Cynulliad Cenedlaethol Cymru

I call the National Assembly to order.

The first item on our agenda this afternoon is questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government, and the first question is from Dai Lloyd.

Thank you very much. The Welsh Government provides funding for public service projects, large or small, within the City and County of Swansea, from £100,000 invest-to-save money for a new looked after children service to £100 million at the Morriston Hospital site.

Thank you very much for that response, Cabinet Secretary. Over the past few weeks, people from across Swansea have been in touch with concerns about the future of the Swansea Community Farm, which has done excellent work over a period of more than 20 years in providing learning opportunities for people of all ages. Unfortunately, it is now facing closure at the end of this month unless they can raise £50,000 to keep the farm open. Will you work with other members of your Government and Swansea council to try and safeguard the future of this important asset in the short term, whilst they look at alternative methods of fundraising in the longer term?

Well, thank you very much for the question. I am familiar with this issue. I saw the response issued by the leader of Swansea council, stating that additional funding is available for the farm to submit a bid, in order to see whether they can assist them in that manner. The county is going to assist the farm in the submission of that bid and I am happy to speak to other Cabinet colleagues to see whether there is anything that we can do. But we, as a Government, haven’t received any bid from the farm as yet.

Can I thank the Cabinet Secretary for his mention of Morriston Hospital? I, like everyone living in the Swansea city region, are very pleased with the work that’s being done in Morriston Hospital, and the work it’s doing, attracting the hub-and-spoke model for health across the whole of south-west Wales. The question I’ve got though is: the project of greatest importance to Swansea city at the moment is the Swansea city region and the need for financial support for that. What I’m asking is whether the Welsh Government will commit to continuing to fully support the Swansea city region project.

I’m very happy to give that commitment this afternoon, Llywydd. The Welsh Government has been ready to sign the Swansea city deal for some weeks now. We are frustrated by the actions of the UK Government in the different messages that different Ministers in that Government appear to relay. I was pleased to see the letter from the Chancellor of the Exchequer to Jonathan Edwards, the MP for Carmarthen East, in which the Chancellor again committed himself to the deal, and said that he hoped the Government would be in a position to move ahead with it very shortly. We certainly believe that they ought to be in that position.

Well, of course, Cabinet Secretary, one of the reasons for the delays is the UK Government’s concerns over the public/private sector balance with that city deal. And on that subject, if you like, I wonder if you could give us an indication—I appreciate you can’t give me a specific figure—of what proportion of Wales’s European funding in my region has gone on public service projects where the main delivery partner has come from either the private or the third sector?

I’m very happy to provide those figures and that level of detail to the Member. In general, as she knows, private sector partners are one of the major ways in which we’re able to deliver European funding alongside our universities, local government and the Welsh Government itself. Private sector partners are up there at that end of the league, and are fully represented at the programme monitoring committee, chaired by my colleague, Julie Morgan. I was pleased to be at that programme monitoring committee at the end of February, and to talk with private sector partners there, both about the way in which they are able to deploy funds under the current round, and how they can help us shape our thinking in relation to regional policy beyond Brexit.

Cabinet Secretary, the Welsh Government provide the City and County of Swansea with around £300 million per year to deliver public service to the people of Swansea. In the most recent National Survey for Wales, the number of people who felt that the City and County of Swansea delivered high-quality services was just over 50 per cent. Cabinet Secretary, do you believe that this represents value for money, and what can the Government do to ensure that local authorities deliver high-quality public services to the people whom they serve and, in the next survey, reach for the 70 per cent and expand on that in the future?

I do think that the people of Swansea get good value for money from the investment that we make in their public services—both health services and services provided by local authorities. Of course, we need to be ambitious for levels of satisfaction. Health service levels of satisfaction, as you know, at primary and secondary care are eye-wateringly high and always have been. I know that colleagues in local government aspire to achieving similar levels of satisfaction in the future.

To date, only one local authority, Caerphilly, has responded formally to the White Paper consultation on local government reform, which closes on 11 April. The Welsh Local Government Association, on behalf of local authorities in Wales, welcomed the White Paper, noting it had been formed by dialogue and engagement with local authorities.

Thank you. The initial response that I’ve received from councillors mainly, from all parts of Wales, does note a number of grave concerns. While supporting the efforts to make public services in Wales more effective, many are concerned that the proposals outlined in the White Paper put at risk the core principles of local government—principles related to being responsive and being accountable at a local level. Your proposals could put at risk the role of local authorities as a crucial part of democracy in Wales. Others ask whether the creation of these regional strata will lead to a more effective and efficient system. So, how do you intend to maintain this important accountability in that regional system, and will there be an analysis of the cost of the proposals contained within the White Paper?

Llywydd, as I said, we’ve received only one formal response to date, and that was a very constructive response, which, of course, raised questions and gave us new comments about trying to strengthen the White Paper. That is what I’m looking for from the respondents to the White Paper. If people ask questions, that does help, but it’s better still if they offer solutions and make representations on how we can strengthen our proposals in the White Paper, and to assist us in answering questions such as those raised by Sian Gwenllian this afternoon.

On a visit to Milford Haven recently with the Climate Change, Environment and Rural Affairs Committee, I was surprised to hear one senior officer of one of the public bodies in the meeting, saying that, at a senior level, surprise had been expressed that money was being paid to another organisation to carry out a function that was going to collectively benefit the community. How well do you think local authority and other public bodies are grasping the opportunities of public service boards as a new way of working and a new way of thinking about how we deliver the benefits for our communities?

I’ve been pleased with the progress that PSBs have made to date on their first core task, and that is the assessment of local well-being. I believe now, as a Government, we’ve received drafts of those assessments from all local authorities in Wales, and they’re being reviewed by my officials. I’ve had an opportunity to read parts of those assessments from different parts of Wales and I think that they demonstrate a genuinely engaged attempt to try and provide an asset-based approach to the assessment of well-being in their areas, looking at the strengths that their local populations have and how we can build on those better in the future. What they won’t be able to do is to succeed to the extent we would like them to succeed if they reflect the attitude that Jenny Rathbone expressed in the first part of her supplementary question. The whole thrust of PSBs and the White Paper on local government reform is to bring people together in new collaborative and co-operative relationships in which people will recognise that some things will be done by other organisations on behalf of a wider population, and that will be the right and proper way to do things.

Cabinet Secretary, I was going to raise the question of responses coming in with regard to voluntary mergers, and whether any local authorities had actually responded and wanted to come forward with voluntary mergers, which are a large part of your forthcoming local government reform in terms of looking for efficiency savings. Having only received one response—just one out of 22 local authorities—how do you intend to actually get stuck in now? We’ve been in disarray over the last three years in terms of local government reform. It doesn’t look to me that there’s an appetite to engage with you, having had only the one response. Therefore, how do you intend now to actually go forward and work with our local authorities to ensure that we’re not keeping our front-line workers and our elected members in a vague situation where no one knows what’s happening? I’m really disappointed to learn that we’ve only had one response.

I’m not disappointed, Llywydd, in the sense that the closing date for the consultation isn’t until 11 April. I’m absolutely confident that we will have a large number of responses from right across Wales by the closing date. There were two specific questions that the Member raised. We’ve received no formal request on the voluntary mergers front as yet. Frankly, with local government elections on the horizon, I wouldn’t have anticipated that any local authority would have made such a proposal with only a few weeks still to go. I will repeat what I’ve said in the White Paper—that where local authorities do come forward with proposals for voluntary merger, the Welsh Government wouldn’t look to be neutral on that but would look to support them where we could to try to bring those proposals to fruition. As to the Member’s final point, which I’ve now managed to forget in my answer—.

It was about engagement really.

Apologies. We were engaged very much with local authorities to encourage them to make sure that they do make those submissions, but it will be in their own best interests to do so, and that’s why I feel confident we will see a far larger number over the next few weeks.

Questions now from the party spokespeople. Plaid Cymru spokesperson, Adam Price.

Could we stay with the White Paper, Llywydd, and the recommendation on the regional map for Wales? It’s 20 years—I almost can’t believe it—since I was commissioned, along with Professor Kevin Morgan, by the Secretary of State at that time, Ron Davies, to redesign the regional map for Wales in terms of NUTS II, to create a Valleys and west Wales region, and an east Wales region, in order to engage with the most deprived areas and, in so doing, obtain Objective 1 status for Wales. This map does the opposite: it engages disadvantaged areas and the most prosperous areas. So, could I ask the Cabinet Secretary whether this is the map that he will use in discussing the future for any continuity in terms of regional funds? Also, is it the assisted areas map for Wales?

Well, of course, I remember that piece of work 20 years ago. I believe that I remember hearing the Member talking at a conference here in Cardiff about the work and what emanated from that work.

Mae’r map yn darparu tri ôl traed—tri ôl traed y dinas-ranbarthau i bob pwrpas—ac rydym yn dweud mai hwy a fydd yn gyfrifol am gyfrifoldebau datblygu economaidd. Yn yr ystyr hwnnw, mae’r map yn amlwg yn berthnasol i’r ffordd y byddai polisi rhanbarthol a pholisi datblygu economaidd rhanbarthol yn cael eu datblygu yng Nghymru ar ôl Brexit. Yr hyn nad wyf am ei wneud, fodd bynnag, yw cau pen y mwdwl ar y drafodaeth honno mewn unrhyw ffordd ar y pwynt hwn. Rwy’n credu bod angen llawer o ystyried pellach, llawer o ymgysylltu pellach â phobl yn y sector, ynglŷn â sut y caiff y polisi rhanbarthol hwnnw ei ddatblygu a beth allai daearyddiaeth hynny fod. Os ydym yn ceisio edrych ar rai o fanteision Brexit, yna efallai y byddem yn dweud y gallai mwy o hyblygrwydd daearyddol o ran y modd y defnyddiwn y cyllid fod yn un ohonynt, ac yn sicr mae hwnnw wedi bod yn bwynt a wnaed yn y pwyllgor monitro rhaglenni, lle y mae trafodaethau ar bolisi rhanbarthol y dyfodol eisoes, yn ddefnyddiol iawn, wedi dechrau.

I’m grateful to the Cabinet Secretary for his considered response. Now, we heard in the Economy, Infrastructure and Skills Committee this morning some concern expressed by the Bevan Foundation, for example, and by Professor Karel Williams, that there is an overdependence on the model and the map, which is, in the south, based on the city regions, and, in the north, based on the growth deal for north Wales, and the risk of actually diluting the focus on those most deprived areas in the northern Valleys, for example, or the north-west of Wales. Will he look at the alternative ideas that are being proposed by the Bevan Foundation in terms of creating an enterprise zone for the Valleys, and by my own party in terms of creating a new version of the Development Board for Rural Wales and also a development body that is purpose-built for the Valleys?

Well, Llywydd, I have a great interest in the work of the Bevan Foundation. Professor Karel Williams’s work was part of the discussions in the PMC back in Merthyr in February, where the debate was about place.

Sut y gallwn gael ymdeimlad o le yn y ffordd yr ydym yn llunio ein polisïau datblygu economaidd rhanbarthol yn y dyfodol sy’n ystyried y mannau hynny lle y ceir y crynodiadau mwyaf o anfantais, heb ei wneud mewn ffordd sydd i’w gweld yn ynysu’r cymunedau hynny rhag posibiliadau sydd i’w cael gerllaw neu o gwmpas eu ffiniau? Ac roedd yn drafodaeth ddiddorol iawn, gyda chyfraniadau gan yr holl sectorau gwahanol o amgylch y bwrdd ynglŷn â’r ffordd orau i ni fapio dyfodol, yn ddaearyddol ac yn gysyniadol, sy’n ein galluogi i ddod o hyd i ffordd o ystyried anghenion penodol iawn y rhai sydd â’r anghenion mwyaf heb eu hynysu, fel y dywedais, rhag cyfleoedd y mae angen iddynt fod wedi’u cysylltu â hwy ac a fyddai’n gwneud gwahaniaeth i’w dyfodol pe bai gennym gyfres wahanol o syniadau ynglŷn â sut y gall polisïau sy’n seiliedig ar le weithredu’n fwy llwyddiannus yn y dyfodol.

We had a perhaps less considered dialogue a few days ago across this Chamber on the question of the balance of investment by Welsh Government across our regions, and let me emphasise that there is nothing I would say that would be anti-Cardiff in any sense, but would the Cabinet Secretary be willing to commission research so that we have statistics to look at the gulf that exists and has been there over a period of decades in terms of investment by Welsh Government in the various regions?

And, finally, in focusing on a golden opportunity for the Valleys, I’m not going to ask him to tell us what the Welsh Government’s decision will be, but this is part of his remit, could the Cabinet Secretary tells us whether any decision or any announcement on the Circuit of Wales will be affected or impacted by Welsh Government rules on purdah within local government, which will come into force in 10 days’ time? As it is an announcement of national importance, perhaps it won’t affected by purdah.

Chair, I heard the exchanges in the Chamber yesterday between the leader of the house and the Member in relation to investment in different parts of Wales. There is a lot of information already available on patterns of investment over recent years and I’m sure that information can be made available. I am myself more focused on making sure that we make the right investments for the future and that we invest our scarce capital resources in a way that secures prosperity for all, right across Wales.

As to the question of the Circuit of Wales, I know that my colleague Ken Skates has embarked upon what he has already promised to this Chamber, which is a period of scrutiny of the final plans that have been received from the Circuit of Wales. He will want to do that with a proper sense of due diligence and it will have to take the time that is required to do that job. I’m sure he’s aware of the purdah issue, but he will be focused, I’m sure, on making sure that the plans that have been submitted are subject to the right level of scrutiny so that he can make a recommendation in due course to the National Assembly.

The Welsh Conservatives’ spokesperson, Nick Ramsay.

Will the Cabinet Secretary update us on any inter-governmental discussions on the roll-out of tax devolution in the wake of the agreement on the fiscal framework?

Well, thank you, Llywydd. Since the fiscal framework was signed between the UK Government and the Welsh Government in December, I’ve continued to meet with the Chief Secretary to the Treasury. I met him last in Edinburgh in a quadrilateral meeting between finance Ministers, at which fiscal devolution in all parts of the United Kingdom was discussed. Two aspects, I suppose: how we make the system we’ve now agreed work effectively; what things we need to see on the horizon that we might want to put on future agendas for work between us.

Thank you, Cabinet Secretary. As you know, there was cross-party support for the fiscal framework and we welcome its implementation. This morning, in Finance Committee, we took evidence from the Office for Budget Responsibility on the next big challenge—accurate forecasts of Welsh tax is no easy task. I’m sure you agree accuracy is vital, because the forecasts will be used to make future block grant deductions. What discussions have you had with the OBR about forecasting and how do you envisage working with them in the future to ensure that forecasts are as accurate as possible?

Well, Llywydd, I met Robert Chote, the head of the OBR, in Cardiff just before Christmas to discuss the work of the OBR and how it can capture data that are important to us in Wales. But, as Nick Ramsay will know, one of the key things that we secured in the fiscal framework was an independent stream of advice—independent of the OBR—that would come particularly from a Welsh perspective should we need to deploy that as part of the fiscal framework agreement. Part of the agreement was that we would secure independent scrutiny of the Welsh Government’s forecasts for the near future and I was pleased to issue a written statement to Members a few days ago, confirming that Bangor University has been successful in securing the contract to provide that independent oversight.

Thank you. The OBR—and others, indeed—have identified that, in recent years, growth in income receipts has been significantly lower in Wales than across the UK, due in part to issues like the raising of the personal allowance threshold and the shifting of the burden higher up the income scale, with lower incomes forming a greater proportion of the Welsh tax base. It’s vital that forecasting is tailored to Welsh needs and I’m pleased with the answer that you’ve just given as to how you’re trying to achieve an independent view of Welsh tax needs and Welsh forecasting.

As I said before, it’s vital that we do have accurate forecasts. It’s vital that we don’t have a one-size-fits-all solution to that. In the absence of a Welsh fiscal commission, how do you plan to ensure the highest input of Welsh data and Welsh experience over the years to come into the process of forecasting, which is so vital in terms of the amount of money we receive in the block grant?

Llywydd, let me begin by agreeing with the general points that Nick Ramsay is making—the importance of having good, independent oversight of the process and accurate data that give us the best possible and reliable outcomes. Economic forecasting is an art, not a science, and the OBR—with its resources that we will never be able to match—you will know that, in a six-month period, its forecasts are able to move very significantly in some very important areas.

So, even with very good data, and with very good resources, this remains an imprecise activity. I met the chair of the Scottish Fiscal Commission, Lady Susan Rice, when I was in Edinburgh a few weeks ago to learn from them as to how they have gone about securing that sort of advice. I’m still thinking with officials about the best way to provide that stream of independent oversight beyond the contract with Bangor, which is for the immediate future. Whether we need a full-blown commission for the level of fiscal devolution we have, I think is a question we have to be prepared to ask, but that doesn’t mean to say that there aren’t alternative ways in which we can secure the sort of assistance and independent input into this process that Nick Ramsay has rightly highlighted this afternoon.

UKIP spokesperson, Mark Reckless.

The Scottish First Minister has said that her Government is now to seek a second independence referendum. One of the challenges she will face is that, on a stand-alone basis, Scotland is running a deficit of some 9 per cent or 10 per cent of gross domestic product, compared to 4 per cent for the UK as a whole. It’s estimated, therefore, that an independent Scotland would have to fill a fiscal hole of some £15 billion to 16 billion. Has the Cabinet Secretary made any estimate of the equivalent figure for Wales?

Well, there are figures of that sort available for Wales, of course, but matters for Scotland, Llywydd, are a matter for the Scottish Parliament and then for the Scottish people to weigh up and come to a decision.

The Wales Governance Centre has helpfully recently published a report where it sets out total Welsh public sector spending by all levels of Government. The most recent year—2014-15—for which they have comparable data was £38 billion. That compares with total public sector revenues drawn from Wales of £23.3 billion. So, the report finds that Wales’s net fiscal balance was a deficit of £14.7 billion, almost the same as Scotland, despite a significantly smaller economy, which would leave a fiscal gap of 24 per cent of GDP. Given that gap, and Wales’s dependence on fiscal transfers from England, is it sensible for the First Minister to say that Scotland should be the model for Wales?

I’m sure the First Minister was right to point to the fact that there are many ways in which Scotland can be a model for Wales, just as there are many things that we do here that Scotland regards as a model that they can learn from as well. So, there are no points to be made of a sensible nature from that remark. What there is, as the Member says—and, from this Government’s point of view, we are a devolutionist Government that believes in being part of the United Kingdom. The reason we believe in being part of the United Kingdom is that we regard it as an insurance policy in which we pool our risks and we share rewards. I don’t believe that questions that appear to pit one part of the United Kingdom against another and to say that one part is being subsidised by another—I don’t think that’s a helpful way of thinking about things. The Member will be aware that the same report from the Wales Governance Centre says that Wales makes a greater fiscal effort per head of the population that any other part of the United Kingdom. We all make contributions, we all have needs that we are able to address, and I think that that is the most sensible way of trying to think about these matters.

So, £7,500, approximately, per head is raised in tax in Wales, compared to £10,000 across the UK as a whole. I’m glad to hear the Cabinet Secretary’s restatement and clarification that his party, at least, and the Government he leads, is a devolutionist one, because, in many of the actions of this Government, agreement is sought with a certain party opposite—and I’m never quite clear whether they are in opposition or supporting the Government, but their signature policy of independence for Wales is supported by a mere 6 per cent of people living in Wales. Now, the Cabinet Secretary spoke earlier about a quadrilateral meeting, and the First Minister has put great emphasis on the Joint Ministerial Committee sort of structure, but are we not in a very different situation? Not only did Wales, as England, vote for leaving the European Union, and did so by more than the UK as a whole, the situation we face is that Northern Ireland has no government, and it’s not clear when they will have a government, while the Scottish Government will, for the foreseeable future, be agitating for independence, seeking pretext for dispute, rather than trying to make the UK work. In that situation, should the Welsh Government not put a greater emphasis on bilateral meetings and negotiation with the UK Government to get the best result for Wales, as the Cabinet Secretary sought to do with the fiscal framework?

Bilateral contacts with UK Government are important. On the Brexit front, I met with the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union the week before last, and the First Minister met bilaterally with him last week. But these things are not, in the end, a substitute for the JMC process and, indeed, for a better, improved and substantially stepped up JMC process. The Scottish Minister for leaving the European Union said very explicitly to me that, despite the fact that they have a political set of ambitions that they hope to take forward in the way that the First Minister of Scotland has set out, Scotland intended to continue to be participating members of the JMC. Coming together in that way, where the four component parts of the United Kingdom share ideas and attempt to find common solutions to common problems, I think, is not to be sidelined by bilateral contacts. Bilateral contacts supplement them and are important, but they are not a substitute for them.

I thank Julie Morgan for the question. The Welsh Government will always aim to make best use of any new funding available to us. The consequentials that arise from the spring budget do nothing to reverse the UK Government’s pursuit of the damaging policy of austerity.

Before you ask the supplementary question, I believe you’ve requested a grouping of this question with question 4.

And you’ve been able to agree that, Llywydd?

Yes. Consider it done. [Laughter.]

Thank you.

The Chancellor announced in his budget a £5 million fund to celebrate next year’s centenary of the first British woman to get the vote in 1918. This is, I know, a small amount of money in relation to the whole of the budget, but I wondered if the Cabinet Secretary could tell us how much of that money we would receive in Wales, how would that money be distributed and to what sort of projects.

I thank Julie Morgan for that question. Wales’s share of that £5 million fund is £294,000. That’s the consequential of it. The Welsh Cabinet will meet on Tuesday of next week to consider how we will use budget consequentials, and that will be part of our consideration.

