I note the Cabinet Secretary’s statement, and I think that it’s important for us to say, as a party, that the flagship programme that you’re announcing the review and the phasing out of today has come under much scrutiny over the years here in the National Assembly. In fact, we’ve probably had review after review, from the Public Accounts Committee, the communities committee, and so forth, looking at how we can sustain and support our communities.

Yet, I would like to ask a question of the Cabinet Secretary. I’ve read the last part of the statement a few times, and you say that you will develop a made-in-Wales approach to community assets, and of the third sector having much involvement. But I genuinely thought that that’s what Communities First was set out to do, and I thought that we were going to be transforming communities, so that they could, by now, after many years of devolution, be empowered in the way that you have said in the statement. So, I’d like to understand, if Communities First is to be phased out, what will be your vision for difference in the future? Will it be another big scheme, such as Communities First, or will it be smaller, potentially more fragmented schemes, because that is why, was it not, that we did streamline Communities First, so that we could try, potentially, to understand why some of the schemes weren’t working and why some of them were, in fact, working in our communities? So, I’d like to hear a bit more about that.

I don’t disagree about the legacy of poverty that’s been largely caused by deindustrialisation—considerable problems that still remain with us. But, I need to understand how you are now going to answer those particular challenges. My personal view, having been here for many years now, is that we are very good at looking to treat symptoms and not the causes of poverty. And so we need to get to grips with that. If Communities First was not set up to eradicate poverty in our communities, we need to look around for fresh ideas, but then recognise that, potentially, in many areas, it has not been the success that you and other party members have claimed it to be over the many years of this institution being in existence.

On employment, we have the programmes outlined in the statement, but will this actually go hand in hand with economic development? How will you be working with your colleague in that area? Will you be working more closely with your ministerial colleagues to ensure that there are more jobs for people to go into? I would also ask how childcare will be protected when Families First, which provides a lot of these schemes across my region, and elsewhere, is also under review at present.

Also—probably like some other people here—I don’t actually know what children’s zones are, so that would be good to try and find out what they are. Because we do have quite a lot of schemes in that area. So, why did you choose to do it in the communities sense, and not through the education system?

Obviously, my passion is to do with financial inclusion, so I’d like to understand from you, Cabinet Secretary, how you’ll be going about introducing the action plan for the refresh of the financial inclusion strategy, which I and others put a lot of time into in the previous Assembly. Again, I believe that this is a key life skill and if we can get people out of poverty by making them have the skills to leave schools, to leave with those tools already, within the system, then we will, I think, be able to tackle some of the core elements of poverty.

The thing I’d like to finish on was to do with the empowerment part and the public service boards. Do you see that as the main area as to where this empowerment will arise from? Are you looking at other countries and other ways of working, so that communities can truly take part in discussion in Wales? Because I think I’ve stood up, as have many Members from your own side, when we’ve talked about community asset transfer and when we’ve talked about volunteers taking over services in their communities. We need to understand how they will be able to do that without actually having the resource available that somehow may or may not be envisaged from your statement today.

So, we will be keeping a close eye on what is happening here. We’re not dismissing the review, but we need to understand why you have come to that particular decision, especially when you’ve launched the new taskforce—sorry, not you, but your colleague Alun Davies—for the Valleys, and how that will all integrate together, because what we don’t want here today is more silos and more Ministers working against one another, not in a negative sense, but in their own departments, and not working together as a nation to deliver for the people of Wales.