Thank you for the series of questions. I would like to acknowledge the good news on smoking, in particular, although it’s not fair to say that it’s simply a direct correlation with e-cigarette use. As I said earlier, a part of the issue is that there are more and more young people becoming adults who don’t smoke, and that really does affect smoking prevalence rates—a really welcome cultural change that is happening, although I don’t have any complacency about the rates or prevalence of smoking amongst young people.

On obesity and diabetes, and the relationship between the two, we are, of course, talking about obesity and its relationship, in particular, to type 2 diabetes, as opposed to type 1. That’s been the significant growth that we’ve seen. For all the fact that the rate of growth appears to have levelled off in the last year or two, that still leaves us with a huge problem, because we know that the more people we have living with type 2 diabetes, the more likely they are to call upon the health service, to live in periods of ill health and all of the significant complications that go with diabetes. We had the national Diabetes Week last week, and I don’t think we can ever tire of repeating that it isn’t a trivial condition. I visited the team in Ysbyty Gwynedd and looked at the work they’re doing—really impressive work—in Betsi Cadwaladr on having surgery as opposed to amputations. It’s pretty affecting to see the pictures of what’s happened with the surgery. If the alternative was an amputation, that has a major impact on someone’s life expectancy as well as their quality of life and their ability to work and get around socially. You know, the reality is that people lose their sight, they suffer amputations as a result of diabetes. It is a really, really serious condition, and that’s where the major concern comes about the impact on people’s quality of life, people’s ability to work and to live, and actually the cost it produces for health services. Already, about 10 per cent of NHS spend, we think, is spent on areas linked to diabetes.

On your points generally about school sports and physical activity, and the links between our work and that of both the children and communities portfolio and, of course, the education Secretary, we recognise that there are very obvious and direct links about how we encourage and make it easy for children to be physically active and, again, how we think about the nature of that activity. So, we don’t simply think about sport, important though that is as part of the picture, but physical activity going much further and much broader than that. That is the conversation that we are having, as we go through curriculum reform as well, to understand what that could look like and what we think that should look like, and then how we measure appropriate points to understand whether our children are being more physically active. But it goes back again to the point that I made at the start in response to Rhun ap Iorwerth as well: this is about what the Government could and should do, in all its forms, as well as what individuals will do as well. So, it’s not just the children but also the families, and the importance that they place on physical activity and, again, how easy we make it for them to undertake that activity as well.

The new post of physical activity director is a joint post, as I said earlier, but it does go to the core of not just what the Government want to see, but actually Sport Wales recognising that part of their mission is not just about elite sport. At least three out of the four main parts of their mission are broadly about participation and, if you like, the link into public health areas of activity. That’s what it’s about: grass-roots activity, not just about elite sport. I think there’s been a willingness in the last few years in Sport Wales to be more upfront about that being part of their mission and how they should be judged as well. So, this post is about trying to bring together what we could and should do across the different arms of Government. Sport Wales, as an Assembly sponsored public body, and then to ensure that we then have some meaningful targets and milestones. So, you will see something that will come back to try and give you and other Members an idea of where we think we are now and what we want to do in various parts of Government, and our partners as well.

I should also say, on your point about deprived communities, we have a range of specific programmes, from StreetGames to Communities First, but there’s also something here about mainstream governing bodies, for example the football at the moment. The Football Association of Wales—the biggest participation sport in Wales. It’s a fairly easy game to play; you don’t need a lot of equipment. So, it’s thinking about the way in which we use sport, and the easily accessible sport, to try and get people interested in activity. That isn’t always about organised league activity, it is about that broader message about sport being physical activity and recreation as part of what we want to see. That has to go into deprived communities. I actually suspect that some of our major sports have a slightly better story to tell than they’re able to present. I look forward to interrogate, with my colleague the Minister of public health, to understand what really is happening and whether they’re actually meeting their own missions that they have as well.

Finally, I take your point about Designed to Smile, but, actually, it’s been one of the programmes that are able to say that there’s been a closing of the gap between more deprived communities and others. That doesn’t say that it’s perfect, so we do want to understand what we need to do more of in the future.

Finally, on your point about the new survey, there will be a new survey as part of the new national survey—a more coherent way to undertake this information in one chunk rather than three or four major surveys. We still expect high-quality data that are useful both for the Government, in understanding what we are doing and what we wish to do, but it could be for the public and Members of this place to understand the impact that we’re having and to aid the process of scrutiny. There’s certainly no ambition to try and hide what we are doing. It is simply a way of ensuring that we have appropriate and high-quality data. If there is a reason to change the way those data are presented, we should be upfront about the reason for doing that. There is no desire to try and avoid comparability, but it may well be that we collect different sorts of data that are more relevant. If that’s what we’re going to do, we need to be upfront about it and explain that that’s what we’re going to do. But I would still expect that you’ll have plenty to be able to ask us about and scrutinise us on. I’ve got no doubt about that.