Minister, I really welcome the fact that this Welsh Labour Government has continued to prioritise investment in social services, in contrast to the approach that’s been taken in recent years in England, but it remains the case that pressure on social services is immense. I hope that you are giving very serious consideration to using the additional funding to tackle those pressures. I know that you’re well aware of my continued concern about the reduction in funding for the Family Fund. What assurances can you offer that addressing the pressures in social services will be a top priority for you, and would you agree with me that this additional money presents an excellent opportunity to review the support for disabled children in general and the cut to the Family Fund specifically?

Well, Llywydd, it’s because of the priority that we have always attached to social services that social services in Wales have not suffered from the cuts that have been experienced across our border. Our social services do face very considerable pressures from demography and other factors—I absolutely acknowledge that—but they are in a better place to face those pressures than other services are elsewhere. The Member will have seen the report published only last week by Wales Public Services 2025 that confirms that, again, in this financial year, spending on health and social services in Wales is 106 per cent of spending in England, and it’s why, in the budget that was put in front of this Assembly for next year, in agreement with Plaid Cymru, £25 million extra was identified in the RSG for social services, and then a further £10 million recurrent funding was identified between the final and draft budget, to help social services departments come to a tripartite solution to the pressures of the so-called living wage in social care. In the run-up to the budget, I wrote to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, urging him to find additional funding for social care, and that matter will certainly be on the table when colleagues in the Cabinet meet on Tuesday of next week to discuss the consequentials. How that money is used, if any of it can be made available for social services, will of course be a matter for the Minister concerned, but she will certainly be aware of the Member’s views and will have heard what she has said this afternoon.

Cabinet Secretary, will you join me in welcoming the £50 million increase to the Welsh Government’s capital budget that will now come as a result of the budget, which builds on the £400 million increase announced in the autumn statement? This does give us some real flexibility in terms of capital development.

Well, Chair, I welcome any extra money that comes to Wales. The £50 million additional capital is over a four-year period. When you take it into account with the autumn statement money, it means that our capital budgets will only be 21 per cent, now, less in 2019-20, compared to what they were in 2009-10. So, the Chancellor has gone some way—some small way—to filling the hole that his predecessor had created.

In previous UK budgets, there has been considerable disagreement on how the UK Government has classified certain spending lines, particularly in capital spending—so, whether they designate a project UK-wide where there is no Barnett consequential, or England only where there is. Has the Cabinet Secretary made any assessment on the recent budget in terms of whether there has been any evidence to suggest similar accounting jiggery-pokery as far as Barnett consequentials are concerned?

Well, the Member can be sure that we are eagle-eyed in looking for exactly those sorts of manoeuvres, and my officials have been looking very closely at the detail of what was said by the Chancellor last week. As you know, the budget turns out to be a very moving feast indeed, and moved again only within the last hour with a further retreat from the proposals that were made only a week ago. But we do look very directly at the point the Member has made and challenge where we need to, where we think that classifications are being wrongly deployed to the disadvantage of Barnett consequentials.

The spring budget provides a £150 million boost to the Welsh Government resource budget and £50 million to its capital budget, as mentioned earlier. The Welsh Government recently announced an additional £10 million a year for social care in Wales, to help meet the additional costs of the national minimum wage. Will the Cabinet Secretary agree to give strong consideration to using some of the increase in the block grant to provide additional finance for social care in Wales, please?

Well, as I think I’ve said this afternoon already, Llywydd, Members can be assured that social care will be properly considered when the Cabinet meets to look at ways in which we are able to deploy any of the additional resources that have come to Wales as a result of last week’s budget.

I was indeed going to ask you about the impact on the block grant of the national insurance rises, particularly for small and medium-sized enterprises in rural Wales, but the smell of the rubber from that particular u-turn is still fresh in my nostrils. So, let me ask, instead: one issue that wasn’t addressed in this budget that does impact on a lot of Welsh residents is that of state pension inequality for women—the WASPI campaign. Is it still the position of this Welsh Government that you are seeking a resolution of that issue, and have you had any conversations with the Chief Secretary or anyone else in the Westminster Government about addressing that in further budgets going forward?

Llywydd, we were very disappointed that the Chancellor failed to take an opportunity last week to grasp that issue and to respond to the points that are very properly made by that campaign. We take the opportunities that are available to us to continue to raise matters of that sort with the Chief Secretary and with the UK Government more generally, and had hoped that the budget would have been thought of as an opportunity to redress some of the injustices that that campaign has highlighted.

I thank Angela Burns for the question. The Welsh Government continues to encourage local government to conduct its business in an open and transparent manner. The current White Paper on reforming local government proposes a range of ways to further increase transparency.

Thank you for that answer, Cabinet Secretary. My understanding is that the current White Paper, though, has dropped the obligation for councillors to publish an annual report to increase transparency and to allow voters to see what their representatives have been doing. I wondered if you could perhaps explain that a little bit further and explain why that requirement has been watered down and, if it has, why you feel that regular and consistent reporting by all councillors on the work they undertake for those they represent is not a suitable mechanism for open and accountable government.

Well, Llywydd, I absolutely agree that it is an obligation on any elected councillor to remain in a continuous relationship with those people who have elected them. What the White Paper does is to set up a menu of ways in which a local councillor can demonstrate that they have done that. They will have to demonstrate that they have done it. But if you are a local councillor, for example, who publishes four quarterly newsletters and delivers them around your ward, then I think you’ve gone beyond a single annual report in demonstrating that you are delivering on the obligation that the White Paper does create, that you as a councillor must be able to show that you are doing what we would, I think, collectively agree that you should do. So, there is a menu of choices that councillors will be able to use to show that they are doing it. An annual report is one, but there are other ways as well. Councillors will have to show what they have done from that list of things to remain in that continuously answerable relationship with their populations.

Cabinet Secretary, do you want equal pay enough to introduce pay transparency in local government, since transparency is a vital step towards equal pay?

Well, I agree that transparency is very important in relation to pay. It’s why, in December 2015, the Welsh Government published ‘Transparency of Senior Remuneration in the Devolved Welsh Public Sector’, a set of principles and guidance. It’s why the Public Services Staff Commission was asked to develop guidance on this, which they published in December of last year. That guidance was discussed at the workforce partnership council, which I chaired last week, with employers and trade unions. We remain committed to taking further steps, where necessary, to ensure that there is transparency in the way that pay is reported in the Welsh public service.

The budget of 2017-18, approved by the Assembly, reflects our agreement with Plaid Cymru to provide £3 million for pilot schemes to support free town-centre car parking.

Thank you, Cabinet Secretary, for your answer. Can I ask what further details you can give on the £3 million fund for a pilot scheme to support town-centre parking and how it will operate? What involvement, so far, have you had with local authorities across Wales? I will say that one local authority that I did write to recently informed me that they were unaware of this funding or how to apply for it and, as a result, have not made any submission to the Welsh Government to receive this funding.

Well, Llywydd, local authorities don’t have to apply to receive the funding because they receive it through the RSG. So, they will all receive their share of the funding. Let me say that I do expect that every local authority in Wales will participate in the new scheme. I understand that my colleague Carl Sargeant met with Plaid Cymru’s spokesperson on this matter earlier today. The Cabinet Secretary, Carl Sargeant, has written to all local authorities today, and the letter has already been published, in which he sets out a series of requirements and guidelines to make sure that local authorities are aware of the scheme and that they will participate within it in the way that we would have expected.

Plaid Cymru is disappointed that the funding for the free parking programme is being distributed through the revenue support grant, rather than there being a specific pot available for councils to bid for, because there is a risk that this funding won’t be used to its intended purpose. But I do understand, following the meeting I had this morning, and at my request, that you will be contacting all council leaders asking them to allocate the funding for this specific programme. Will you therefore confirm that your Government is asking councils to use the funding for free parking, as was agreed between the two parties, as part of an ongoing attempt to improve our high streets across Wales?

Well, I understand, Chair, that whenever anybody has a particular scheme that they are committed to, they would like to see it in a special grant because it’s more visible in that way. That’s always in a bit of a conflict with the principle that local authorities of all parties prefer that money should go into the RSG to allow greater flexibility for people on the ground. In this case, I decided that it would go into the RSG, but that it would be very carefully monitored. The Cabinet Secretary’s letter makes that clear. We want to have innovation. We want to allow local authorities to develop pilots that work best in their own localities, with the aim—. As Sian Gwenllian said, the shared aim of them all is to do more to allow our high streets to be thriving places where businesses can operate successfully and local people can feel that they are provided with something that is vibrant and worth while in their lives, too.

Thank you, Cabinet Secretary.

The next item on our agenda is questions to the Assembly Commission. The first question is from Simon Thomas.

I thank the Member for his question. I would like to say that, following on from my response to your question on this matter in October, I am pleased to confirm that arrangements are in hand for two charging points to be installed on the estate. These will utilise a pay-as-you-go card/keyfob payment system that will allow for charging of electric vehicles on site and an easy payment scheme for the user. Once it is in place, we will promote knowledge of the facility amongst Members and staff. We hope that this provision will encourage the use of electric vehicles.

I thank the Commissioner for her reply, and I welcome very much the development and the response to earlier questions on this, and the fact that we will shortly have charging points for electric vehicles in the Assembly. Battery technology is not quite there for the battery that takes me from Aberystwyth to the Assembly in one go yet, but I think it’s almost there. I think it is important as well that we send a very clear statement of our sustainability principles and that we welcome all forms of sustainable transport to the Assembly. I look forward, therefore, and would like confirmation from the Commissioner that this will be available to both staff and Assembly Members, and also visitors.

I’d like to thank the Member again for asking about the electric vehicles. I’d like to say that we will need to go through the proper procurement process, and this is going to take some time. But following the survey that was sent out in February, there was a more positive response to electric vehicles, and we have responded affirmatively. I’d like to say that we are hoping and being positive that this would be completed by the summer—the charging bays—but we obviously have to allow time for contingencies. Thank you.

I welcome the introduction of the two charging points on the Assembly estate. Could you elucidate whether or not this would be exclusively on the National Assembly site here in Cardiff, or whether there might be other charging points on other parts of the National Assembly’s estate up in north Wales? Because, like Simon Thomas said, one of the major problems is that it’s not possible to get from south Wales to north Wales because there aren’t sufficient charging points to enable you to get there.

I thank the Member for her question. I’d like to say that, at the moment, we are looking just at two charging points in Tŷ Hywel, but obviously, we’ll see the success of this, and we’re interested in looking at this positively and reducing the carbon emissions footprint. We want to progress with this idea, so with progression I would anticipate that we would be looking at other sites.

The next item on our agenda is the 90-second statements. Hannah Blythyn.

March marks Ovarian Cancer Awareness Month. Ovarian cancer is the fifth most common cancer in women. In the UK alone, around 7,200 women are diagnosed with the disease annually, and there are approximately 4,300 deaths due to ovarian cancer each year. Many of us here have a family member, a friend or will know somebody who has been affected by ovarian cancer. And although this is a relatively rare cancer, the fact that one woman dies every two hours from the disease testifies to the need to tackle this, to raise awareness and to bust the myths around ovarian cancer with both women and practitioners alike.

Ovarian cancer has been called ‘the silent killer’ because of the difficulty in diagnosis, but there are symptoms to be aware of. Knowing, taking seriously and acting on these symptoms is a crucial factor in the fight to crack this cruel cancer. The main symptoms to look out for are persistent stomach pain, persistent bloating, finding it difficult to eat or feeling full quickly, and needing to urinate more often. We know that 90 per cent of women are not aware of these four main symptoms. More can and must be done to raise awareness around ovarian cancer. The Ovarian Cancer Action charity recommends that, if you experience any symptoms, don’t ignore them, act quickly and talk to your general practitioner. If diagnosed at stage 1, women have a 90 per cent survival rate from ovarian cancer. Early detection is a lifesaver; knowing the symptoms makes a difference.

Spot on. Simon Thomas.

Thank you, Llywydd. At 40 years of age this year, the Dyfi Biosphere has been one of the six designated UNESCO biosphere reserves in the UK. It was renamed and extended in 2001, and by now it extends from Aberystwyth to Llanbryn-mair and from Borth to Dinas Mawddwy. It has a clear, decisive vision, namely that the Dyfi Biosphere will be recognised and respected internationally, nationally and locally for the diversity of its natural beauty, its heritage and its wildlife, and for the effort of the people there to make a positive contribution to a more sustainable world. It will be a self-confident, healthy, caring and bilingual community, supported by a strong locally based economy.

To meet that challenging and exciting vision, it has nine main objectives. One of them is to ensure that it will be a bilingual community that will be recognised and respected for its heritage. Therefore, the biosphere status relates to far more than just the environment—it encompasses the situation of the Welsh language around the Dyfi estuary.

I’d like to thank and applaud the Dyfi Biosphere for its work, not only as a platform for sustainable development, but for its decisiveness in placing the Welsh language at the heart of its activities. I therefore encourage the Welsh Government to respect and promote the biosphere as an exemplar of sustainability in Wales that has international status, and to work with UNESCO to secure its future.

Spot on.

The next item on our agenda is the motion under Standing Order 26.91 seeking the Assembly’s approval to bring forward a Member Bill on the protection of historic place names in Wales. I call on Dai Lloyd to move the motion.

Thank you, Llywydd, for the opportunity to explain the rationale for proposing this Billon protecting historical place names, and for giving Members an opportunity to discuss the means by which the Bill may develop. Essentially, there is no protection now. I hope to use this debate to explain to members the very clear policy objective that I have in mind, to show that I have undertaken consultation with a range of organisations and experts in the field, to show that there is support for the Bill’s aims, and that there are a range of options open to us in being able to deliver against the policy objectives. I will also state how I believe that we can look to learn from international experiences in this field in developing the legislation.

Essentially, the purpose of the Bill is very simple—it is to protect historical place names in Wales, and to try and ensure that a key element of our local and national heritage is not lost. Members across the Chamber will be aware of the high-profile examples of historic place names that have been lost or have been at risk of being lost and have received media attention as a result—changing ‘Maes-llwch’ in Powys to ‘Foyles’, ‘Cwm Cneifion’ in Snowdonia to ‘Nameless Cwm’, and ‘Faerdre Fach’ farm near Llandysul, which is now promoted as ‘Happy Donkey Hill’ farm.

Fel mab ffarm, mae diwylliant amaethyddol yn bwysig i mi. Ac mae’n bwysig nodi bod gan bron pob cae ar ffermydd Cymru enw penodol hanesyddol—a phob craig a bryn, i’r perwyl hynny hefyd—ond bod llawer ohonynt nawr mewn perig o gael eu colli. Maen nhw ar hen fapiau ond nid o reidrwydd ar fapiau modern. Yn wir, ar draws Cymru, mae enwau ffermydd, caeau, tai hanesyddol, nodweddion naturiol a thirweddau yn cael eu colli. Yn aml, mae ein henwau lleoedd ni yn adlewyrchu topograffeg ardal, cysylltiad â pherson hanesyddol neu nodedig, cysylltiad â digwyddiadau yn y gorffennol, er enghraifft brwydrau fel Garn Goch yn Abertawe, lle collwyd lot o waed—dyna’r ‘coch’—neu gyfnodau, fel ymosodiadau, sydd wedi cael effaith ar hanes cymdeithasol-ddiwylliannol ac economaidd Cymru, a hefyd y cysylltiad â hanes diwylliannol lleoliad, er enghraifft cysylltiadau â thraddodiadau, diwydiant a chwedlau.

Mae colli’r enwau yma yn meddwl ein bod ni’n colli ein treftadaeth leol a chenedlaethol. Yn wir, mae Llywodraeth Cymru eisoes yn cydnabod pwysigrwydd yr enwau yma, ac mae Deddf yr Amgylchedd Hanesyddol (Cymru) 2016, a gafodd ei gynnig gan y Llywodraeth, yn rhoi dyletswydd ar Weinidogion Cymru i—ac rwy’n dyfynnu nawr—

‘lunio rhestr o enwau lleoedd hanesyddol yng Nghymru.’

O ran cynnwys y rhestr hon, mae memorandwm esboniadol y Bil yn nodi:

‘Mae enwau lleoedd hanesyddol yn dystiolaeth werthfawr o ran hanes cymdeithasol, diwylliannol ac ieithyddol. Mae enwau aneddiadau, tai a ffermydd, caeau a nodweddion naturiol yn darparu gwybodaeth am arferion amaethyddol y presennol a’r gorffennol, diwydiannau lleol, sut mae’r dirwedd wedi newid a chymunedau’r presennol a’r gorffennol. Maent yn dystiolaeth o ddatblygiad treftadaeth ieithyddol gyfoethog—yn Gymraeg, yn Saesneg ac mewn ieithoedd eraill.’

Mae hyn yn adlewyrchu ein hanes dros y 2,000 o flynyddoedd diwethaf. Mae enwau Cymraeg, Lladin, Eingl-Sacsonaidd, Llychlynnaidd, Ffrengig, Normanaidd, Saesneg—maen nhw yna i gyd, ac unrhyw iaith arall rwyf wedi anghofio sôn amdani.

Mae’r rhestr genedlaethol hon yn y broses o gael ei chreu, gyda Chomisiwn Brenhinol Henebion Cymru yn arwain ar y gwaith. Felly, mae diffiniad o enw hanesyddol yna’n barod. Mae gyda ni restr yn barod. Mae arbenigwyr penodol yn helpu gyda’r gwaith ac, ar y foment, mae mwy na 300,000 o enwau hanesyddol ar y rhestr yma. Mae angen gwneud yn siŵr bod y gofrestr yma yn ddibynadwy ac yn awdurdodol, ac wrth sicrhau hyn, fe fydd hi’n bosibl defnyddio’r rhestr hon fel sail i ddeddfwriaeth ychwanegol i ddiogelu a hyrwyddo’r enwau lleoedd hanesyddol sydd arni.

Yn dilyn y balot llwyddiannus ar 25 Ionawr eleni, fe wnaeth nifer o sefydliadau ac unigolion sydd â diddordeb mewn diogelu enwau lleoedd hanesyddol ddangos eu diddordeb i mi a'u cefnogaeth ar gyfer egwyddor gyffredinol ac amcanion polisi’r Bil. Rwyf wedi cysylltu ac ymgynghori gyda nifer o fudiadau ac arbenigwyr yn y maes, ac fel rhan o’r broses ymgynghori yma, penderfynwyd cynnal digwyddiad penodol i randdeiliaid ar 17 Chwefror, yma yn y Senedd. Roeddwn yn falch iawn gweld cymaint yn mynychu, gan gynnwys cynrychiolwyr ac unigolion o Gomisiwn Brenhinol Henebion Cymru, yr Ymddiriedolaeth Genedlaethol, yr Arolwg Ordnans, Cymdeithas Enwau Lleoedd Cymru, Prifysgol Caerdydd, Cymdeithas Llywodraeth Leol Cymru, swyddfa Comisiynydd y Gymraeg a Chymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg.

Mae cefnogaeth i amcanion y Bil wedi ei derbyn wrth Gymdeithas Enwau Lleoedd Cymru, Mynyddoedd Pawb, Comisiynydd y Gymraeg ac amryw o unigolion eraill, gan gynnwys academyddion ac arbenigwyr yn y maes. Prif nod y digwyddiad i randdeiliaid yma ar 17 Chwefror oedd i drafod cwmpas y Bil, yr opsiynau o ran fframweithiau deddfwriaethol a chostau posibl y Bil. Fe wnaeth y trafodaethau hynny ddangos yn glir fod yna amrywiaeth o ffyrdd y gellid diogelu enwau lleoedd hanesyddol.

Mae’r sbectrwm yma yn cynnwys, ymysg eraill, sicrhau bod perchnogion tir yn ymwybodol o arwyddocâd hanesyddol eu henwau lleoedd; neu gyflwyno gofyniad i berchnogion tir neu gyrff cyhoeddus ymgynghori â chorff cyhoeddus penodol, neu gyrff cyhoeddus penodol, pan fyddant yn newid enw lle hanesyddol; neu ei gwneud yn ofynnol i berchnogion tir neu gyrff cyhoeddus ddefnyddio enwau lleoedd hanesyddol wrth baratoi gwybodaeth sydd ar gael i’r cyhoedd; neu, eto, gyflwyno cyfundrefn ganiatâd wrth fynd ati i newid enw lle hanesyddol; neu gyflwyno gwaharddiad cyffredinol ar newid enwau lleoedd hanesyddol; neu, yn olaf, gyfuniad o’r opsiynau gwahanol cynt, gan ddibynnu o bosibl ar y math o enw neu sefyllfa lle y gallai enw gael ei newid. Mae’n bwysig nodi bod dim diogelwch ar gael i enwau lleoedd hanesyddol ar y foment, ond am y ffaith eu bod nhw’n bodoli, neu yn mynd i fodoli ar y rhestr genedlaethol sy’n cael ei datblygu gan Gomisiwn Brenhinol Henebion Cymru. Felly, byddai unrhyw un o’r opsiynau uchod, ar y sbectrwm, yn gam ymlaen.

Rwyf wedi gweithio yn agos â’r Gwasanaeth Ymchwil a gwasanaeth deddfwriaeth y Cynulliad dros y mis diwethaf, ac yn ddiolchgar tu hwnt iddynt oll am eu gwaith wrth i ni ddatblygu opsiynau ar gyfer y Bil. Yn dilyn y gwaith yma, rwy’n gwbl argyhoeddedig ei bod hi’n bosib i greu deddfwriaeth bositif yn y maes, ac hefyd o’r posibilrwydd o edrych at wledydd eraill a sut y maen nhw’n mynd ati i warchod enwau hanesyddol. Mae gwledydd fel Seland Newydd, er enghraifft, yn cydnabod pwysigrwydd enwau hanesyddol, ac wedi datblygu deddfwriaeth, ac felly mae yna botensial i ddysgu wrth eraill wrth i ni ddatblygu deddfwriaeth yma yng Nghymru. Yn amlwg, yn dilyn y bleidlais heddiw, rwy’n gobeithio y bydd gen i flwyddyn arall i ddatblygu’r Bil yma, ac i benderfynu ar fodel a strwythur o ddeddfwriaeth briodol. Rwy’n edrych ymlaen at wrando ac i gydweithio ag Aelodau ar draws y Siambr i sicrhau ein bod ni’n gallu datblygu’r ddeddfwriaeth yma. Yn wir, mae’r trafodaethau hynny eisoes wedi dechrau, ac roeddwn yn falch o gael cyfle i drafod y mater gyda’r Ysgrifennydd Cabinet dros ddiwylliant yr wythnos diwethaf, ac hefyd yr wythnos yma, a byddwn yn gobeithio gweld y trafodaethau hynny yn parhau wrth i’r Bil ddatblygu.

