Thanks to the Minister for his statement. The success of Welsh teams and performers in the international arena is very welcome and is to be applauded. Such success is a great advert for Wales and will initially have an effect in encouraging greater sporting participation here. There is also much commercial merit in Wales staging major international sporting events. However, there is sometimes a major disconnect between what a nation achieves in elite sport and the lack of general participation at grass-roots level. By ‘grass roots’ I don’t refer to aspiring Olympians, but rather to ordinary people who are never likely to grace an international arena.

Here in Wales we produce world-class footballers like Gareth Bale, we have Olympic-medal-winning cyclists and swimmers such as Becky James and Jazz Carlin, and many other notables, but at the same time, like other regions of the UK, we are facing unprecedented levels of child and adult obesity. Clearly this is a major contradiction. Clearly the one thing, international sporting excellence, does not lead automatically to the other thing, a generally high level of health and fitness. Does the Cabinet Secretary acknowledge this seeming paradox, and how does he seek to deal with it?

In Wales as a whole, more and more councils are putting leisure centre management out to privately run companies. We must ensure that this policy doesn’t impact on the ability of ordinary people to access gyms, swimming pools and badminton courts at reasonable cost. How is the Welsh Government helping to ensure this? We need to encourage more sporting participation among the young, beginning with actually getting them to walk to places rather than always going in their parents’ car. I appreciate that these are fairly fundamental problems of the UK as a whole.

We need, too, to encourage the middle aged and the old in their sporting endeavours. There has been a shocking rise in bowling club fees in Cardiff in recent years, which is surely counterproductive. If old people become more inactive, they end up costing the economy more in terms of medication and treatment in the long run.

The First Minister has earlier today given his reasons for withdrawing a Welsh bid for the Commonwealth Games, and I appreciate that there may be some sound reasons there. I’m not going to criticise that. I also agree with your own statements about joint bids because there was a Commonwealth Games in Kingston, Jamaica in 1966—now, it would be impossible for Jamaica to host it. And, the Commonwealth Games tends to go on a sort of triangle between the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and that’s it. So, we need to encourage more participation in that sphere. So, I welcome your efforts at the Commonwealth level.

Perhaps we could also consider making moves towards ring-fencing some of the funds earmarked for the Commonwealth Games project, now abandoned, and put them into encouraging grass-roots sport instead. Thanks.