for all of us to grasp by having a system that we choose to design and deliver and really take forward the high-quality system that all of us wish to have now and in the future in every community in Wales.

Thank you. The proposal is to agree the motion. Does any Member object? No. Therefore, the motion is agreed in accordance with Standing Order 12.36.

And that brings today’s proceedings to a close. Thank you.