Mae gofyniad yn Rheol Sefydlog 26.91A(iv) i gynnal asesiad cychwynnol o unrhyw gostau neu arbedion sy’n deillio o’r Bil, ac mae cryn dipyn o waith wedi’i wneud i drio ystyried yr agwedd yma. Gan fy mod i’n ystyried ystod o opsiynau o ran sut y bydd y Bil hwn yn cael ei ddatblygu, daeth i’r amlwg yn ystod y digwyddiad rhanddeiliaid cychwynnol, a gynhaliwyd ar 17 Chwefror, y bydd cyfle i greu Bil na fyddai’n esgor ar effaith ormodol, ond a fyddai’n dal yn driw i egwyddor y bwriad o warchod enwau lleoedd hanesyddol Cymru. Mae hyn wedi’i nodi fel rhan o’r memorandwm esboniadol i’r Bil, sy’n cynnwys ysgrifennu canllawiau a gwneud newidiadau i ddeddfwriaeth yn hysbys; sefydlu neu ddilysu rhestr gyfredol o leoedd ac enwau; unrhyw gostau ymgynghori a allai fod yn rhan o system weithredu a sefydlir gan y Bil a/neu gostau sy’n gysylltiedig â phrosesu ceisiadau am gydsynio ag enw lleoedd hanesyddol; gorfodi’r ddeddfwriaeth a chostau apeliadau/tribiwnlys; ac unrhyw ganlyniadau annisgwyl. Yn amlwg, byddai angen cyfathrebu’r newid statws a’r newidiadau o ran y gofynion sydd ar bobl sy’n berchen ar eiddo, neu’r sawl sy’n cael eu heffeithio gan y Bil. Mae amcangyfrif o’r costau yma ar gyfer Biliau tebyg ar gael, ond, wrth gwrs, bydd y gost wirioneddol yn dibynnu ar gymhlethdod y canllawiau a nifer y bobl neu sefydliadau y byddai angen cysylltu â nhw i’w hysbysu o’r newidiadau i ddeddfwriaeth.

Tra gallai’r dasg o sefydlu rhestr o enwau a lleoedd fod â chost sylweddol ynghlwm â hi, rwyf eisoes wedi nodi bod Deddf yr Amgylchedd Hanesyddol (Cymru) 2016 eisoes yn sicrhau bod yn rhaid i Weinidogion Cymru greu a chynnal rhestr o enwau lleoedd hanesyddol Cymru. Byddaf felly yn archwilio pa mor dda y mae’r rhestr yn diwallu anghenion y Bil a gaiff ei ddatblygu. Byddai angen golygu ansawdd y wybodaeth ar y rhestr yma, ac ystyried a fyddai angen dilysu’r enwau ar y rhestr, neu gynnal gwaith pellach arnynt. Serch hynny, mae’r ffaith bod rhestr eisoes yn bodoli, a chyllid eisoes ar gael i greu’r rhestr, yn golygu na fydd y goblygiadau ariannol sy’n deillio o’r Bil yma yn fawr o gwbl. Mae potensial hefyd y gallai rhoi’r Bil hwn ar waith godi proffil rhestr gyfredol Llywodraeth Cymru ynghyd â’i disgwyliadau. O ganlyniad, gall fod mwy o alw i ychwanegu enwau at y rhestr.

Yn amlwg, byddaf yn ymgynghori yn eang yn ystod datblygiad y Bil er mwyn lleihau’r posibilrwydd y bydd canlyniadau anfwriadol yn dilyn, er enghraifft, costau ychwanegol ar sefydliadau ac unigolion. Rwy’n hynod ymwybodol o’r angen i reoli costau a biwrocratiaeth, ac wrth ddatblygu’r ddeddfwriaeth a’r wahanol opsiynau, byddaf yn pwyso a mesur yr angen i leihau’r gost gymaint ag y gellid a’r modd y gellid cyflawni amcanion y Bil hwn.

So, Llywydd, in summary, I am pleased to note that there is strong support for the Bill’s objectives from a number of external organisations and from key individuals within the field, and that there are a number of options open to us as we seek to develop the legislation. I would be keen to listen to Members from across the Chamber over the next year in developing the Bill, and I look forward to hearing what Members have to say on the subject today as that conversation begins. Diolch yn fawr.

I call on the Cabinet Secretary for the Economy and Infrastructure, Ken Skates.

Diolch, Lywydd. Thank you, Presiding Officer, and can I start also by thanking Dai Lloyd for bringing forward this proposal and also for the constructive dialogue that I’ve had with him in recent weeks? There is no doubt that historic place names are an important part of our heritage and bear witness to the linguistic, social, and historical changes that have shaped our nation. Dai recognises this and so do I. They constitute a rich legacy for the present and for future generations and, as some in this Chamber may recall, this is not the first time that the Assembly has given consideration to recognising and to promoting the importance of historic place names.

Indeed, during the passage of the Historic Environment (Wales) Act, historic place names were a subject of debate, both here in the Chamber and in committee. The Assembly considered a number of options for their protection and I’ve always been clear that a formal consenting regime is very complex: it’s costly to administer and near impossible to enforce. But, I do understand and appreciate the desire to protect the historic names that mean so much to all of us. That’s why I was very pleased to respond to the constructive debate that we had during the passage of the Historic Environment (Wales) Bill and to successfully introduce a Government amendment to place a duty on Welsh Minsters to create and maintain a list of historic place names for Wales.

In May, Wales will have the only statutory list of historic place names—a first, not only for the United Kingdom, but a world first. This groundbreaking list is being developed by the royal commission under the guidance of a steering group that includes representatives of the Welsh Place-Name Society, the Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies and the National Library of Wales, and also, as an observer, the Welsh Language Commissioner.

The list will be freely accessible, not only online, but also through the Welsh historic environment records. It will record historic names and variants of geographical features, settlements, thoroughfares, farms, houses and fields. Indeed, the only criteria for the inclusion of a place name is that it can be confidently identified and mapped for reliable historical evidence. At launch, as Dai Lloyd has outlined, the list will contain over 350,000 place names derived from historic Ordinance Survey maps, nineteenth century tithe maps, and apportionments and earlier evidence. However, that will only be the beginning. The list will continue to develop and grow as other sources are added and further research adds greater depth to the records of our historic place names. The list will not attempt to identify a single authoritative historic place name for each feature, locality or property. That would be an impossible task given the sheer volume of names and their sometimes complex transformations over many centuries. Rather, it will present the evidence to show how a place name has changed over time. Researchers will, of course, find this an invaluable tool, but it will also be something that members of the public can easily use if they are curious about the history of their property or their local area. As such—.

Will you take an intervention?

Of course.

I thank the Cabinet Secretary for giving way and, of course, I wasn’t here when that Act, as it now is, was taken forward. What are the implications of that, whether it’s a local authority or a developer in a local area, in terms of having due regard to that list of names? Because, as you say, it cannot be utterly definitive. Even in my own area I know of areas of attractive woodland that have two, possibly three, different names that are used by local people and have been used for generations. But what is the practical effect of that on somebody proposing some sort of development or, for example, on the Ordnance Survey map?

The Member makes a very strong point. Many place names have changed multiple times over the centuries. There are towns and villages in Wales that have had no fewer than five names. The key point to the historic environment Act is that we were able to bring forward statutory duties on—and I’ll come to this point—local planning authorities to pay due regard to that list and to consider historic place names in any changes that may take place. So, there are practical purposes behind this list that go beyond merely educating and informing the public.

The list will, of course, help to raise general awareness about the importance of historic place names and encourage their use, but it will be much more than just a record. It will also support, as I’ve mentioned, the informed and sensitive management of the historic environment. In statutory guidance that I will be issuing to local and national park authorities and Natural Resources Wales this May, use of the list of historic place names will be specifically considered. In general terms, that guidance will direct these public bodies to take account of the list of historic place names when considering the naming and renaming of streets, properties and other places, either directly or, indeed, as the Member outlined, by another party. This will make sure that appropriate historic names are given proper consideration before these bodies take any naming decisions. More specifically, it will guide local authorities on the use of the list of historic place names in the exercise of their statutory responsibilities over street and property naming and numbering. Anyone wishing to change a property name that is part of its official address, whether that name is historic or not, must make an application to the local authority. The new guidance will direct local authorities to recognise historic place names and their policies on street and property naming, and make applicants aware of historic names and encourage them to use them.

These measures will highlight the importance of historic place names and make sure that they continue to be vital elements of Wales’s heritage. These measures are proportionate and crucially they are deliverable. Any legislation to introduce formal protection at this time would be premature. Moreover, based on the information provided in the Member’s explanatory memorandum, I have some reservations about the proposals.

Would the Cabinet Secretary give way again?

Yes.

I thank the Cabinet Secretary for giving way. Could I ask about the flip side of that? Having due regard by local developers or a local authority or a national park authority to historic place names is absolutely right. But, what is the balance in terms of the developer coming forward with a proposal, which they have market tested, for some wonderful new name for an attractive development they have? Is that proportionality right in the burden that is placed on them as well? Is there anything within this that actually makes it too burdensome and too bureaucratic with too much red tape? Do you feel that the balance is right?

We were always conscious of the need to minimise bureaucracy and administration, but equally to ensure that any provisions that we bring forward lead to a better understanding and appreciation of historic place names and our heritage. We are confident that the arrangements that were developed as part of the passage of the Historic Environment (Wales) Bill results in minimal additional bureaucracy costs and administration but do deliver the job of better informing and ensuring that historic place names are, indeed, guaranteed and protected.

I’ve already said that the list of historic place names now contains over 350,000 entries and it will, of course, continue to grow. It will grow at a rapid rate. It will grow to, potentially, 1 million place names. And given the number of historic place names and the wide-ranging protection that the Member would like to introduce, I do not see how any system of general consent or control for changes can be feasible or affordable.

The issue of enforcement also gives me concern. A particular problem will be the regulation of names for natural features, fields and archaeological remains. Who would police infringements and what penalties would be imposed? In practice, I struggle to see what the legislation that the Member proposes will achieve beyond the actions that we are already taking. In May, we will have a resource that will, for the first time, provide access to our rich stock of historic place names for all. This will promote our historic place names so that they continue to be a living part of our nation long into the future.

Although I cannot support this motion, I believe that the groundbreaking measures that we are about to introduce are vital steps in appreciating and valuing this precious inheritance. And this is where I believe our energies and our resources should be directed. We will continue to work with the royal commission and its advisers, relevant public bodies and other interested parties to broaden awareness of the list and the important role it will have in the future, and I will keep Members fully informed of our work.

Thank you, Dai Lloyd, for bringing these proposals forward today. You may have to run all those languages past me again, because I really didn’t catch them all, but thank you very much.

On behalf of the Welsh Conservatives, I can confirm that we’re happy to support the proposals for the Bill at this stage, recognising the aims that you set out. During the passage of the Historic Environment (Wales) Bill, the Welsh Government did indeed agree to the compilation of a list of historic place names, accessible through the historic environment record, and with that duty on Welsh Ministers to compile and maintain that list of place names. So, accordingly, I’m not hugely surprised that the Cabinet Secretary argues that he’s already protecting historic place names by virtue of this growing list.

Nevertheless, at Stage 2, the then Deputy Minister accepted that referencing historic place names via the historic environment record would not formally safeguard them. Huw Irranca-Davies, you spotted that without even being here during the fourth Assembly, so I am grateful to the Cabinet Secretary today for the confirmation regarding due regard. However, I’ve still got to ask: what status does guidance have in these circumstances, and what consequences would befall those individuals who fail to observe the guidance that you’ve indicated you’re producing today, Cabinet Secretary?

Dai, the explanatory memorandum suggests that this duty is the basis for a more explicit piece of legislation, and some of its aims I can support without any further query, actually, but there are some others I’d like to see developed in a revised explanatory memorandum or, indeed, in a draft Bill. In particular, I just want to look at the requirement for landowners to consult on changing names, and there are three things there. The first is that, on first reading, it doesn’t of itself seem to solve the ‘happy donkey’ problem, where the holding is called whatever the holding is called, but the business is called something else, and that’s what causes the upset. So, I’m wondering, as this Bill develops, whether you will be tackling that particular question.

The second on this particular point is the relationship between ensuring landlords are aware of an historic name and the duty to consult if they wish to change it. And I’m looking for a categoric assurance that we do not repeat the unhappy story of the Historic Environment (Wales) Bill, where an offence of strict liability was created, even when there were identifiable instances where it was clearly not reasonable to expect an individual landowner to know something important about their land. While I don’t think you can place a failure to consult due to ignorance in the same category as damaging a scheduled monument due to ignorance, you will need to make it clear what you mean by ensuring that landowners ‘are aware’ of the historical significance of a place name for us to support that point at the next stage.

The third thing is—and, in fact, the Cabinet Secretary raised something similar—what penalties you have in mind for those who may flout the proposed consent regime. Will you be coming down harder on big developers than someone who turns Pen-y-bryn into Squire’s Roost, to quote a miserable local example? Using the list in a consent regime rather than as a reference point, if you like, is attractive, but you will have to be very clear that the process is proportionate to the purpose of that.

I’m pleased to see that the protection would apply regardless of language. I wonder, though, if you have any plans to capture local pronunciation as well. Seven or eight years ago, local communities found themselves caught up—some of you may remember this—in consultations on the correct spelling of the name of their town or village in both languages for road signs and official documents, and I can remember an excruciatingly long evening discussing how to spell Crickhowell in Welsh. On the back of that though, we confirmed correct Welsh spellings, losing the Anglicised spelling in many cases, though my understanding of this is that the historic environment Bill list will still record the ‘Dolgelleys’ and the ‘Llanellys’ with a ‘y’ in them. On the other hand, we haven’t done anything to acknowledge that spelling and local pronunciation can diverge quite considerably. I’m just wondering what’s going to happen to Hirwaun, Pencoed, Groesfaen, Llanfaes, Waunarlwydd, Beddau, Ponty, Llani, Aber—I’m wondering whether your Bill will cover those as well.

Just briefly then, two other questions. The Deputy Minister at the time was adamant that the inclusion of commonly used current names would fundamentally alter the character of the list. While I have no particular issue with a centralised system for recording a list for purposes of consistency and avoiding a sort of Wikipedia free-for-all, I did very much come from the perspective that local opinion mattered when it came to inclusion on the list and supported Bethan Jenkins in her amendment to include current usage, because today’s social use, of course, is tomorrow’s historic use. When my grandchildren grow up, I want them to know what I meant when, as a child I was forbidden to go up the Werfa—something Vikki Howells might know what I’m on about—and I’d like them to know that I wasn’t coalmining and I wasn’t doing anything rude. So, I want you to explain whether the Bill will be covering current as well as historic usage. Thank you.

Well, I rise to support Dai Lloyd in this proposal and congratulate him on the convincingly ministerial way in which he introduced the motion today. My party’s often unfairly accused of living in the past, but respect for the past is an essential element in what we stand for. Lee Waters, the other day, talking about UKIP wanting to take the party back to the 1950s—of course, what he really meant was the 1450s. If we look at the history of a nation, it is very importantly reflected in the etymology of the place names, and they tell us so much about the country that we are and the country that we were. I forget who it was who once said that, as the past ceases

‘to throw it’s light on the future the mind of man wanders in obscurity’,

but I think there is an essential truth in that.

We’re all accustomed to the corruption of names over the years. Indeed, I suppose Dai should really be called ‘Dai Llwyd’, although he is the very opposite of a grey man in my opinion. But, in place names, this is all part of our history, as Suzy Davies pointed out a moment ago. The changes themselves and corruptions are an essential part of history too.

With the examples that have featured in the newspapers et cetera in recent years—unhappy ones like the ‘Happy Donkey Hill’ story. It refers to, as Dai said in his speech, y Faerdre Fach, which I believe means ‘little home farm of the prince’, which was a smallholding that was designed to provide an income to the lord in medieval times. I would have thought that it doesn’t require a great deal of imagination, in marketing terms, if you’re running a business based upon such a plot, to make something of that. To change it to something like ‘Happy Donkey Hill’, which bears no relationship whatsoever with the history of the place, is rather unfortunate and I wouldn’t have thought that there’s much business advantage in that. It’s interesting that Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch was itself an invention of the mid nineteenth century designed to sell the touristic advantages of visiting that part of Anglesey. So, this works perhaps two ways as well.

There is an argument, of course, which was referred to by Suzy Davies in her speech, about interfering with people’s own rights to do with their own property what they will. But, of course, we accept this in relation to historic buildings where people know that there is a public interest in protecting what they are entrusted with for the period that they’re on this planet earth. I think, therefore, that there is no real question of principle involved here in relation to the protection of historic place names, and, whilst there are lots of technical issues that might arise during the course of the passage of the Bill, which has been referred to already, nevertheless, in general terms, we should give a warm welcome to what is a measure that is long overdue.

I’m sorry at the rather unimaginative approach that has been given by the Welsh Government, because I certainly don’t think we should make the best the enemy of the good, and, just because the Government is already doing something that is worth while and valuable, that we shouldn’t overlay that with another measure that could supplement what the Government is doing. So, I give this proposal a very warm welcome and we’ll do our best to make sure that it gets onto the statute book.

Thank you for the opportunity to contribute to this afternoon’s debate. Clearly, I’m going to support Dai Lloyd’s attempts in bringing this Bill forward, which is important in terms of our heritage and history as a nation.

As has been mentioned by a number of Members this afternoon, there was a thorough debate in the last Assembly, and amendments were tabled by us as a party and by other parties, and we did reach some sort of consensus on the list, but we still weren’t happy with the fact that there was no means of protecting those place names within the legislation as it was passed in the last Assembly. I do believe, and still believe, that that was a missed opportunity to ensure that the legislation could be more robust. As Dai Lloyd has already highlighted, a list is simply a list, and we must put some meat on the bones in order to ensure that people can use that list and have faith in how that is developed.

Of course, any new guidance in that regard is going to be a positive development, but that isn’t going to be on a statutory basis, so I need to know from the Minister today how that is going to change the situation as it currently exists, and how people can ensure that that list is robust in and of itself. Because I think what’s important in this debate is how we protect and defend our heritage in terms of our past, and also how we discuss and deal with what’s happening in contemporary society. If place names are to change just on a whim, because someone prefers another name, then how can we actually tell our own story about the history of a certain field or of a particular industry unless there is some sort of status to that heritage for the future?

As one who has brought legislation before this place in the past, I don’t really buy the argument about cost in terms of this Bill. I know that Dai Lloyd has presented some information about that, because he wants to reach a compromise with Government. But, if something is a political priority, then something like a list and protecting these place names shouldn’t be impossible. I have heard the Government saying in the past that relatively complex things are possible, and I don’t see how this could be too complex to be achievable if the political will is there to deliver in this area.

I would want to hear more from the Minister as to how we can use the historic environment records in that regard. There are people doing some very detailed work in gathering data on a daily basis at the moment. Some of our historic names remain unknown because of the fact that archaeologists are only now working in the field, carrying out that research. So, how can we use these records to complement the work of the list? That is what I would want to add to this debate today.

Also, one of the amendments I put forward in the last Assembly was that individual people should be able to add to the list or remove names from that list. Of course, somebody needs to monitor that and there need to be safeguards, but this provides a means for ordinary people across Wales to become involved in this process. And so, if someone—as Suzy is aware of something locally in Aberdare, for example, if someone is aware of something in their own locality that isn’t a national issue at the moment, they could add that to that list as part of the debate on this issue.

I think it’s important that we don’t lose our history, and that we celebrate it and that we see the value of it, and, through place names—. Some people may think that it is not important, but, through place names, we can understand our history. We all here have our own names as individuals. Neil Hamilton has described Dai Lloyd’s name, but it makes us as an individual—our name is who we are, it reflects our personality, and I think the same is true for place names, be it a house, a field, a mountain. We know that mountain or hill or field through that name, and there is a sense of ‘hiraeth’ or a more fundamental relationship with that place because of its name. So, we shouldn’t discount the argument, and I’d like to thank Dai, therefore, for bringing this idea forward again. I very much hope he will be successful, as Dai has been successful with previous legislation when he’s been a Member in the past in terms of playing fields. Thank you.

Thank you, and warm congratulations to Dai Lloyd on his attempt to introduce a Member’s Bill as regards the protection of historic place names in Wales. I’m very pleased to support him today, and I’m confident that he will receive cross-party support. The historic names of Wales are part of our proud heritage, and they deserve the same protection as rare plants and animals. Very often, the original Welsh name is full of meaning, and, in a couple of words, you can get a wealth of historic background as regards the landscape or local history.

