First Minister, thank you for your statement this afternoon. It is somewhat disheartening to see that the collective intellectual might of Plaid Cymru, the Welsh Labour Party and the Liberals have come up with a document that runs to 15 pages, and that includes the front cover. Fifteen pages for five years’ worth of government hardly fills you with confidence, I have to say. Obviously, it’s a pale imitation of the 666 pages that the previous Welsh Government, of which he was First Minister, delivered the last time they delivered a programme for government. But I do genuinely hope that the Welsh Government does succeed. You might find it odd to hear that from an opposition leader but, ultimately, if you do not succeed, it is the people and the communities the length and breadth of Wales who will ultimately suffer. So, people go to the polls, they vote and this Assembly convenes. But it is rather disheartening to say the least—it’s disheartening to say the least—that this is the best effort that the Welsh Government can come up with for a five-year programme for government when we were told that they needed to spend a summer to reflect—reflect—on their priorities.

Actually, when you look at what the First Minister achieved in the last Assembly, in which his flagship policy was the Williams commission, which was going to reorganise local government and he was going to drive this through and reform the map of local government in Wales, irrespective of what people thought of that, it does show the limitations of this First Minister in his ability to drive through change and drive through a programme for government. And that is a real, real Achilles heel for anything that sits in this document, because the First Minister has proven within his first term that he is unable to deliver for the people of Wales and, indeed, the commissions and operations that he does set up. I do hope that the First Minister will actually graft this term and actually deliver the changes that will improve people’s lives, whether that be in education, whether that be in the economy or whether that be in the NHS.

I do hope that, in responding to the questions that I will put to him, he will be able to confirm that this programme for government, by the end of 2021, will put the Welsh education system over and above the Vietnamese education system, which is where we are ranked at the moment in the league tables. So, will he confirm that the education initiatives—it’s hardly a brilliant goal to aim for but will he give us a target that we will be above the Vietnamese when it does come to 2021? When it comes to the economy, will the First Minister confirm that, by 2021, this programme for government—this programme for government—will make us more economically prosperous than areas of Romania and Bulgaria, where we are matched against at this moment in time, and that’s after 17 years of Welsh Labour in Government here? Will he, at the end of this period in 2021, confirm that this programme for government will deliver an NHS that will not have the longest waiting times of any NHS in the United Kingdom? Those are three simple questions that I hope he will be able to respond to and say, ‘Yes, yes, yes’, so that, in 2021, we will be able to benchmark him against his Government’s performance.

But I do think the one thing that is a damning indictment of 17 years of Labour failure is this document that talks about bringing forward a new treatment fund, when we spent the whole of the last Assembly making the point about a cancer drugs fund and access to medicines here in Wales. The document itself, after 17 years of Labour in Government, talks of a

‘postcode lottery for drugs and treatments not routinely available on the NHS’ in Wales. You have been running the NHS for 17 years, First Minister. It is your party that has created that postcode lottery for access to medicines across Wales. So, when we look at this programme for government, we can clearly see no real change of course, no real change of direction, just more of the same. And I just hope that, ultimately, the First Minister will get to grips with the situation and start delivering both economically, educationally and for our NHS so that people will not feel let down again at the end of this fifth Assembly.