Unfortunately, there are a number of examples of pointless changes or perhaps corruption of our traditional place names. We’ve heard a number of examples of this today. I am going to talk about an example from my constituency that led to a short, but, I’m pleased to say, effective, campaign to retain the historic name of a famous mansion, namely Plasty Glynllifon. It stands in a large, walled country park about six miles from Caernarfon on the main route to the Llŷn peninsula. The name Glynllifon was used as far back as the sixteenth century—a 100 room mansion in a 700 acre park—but, in 2015, there was an attempt to change the name. A company from Yorkshire in England called MBI Sales proposed to sell units in the historic mansion as buy-to-rent opportunities. This came to the attention of the local population, and it was noted that the name Glynllifon wasn’t being used, but that the company had coined a new name, ‘Wynnborn Mansion’, with no mention of the real name, Plas Glynllifon. All the marketing materials referred to ‘Wynnborn Mansion’. It was an attempt, apparently, to create a particular kind of image—an echo of ‘To the Manor Born’, or the famous opera location Glyndebourne, perhaps, that, in rural Wales, did not fit at all.

The local people were livid. No local consultation had taken place on the name change. An effective campaign was launched, and I had the privilege of leading that campaign. At the time, I was a member of Gwynedd Council’s language committee, and I got cross-party support to try and get the company to change their mind. I received support from every part of the community, because the non-Welsh speakers were just as supportive as the Welsh speakers. Very strong feelings came to the fore, and it was good to see how important local heritage was to the people of the constituency. I met with MBI Sales, there was a great deal of press attention, and, finally, in the face of such local opposition, the company changed its mind and reverted to using Plas Glynllifon in October 2015. By the way, nothing came of the idea of buy-to-rent, and by now I understand that Plas Glynllifon is in new hands, and those owners intend to convert it into a hotel, keeping the original name, Plas Glynllifon, with all its associated history.

This is just one story, and, thankfully, it had a positive outcome. But how many names, and, therefore, how much of our heritage has already been lost forever? I’m pleased to see that Dai Lloyd’s Bill offers a number of options as regards how to address this matter of protecting historic names. I note the comments of the Cabinet Secretary for the economy, but I do wish Dai well, and thank him for bringing this Bill forward. There is a great difference between guidelines and placing protection into law and legislation, and that is what is required in this case. Thank you.

I call on Dai Lloyd reply to debate.

Thank you very much, Llywydd. May I start by thanking all contributors to today’s debate and those Members who are supportive of the principle and main objective of the Bill, namely safeguarding historic place names in Wales and putting that in law? Now, I can say ‘yes’ to virtually all of Suzy Davies’s questions, but I can expand upon that again outside the Chamber, perhaps, because the main purpose of the debate today was just to win a vote on the general principles—on the need for legislation. I have 13 months to pursue the details—the kinds of details that the Cabinet Secretary wanted today. Well, we’ve had around a month to reach this point. That’s why there is a process, and we’re today voting simply on the principle of making new law—that’s all. The details will be thrashed out over the next 13 months. That’s why the process is in place as it is. So, asking for the details today makes no sense whatsoever, and I’m disappointed, therefore, in the approach of the Cabinet Secretary.

Roedd y bleidlais heddiw yn ymwneud â sefydlu egwyddor gyffredinol. Dyna i gyd. A yw’n syniad da i ddiogelu ein henwau lleoedd hanesyddol yng Nghymru—ydi neu nac ydi—yn gyfreithiol? Nid yw’n anodd, Ysgrifennydd y Cabinet.

Can I thank the Member for giving way? Nobody would dispute that whatsoever, but the point of legislation is that it should be a last resort. The problem with the proposals is that, as presented, there is no evidence base, and, indeed, Sian Gwenllian asked the question of how many names have been changed. Without a sound evidence base, it is simply not possible—I’m sure the Member would agree—to make sound legislation.

I beg to differ with the Cabinet Secretary there. There have been countless representations. That’s why we had the original historic environment Act and the Plaid Cymru amendments that have got you to the position of having the register that you have today. The fact is that there is no statutory protection for our historic place names, be they of any language—English, Anglo-Saxon, Viking, Latin, old Welsh, new Welsh, Norse, Flemish, you name it. The rich smorgasbord of our history is going down the tube, and we’re standing idly by, either doing nothing or lamely saying, ‘Duw, let’s have a bit of guidance, is it?’ [Laughter.] No, it is not on. We’re talking history of nation here, pride in the history of that nation, pride that deserves to be enshrined in law. Nick.

You’ve inspired me with that bit of old English there, Dai, or whatever it was.

Norse.

Norse. I will be supporting your Bill at this stage and the general principles, but I have to say I do have some sympathy for the Cabinet Secretary, because law does have to be very clear. In my constituency, the village of Trellech has 13 different local variants in pronunciations and spellings, which causes massive confusion on road signs, as you can imagine. So, you have to be very careful when you do develop this that you don’t protect one variant of a place name at the expense of others. So, I’m looking forward to seeing how you actually achieve that.

It’s not about protecting one place name vis-à-vis another form of it. If it’s historic and on that list, they’re all protected, regardless of language—Trellech, Treleck, whatever. I’m reminded there’s a village also in Monmouthshire, ‘point of Scotland’ and people say, ‘Well, Duw, where do we get “point of Scotland” from?’ From the old Welsh ‘pysgotlyn’, a pool full of fish, originally. But both names would be protected under my Bill. Diolch yn fawr.

The proposal is to agree the motion. Does any Member object? [Objection.] I will defer voting on this item until voting time.

The next item is the debate on the Economy, Infrastructure and Skills Committee report on the national infrastructure commission for Wales, and I call on Russell George to move the motion. Russell George.

Diolch. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I move the motion in my name. The committee’s inquiry into a national infrastructure commission was a significant piece of work for the committee. In Wales, at this time, I think we do seem to have a number of really high-profile, blockbusting projects in the pipeline. We have the M4 relief road that’s, of course, going through its public inquiry at the moment—and I thank the Cabinet Secretary for his drop-in session today that he put on for Members—proposals for a new nuclear power station at Wylfa, electrification, of course, of the main line through Cardiff and to Swansea and the south Wales metro, and, of course, the potential, as well, for a Swansea tidal lagoon, which, I should add, has cross-party support in this Chamber. And, of course, I don’t want to leave out mid Wales: we have the likes of the Newtown bypass, which will of course be hugely beneficial to the mid Wales economy. So, I think it’s fitting that the Cabinet Secretary is proposing a national infrastructure commission for Wales by the end of this year.

Now, the Economy, Infrastructure and Skills Committee has taken a great interest in the plans, and has indeed made it one of its first inquiries. So, the committee looked in detail at the proposals the Government was putting forward earlier this year. We invited evidence from stakeholders in Wales, those involved in the new UK National Infrastructure Commission, and looked at how similar organisations work in Australia. We didn’t do a site visit, I should add; it was all without a site visit, unfortunately. Our conclusions were largely very positive. The Cabinet Secretary’s vision of an expert body that can depoliticise some of the most contentious and far-reaching decisions in Wales, I thought, was a compelling one, and that was the view of the committee.

But there were three areas where the committee recommended change. While we agree that the establishment of the body shouldn’t be delayed by legislation, we believe that there was a real benefit of putting it on a statutory basis to give it more credibility and clout, and, to that end, we recommended that it should be set up with the presumption that legislation will follow. We thought that the remit of the commission should be slightly wider to include the supply of land for strategically significant housing developments, and we also wanted to make the body more independent, by making it accountable to the future generations commissioner, and by ensuring that it was based outside Cardiff and not sharing a building with Government, and by giving an Assembly committee the chance to scrutinise the chair prior to his or her appointment. So, in all, we made 10 recommendations, and I’m pleased that the Government has engaged seriously with the work that we undertook and has given consideration to the ideas that we put forward, and the Welsh Government has accepted six of the committee’s recommendations. Another three have been accepted in principle, and one was rejected.

So, I’m pleased that the committee has been able to influence the model for the national infrastructure commission in the following ways. The preferred candidate for chair of the commission will be scrutinised by an Assembly committee in a pre-appointment hearing, as the Finance Committee did recently for the preferred chair of the Welsh Revenue Authority. The commission will produce a ‘state of the nation’ report on future Welsh infrastructure needs every three years, to detach its work from the political cycle, and will produce an annual report focusing on governance and past and upcoming work, and the Government has agreed to respond to all recommendations within six months. The commission’s annual remit letter will provide information on how much the Welsh Government expects to be able to spend on infrastructure funding over the longest possible timescale to give important context to its recommendations. The remit letter will also encourage the commission to build a strong relationship with the UK National Infrastructure Commission and the Scottish Futures Trust to maximise effectiveness. Appointments, also, to the commission will need to take into account the diversity of communities across Wales, and engagement at regional levels will be set in its terms of reference. Finally, the Welsh Government will explore mechanisms such as the development bank to focus on how more private funding can be used to support infrastructure development.

The only recommendation that the Government has rejected is our view that the commission would be in a stronger position if it was established under the assumption that it would be put on a statutory basis in due course. Now, our recommendation was influenced by the evidence from federal and state level infrastructure advisory bodies in Australia, which told the committee that their status as an authoritative voice on infrastructure has been enhanced by their independent status, and that the benefits of such an approach would apply more widely than Australia. The chief executive of the UK National Infrastructure Commission told the committee that, although being a non-statutory body had allowed it to be established more quickly, there was also a downside, since stakeholders perceived it to be less permanent. The committee agreed with the Government that we shouldn’t wait for legislation in order to establish the commission with pace, but we felt that there would be a real benefit in giving a clear commitment from the outset that legislation would be likely to follow. Now, as it stands, the risk remains that a future Cabinet Secretary—one perhaps less committed than the present Cabinet Secretary’s vision of a national infrastructure commission—could abolish the organisation at the stroke of a pen, or compromise its independence. So, a statutory body would provide protection to the new body and send a clear message to stakeholders that it was here to stay. So, I am, of course, disappointed that the Government has rejected this particular recommendation.

However, I do note that the Cabinet Secretary hasn’t completely slammed the door on this, and his plan to review the body before the end of the Assembly leaves a window, I hope, where these issues will be considered again. So, I and my committee colleagues will look forward to reviewing progress in 2021—it sounds a long way off—and seeing whether the vision that we all share today has been delivered. So, I know there are a number of committee members that are keen to speak and be called in this debate today, and I look forward to hearing the Members’ views and the response from the Cabinet Secretary.

As a member of the Economy, Infrastructure and Skills Committee, I welcome the opportunity to contribute in this debate and add my support to the motion. I’d like to start by thanking, actually, my fellow committee members and committee staff for the work that has gone into producing the report, and the Cabinet Secretary for his careful and positive consideration on behalf of the Welsh Government. The Chair is quite right about the range and scale of the potential projects currently in the pipeline, and as a proud north-Walian, it would be remiss of me not to add into the mix the north-east Wales metro and a potential third Menai crossing.

I’d like to focus my contribution briefly today on two areas of the committee report, recommendations 7 and 8. Starting in reverse order, recommendation 8 states that

‘the NICfW board should reflect the diverse communities of Wales to ensure an understanding of all parts of Wales.’

I’ve always stressed that this pan-Wales body, in principle, needs to be just that in practice, and that there is potential for all regions of Wales to benefit. But in order to do so, the commission must have a comprehensive understanding of the needs and aspirations of the different areas of our nation. Given the focus and the recognition of the role of the various city deals and the cross-border growth vision within the north of Wales, I’m pleased that the economy Cabinet Secretary on behalf of the Welsh Government has concurred with the committee’s recommendation that it will be important for the commission to engage with regional fora at the appropriate levels. In fact, the written response to the committee states:

‘This principle will be enshrined in its terms of reference; I see the detailed mechanisms as a matter for the commission.’

I hope that, once the commission is established, we as a committee will be able to play a part in ensuring that these mechanisms are put adequately into action, and effectively into action, of course.

Moving back to recommendation 7, that

‘The NICfW should produce a regular “State of the Nation” report in a timescale disconnected from the political timetable’,

and putting forward a suggestion of every three years—a suggestion that was accepted by the Welsh Government—this idea of taking steps to separate projects so significant to the future investment of our economy and the infrastructure of our country from the political cycle, coupled with a long-term pipeline, planning and vision that will hopefully be enabled by the establishment of the commission, was met with consensus and support at a recent Future Flintshire event that I held this week in my own constituency, to discuss the needs and aspirations of our local economy with stakeholders across the area. The priority now must be to establish the commission within the planned timescale and to kick-start work on these key projects, which would not only benefit businesses, communities and stakeholders in my area but across the whole of Wales.

I think that, as the Chair has highlighted, while it is welcome to see the Government’s positive response to some of the recommendations, there is some disagreement about the role and the remit of the national infrastructure commission, and some of that disagreement is fundamental. It goes to the very heart of what problem the commission is trying to solve. You wouldn’t necessarily know this level of disagreement from the figures that the Government has published in relation to its own consultation exercise. The percentages that disagree: it’s 1 per cent and 0 per cent in many of them. I would have to say—and I am not trying to be deliberately provocative here—that some of them are almost questions that it is impossible to disagree with:

‘Do you agree that NICfW should work collaboratively with the UK National Infrastructure Commission…?’

Who could possibly disagree with that? Nobody does. Similarly, ‘Do you agree there should be an open public appointments process for the commission?’ So, I think maybe, if we want to learn something from consultations, let’s actually frame the questions about those areas where there is genuine, sincere disagreement. Even on the first question, which is the fundamental one about the role and remit, it says that 87 per cent agree—but in brackets, it says ‘in whole or in part’. It is the second bit—‘in part’—where of course we find there is disagreement. So, on the question of the statutory basis, some of the key industry bodies—the Civil Engineering Contractors Association—clearly argue, as they indeed have done in terms of the UK Commission, that for this commission to do the job of work that it is tasked with on behalf of the people of Wales, it needs to be set on a statutory basis. Indeed, Lord Kinnock, of course, in response to the u-turn following the commitment in the Queen’s speech in Westminster—which now, of course, means that the UK Commission is also not being put on a statutory basis—went as far as to say that that actually wrecked the whole impact of the body to create the kind of independence and authority that actually is needed to have a long-term approach to our infrastructure needs, which go beyond the political cycle and go beyond the vagaries of the change of administration from one term to another. So, I have to say that that is a great source of disappointment, not least to my party, but indeed, clearly, as evidenced by the committee’s report, across the Chamber and among key bodies and sectors that base it upon their own expertise.

In terms of social infrastructure, again, part of the problem that we have and that we are trying to solve is the imbalance of our infrastructure investment: the fact that there isn’t a long-term approach but there isn’t a comprehensive or holistic approach either. That’s why, though I couldn’t convince all of my fellow committee Members on this—. Why actually keep social infrastructure out? As we heard powerfully this morning, I think, in evidence from Karel Williams, it is an arbitrary divide—the difference between social and economic or productive infrastructure. So, bring it in. There are tentative moves, possibly, hidden within the Government’s response, but actually, let’s make that part of the core remit. I’m glad to see that the Government has said that it will explore alternatives in relation to this key question of how we fund infrastructure investment, but can I ask the Cabinet Secretary a very direct question? Does that mean that infrastructure investment will be part of the other remit letter that he’ll be writing soon to the development bank for Wales?

Finally, on this question of the other imbalance, which is an imbalance of investment across Wales, it’s something of a personal and indeed a party obsession of ours at the moment. There’s reference to having the voice of the different regions of Wales heard within the context of the infrastructure commission, but could we have, in that remit letter to this body, a commitment to equalise investment—indeed, in the region in which his constituency lies as well, in north Wales, but across Wales—so that that is clearly there on the face of the remit? And for us to get a sense—if it’s not going to be put on a statutory basis, could the Cabinet Secretary at least tell us, if he has a figure, what the size of the budget for the new body will be, so that we get a sense of its capacity to do the work of overcoming the decades of underinvestment to which I referred earlier?

As stated in the Chair’s foreword to our committee report:

‘The Cabinet Secretary’s vision of an independent expert body which can de-politicise contentious decisions that have far reaching consequences is compelling.... We hope our recommendations will provide a basis for the swift establishment of a Commission that—once strengthened by legislation—can ensure Wales develops the essential infrastructure we all rely on for a prosperous 21st century nation.’

As the Cabinet Secretary says in his response,

‘we have committed towards establishing a National Infrastructure Commission for Wales to provide independent and expert advice on strategic infrastructure needs and priorities’.

It is therefore regrettable that the Cabinet Secretary has chosen to reject the committee’s recommendation that the commission should be established as a non-statutory body but with a clear presumption that legislation will follow to move the commission to become a statutory independent body.

As our report states:

‘While the Committee believes that believes that ultimately the independence and credibility of the Commission will best be secured by it being placed on a statutory footing, there is no need to delay setting up the body waiting for legislation.’

But as the Civil Engineering Contractors Association told committee,

‘if it is part of Government, I really don’t think that we’ll get what we need from this. I mean that not as an industry, but as a nation’.

Evidence from Australian infrastructure bodies emphasised the importance of being established by legislation. Infrastructure Australia told us that legislation strengthening their role as an independent, transparent and expert advisory body has allowed them to operate more effectively and independently. Infrastructure Victoria told us that the reasons for setting up an independent body to advise on infrastructure applies not just to their particular circumstances, but across countries, increasing, they said, community confidence in processes and outcomes.

Although the Cabinet Secretary has already committed to a review of the status of the commission ahead of the next Assembly election, the committee concluded that, to have clout and credibility and to overcome the perceived lack of permanence of a non-statutory commission, it must be, and be seen to be, an independent body.

The Cabinet Secretary should be aware that local campaigns against proposed housing developments generally focus on the claimed inappropriateness of the site proposed and the inadequacy of local infrastructure such as schools, GP surgeries and transport links to support an increased population. It is therefore also regrettable that he has only accepted in principle the committee recommendation that the remit of the commission should be extended to include the supply of land for strategically significant housing developments and related supporting infrastructure alongside the economic and environmental infrastructure. His statement that this issue will not be considered until the review of the commission before the end of this Assembly term leaves the Welsh Government following rather than leading the agenda.

Ironically, the Welsh Government’s own local development plan manual, setting out criteria against which local planning applications will be considered, includes housing, access, parking, design, green infrastructure and landscaping, and refers to both sites for development and areas of restraint. It would therefore be entirely inconsistent if the remit of the commission excluded this. In contrast, good practice is exhibited in the North Wales Economic Ambition Board’s ‘A Growth Vision for the Economy of North Wales’, which states that the delivery of the vision will be integrated into plans for sustainable community planning, but to deliver a more successful and balanced economy, long-term investment will be required to tackled long-term challenges, including housing needs, and that the housing offer across north Wales, a key component to enabling growth, will have to respond to demographic shifts and cater for housing needs across the region. Further, it identifies the need to address key barriers to housing delivery to ensure supply of adequate land for residential development to meet projected demand and need, especially reuse of brownfield sites, and to assist with costs associated with site remediation and enabling infrastructure.

In its acceptance, in principle only, of the committee’s recommendation that the commission should be based outside Cardiff and should not share premises with Welsh Government departments, but should share accommodation with another public body to keep costs down, the Cabinet Secretary rightly identifies the commission’s need to maintain its independence from a range of influences and bodies, which was precisely the point made by the committee. However, his response makes no reference to the commission’s location outside Cardiff, and I therefore ask him to address this in his response today.

I’m pleased to speak in support of this motion today, and as a member of the Economy, Infrastructure and Skills Committee, I’d like to thank the Chair, the clerking team, other Members and witnesses for what’s been a really interesting inquiry. For my contribution today, I’d like to focus on the first recommendation in the report. The evidence we took reinforced how important it is for housing and related supporting infrastructure to be included in the commission’s report, alongside economic and environmental infrastructure. The testimony of the North Wales Economic Ambition Board, the Home Builders Federation, and the Association for Consultancy and Engineering made a powerful case that our approach to housing needs to be holistic, Wales-wide and at the core of how we conceptualise infrastructure.

I welcome the response from the Cabinet Secretary that the Welsh Government will consider the way we use strategic land during the review of the commission within this Assembly. But I’d like to make the point that when housing is developed, we also need to make sure we get the peripheral infrastructure right. For example, I’m dealing with an issue on a housing estate in the urban heart of my constituency that was developed a few years ago. For all this time, residents have been without decent broadband. For example, one resident told me their broadband speed is just 0.3 kilobytes per second. The reason for this: infrastructure provision at the site has never been linked up. This impacts on their ability to work, to study, to communicate and to relax. Residents are forced to go to unnecessary cost and are left disappointed that an infrastructural expectation on a brand-new housing estate just isn’t up to scratch.

Alongside this, the committee considered social infrastructure. We didn’t reach agreement that all aspects of this should be within the commission’s remit, but I am pleased that the Cabinet Secretary placed on record in his reply that the national infrastructure commission for Wales will be expected to consider the potential interactions between its future recommendations and social infrastructure. I’d like to briefly explore why this is so important, and why it is the glue that can bring together and strengthen local communities, to quote from a document on considering Infrastructure in the Thames gateway. Ed Evans, from the Civil Engineering Contractors Association Wales gave some important evidence, which is quoted in our report. He said:

‘we need to see infrastructure in its entirety, and it does encompass economic, social and environmental considerations.’

If we don’t do this, I would argue that we won’t align with the sustainability principles underpinning the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015. Chwarae Teg also made this point, noting that the definition of sustainable development in the Act intertwines the social with the economic and environmental. Including childcare, social care and educational facilities will ensure the commission can play its strategic role effectively. In a twenty-first century Wales, we need to consider these elements of social infrastructure, alongside more traditional aspects of infrastructure such as transport or broadband, as both determine whether people can access work, as well as how and where they’re able to do so. Public services and infrastructure are key components of the foundational economy and I was glad to table a motion last week with two other members of the committee on this crucial issue.

Flexible childcare provision is one aspect of this. My constituency and others across the northern Valleys are well-served by a plethora of childcare providers and we see some innovative practices currently in development, such as Wales’s first outdoor kindergarten, which is scheduled to open in Dare Valley Country Park this summer. The network of existing provision will be further utilised under the roll-out of the Welsh Government’s childcare policy, and, indeed, demand for childcare may well outstrip supply. Additional childcare providers are likely to be needed to provide this vital infrastructure—infrastructure that has the potential to assist residents in enhancing their employability prospects, increasing their disposable income and boosting their social mobility.

My final point in support of including social infrastructure within the remit of the commission is that this is what the most ambitious global examples already do. Australian federal and state governments both look at economic and social infrastructure. New Zealand and Canada’s national infrastructure bodies include social aspects in their remits, too. And these seem like good examples for us to be following.

Much of what I say will echo comments by other members of the committee, but it does no harm to reiterate some of those points. Firstly, I confirm that the Economy, Infrastructure and Skills Committee, recognises and welcomes the formation of a commission that will provide expert, professional and, above all, independent advice to the Government of Wales. As a member of that committee, I’m also pleased that this commission will receive an explicit mandate and a clear idea of its funding model.

Whilst I realise and accept that it will be instituted as a non-statutory body in the first instance, I note the information received from a number of Australian infrastructure advisory bodies, which almost all stated that the standing of the body was substantially enhanced by its status as a body of statute. In addition to this announced status, there would be the added advantage of the commission being a permanent institution. So, whilst I am sure that the present Cabinet Secretary would at no time seek to dissolve this body, it would prevent anyone, subsequently holding his position, from doing so at some time in the future. I would also add that I believe that the commission’s permanence would greatly assist its prospects of recruiting the very best quality of personnel. The acceptance in principle to locate the commission outside of Cardiff is seen as a positive move and I welcome this proposal.

I wish to make the point that scrutiny of the commission is of paramount importance and I note here that we do not have a defined set of targets. I feel that it’s highly desirable that this deficit be remedied at the earliest possible opportunity. It cannot be stressed too forcefully that the appointment of the commission chair should be the subject of a pre-appointment hearing by a relevant committee. This is an absolute necessity, given the importance of the appointment, and would establish, from the outset, the independence of the commission. I also wish to echo my fellow committee members’ comments with regard to including social infrastructure in the commission’s remit.

So, in conclusion, we in UKIP welcome the Cabinet Secretary’s vision of creating a body that is removed from the burden of political expediency when making decisions of strategic importance with long-term implications. My party will fully support its implementation.

Can I echo the thanks that my fellow committee members have already extended to the committee Commission staff and everyone who’s engaged with the work of the committee? I think there is some very useful evidence in the transcripts that may not have made its way through to the report, which it would bear reflecting on.

I also welcome the Cabinet Secretary’s response. I wish he had felt able to go further in relation to the land for housing and in relation also to acknowledging an ultimate statutory destination, if you like, for the commission, but I also appreciate the fact that he’ll return to that question in his review in due course.

I want to comment briefly on three aspects of the work of the commission and its implications. The first is the 30-year horizon over which the commission intends to work. We heard, both anecdotally in discussions and formally, how important that was for investors and for the industry generally in terms of resource planning, financial planning and, indeed, skills planning. So, I welcome the long time frame over which it will work. Any business knows that there’s greater certainty in the early years than the outer years, but, nevertheless, I think that visibility is important. I also welcome it because I think it actually increases the prospect of political consensus around some of the projects that will inevitably be proposed. Having a solid base of evidence in the public domain over time, available for reflection and challenge, is bound to maximise the opportunity for political consensus to be reached where that’s possible.

I would say, though, that a 30-year time horizon is no small task. It’s not yet 30 years since the worldwide web was invented, and if any of us can think of a more transformative development in recent decades—I’m sure we can’t. It’s a significant task to do that, whether it’s in the marine renewable sector, in terms of the challenges we face for energy distribution, how we fuel our vehicles, what our ports will be doing, and how the internet of things becomes an indispensable part of everyday life. Imagine a world where 10G connectivity is absolutely essential in all parts of Wales to deliver in-home healthcare, which may by then have become the norm. There are all sorts of challenges, which are, at this point beyond imagining. I think it’s important, therefore, that we will have some free thinkers on the commission, and that we won’t be forgiven for building yesterday’s infrastructure tomorrow. And given the pace of rapid technological change, the 30-year period has never been longer than it is today.

I want to speak briefly about the composition and the approach to the work of the commission. As well as the free thinkers, whom I mentioned, we’ll also need people on the commission with hands-on experience of delivery: people with the imagination to think ahead. Reflecting the comments that Vikki Howells and other speakers have made today, despite the fact that social infrastructure isn’t part of the remit, I think it’s important that we have people on the commission with an understanding of social infrastructure, because it’s vital to understand the interconnection between economic, environmental and social infrastructure, even if that’s not a formal part of its activity.

I’ll venture to say as well that I don’t think this is a time just for the familiar faces. We should be bold and we should seek the best available people from wherever they come. I would like, personally, to see experience of international infrastructure on the commission itself. I happen to think that the quality of the people we’ll be able to attract to the commission correlates very closely to their confidence in the independence of the body. Whatever the formal structure is, I hope the Cabinet Secretary will reflect on that in the arrangements of the commission generally. I think it’s absolutely integral that members of the commission have full confidence in its independence.

The third point I want to make is on its role as a challenge partner. It’s not a delivery body: it’s an advisory body and it exists to advise the Welsh Government principally, and in that sense to be a challenge partner to the Welsh Government. But I also hope that other public bodies with an interest and a responsibility for infrastructure will engage in the same way with the work of the commission, and that it can present useful challenge to some of the assumptions in our local authorities, the NHS and in our city regions. I hope that is welcomed by those bodies. No public body has a monopoly on wisdom, and certainly not over a 30-year horizon. Provided that’s a credible challenge, I think it would be a useful contribution to Welsh economic life, and I hope that other public bodies will engage in the same way the Welsh Government has promised to do.

It’s a pleasure to follow my friend Jeremy Miles, and to echo his call for free thinkers to engage with the debate around our future infrastructure needs. I do have some hesitation about the emphasis on the importance of infrastructure. As we’ve discussed previously in this Chamber, the future economic pressures we face demand a more agile and rapid iterative response rather than focusing heavily on infrastructure as we have in the past. That said, we do need to take a long-term view to meet the known long-term challenges that our economy and society face, not least the climate change target that we’ve all signed up to and the implications of the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015. It’s quite clear the current system does not work terribly well. I remember Gerry Holtham recounting to me his experience as the Welsh Government’s advisor on finance when he had been tasked to go off to the city to try and raise alternative funds to fund the infrastructure ambitions of the Welsh Government. He patiently spent time cultivating his city contacts, agreeing a package of finance, but no sooner than he was about to sign, a Cabinet reshuffle meant that the infrastructure priorities of the Government had changed and all that work had been for nought, and back to square one it was on trying to find finance for infrastructure.

It’s crucial, though, I think, that any new body makes its decisions in a way that takes into account the long-term challenges and sets out the basis on which it makes those decisions transparently, and applies them in a consistent way. A key measurement must be value for money. We should surely prioritise those schemes that give the greatest payback. The Treasury’s Green Book very helpfully sets out a categorisation of what it regards as good value for money.

I’ll just recount briefly its guidance. A scheme that will return somewhere between £1 and £1.50 for every £1 invested is regarded as being low value for money. A scheme that returns £2 for every £1.50 invested is regarded as being medium value for money. A scheme that returns somewhere between £2 and £4 for every £1 is seen as high value for money, and anything delivering a return of over £4 is seen as delivering very high value for money. As an example of that, schemes that encourage walking and cycling for short journeys, for example, typically return about £9 for every £1 that’s invested. But, some of the schemes that we’re currently progressing or have progressed recently don’t fare terribly well according to that benchmark.

The black route of the M4, for example, is predicting a return of £1.62 for every £1 invested. And it’s worth bearing in mind that the formula used to come up with that figure is in itself heavily biased to try and make road-building schemes look attractive. So, to give you an example of how it works, it’ll project that the scheme will produce a saving in journey time of a certain number of minutes, and it’ll then estimate how many cars will make that journey; it’ll take that figure and multiply it by that year—so, in effect, it’ll randomly pick a number up that has no real basis in fact; it’s a projection—and then it’ll multiply that by 30 because that’s the number of years for which it thinks that the scheme will return an investment. So, road schemes are inflated to make them look as if they’re giving the maximum possible return for public money. Even using that formula, the schemes we’re progressing don’t fare terribly well.

Again, the A477, St Clears to Red Roses, had a return of £1.35 for every £1 invested, even using that very ambitious formula and its assumptions. That is a low return on investment. I was staggered to receive a written response from the Cabinet Secretary on the Llandeilo bypass, which in fact said it didn’t have a figure that it based its decision on to give it the go-ahead. I quote:

‘As there has been no development work carried out on the scheme over the last 10 years the Benefit to Cost Ratio (BCR) dates back to the Public Inquiry in the nineties and at that time was 1.16.’

For a £1 investment, a very low figure. He went on to say:

‘establishing a robust BCR for the project will be an early action as part of the scheme's development.’

Now, I do hope that, when we have an infrastructure commission, we won’t be giving the go-ahead to schemes without robust data to justify them and without a strong resonance for implementing the target we’ve all signed up to on climate change.

I hear muttering from Adam Price. I must say, I do find it breathtaking cynicism to hear him talk about the need for a statutory body, which would take the discretion out of the hands of Ministers, while at the same time getting an exemption for any scheme—

Sadly, I’m out of time.

No, he’s out of time. I’m sorry, Adam; the Member is—[Interruption.]

Getting an exemption—. As it happens, Dai Lloyd, I’ve given way to Adam Price more times than he’s given way to me.

You are winding up, aren’t you, now? Thank you.

Absolutely. An exemption was granted for the Llandeilo bypass so it wouldn’t need to be looked at by the independent commission, knowing full well that, on the basis of a £1.16 return on investment, it wouldn’t pass muster. I do find that breathtakingly cynical when he’s then demanding that other schemes have to pass a similar test. We’ve all signed up to tackling climate change. We all now need to follow through and reflect that commitment in the decisions we make.

Thank you very much. Hefin David.

Let’s calm it down. I’d like to focus on recommendation 1 and recommendation 8 in my response, particularly recommendation 1:

‘the supply of land for strategically significant housing developments and related supporting infrastructure’.

This is a theme I spoke about on a number of occasions in the Chamber when I was first elected and, indeed, formed an unlikely double act with Neil McEvoy, talking about the need for joined-up—. [Interruption.] It’s a shame he’s not here today, because with his newly independent status perhaps we could have revived that double act. We spoke about the need for joined-up strategic development plans to address the cross-boundary challenges of housing particularly, but also employment and transport, as opposed to several competing local development plans in areas of close geographical proximity. This is something that was discussed at length in the committee, and it’s something I still don’t think we’ve quite got to grips with. I’m hoping that there may be a way for the commission to examine this, even if it isn’t part of its formal remit.

As the demand and supply of housing is intimately linked to the economy and the environment, to me, it makes sense to expand the commission’s remit in this regard. Mark Isherwood made that point, albeit in a slightly grumpy way. He’s not grumpy in real life, but I did agree with him. [Laughter.] I noted that the Cabinet Secretary has accepted the recommendation in principle, subject to a formal review. In his response he says that there are already existing mechanisms in place to consider this issue, and that there’s a need for regional development plans to bed down before extending the commission’s remit. I’d like to know more about what the Cabinet Secretary means by bedding down, and regional plans are needed sooner rather than later, in my view. I would expect the Welsh Government therefore to monitor that situation very closely. They’ve said ‘over the course of this Assembly term’. Could, therefore, the Cabinet Secretary clarify for me how strategically significant housing developments will informally be incorporated in the commission’s remit in order to take the holistic view that he refers to in his response to the report?

Finally, recommendation 8 says the commission’s board

‘should reflect the diverse communities of Wales to ensure an understanding of all parts of Wales.’

And that it should

‘consider establishing a forum to bring together and consider the work going on in each of the regions of Wales.’

That, of course, is directly related to the city deal in Cardiff—the Cardiff city deal. My constituents in Caerphilly would benefit from the Cardiff capital region deal and the associated south Wales metro. I’m pleased that the Cabinet Secretary has accepted this recommendation, but one of the concepts that I’ve tried to develop in the Chamber, and which other Members have made reference to today, is the concept of the northern Valleys, and the need for an economic strategy for these parts of Wales that don’t attract as much investment as the city hub. I’m concerned that the city deal serves the northern Valleys. With the interest in the northern Valleys, which are communities in their own right, would you then have representatives of that area on the commission’s board to ensure that this area is considered in the depth that it should be, now and in the future?

Thank you very much, and I now call the Cabinet Secretary for Economy and Infrastructure, Ken Skates.

Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. Can I begin by thanking the Chair and members of the Economy, Infrastructure and Skills Committee for their inquiry and their report? The inquiry was both thorough and inclusive, expertly chaired by Russell George, and members of the committee took a very deep and inquisitive interest in the subject. I do appreciate the strong contribution that their findings have made to the development of the national infrastructure commission for Wales. Ensuring people are united and connected is a fundamental part of this Government’s work, and a key part of ‘Taking Wales Forward’. Our success will be measured by the economic growth and stability that we are able to provide to communities across Wales in the years to come, and that’s why we must focus on developing a stronger and fairer economy.

A fundamental element to improving economic stability is the range and the quality of a country’s infrastructure—the physical systems and services that we need to have in place in order to ensure that Wales works effectively. Individuals, families, communities and businesses all need to be supported by sustainable services that meet the needs of today, but which also prepare us for the challenges of tomorrow. This will be particularly crucial because we know how tough the next few years are going to be. So, our challenge is to create the stability needed for the long-term well-being of our people and communities.

We are living at a time of particular financial uncertainty, which makes it even more important to act now and strengthen the way we consider and prioritise future infrastructure needs. We must create the conditions for sustainable, long-term investment and there is no question that getting the right infrastructure is vital. It’s for this reason the Government is committed to moving towards a better informed, longer term strategy of investment in infrastructure, which enshrines the principles of the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015.

The establishment of the national infrastructure commission for Wales will be a critical step towards achieving this ambition, and I was encouraged that the committee recognised the importance of the commission by making it the subject of one of its very first inquiries in this Assembly. The timing couldn’t have been better as, last year, I launched a 12-week public consultation on the commission, which ran alongside the committee’s inquiry. I very much welcome the committee’s report and the opportunity today to discuss it further with Members.

The report, which echoed many of the views expressed during our public consultation, was very constructive in helping to shape my considerations of the commission. I was pleased to accept, or accept in principle, almost all of the recommendations. One of the most prominent emerging themes from the report and from the consultation exercise was the pressing need for advice that is strategic, that is cross-cutting and that takes a long-term objective view.

The remit of the commission will be tailored towards ensuring focus and resource are directed towards strategic infrastructure needs. It will be critical, also, to protect the independence of the commission. So, I welcome suggestions for the National Assembly to take an active role in scrutinising the independence and recommendations of the commission, as well as how Welsh Government responds to these recommendations. So, to facilitate this, I plan to lay the annual report of the commission in the Chamber. I also agree with the committee’s suggestion for a three-year state of the nation report to provide an effective framework for the reporting arrangements.

Now, although the committee’s recommendations align mostly with our thinking, there are some areas where more time is needed to assess the benefit and the potential impact. I view the establishment of the commission as the first stage of a developing process and I was encouraged by the clear support in the committee’s report and the consultation responses for a review of the commission’s status and remit towards the end of this Assembly term. We’ll establish the commission on a non-statutory basis to ensure that it is able to provide advice and recommendations as soon as possible.

I agree with the committee that the remit should not extend to social infrastructure in general, and have accepted in principle the recommendation to extend the remit to include land supply for housing developments. I recognise the clear links between housing supply and economic growth, but I’m minded to give this more careful consideration given the pre-existing mechanisms in this sector. Furthermore, more time is needed for strategic development plans to mature and for their effectiveness to be assessed. I therefore consider the scope of the commission to be a focus for planned review before the end of this Assembly.

However, from the outset, the commission will be expected to consider the potential interactions between its recommendations and social infrastructure, as many Members in this Chamber have spoken of today. This will ensure that the commission’s recommendations take a holistic view of infrastructure needs, but also maintain its primary focus. Furthermore, through its advice and recommendations, the commission will be expected to fully reflect the obligations on the Welsh Government in respect of the environment Act as well as the goals and principles of the well-being of future generations Act. Another key aspect of the consultation was the importance of having a close working relationship with the UK National Infrastructure Commission. We’re committed to building on and developing a constructive and mutually beneficial relationship with the UK commission on such key areas as rail connectivity and energy, and this was strongly supported by the committee and responses to our consultation.

The UK commission has liaised closely with us on engaging with stakeholders in Wales to help inform its first national infrastructure assessment. We are co-hosting a visit by the UK commission to Wrexham this week with round-table discussions for politicians and for businesses.

I’ll pick up on the small number of additional points that were raised today during the debate. I do believe that, as Members have indicated, the commission should be based outside of Cardiff, but in an area, in a building, that sufficiently removes it from any organisations that might benefit from its considerations. I also believe, as Members have highlighted, that there should be a fairer allocation of resource for projects right across Wales. We shouldn’t just look at a fairer share of resource, though, for the regions, but also within the regions. Because, quite frankly, if we were to follow the suggestion that has been posed by some to reduce spending dramatically in south-east Wales without looking at how that spending within south-east Wales is proportioned, then—

Will the Cabinet Secretary give way?

Absolutely.

When has anyone, I think, in this Chamber, actually called for less investment in south-east Wales or in any part of Wales? The point is to get investment up in the other regions as well. We’ve provided him with some innovative methods whereby he could do that.

In talking about disparities between regions, and, essentially, playing regions off against one another on the spending, unless you can identify how to increase spending and the resource in those areas without cutting in other areas of Government, one must assume that you are talking of and proposing a reduction in one or another region of Wales in order to increase funding in another area. My point is a point that should surely be supported by yourselves, and it’s this: it’s not just about regional inequality, it’s about intraregional inequality, as well, and we must ensure that, within the regions, there is a fair allocation of resources to ensure that no communities are left behind or disadvantaged.

In terms of some of the other points that have been made, I think that it’s absolutely essential that we should look at drawing the best technical experts from not just within Wales, but from around the world, and I would agree entirely with Jeremy Miles that we have to reach out and bring in new blood and new ideas and innovation. This is something that I’ll be speaking with Lord Adonis about on Friday.

Finally, in terms of social infrastructure, Vikki Howells made a very important point about childcare. Of course, childcare provision should be linked closely to the development of new metro stations, and this is why I think it’s absolutely essential that there is a good understanding of emerging social infrastructure on the commission.

Deputy Presiding Officer, I now look forward to seeing the commission set up and starting to fulfil its potential. My aim is to launch the public appointments exercise for the chair and members in the early autumn and to have the commission in place by the end of this year.

Thank you very much. I call on Russell George to reply to the debate.

Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. Can I thank all the Members who took part in this debate today? I think the fact that every single member of the committee, and further Members, not part of the committee, also, took part in the debate demonstrates the level of interest in the national infrastructure commission for Wales, and, indeed, the potential it has, I think, to develop the Wales of tomorrow.

I should like to also put on record my thanks to not only my fellow committee members for their work in this inquiry, but also for the support that we’ve had from the committee clerking team and the wider integrated team. I speak on behalf of all my members in that regard. They’ve offered fantastic support in supporting us in our work.

Adam Price presented some fair views in regard to some of the questions asked in the Government’s consultation, and I wonder if there is an opportunity here where the Government is aware that there is a committee undertaking an inquiry where it could, indeed, consult with that committee and involve that committee in, indeed, asking the committee for its views on its own consultation questions. I think having valid and purposeful questions in a consultation is something that we’d all want to see, and I wonder whether committees in the Assembly have a role to play in supporting Government in that regard. Adam Price also talked about why keep social infrastructure out, and we had a very good session with Professor Karel Williams this morning in that regard as well. I’m grateful to Hannah Blythyn and to Mark Isherwood, both who often fly the flag in the committee in regard to north Wales, and they did so in the debate today as well, and to Mark for expanding in more detail in regard to the recommendations that were only accepted in principle.

Vikki Howells has been a strong advocate in the committee in our discussions in regards to social infrastructure, and very much shaped our report in that regard and prompted the recommendation from us in that regard as well, I think, and I thank Vikki for fleshing that out a little bit more and presenting the examples that she did today as well. I thank David Rowlands and Jeremy Miles and Hefin David for their contributions, and Lee Waters—I thank Lee for taking part in today’s debate; not being a member of the committee, it’s interesting to have views from outside of the committee. I was a bit disappointed that there wasn’t time for Adam Price’s intervention, but if Adam did want to intervene on me to put across the point he was going to make to you, I’d be happy to accept that intervention. [Laughter.]

I’m very grateful to the Chair of the committee—collaborative and consensual as ever. I think the key point was the role of a national infrastructure commission, if, in the remit letter, it has clear guidance from the Welsh Government that we need to equalise the levels of infrastructure investment across the regions, and, absolutely—echoing the point made by Hefin David—as well within the existing city regions so that no community is left behind.

I’d certainly support that, and very much so. I think also the important point here, as well, is that doesn’t take away—the infrastructure commission would not take away responsibility from a Government Minister, but it would allow the commission to work outside of politics, and I think that’s what the commission is set up for in that regard.

Can I also say that I do think that the Cabinet Secretary has taken a pragmatic approach, I think, to establishing the commission, and his intention, I think, to review its effectiveness at the end of the Assembly term is to be welcomed as well? It will give us a chance to take stock on whether the commission has delivered and is delivering on its potential as well, and whether it needs support, for example, by putting it on a statutory basis in order to succeed. The next steps, I think, will be absolutely crucial, and Jeremy Miles spoke strongly in this regard, but I do wish the Cabinet Secretary and his team well in recruiting the high quality of individuals that will be needed, with a diverse range of backgrounds and experience and knowledge of Wales, to give the commission the human infrastructure that it needs to deliver for Wales. So, I would like to thank the members of the committee and Lee Waters for contributing to today’s debate. Thank you.

Thank you very much. The proposal is to note the committee report. Does any Member object? No. Therefore the motion to note the committee report is agreed in accordance with Standing Order 12.36.

We now move on to item 6 on today’s agenda, which is the Welsh Conservatives debate on Welsh Government’s performance. I call on Andrew R.T. Davies to move that motion.

Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer, and I formally move the motion in the name of Paul Davies on the order paper today, which took a huge amount of thought process and literacy to put together, which simply states:

‘Believes that the Welsh Labour-led Government is failing the people of Wales.’

I understand the leader of the house is responding on behalf of the Government. We will not, unsurprisingly, be accepting the Plaid Cymru amendment that has been tagged onto our motion. That was a very difficult one to weigh up as well, and we spent a long time in group. But I do hope that Plaid Cymru do reflect, because, given that the language that has come from Plaid Cymru over recent days and weeks, there does seem to be an element of unhappiness with Plaid Cymru, and not necessarily getting the best of both worlds, as their leader stated at their conference, certainly seems to be the order of the day at the moment in their arrangements with the current Welsh Labour Government.

It would be a shame if the opposition parties couldn’t coalesce around this motion this afternoon to vote on what is before us. Because it is a fact the Welsh Labour Government won the election back last May. This motion isn’t trying to seek to deny that, and the Government came together and formed, obviously, after that election. But most Governments, when they come into being, have an energy about themselves, especially in the first year, the first 18 months, when they set a trail and blaze that trail to show that they have energy and they want to make the change and the reforms that are so desperately required, especially in the environment that we find ourselves in today and as we go forward in the years ahead.

It is interesting, watching the Government, how it does work over the last couple of months—or not, as the case may be. There is the issue over whether you can hold collective responsibility of the Government. It is interesting to see the Cabinet Secretary for Education, who’s just walked in now. It is interesting to reflect on the one major European vote that was held some three weeks ago, where the education Secretary was unable to support the Government line in opposing the Plaid Cymru amendment that was tabled that day. I think most people would find that rather bizarre, to say the least, when you think of collective responsibility. Then we saw, over the weekend, the Lib Dems conference where, outside of this Chamber, you were going to be opposing the Government’s intention to legislate on the right to buy. Yet, as I understand it, the Cabinet Secretary has indicated that she will be exercising collective responsibility and voting to outlaw the right to buy here in Wales, which I’ll deal with later on in my speech.

I think that that’s a real shame, that, looking at these early weeks and early months, the Government has had so much difficulty in trying to co-ordinate itself, and, in particular, with Plaid Cymru. They say they have the best of both worlds, but, just before Christmas, we had the spectacle of Adam Price, who’s left the Chamber, throwing his papers in the air in complete despair after we’d just had the economy Secretary making his leadership speech—or, sorry, his speech at Cardiff Airport about economic infrastructure developments—when they hadn’t been consulted at all on what was in that speech. That really does pose the question: exactly how is this Government working, and exactly how are they going to deal with some of the real challenges that need serious thought and positive answers coming from the Government of the day? Regrettably, we just don’t see that happening and we don’t see it coming from the Government that was formed after May.

This wonderful document that was put together that outlines five years’ worth of work—five years. I’ve been doing my best to try and think what on earth I can do with it: it’s not even wide enough to prop up or hold a door shut or open a door, whichever way you wanted to use it. I’m still trying to think of ideas for what can be done with it, although it may be, as we have the Record of Proceedings, it most probably isn’t the best place to suggest what to do with this document. Because it is so broad in nature that, really, it doesn’t justify being called a programme for government at all, in fairness. For five years’ worth of work, we get 15 pages’ worth of—well, nothing, if I’m honest with you. I do hope that the leader of the house will actually be more positive in her response and actually offer us some solutions that this document clearly doesn’t offer us in—

Will you take an intervention?

[Continues.]—its programme for government. I’ll gladly take the intervention.

Thank you for taking the intervention. Perhaps I can give you some advice: use it for your next manifesto. It works.

Well, I question whether it does work, actually, because—. That leads me very nicely into the problems, the deep-seated problems, that the people of Wales do face. I do see the Deputy Minister for skills congratulating you on such a wonderful intervention. [Laughter.] If that passes for congratulations, why are one in seven people in Wales on a waiting list? Why is this Government failing to tackle one of the huge obstacles that have been around the neck of the NHS here in Wales for 17 years, which is tackling the waiting lists that have grown over the years?

It’s not the UK Government—I can hear, from a sedentary position, the Member for Aberavon say it’s the UK Government. If you actually look at treatment times here for cataracts, for example, in England, you will be seen within 58 days; here, it’s 107 days. Upper digestive tracts, 21 days; 32 days in Wales. Heart operations, 40 days; 48 days in Wales. Hip operations—which the Member for Aberconwy will know shortly about, because her husband is going in shortly to have his hip done—in England, 76 days for treatment; 226 days people wait in Wales to have that treatment done. On diagnosis, heart disease—38 days in England; 46 days here in Wales. On a hernia, 43 days in England; 120 days in Wales. Those are the facts. They’re not my facts; they’re the Nuffield Trust’s facts, which were done in their recent report. So, the Member for Aberavon says about it being a successful manifesto. I have seen nothing over the first 12 months of this term to show that this Government is getting on top of waiting lists.

And when you look at recruitment into the NHS in Wales, we are told that we have to wait for the new recruitment campaign that this Welsh Government has brought forward, while GP surgeries the length and breadth of Wales are shutting. We had a recruitment campaign back in 2011 from the then health Minister in this Assembly, and that didn’t exactly work very well, did it, when you see GP surgery and consultant posts going vacant the length and breadth of Wales. As I said, I’m not disputing the fact that it’s the right of the Labour Party to have the Government here; you won the election. I recognise that. But you should have the energy. You should have the appetite to deal with these deep-seated problems, and you don’t. When you look at our health boards, four of the six health boards are in some form of special measures here in Wales, and I appreciate there are health concerns across the whole of the United Kingdom, but there’s nowhere with those type of figures where four out of six—you’ve only got six health boards—are in special measures in some shape or form.

In education, you look at the PISA rankings that came out before Christmas. We had a First Minister who, when he came into position in 2009, quite rightly marked out education as being his chief policy priority, wanting to develop improvements across the board in education. He was going to invest to improve the outcomes for children in Wales. And what do the PISA rankings tell us? We’re going backwards in education here in Wales, and that cannot be a position that, after six or seven years of leadership, gives anyone any confidence at all, let alone in this Chamber, but outside of this Chamber. Spend per school is still horrendously in deficit when it’s compared to other parts of the United Kingdom, as the education committee heard only recently from the teaching unions, where Rex Phillips gave us the figures of £607 being the difference in a secondary school in Wales to a secondary school in England—£607 more is spent in a secondary school, per pupil, in England than in Wales. [Interruption.] I’ll gladly take that answer.

Do you know why? Have you considered that perhaps one of the reasons is that capital expenditure in Wales by local authorities is held separately, whereas in England, in academies, it’s held by the academies?

That doesn’t account for it, Mike. What I do know is that in the figures that were given to us at the start of devolution, that gap was £32. It’s now £607. That’s happened on your watch—the Labour Party’s watch—and this Government is not giving us any confidence that it is dealing with that particular issue. When you look at teacher numbers, a vital component of any successful education system, again, the evidence shows that there are less teachers in the classrooms in Wales, and there are over 3,500 teachers registered to be in the profession—[Interruption.] Fewer teachers. I will be corrected grammatically by my peers.

When it comes to the economy, when we look at the business rates fiasco: we were told in the Labour manifesto that there was going to be a new business rate regime brought forward that would unshackle businesses from the business rate revaluation that was coming around the corner. And what have we had? We’ve had business upon business lobbying Member upon Member to say that their livelihoods and their futures were being threatened. When you look at the general take-home pay conditions here in Wales, nearly £100 less a week is in the average pay packet in Wales, as opposed to other parts of the United Kingdom. We have the lowest take-home pay anywhere in the United Kingdom. How does that give us confidence that this Government is dealing with these deep-seated issues and deep-seated problems? And when we look at the way the infrastructure developments are processed via the Welsh Government, as we heard in the previous debate, it just seems that it’s pork barrel politics when it comes to the Llandeilo bypass, as part of a budget deal, when there’s a village just down the road from here, Dinas Powys, which is the largest village in Wales, and has been calling out for a bypass for the last 50 years, and doesn’t even get a look-in on having a bypass. [Interruption.] I’ll gladly take the intervention.

I’m enjoying thoroughly his extensive peroration here. Could I simply ask, on the issue of national infrastructure, where is the electrification from beyond Cardiff down to Swansea and west Wales? When is it going to happen—if ever?

Excuse me. Before you carry on, can everyone just calm down? Because when you shout, somebody else has to shout above you to be heard. Can we just keep it down slightly, and we’ll listen?

Sorry, Deputy Presiding Officer. I would gladly take an intervention from the Member for Ogmore so that he can correct the Record to say how many times he voted for the Labour Government to electrify rail lines in Wales when he was a Member of Parliament. I think it will show that he never voted once, whereas the Conservatives are electrifying the line between Paddington and Cardiff, and will continue to electrify beyond Cardiff. That’s more than the Labour Party ever did. I would love to give way, but the clock is slowly going to beat me.

If you look at the economic statistics, this Government is not giving the confidence that is required to say that it is a new Government, with new energy and a new impetus to deal with the deep-seated economic problems that Wales faces. That cannot be right. It cannot be the way that Members are going to allow this Government to carry on for the next four years. We, on this side of the house, will certainly continue to challenge the Government at every turn and work to make sure that people’s aspirations and beliefs in our great country can be achieved. That’s why we have tabled this motion today. I hope that Plaid Cymru will consider their amendment. I’ll most probably be disappointed in that fact, but it will be good to see the opposition come together and vote to show that we do not have the confidence in the current programme for government—and rather than just change the headlines, they act with substance and vote for this motion that’s before the Assembly today.

Thank you. I have selected the amendment to the motion, and I call on Simon Thomas to move amendment 1, tabled in the name of Rhun ap Iorwerth.

Thank you very much, Deputy Presiding Officer. I think we had a very good example just now of chasing the headlines and not producing any substance whatsoever. I get it that the Conservatives oppose the Labour Party. What I don’t get is any sense of what they’d do if they were in Government in Wales, or any progressive or positive ideas that they have for our economy or our society.

Now, it will come as no shock to the Conservatives, or to the Labour Party for that matter, that Plaid Cymru says, ‘A plague o’ both your houses!’ We don’t stand here to support either of the unionist parties who want to lock us into a union that has been so unsuccessful at protecting the interests of the people of Wales or building the Welsh economy. We don’t accept that narrative at all, and we will always try, in this place, as the elected opposition, to work with the Government of the day to achieve what’s best for our communities, what’s best for Wales—and we will work with any party in that regard.

I think I understand where the Conservatives were coming from in putting forward this rather simple but straightforward motion today. They saw us vote against the supplementary budget last week, and they thought, ‘Ah, that’s the vote against the supply, let’s put a motion down on the confidence, and let’s see if we can get some kind of parliamentary thing going here’. But we don’t follow Westminster conventions in this place. Plaid Cymru certainly doesn’t. We’re not in a relationship with the Labour Party that’s one of confidence and supply, or one of coalition. We’re in a Welsh solution that we agreed with the Labour Party at the time that we elected the First Minister. Because, like the leader of the Welsh Conservatives had to accept—and we have to accept as well—the Labour Party won the election; and therefore their nomination for First Minister deserved our attention and potential support, or at least tolerance, in this Chamber. As a result of that, we had a series of agreements, leading up to the budget, which has delivered, as far as we are concerned, on many of the things that we think were important for Wales. We’ve seen the fruits of that, whether it’s the innovative fund for drugs, whether it’s the extra resources for economic development, or whether it’s what we’ve done on business rates. We’ve seen that delivered in the process over the last year.

So, we are confident in going back to the people who voted for Plaid Cymru on what we’ve done, having been elected to this place. What we don’t have, however, is any confidence in the UK Conservative Government to deliver likewise. We’ve just seen that in this last week, with the budget and the screeching u-turn that was done only today. The fact is this: after 10 years almost now of austerity politics, we’ve only recorded mediocre growth in the economy, negligible growth in productivity throughout the UK, and Wales is even more behind in productivity than that. By 2022, people will be 18 per cent poorer than they were in 2008. Now, I know that that was just after a recession, but the fact is that austerity politics, as worked through by the Conservatives, have not delivered for the people of Wales.

Will you take an intervention?

I will take an intervention.

Would you agree that austerity has never worked, from Hoover in the United States of America, through to Greece today, and all it does is make people poorer?

I think that I and Mike Hedges would share a Keynesian view of the world in this regard. I would say to him that the Office for Budget Responsibility came to the Finance Committee this morning. They didn’t tell the Finance Committee this morning because it is in their report, but they said that, clearly, fiscal consolidation continues to depress GDP. In other words, austerity is damaging the economy. But Westminster is insistent on sticking to it, regardless of the damage it is causing. I have to say that, although the Labour Party has changed a little over the last year, initially, they signed up to that austerity charter. Even Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell put their names to that austerity charter. That’s why they have proven to be such an ineffective opposition since then in Westminster—up to and including today, as I can see in Prime Minister’s questions.

Infrastructure is something that could drive us out of austerity. But, even those infrastructure projects that could be benefiting Wales—such as electrification to Swansea, such as the tidal lagoon, such as the Swansea city deal—are all delayed by UK Government politics and their considerations. So, I think it is quite simplistic, really, for the Conservatives in Westminster and former Conservatives here in this Chamber as well—[Interruption.] I don’t have time now, sorry, Mark. I appreciate your view, but I don’t have time now. I think it is very easy for them to gloat about the poor situation that Wales finds itself in—the constant harping that we have that we could never pay our own way and we could never be independent. It is as a result of the two unionist parties and what they have done to Wales that we are in this poor situation and unable to make those key decisions for ourselves that the Scottish people are able to take. So, until that changes, we will remain the voice of opposition in this place, both to the Conservatives and to the Labour Party—or rather to the coalition government, which Peter Black usefully described it as now. We will remain a clear voice of alternative politics in this place. That is our view.

The Welsh Government has been in power in Wales for 18 years. For 11 of those 18 years they have governed hand in hand with a Labour Government in Westminster. During those 18 long and wasted years, they have systematically failed to improve the lives of our most vulnerable members of society. One in five children in Wales still lives in poverty. What a shame. This is higher than in England or Scotland, and higher than the average of the United Kingdom. In spite of spending £500 million since 2001 on their much-vaunted Communities First programme, they have failed to raise prosperity levels in the most disadvantaged parts of Wales. I represent many of those communities in south-east Wales. These communities have been let down by Labour’s failure to break the cycle of poverty and deprivation. Of the United Kingdom’s 12 regions, Wales is the tenth most impoverished, and that is a shame. Despite the goal to eradicate child poverty by 2020, rates have remained stagnant. Last month, the Cabinet Secretary for Communities and Children admitted that Communities First, in his words, had not had the impact on overall poverty levels in these communities, which remain stubbornly high. He went on to say that a new approach is needed that deals with the root causes of poverty.

In spite of this admission of failure, we have had no clear announcement of what will replace Communities First. Instead, the current programme will continue until March 2018, and there will be 30 per cent cuts in funding. It could be that one of the reasons for the failure of Communities First is that not enough money reached front-line projects in Wales. For example, the Communities First cluster in Caerphilly, Deputy Presiding Officer, spend £375,000 on front-line projects last year. However, they spent more than £2 million on staffing. Communities First promised so much, but has delivered so little.

Education remains the best route out of poverty, but Welsh Labour has failed to provide so many of our children with the skills they need to succeed in life. The recent PISA result, which Andrew earlier mentioned, highlights the growing gap between the skills businesses need from their employees and the provision of education in Wales. More than a fifth of Welsh students lack the reading skills for functioning in the workplace. Again, this is the highest proportion of any nation in the United Kingdom. We face a skills shortage here in Wales. More than 72 per cent of Welsh businesses experienced difficulty in recruiting the right staff in 2015. Sixty-one per cent of Welsh businesses fear they will not be able to recruit enough high-skilled workers to meet demand and to grow. Employers in various industries frequently raise concerns that they struggle to find graduates with the right skill or work experience in Wales.

Deputy Presiding Officer, I came to live in Wales 47 years ago. It used to be a wonderful city, Newport, and a prosperous town. But if you look at it now, I think instead of going forward, it’s pedalling backwards in all walks of life. This is true. I know this is something—I have seen it. I know the people who are living there. Whether you look at education, housing, transport, you name it—and I can count many other areas where even our councils are struggling to fulfil—. [Interruption.] We were debating here the rubbish collection, which used to be very good every week, but not anymore—fortnightly. And there is more rubbish—[Interruption.] No, I’ve got no time. There is more rubbish on the streets now than probably for recycling. It’s frustrating. It frustrates me to see the country I chose to make my home fall further and further behind other parts of the United Kingdom and the world. The Welsh Government cannot duck its responsibility and pass blame to others on the other side of the channel, to the Westminster Government. That is totally foolish. They have had 18 years to change and to make life better in Wales, which they haven’t done. They have let Wales down, and it’s a shame. Thank you.

I’m delighted to speak in today’s debate, to set on the record the excellent work this Welsh Labour Government has done, and continues to do, as the people of Wales experience the impact of attacks and failure of the Tory Government at Westminster. Members will only need to look at my own constituency to see how the Welsh Labour Government is providing strong leadership on economic support, together with investment for our future, whilst the Tory Government turns away from us.

Deputy Presiding Officer, I could actually spend the rest of the whole hour highlighting the Welsh Labour Government achievements and Tory failures, but in my contribution I’ll focus on just two examples that highlighted such differences. Firstly, the steel industry, as you would expect, often referred to as the beating heart of Port Talbot, has seen unwavering support from this Welsh Labour Government, and it remains committed to doing everything in its power to secure the long-term future of the Tata plants in Wales. It continues to work closely with the trade unions and Tata Steel in this regard, and since the announcements of job losses last year, and then the sale of Tata Steel’s business in the UK, this Welsh Government has offered significant conditional support to keep steel production and steel jobs at all Tata sites in Wales. Such support includes the provision of over £4 million for skills and training, a package that will help develop the future workforce of Tata’s Welsh sites, improving succession planning and facilitating the transfer of skills for the mature workforce to the young employees—a vitally important area to ensure the longevity of steel making in Wales, and which shows the Welsh Government’s confidence in the long-term production of steel in Wales.

The Welsh Government has also announced £8 million support towards an £18 million investment in the power plant at Port Talbot works, reducing energy costs and cutting carbon emissions. At the recent cross-party group on steel here at the Assembly, senior trade union officials told us this will be a game changer for Port Talbot, helping towards a reduction in energy costs. So, what has the Tory UK Government done? Any takers? [Interruption.] Oh, yes, I’m happy to take an intervention.

A package of measures for green energy; £132 million has gone into high-energy companies such as Tata Steel, and more to come up to the £400 million rebate that’s been offered by the Treasury in London. That’s a lot more than you’ve done on business rates, which you haven’t tackled at all from this front bench.

I was waiting for that one. Can I remind the Member that, in fact, his party promised in 2011 that package? In 2014 the EU actually approved a package, in 2015 they approved another one, and extended it, and by 2016 we still hadn’t received the money. When announcements are made about job losses, when announcements were made about sales—over four years waiting for the UK Government to do something. So, don’t tell me that they actually are reacting. They were slow to react. They did call a steel summit when Redcar was closed. There was enough hot air coming from politicians to keep the rolling mills going for quite a while. But, you know, they did need help to create an even playing field, and that’s all the industry asked for—an even playing field. It didn’t happen. They failed to take the necessary steps to reduce the costs on energy for all Tata and other steel companies, and the quality of steel in this country is one of the best in the world. And we need that to support our industry, but despite promises of procurement, the Ministry of Defence actually went to France for steel for the Trident submarines, and the UK Government has failed to commit itself to procurement of British steel for HS2. It’s terrible, in fact. And in contrast, the Welsh Government has examined the future need for steel in public sector infrastructure and construction projects in Wales and has committed to using procurement to open up accessible opportunities, doing more than the UK Government has actually ever done.

My second example—because I did say two—reflects the progress in building modern, state-of-the-art schools for our children. In England, we saw the Tory Government abolish the building schools for the future programme, and that would have actually seen a similar concept. And if it had been under the control of English Government, we’d have seen no schools built in Wales at all. Here in Wales, we’re proud of the twenty-first century schools programme. But more than building new schools, it’s actually a programme that focuses resources on building the right school in the right place to deliver education from early years through to post-16. It delivers learning environments that will enable successful implementation of strategies to deliver improved educational outcomes. It creates public buildings that meet national building standards and reduces the costs that schools will have to find.

Only this Monday, the Cabinet Secretary actually attended one, Ysgol Bae Baglan, and saw for herself the fantastic state-of-the-art school that has replaced three ageing secondary schools in my constituency. Twenty million pounds from this Welsh Government has actually allowed young people in Briton Ferry, Sandfields, Port Talbot and Baglan to benefit from modern, state-of-the-art facilities. And they’re building three more schools in Aberavon—fantastic news and fantastic support from this Welsh Government.

Dirprwy Lywydd, the truth always comes out and this debate reminds us that this Labour Government invests in our future, while the Tories in power in Westminster have shown that they either ignore us or seek to penalise those most at risk. The Welsh Labour Government is fighting for the people of Wales and the people of Wales recognised that last May.

I am tempted to just cough and say the words ‘Cwrt Sart’, but I won’t.

Andrew R.T. Davies was talking earlier about energy, and 18 years is a long time for any party, and I do mean any party, to be in Government. It doesn’t really matter who props them up, it’s still a long time. But the one thing that is good about it is that it gives those parties a long term to plan, and I do think that is a good thing.

Since the Alastair Campbell days of headline-driven policy making, short-termism has become a less than helpful feature of politics. This sort of ‘show me now’ expectation puts pressure on Governments to come up with a shiny new distraction on the back of every budget, and an annual budget cycle brings its own difficulties to long-term planning.

Eighteen years also gives parties a long time to make mistakes. I think we can be forgiven for making the odd mistake. Everyone miscalculates from time to time. But my essential difficulty with these Labour-led Governments is that 18 years is a long time to put those mistakes right. And they haven’t done that—they just keep making them. Eighteen years is also a long time to blame everybody else. In the six years or so that I’ve been here, the standard response to scrutiny has been, ‘Well, it’s not me, Miss, it’s those Tories in Westminster.’ Well, at 18, I would expect a more mature response from anyone. Those Tories had to play the hand that was dealt to them and the Government here needs to do the same, especially as they’ve had 12 years more practice. And, yes, I would expect a party that’s been in power for 18 years to do things differently from the UK Government. The reason we have devolution is to put the needs of the people of Wales first. You’ve seen the Welsh Conservatives develop policies that are quite different from those of colleagues in Westminster, because the needs of Wales are specific. The reality of that, though, is that these needs now are specific, and not in a good way, as a result of 18 years of poor Government here: NHS waiting lists, education and skills and standards—despite the lovely new schools—GVA, child poverty, bad investment decisions along with small business deaths, poor social mobility, and indifference to rural communities.

In the six years that I’ve been here, Labour-led Government haven’t just blamed Westminster, it’s been a series of, ‘I expect the health boards to do this’, ‘That’s a matter for local authorities’, ‘That’s for the headteacher to decide’. And I would go some way to accepting those responses, as a subscriber to localism and subsidiarity myself, if they were followed up by adequate resource following every new expectation, and if they were subject to some visible accountability.

Last week, I was at Bridgend College, which has received a double excellent result from its Estyn inspection. This is a miracle for two reasons. The first is that they managed to weather the loss of 150 members of staff, following the crippling cuts that Welsh Government inflicted on them two years ago, and the second is that 88 per cent of their learners are below level 1 in numeracy and 84 per cent are below level 1 in literacy.

Now, these are the students who were born under a Welsh Labour Government. They have been educated in accordance with Welsh Labour policy. Half of them come from areas classified as ‘most deprived’, most deprived after a whole lifetime of Labour Welsh policy. Our new teachers, of whom we’re going to expect so much in this Donaldson era, only know the education system that they had themselves. How can we imagine that a nine-month PGCE is anywhere near long enough for them to look for those new ideas when their own experience was either about grade-led meltdown, or no expectation at all? I don’t doubt the Cabinet Secretary’s determination not to waste another generation’s potential, but I have no sense of direction of leadership about how this Labour-led Government will ameliorate the consequences of 18 years of mistakes. It is the same old stuff: only already exhausted local authorities can be trusted to effect change, but you won’t give them any sufficient resource to do what you’re asking them to do—not on education; delays in planning anything so local businesses with good ideas give up on the whole idea of partnership working and get on with what they do, locking up their expertise and not sharing it; a lack of frankness about how efficiently public services work, for fear of it being an attack on the workforce when, actually, a workforce feels valued when it’s able to do its job as best as it can without waste and without constant meddling, and you get constant meddling when there is no vision at the top, and no say at the bottom.

Will you take an intervention?

I’m a bit short on time, but if you can keep it quick.

Thank you for taking the intervention. Do you therefore agree with me also that—? You say getting the best out of the workforce—one way of getting the best out of the workforce is working in partnership with the workforce, as we are seeing across Neath Port Talbot, where there is a great partnership between the workforce and the council. That’s a way of getting success.

Absolutely; that was my point. I’m thinking some of these partnerships don’t work because, actually, the private sector isn’t as involved as it could be, and I think that’s a real shame for Wales.

This is what I have seen over these last six years. I know there’s only so much money, but how well has it been spent? There’s no vision, no bravery, and Wales needs its Government to be brave enough to do something. You’ve had the privilege of a long Government. Your long-term plan seems to have been to do the same thing over and over again for the same result, and that is your unforgivable mistake.

UKIP has no difficulty at all in supporting this motion today. The best that can be said of the Labour Government in Cardiff is that its problems are serious but not terminal, which is the opposite to the position of the Labour Party in Westminster, whose problems are terminal but not serious. Fortunately, we haven’t got—[Interruption.] Fortunately, we haven’t got Jeremy Corbyn as the First Minister in Wales to impose upon us the economic policies that have created such a massive success in Venezuela and Cuba, the other countries in the world that he venerates. That’s not to say that we approve of everything that the Conservative Government at Westminster does as well, and we’ve seen in the course of the last week how one car-crash mistake has now been reversed, and the famous white van man has managed to change the Chancellor’s mind and turn him into white flag man, and a very good thing, too.

But I must say I was rather taken aback by Simon Thomas’s speech about what it means to be an opposition party in this place, because he referred to the right of the Labour Party to continue to be the Government of this country as though they’d actually won the election last May. The truth of the matter is not only did they not win a majority of the seats, they only got 33 per cent of the vote. I don’t think that that is a resounding qualification for the leadership of this country, and after 18 years I would have thought that the opposition would have had more ambition than to be Carwyn Jones’s pit prop to keep up his tottering administration. Unfortunately, Plaid Cymru is a bogus opposition, because we know that at every opportunity when there is, effectively, a vote of confidence—and we saw it the other day on the supplementary budget—they won’t actually press home the advantage in votes that we have collectively as opposition parties. They keep this tottering Government in place, and so they can’t shuffle off the failures of the Labour Government entirely upon the Labour Party, because they are actually the Labour Party’s accomplices in all of this. And over the last 18 years, occasionally, they’ve actually been formal accomplices. Now they’re the informal ones but, nevertheless, without them, the Labour Party would not now be the Government of Wales. And in the course of the last 18 years, as Andrew R.T. Davies pointed out in his opening speech, Wales has become the poorest region, virtually, in western Europe. We’ve seen us actually going backwards in 18—. [Interruption.] Oh, go on.

Thank you for giving way; I’m very grateful to you. Will he then explain what is the alternative Government of Wales that he proposes?

Well, the alternative Government of Wales would be one of him and me, I think, which would be a very alternative Government indeed, of course. It is true to say that it would undoubtedly be a rainbow coalition of parties if Plaid Cymru, the Conservatives, UKIP and the independents had combined in order to provide a change of Government for Wales. But, a change is as good as a rest, as they say, and I think that anything would be better than what we’ve got at any rate.

Wales has moved backwards in the last 18 years, from having been second from the bottom of all the regions of England and the nations of the United Kingdom, we are now at the bottom of the league table. Andrew Davies pointed out that four out of the six health boards are in either special measures or targeted intervention, and the PISA results speak for themselves. On all the major indices of achievement, the Labour Government has failed and it surely is time for some kind of change.

I must say, I was taken aback secondly by Simon Thomas saying that if we had independence in Wales, it would all suddenly become very different because we could then move into a Keynesian nirvana where money growing on trees could be picked off and spent. But, of course, how could he do that? Because unless Wales had its own currency, he wouldn’t be able simply to print the money that he wants to spend. This was the question that the SNP couldn’t answer during the Scottish referendum campaign. If they became an independent nation, how would they manage their spending plans if they were either part of the eurozone or if they were part of the sterling zone? And there is no answer to that question. The answer is, of course, that although the Government at Westminster has doubled the national debt in the last seven years—which must be the most Keynesian policy that we’ve ever had in this country—that has not achieved the impact that Plaid Cymru thinks it would have if they had the opportunity to do that in Wales.

The future of Wales lies with the industries of the future, which are in the areas of high technology—the digital future of this country. What we see going on the other side of the Severn bridge, with Dyson’s new technology campus at Hullavington—it’s only an hour from where we are here in Cardiff—these are the kinds of industries that we should be attracting into Wales. We should look forward to a low-tax, low-regulation environment that is going to make Wales a beacon to attract the investment that we need to produce those jobs for the future.

I would like to thank the Welsh Conservatives for giving me an opportunity to rise in this debate to highlight the actual work of the Welsh Labour Government. It would be equally remiss of me to start without mentioning ‘Spreadsheet Phil’ even further from today’s announcements. The Tory UK Government Chancellor last week caused absolute outrage with one of the most naked broken promises in politics—a broken promise that would cause even Nick Clegg to blush. It is not often in this Chamber that I will ever, I hope, quote David Cameron, but I’ll give it a go. He tweeted on 25 March in 2015,

‘I've ruled out raising VAT. Why won't Ed Miliband rule out raising National Insurance contributions? Labour always puts up the Jobs Tax.’

They’re not raising it.

Though in fairness—I realise—Dave did once say, for those today who have got long memories, ‘Too many tweets make a—’.

But in all seriousness and in all earnestness, the Conservatives, despite the u-turns, broke an explicit and direct manifesto promise and did directly betray 1.6 million self-employed people. In contrast, the Welsh Labour Government has delivered on its promises for the people of Wales. Let me suggest to the Welsh Conservatives that they would be better off spending their time trying to find the £2 billion black hole in the UK Conservative budget rather than trying to shout in the wind in this Chamber. Even the OBR, set up by this Government in the UK, has stated we will be 18 per cent worse off in 2020.

Only last May, the people of Wales gave their verdict at the ballot box on the Welsh Labour Government. The Welsh Conservatives told us that Andrew R.T. Davies was to be First Minister—the Welsh people had a different point of view. And the Welsh Conservatives went from the main opposition party to being the third group of this Assembly. So, if Welsh Tory AMs call that progress, then I can only agree they’re heading in the right direction and long may it continue.

Wales continues to outperform the rest of the UK in terms of falling unemployment and both economic inactivity and the claimant count in Wales are falling faster than the UK average. Wales enjoys record inward investment, record tourism figures, the lowest unemployment rates in the UK, the best recycling rates in the UK, the second best recycling rates in Europe and the third best in the world, and record-equalling GCSE results. The Welsh NHS is treating more people than ever before, faster than ever before, despite record demand. [Interruption.] The Welsh NHS is delivering better healthcare for people across Wales. The Welsh ambulance service is the best in the UK. Cancer survival rates continue to improve year on year, and overall waiting times are down 20 per cent on last year. And we, in Wales, are protecting the NHS nurse training bursary, slashed and trashed in England at the deficit and disablement of the NHS in England.

And there are challenges, obviously, there are. Yet, time and time again, the Welsh people have delivered their verdict—

Sorry, I have no time.

[Continues.]—and said that the Welsh Labour Party is the true party of Wales: on their side, with them and standing up for them.

Deputy Presiding Officer, I came to this Assembly from local government and in Wales, under Labour, despite scalic block grant cuts to Wales, local government revenue funding has been protected, standing at £4.114 billion—the best settlement, protected following years of cuts from the UK Government. A level of protection that has not been afforded to local government in England under the Tories. Council budgets there have been cut by 10 per cent in cash terms. Vulnerable people—the biggest users of local authorities in England—are suffering, whereas, in Wales, those budgets have gone up by 2.5 per cent. To put this in context, Cardiff’s expenditure increased by £67 million and in Liverpool, it decreased by £75 million. In the words of Catatonia—and I promise I won’t sing it—‘Every day, when I wake up, I thank the Lord that I am Welsh’ because I served in local government as a teacher, and in Wales, under Labour, school buildings are being radically improved with a £2 billion twenty-first century school building programme—the biggest school building programme Wales has ever seen, after years of pre-devolution disinvestment in school assets. In Islwyn, the magnificent Islwyn High School is rising from the ground; in England, as has been said by many, the Tories have trashed and abolished Labour’s school building programme. So, if it’s true—and it is true—I say to myself, ‘Thank the Lord that I am Welsh’, because as the Conservative Members know in their heart of hearts, life is better under Welsh Labour. Thank you.

Janet Finch-Saunders. [Interruption.] Janet Finch-Saunders. Daydreaming?

Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. Today’s debate shines a spotlight on the workings of the Welsh Labour Government and so too on its failings—a Government that has systematically failed to improve living standards for our residents here in Wales. Twenty one per cent of our students are under-proficient in reading; PISA results and GVA are the lowest in the UK; funding for GP services has been cut by £20 million over four years; NHS spend per head is the lowest in the UK; treatment waiting times for routine procedures are two-and-a-half times longer in Wales than in England; one in seven are still lingering on an NHS waiting list; and 127 patients have waited over 105 weeks for treatments such as hip replacements and knee replacements—yes, on the NHS in Wales. So, it should come as no surprise, then, that the Nuffield Trust has said,

‘Wales’s lengthening waiting times should set alarm bells ringing amongst policy-makers’.

By that, of course, they mean the Welsh Labour Government. Now, we face a social care crisis—a forecast of doubling costs over the next 13 years, and yet no strategic forward work management planning in place by this Labour Government.

Locally, there have been £299 million in local government budget cuts since 2013 that have seen many of our vital local services eroded. Council tax, on the other hand, is rising by an average of 3.6 per cent again this year, with Conwy, Ceredigion and Pembrokeshire raising bills by an inflation-busting 5 per cent, thanks to Plaid Cymru and Labour—higher than all but three councils in England and Scotland, and now many more are facing further hikes of up to 4.6 per cent for 2017-18.

Deputy Presiding Officer, our residents pay a significantly higher proportion of their pay packets towards council tax bills than any other British nation. Little wonder, then, that Citizens Advice has labelled council tax as Wales’s single biggest debt problem for our families for the second year running. The failure of the Welsh Labour Government to properly utilise consequential funding of over £94 million that came to Wales provided by, yes, the Conservative-led Government in Westminster between 2010 and 2016 is seeing Welsh council tax payers robbed of their own income to the tune of over £794—

Will you take an intervention?

No, I’m sorry. I’ve started, I’ll finish. You’re always wanting to mention Westminster; well, let me tell you, a band D property in Westminster has a council tax of £669. A band D property in Conwy: £1,401. Business rates are crippling our most hard working and enterprising individuals. In England, under a Conservative Government, our businesses are valued, they are appreciated, they are supported, and they have now received £3.6 billion in transitional relief. The equivalent in monetary terms of this support in value for Wales, if provided, would be £180 million, yet the recent boasting of a £10 million fund to mitigate this appalling increase is an absolute insult—a complete disgrace—proving, once again, that Welsh Labour simply do not get business.

On broadband, average speeds in Wales are the lowest of the UK regions. In Aberconwy, not only individual premises, but almost some whole communities are being excluded from the Superfast Cymru project, whilst the fibre journey continues to report unreliable data under Welsh Labour in power, supported, of course, in recent years by Plaid Cymru and the Lib Dems. Here we go again. What more can I say? But my constituents in Aberconwy have seen a 230 per cent increase in their council tax bills; their local health board put in special measures, and remaining there for 22 months today; and the closure of our rural schools, against the wishes of a number of parents and governors. The Welsh Labour Government is simply failing my constituency, and it is certainly failing the people of Wales. Thank you.

In his opening speech, the leader of the opposition—although I’m not sure I can call him that again; Neil McEvoy is no longer listed as a Plaid Member, I see. He said that he expected to see a new Government with new energy and new impetus. He even went so far, I think, as to say for 18 months he anticipated a blaze of energy. But of course this, to all intents, isn’t a new Labour-led Government. It’s not the first 18 months. It’s the fag-end of 18 years and, frankly, it shows.

We have the Welsh Government’s eight key economic indicators that they set themselves, and the first—I think the most important—of those was GVA per capita. We’re twelfth out of 12 of the English regions and the three nations: Wales, £18,002; UK, £25,351. We go down these and we’re tenth out of 12; eleventh out of 12; twelfth out of 12; ninth out of 12; eleventh out of 12; tenth equal out of 12. There is one, actually, where we’re a bit better, but not all the data are available on that one. I don’t think there’s anything more important that the two major public services that are devolved: the health service and education.

We look at urgent GP cancer referrals. We set ourselves the target of 95 per cent to be seen within two months, yet it’s only 86 per cent. The A&E four-hour waiting time: only 82 per cent in Wales are seen within that. In England it’s 86 per cent, compared to the 95 per cent target they set. We see it for waiting times: three times as long for hip replacement or hernia; nearly twice as long for cataract operations; and, actually, the only reason we’ve got those numbers is because of the Nuffield Trust. The reality is that when Labour aren’t hitting their targets, they stop collecting the data. But one piece of data that is available in the health services in mortality, and for avoidable deaths in Wales we have 240 per 100,000 people, compared to 221 in England. In just one year, that implies 600 extra and avoidable deaths in Wales, and potentially over the period of devolution 10,000.

Turning to education, the leader of the opposition said that the PISA results were going backwards, and I heard muttering from a Labour Member, ‘No we’re not.’ But look at them. I mean, maths, the Wales number is 478 compared to 493. That gap’s getting wider, and it’s fallen in Wales compared to the previous numbers. On reading, we have in Wales 477 compared to 500 in England. That gap has doubled in the past decade, and the Welsh number has been going down. And then, in science, we have Wales on 485, compared to 505 back in 2006; again, the gap has doubled with England. So, that’s the record on the key public services.

But then we also look at the constitutional issue, and we have no settled devolution settlement. The First Minister has instead set Wales on an uncertain journey by saying Scotland should be our model. Now, I don’t wholly blame the Labour-led Welsh Government for the unsatisfactory nature of the Wales Act 2017, but I think, also, Labour frontbench and Labour Welsh MPs, who are the majority, also bear some responsibility for that, as I think does Sir Humphrey and his pernicious influence on the Conservative Government at Westminster. But we had only, I think, pretty marginal changes in the drafting, yet we had these speeches from so many Labour Members, including the frontbench, that, ‘Ah, it’s not great, there’s all these problems with it, but, on balance, and it’s very much an on-balance decision, there’s this great thing that the Sewel convention is going to be codified in law and that will then be judged by the courts, and, on that basis, we should vote for it.’ Yet, within a couple of weeks, the rug was pulled out from under them, and, following the Counsel General’s intervention, we’re told by the Supreme Court the fact it’s in law makes no difference at all and it remains a convention.

And then, on leaving the EU, we see how the Welsh Government position has evolved. I don’t want to be too critical for this; this is something I’ve been obsessed with all my life. The First Minister has led on it and he’s mugged up over the past nine months and his understanding has developed. But he’s had three separate positions on freedom of movement. At one point, he very sensibly said that we couldn’t be members of the single market—indeed, he voted down a Plaid motion on it—because we needed to deal with freedom of movement. Unfortunately, that position now seems to have gone back, and free and unfettered access to the single market is, I think, something that would get a consensus. But then, when that then becomes full participation in the single market, as I’ve said before, what on earth does that mean? I saw that Jane Hutt, the leader of the house, adopted a new formulation in taking questions yesterday—she referred to ‘participation’ in the single market. But, ultimately, are we going to do what the people of Wales want? They voted to leave. Are we going to come out of the single market? Are we going to restrict freedom of movement? Are we going to take a sensible approach to this and back, actually, what the people of Wales decided, or are we going to try and hug the Scottish Government? All the Scottish Government cares about is independence.

The idea of the future UK framework as something that the Wales relationship with England or with UK Government, and the huge importance of that for us—the idea that that should be based on whatever Nicola Sturgeon fancies stirring up or having as a precept in negotiations on the UK framework I think is wrong. We need to see the Welsh Government lead in finding a settled model of devolution, not the independence supported by 6 per cent of the country, yet, however many Members there now are opposite, and we look to the Government to lead on that. Unfortunately, it’s not doing so, and I’m delighted to support the Conservative motion today.

Thank you very much. I now call on the leader of the house, Jane Hutt.

Dirprwy Lywydd, I’m very pleased to have the opportunity to respond to this debate, and I do intend to speak on our record and be positive about what this Welsh Labour Government is achieving in Wales, because it is a record of a Welsh Labour Government delivering for the people of Wales.

So, let’s start with the economy: fewer people out of work in Wales and close to record numbers in work. The latest figures bear testament to this: the unemployment rate in Wales now remains lower than the UK average, and we’ve created tens of thousands of new jobs. Last year alone, the Welsh Government helped create and protect 37,500 jobs. But we’ve also responded to the economic challenges, and supporting our Save our Steel campaign is an example of that, as David Rees has said. We’ve taken action to safeguard the steel industry here in Wales. Thanks to the £60 million of support the Welsh Labour Government has set aside to support the steel industry, we’ve been able to keep steel jobs and steel production here in Wales.

Dirprwy Lywydd, more than 15,000 young people, across all our constituencies, have been supported into work through the first Jobs Growth Wales programme, and apprenticeship success rates are higher in Wales than in England. We’re supporting tens of thousands of small businesses with their business rates and we’ve listened and responded to their concerns about revaluation by creating two bespoke relief schemes.

How do you respond to official figures showing that Wales has the highest level of people not in employment, the highest level of underemployment, and the highest percentage of employees not on permanent contracts amongst the 12 UK nations and regions?

ONS figures, of course, show now 4.4 per cent unemployment in Wales, compared with 4.7 per cent across the whole of the UK. ONS figures speak for themselves. But, also, we’re continuing to drive forward improvements in health and social care. Let’s put the record straight again: we spend 6 per cent more on health and social care here in Wales than in England, and people are being treated faster and living longer, waiting times are falling—the latest cancer figures are proof of that. Our new £16 million-a-year new treatment fund will provide faster and more consistent access to new and innovative medicines. Welsh ambulance response times are consistently above target and among the best in the UK. Delayed transfers of care are close to historical low levels despite an increase in demand for hospital care—stark contrast to England where, according to the UK Government’s own figures, delayed transfers of care have risen to record levels and social care is in deep crisis.

On education, pupils’ performance at key stage 4 is continuing to rise. The gap between children receiving free school meals and their peers is narrowing. Absenteeism from our primary schools is at lowest-ever levels. And we are, as has been said already this afternoon, two thirds of the way through the most ambitious school building and replacement programme since the 1960s—112 of 150 schools and colleges either in construction or completed. Thank you, again, to David Rees for drawing attention to that £40 million Ysgol Bae Baglan in Neath Port Talbot. We should be proud of this—in Neath Port Talbot, officially opened last week with Kirsty Williams—a school that has spaces for 1,500 pupils, replacing three secondary schools and one primary school. It will stay open until 10 o’clock at night on weekdays, the canteen transforming into a community cafe. That’s a Welsh Labour Government investing in our children and young people, supporting our teachers—the best learning environment. Ysgol Bro Teifi in Ceredigion—another of our twenty-first century schools—was Wales’s first purpose-built combined primary and secondary Welsh-medium community school. That was designed in partnership with teachers and pupils, linking all phases of learning on a single site. But we’re also implementing a unique package of higher education support, guaranteeing student support linked to the national living wage while they complete their studies.

Also, Dirprwy Lywydd, we’re delivering for communities across Wales. No-one’s mentioned housing. In the last Assembly, we built more than 11,000 affordable homes, and brought 5,000 empty homes back into use. I saw those houses that had been shut up opening up for people who were in housing need, and helping 3,300 homebuyers buying through Help to Buy—Wales.

Just hold on one second. By 2021, we will have done more, as we will build a further 20,000 affordable homes.

The amount of underbuilding we’ve done is about 4,000 or 5,000 homes each and every year throughout the period of devolution. If you don’t believe me about where we are and the crisis we’re in, can I refer you to the excellent explanatory memorandum that the Government has produced on the abolition of the right to buy Bill? [Laughter.]

Well, I think that the people who are in housing need, and who do benefit and whom I’ve met—not just in terms of affordable and social housing, but in terms of those who have access to help to buy as first-time buyers—would, I think, disagree with your disputing of figures, which, of course, are very clear in terms of the 20,000 affordable homes that we have committed ourselves to, in terms of our ‘Taking Wales Forward’.

On the environment, we’ve invested in flood protection. Yesterday, we heard of the status that we are achieving, in partnership with local government, in terms of being a world leader in recycling: second in Europe, third in the world, in the first half of 2016-17. We recycled 62 per cent of our waste—significantly better, again, than England—Carl Sargeant made that point very clearly—recycling rates are under 44 per cent. Aren’t you proud to live in Wales, as Rhianon Passmore says? We are doing all of this against the backdrop of austerity, in the shadow of a Conservative UK Government that has systematically failed to invest in public services. It’s taken from the poor and the vulnerable at the very time when it should be supporting them. It’s squandered billions in pet projects that benefit the well-off and entitled. So, we will take no lessons from the Conservatives about government. In Westminster, theirs is a Government of broken promises—a Government which, last week, as Rhianon Passmore so eloquently described and reminded us, broke a manifesto commitment not to increase national insurance contributions. [Interruption.] Yes, this afternoon—as Simon Thomas said earlier on, the smell of rubber with the u-turn, the spectacular u-turn, dropping their plans. But I have a serious question for Andrew R.T. Davies, for you to ask your colleagues in Westminster. This u-turn has left a £645 million hole in this budget and his spending plans for social care and schools. So, I would ask that question: what is now going to be scrapped and cut as a result of that u-turn?

But, on a very serious note about the clash and differences of our values, this is the same Tory Government that prematurely scrapped the Dubs amendment scheme after giving just a tenth of the child refugees it had originally promised a safe haven in the UK. That makes me angry. It makes a lot of people angry here in Wales. Because, in Wales, we have a warm welcome for refugees. We support our local authorities in their vital role in caring for migrants and asylum seekers.

So, Dirprwy Lywydd, the Tory UK Government will have taken £1 billion from Wales in the decade since 2011—money that our public services desperately need. Dirprwy Lywydd, I want to close by returning to our record as a Welsh Government. Yes, thank you for acknowledging that, last May, I was very proud when the people of Wales re-elected Welsh Labour as the majority party to form a Government, and that we have set out an ambition, a programme for government, and that Kirsty Williams is part of our Government. ‘Taking Wales Forward’ will help us deliver that. But I would say to this Assembly, finally, that we are in power at a critically important time—arguably the most important time of the last 18 years. Six weeks after the Assembly election, Wales voted to leave the European Union. As a Government, we’re working to ensure that Wales’s best interests are both represented and secured during the negotiations to leave Europe. We have worked closely with Plaid Cymru to produce the White Paper ‘Securing Wales’s Future’. This is where we share—and we must; we have to a duty to share—responsibility, because we have to put the interests of Wales first. That is what this Welsh Labour Government is doing, and I am proud of it.

Andrew R.T. Davies to reply to the debate.

Thank you very much, Deputy Presiding Officer. I welcome and congratulate everyone who’s contributed in the debate in their own particular way. It was noticeable from the leader of the house that she didn’t address head-on the very points that were put to her around health waiting times, around recruitment of doctors and nurses to get our health service back up to where we want it to be, around the special measures that four of our six health boards find themselves in, and around the points that Mark Reckless touched on, where he used the indices that are internationally recognised. Wales, sadly, is at the foothills of those league tables. None of us are proud about that at all. We are ambitious for Wales, but what we want is a Government in this place that has the same ambitions that the people of Wales have. Regrettably, from the exhibition that the leader of the house gave today—. All she gave was a poor excuse for the record to date delivered by this Government. Do you know what makes me angry, leader of the house? [Interruption.] I’ll take the intervention in a minute. Do you know what makes me angry, leader of the house? That generation after generation of schoolchildren have missed the opportunity to reach their potential under the education system that you have presided over, where you have been a Minister right the way through since the dawn of devolution. I notice that you didn’t address the points that I put to you on education around the PISA rankings, around the funding—£607—around the lack of teachers in our schools, which are all figures that have been given to the education committee by the unions. You have presided over those figures, and you continue to preside over those figures. David Rees touched on—[Interruption.] Sorry, Jenny, I did forget. I’ll take the intervention. Sorry.

If you are so exercised about education, why didn’t you submit a motion to be debated on the quality of our education, instead of this catch-all motion, which leads us absolutely nowhere and is a waste of Assembly time?

Well, with respect, Jenny, we are three weeks away from the end of term. One-fifth of this Assembly term has gone away. I appreciate that you weren’t here at the start of the debate, but I made the point that, when Governments come in, they normally have energy, they have vibrancy, they blaze ideas and trail blaze ideas that people want to rally around. Sadly, this Government has just continued—[Interruption.]—continued with the same policies that have seen decline in education, decline in health, and a decline in the economy. David Rees touched on the steel industry. One thing the steel industry has been talking about time and time again is help around business rates. This Government has done nothing on business rates at all. The Westminster Government has put a £400 million fund for high-energy users—[Interruption.] I’m pushed for time, to be honest with you—£400 million for high-energy users, of which £130 million has been delivered to those high-energy users already. And who put most of the tariffs in place that pushed energy up in this country? It was none other than Ed Miliband, back in 2009 and 2010. He did it—Labour did it. With the greatest of respect to the Member for Islwyn, is it a fact that, when you look to your communities in Islwyn and the Communities First projects that now—. Thankfully, that’s the one thing this Government has noticed: that they had little or no success in lifting people out of poverty. Thankfully, the one thing the Cabinet Secretary has done in his time in office is actually say, ‘Enough is enough’ and pull the drawbridge up on that project.

It’s your Government you should be holding to account for the failure to lift GVA and economic activity in your constituencies. But actually, if Plaid Cymru think the road to independence is the salvation for Wales, then God help us, I have to say, to be honest with you, because ultimately that would be the road to ruination. The union of the United Kingdom has offered Wales the huge opportunities and strength of sharing the resources of the union to support all four parts of that union—[Interruption.]

Can we all just calm down?

They do have this inferiority complex. They really do need to get over it. Rather than having the chip on the shoulder—[Interruption.]

[Inaudible.]—calm down.

[Inaudible.]—you’ll be amazed at what you can achieve.

But this motion today, at the end of what is one fifth of this Assembly term, seeks to highlight how the Government here has failed to address those deep structural problems on the economy, on health, on education, on housing, as has been pointed out by spokespeople here today. In fact, the leader of the house introduced housing herself: 5,000 houses less built a year, every year since devolution. That’s why we’ve got a housing crisis, and your solution is to get rid of the right-to-buy legislation that has empowered so many people the length and breadth of Wales—140,000 people live in and own their homes today and have a stake in the Welsh economy and Welsh society, and if you want to stand against aspiration, you carry on. But on this side of the Chamber, we will continue to make sure that people can reach their full potential. That’s why this motion is before the house today, and I hope that Members will support it.

Thank you. The proposal is to agree the motion without amendment. Does any Member object? [Objection.] Thank you. Therefore I will defer this vote until voting time.

It has been agreed that voting time will take place now, unless three Members wish for the bell to be rung. No? Okay, we will move to voting.

The first vote this afternoon is on the motion under Standing Order 26.91 seeking the Assembly’s agreement to introduce a Member Bill on the protection of historic place names. I call for a vote on the motion tabled in the name of Dai Lloyd. Open the vote. Close the vote. For the motion 25, no abstentions, against the motion 28. Therefore the motion is not agreed.

We move now to the vote on the Welsh Conservative debate. I call for a vote on the motion tabled in the name of Paul Davies. If the proposal is not agreed, we will vote on the amendment. Open the vote. Close the vote. For the motion 17, no abstentions, 36 against. Therefore the motion is not agreed.

I now call for a vote on amendment 1, tabled in the name of Rhun ap Iorwerth. Open the vote. Close the vote. For the amendment 12, two abstentions, 39 against, therefore the amendment is not agreed.

As the motion was not agreed, nor the amendment agreed, we have agreed nothing, and therefore the motion is not agreed and falls.

I now move to the short debate. If you are leaving the Chamber, please do so quickly and quietly. I call on Paul Davies to speak on the topic he has chosen—Paul Davies.

Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. I’m please to use my short debate this afternoon to highlight why the city of St David’s should become the next UK City of Culture in 2021. I’m also pleased to give Eluned Morgan a minute of my time.

Members may be aware that the city of St David’s is in the early stages of putting together its bid. So, a strong message of support from across Wales would certainly help generate more local and national backing for the bid. Of course, any efforts to better promote Wales’s cultural identity should be encouraged as culture plays an important role in our communities. It brings people together, it teaches us about our past and it attracts visitors and tourists of all backgrounds and beliefs.

In other words, culture plays a huge part on a social, educational and economic level. That’s something that I hope the Welsh Government will encourage for the future. I’m pleased that the Welsh Government has chosen to market 2017 as the Year of Legends to bring our culture and heritage to the centre of our national brand. Indeed, there’s nothing more national to celebrate in Wales than the area most associated with our patron saint.

For those of you who don’t know, the city of St David’s is built on the site of the monastery founded by St David in the sixth century, who is of course the patron saint of Wales. Therefore, the city of St David’s is not just a cultural asset to Pembrokeshire, but to west Wales and of course to Wales as a whole. So, while St David’s may be UK’s smallest city in terms of geography, I believe it’s one of the largest cities when it comes to cultural value.

St David himself died in the year 589 and legend tells us that the monastery is said to have been filled with angels as Christ received his soul. Of course, to this day, the city of St David’s still holds a special place in the Christian community. The cathedral has been a site of pilgrimage and worship for more than 800 years and continues to attract thousands of visitors a year.

Indeed, I was delighted to recently attend the enthronement of Wales’s first female bishop at St David’s cathedral, alongside other Members, which just shows that the cathedral continues to have a significant role in Welsh Christianity today.

However, St David’s is not known solely for its importance to Christian heritage. Therefore, I’d like to take this opportunity to encourage all Members in this Chamber to make an effort to visit the local area and see for yourself just what St David’s has to offer, because there really is something for everyone.

The city is home to some of the most incredible beaches in the world. May I remind Members that St David’s is in Pembrokeshire Coast national park, which is the UK’s only coastline national park? St David’s has also played its part in promoting the Welsh language and keeping it alive by hosting the National Eisteddfod in 2002, again demonstrating the city’s national importance to Wales’s culture.

The guidance for the UK City of Culture bidding process stipulates that it is seeking bids that demonstrate cultural and artistic excellence and innovation and I believe that St David’s does that extensively.

I’ve explained a little bit about St David’s cultural significance but it’s important to remind Members that St David’s also has a thriving artistic community with art constantly being exhibited on a variety of platforms, such as on canvas, glass and sculpture. St David’s is home to Oriel y Parc gallery and visitor centre, which has a class A gallery displaying works of art from the National Museum Wales collection and an artist-in-residence studio, further demonstrating the area’s commitment to art.

My understanding is that the overarching ambition of the St David’s bid is to improve the well-being of all those touched by the involvement of St David’s in the City of Culture programme. As Members are aware, art and culture have the power to have a significant positive benefit on people’s well-being. The Royal Society for Public Health’s report in 2013 showed that access to and involvement in creative activity and the arts in all its forms is an important component in both the overall health and well-being of society and for individuals within it.

The Arts Council of Wales’s ‘Arts in Wales 2015’ survey shows that half of all adults with a disability are inspired by artistic activity and enjoy getting involved, and that three out of five adults in Wales agree or agree strongly that arts and cultural activity help enrich the quality of life.

Therefore, if Members take anything from this afternoon’s debate, let it be a better understanding of the importance of St David’s to Wales’s cultural and artistic identity and the impact that a bid like this could have on people’s well-being. A bid for St David’s to become the UK City of Culture in 2021 would be a public recognition of the area’s cultural and artistic capital, and in the event that St David’s is the only Welsh bid in the competition, I’m pleased that the Welsh Government has indicated it will support the bid.

The Cabinet Secretary made it clear in response to a question that I asked a few weeks ago that he would be meeting with the respective organisers of any Welsh bids in the coming weeks. Therefore, perhaps in responding to this debate, the Cabinet Secretary could update Members on where he is with those discussions. At a local level, I understand that discussions with Pembrokeshire Coast National Park Authority and partners on the Pembrokeshire public service board have been very supportive, and I welcome that. It’s absolutely vital that as many stakeholders as possible come together to support this bid, because it is only by working together that St David’s will have a shot at winning this competition.

The bid must demonstrate an ambitious vision for what St David’s will achieve in 2021 and afterwards, and so the bid would be significantly strengthened by support and evidence from partners such as Pembrokeshire Coast National Park Authority, Pembrokeshire County Council and the Welsh Government. I agree with the leader of Pembrokeshire County Council, Jamie Adams, when says that ‘I believe in St David’s we have something very different; it’s not all about big proposals, but it’s about impact in terms of the city itself’. The support from Pembrokeshire County Council is particularly welcome, because if the bid is successful, then the council will have a key role to play in ensuring that the local tourism and transport infrastructure has the capacity to deal with the additional visitors to the area. Indeed, the guidance for the bidding process not only asks for evidence of the area’s cultural and artistic strengths, but also the likely social and economic impacts estimated for the area should the bid be successful. I’m pleased that in the last few days, Pembrokeshire County Council’s cabinet has agreed to provide a capital guarantee of £5 million to support the city’s stage 1 application.

Of course, if St David’s is fortunate enough to actually win the competition, then the benefits for the area will be felt for years to come. The UK City of Culture programme would give St David’s access to key funding and resources that would not just help regenerate the local area, but showcase the very best of St David’s local culture to the rest of the world. It would also build on Pembrokeshire’s strong tourism reputation, because the additional marketing and promotion of St David’s would certainly result in attracting more visitors to the area. We know that the full impact of the UK City of Culture on Londonderry is yet to be fully evaluated, but initial research from the Northern Ireland tourist board shows that it delivered a significant positive impact, with recognition that the benefit is not just felt by Londonderry, but further afield too. According to their report, 87 per cent of tourism businesses from the north-west of Ireland felt a positive impact on tourism revenue, and the industry also endorsed the legacy effect of the UK City of Culture for future tourism growth. It’s exactly this sort of impact that we want to see in St David’s and right across Pembrokeshire and west Wales.

Pembrokeshire has already established a strong reputation for delivering a first-class tourism experience, and we know the area contributes significantly to the Welsh economy. Pembrokeshire was once named the second best coastal destination in the world according to the ‘National Geographic’ magazine, and it’s essential that we do all that we can to support and promote these types of areas. A successful bid for St David’s to become the UK City of Culture would naturally result in more people spending money in the St David’s area and providing the local economy with a welcome boost. Therefore, support for the St David’s bid to become the UK City of Culture in 2021 would result in support for the Welsh Government’s target to grow tourism earnings in Wales by 10 per cent or more by 2020.

This engagement really underlines the most important outcome that bidding for this competition will deliver—partnership working. Whether the St David’s bid goes on to win the national competition or not, the collaborative working of partners across west Wales, and hopefully beyond, will in itself have a positive impact. The bringing together of partners within and across different sectors and Government departments to rethink how we promote ourselves can’t be a bad thing for the area. I hope that bidding for the UK City of Culture will also result in a re-energised approach to how we view culture in our communities. Of course, the foundations of a successful bid are already there, but Welsh Government support for a St David’s bid would garner more national widespread support across Wales and make the bid a serious contender. But I appreciate that there are other bids being considered at the moment. It would further extend the level of partnership working for the benefit of west Wales, and make a statement that the Welsh Government is invested in Welsh culture right across the country.

Therefore, in closing, the current cultural and creative economy in the St David’s area and indeed, in the whole of Pembrokeshire, provides a sufficient base on which to build a strong application to become the next UK City of Culture.

St David’s boasts a wealth of cultural assets, from Christian architecture and history to contemporary art and music, and is the home of our own patron saint. A successful bid for the UK City of Culture will cement St David’s growing cultural reputation and create a lasting legacy for years to come. Therefore I sincerely hope that St David’s will receive the support that it deserves so that it does become the next UK City of Culture in 2021.

May I thank Paul Davies for leading this debate and support St David’s in its bid for City of Culture in 2021. I think you’ve put forward a very good pitch today, and I don’t see how anyone could turn you down. And, as someone who has their family roots going back 400 years in St David’s, nobody would be more pleased than I if St David’s were to win that particular bid.

I think what’s very important to underline is that the St David’s bid won’t look anything like the bids from other cities. St David’s is the smallest city in the UK and one of the most geographically isolated. It sits on the most beautiful coastline in the world. I don’t agree with ‘National Geographic’: it’s not the second best, it is the best, in my opinion, and I do very much hope that it will bring something original and unique to this competition.

It’s clear that St David’s won’t be able to compete on the same scale financially, in terms of population, or geographically with other cities, but I do think that the bid would be an inspirational one and a magnificent one. It will use the culture as a way to transform the area. It will meet the priorities of the Welsh Government in terms of health and well-being, regeneration, community cohesion, education and learning, and I would like to wish them the very best. I think it’s a unique opportunity for St David’s and the surrounding area, and I would like to offer my support and helps to the bid in any possible way.

I call on the Cabinet Secretary for Economy and Infrastructure to reply to the debate.

Can I begin by thanking Paul Davies for bringing forward this short debate today, and also thank Eluned Morgan for contributing? UK City of Culture status, inspired by Liverpool’s time as European Capital of Culture in 2008, is more than just a title—it really is something that has the potential to generate significant social and economic benefits for St David’s and the surrounding area. It’s got the potential to attract more visitors, increase media interest in the city and bring community members together in increasing levels of professional and artistic collaboration, as well as, of course, grass-roots activities.

St David’s is a unique and absolutely beautiful city—the smallest city in Britain, with a population of just over 1,600 people. As Paul Davies has outlined, the main feature of St David’s is the cathedral. Since the sixth century, there’s been a church on the site, and, for the last 1,500 years, it’s welcomed hundreds of thousands of visitors and pilgrims who come to the cathedral and shrine of St David, or Dewi Sant, every single year. The city is surrounded by some of the finest coastline in Europe, again, as Paul Davies identified, set in the UK’s only coastal national park—the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park. I do think it will benefit considerably from the Year of Legends in 2017, but I also think that the Year of the Sea in 2018 presents many opportunities for St David’s to prosper.

It’s a very exciting opportunity and I applaud the fact that Pembrokeshire council has now registered an interest for St David’s to become the 2021 UK City of Culture. It shows the council’s resolve as well, not just to make St David’s an even more successful culture and tourism destination, but also to help regenerate the surrounding area. It would, indeed, be a magnificent coup if they can secure it. We’re already in close contact with Pembrokeshire council over its bid and will remain in close contact as the authority develops its detailed proposals. I will indeed be meeting with the authority once it’s developed its proposals more fully, and certainly before the 28 April deadline for initial bids. But in the meantime, my officials are assisting St David’s to identify all potential options for funding and for supporting the bid.

We are, of course, offering similar support to Swansea, which has also submitted an expression of interest. But as the title of today’s debate states, St David’s is a small city with a big, unique opportunity. Indeed, the bid’s own team’s stated vision is to bring the world to St David’s and St David’s to the world through an awe-inspiring programme of physical and digital cultural activity. I would love to see St David’s secure city of culture status. I saw how it improved pride in Liverpool and captured the imagination of its entire population, and even to this day, we see superlambananas, not just in Liverpool, but in north Wales, showcasing what city of culture status can offer and can achieve.

I do believe that St David’s is a tiny city, but has a huge heart, and city of culture status could do even more for boosting the economic prosperity of the city and the region, as well as give the city global attention. We will continue to support both St David’s and Swansea in whatever ways we are able to, in the hope that the UK city of culture status will come to Wales in 2021. And if it does, perhaps we should continue our thematic year approach for tourism by declaring 2021 the year of culture.

Thank you. That brings today’s proceedings to a close.