Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. Can I begin by thanking the Welsh Conservatives for bringing forward this motion today? I also thank Members for their contributions to the debate. I thank them because it’s very clear that there is a critical importance around digital infrastructure for the people, communities and the economy of Wales. As has been made very clear in the contributions today, there is no need to reiterate the growing importance of high-quality fast broadband connections to both homes and businesses right across Wales. I will just bother to reiterate that, as the Welsh Government, we have made it more than plain that we want as many people as possible to be able to access fast, reliable broadband services and, crucially, for them to be able to make the most of that access.

Mark Isherwood did a very good job for me in explaining how the superfast project worked, and I’m very grateful to him for that, but I will just reiterate a couple of the points. Superfast Cymru is a project that is designed to deliver 30 Mbps downloads, and not 24 Mbps, to the people of Wales. It is a market intervention. That means that, without the intervention of a Government programme, we would not have had any superfast or other roll-out of any kind of broadband service to those areas that could not command a commercial market.

We have been in conversation with the UK Government about this for quite some time, and I’m delighted that the UK Government has now seen fit to bring forward a Bill that puts a universal service obligation in place, but it is important to remember that this is not currently considered to be infrastructure. So, this is not something that we can just go and do whenever we want to. We can’t just throw money at it and build some more or anything else. We have to go through a state aid programme in order to do a market intervention. So, it’s been a long time coming to get it to be a universal service obligation. We’re delighted with that, but Members would do well to remember that the universal service obligation currently proposes 10 Mbps and not 24 Mbps or 30 Mbps, and that we’re currently working very hard to make the UK Government see some sense and put some accelerators into that, so that, at the very least, it will go up from 10 Mbps in the future, even if they didn’t see fit to put it higher than that in the past.

I’m grateful to Janet Finch-Saunders for acknowledging the meetings that we’ve had and so on. But I’m quite genuine in this—this is not a party political thing in any way. We do actually need to make sure that the Government’s universal service obligation is fit for purpose and actually assists us in our mission to get this broadband out across Wales. So, if any Members want to contact me, I will tell them what our concerns are—and I think I’ve provided them already to Janet Finch-Saunders. I’m happy to provide them to anybody else who wants them, so that they can assist us in helping the UK Government to arrive at a position where the universal service obligation is actually something worth having, and that we can then fund it accordingly. So, I just wanted to make those points.

In terms of the commitments that we’ve heard a lot about us breaking, obviously you won’t be surprised to find that I refute that. It’s important to remember that the percentages and the numbers of properties change all the time. If we just set a level of properties in 2011 and said, ‘We’ll get through all of those’, then everything built after that wouldn’t have any broadband. It’s a truism to say so, but it’s worth repeating. And actually, one of the reasons we did the further open-market review was to include in some of the properties that were built afterwards. Again, it’s a matter of some concern to us that the UK Government is not seeing fit to put that universal service obligation into all new builds at the moment. So, you do have a ridiculous situation where you build a new housing estate and then afterwards you dig up the road to put broadband in. Clearly, this is not sensible. I appeal to all Members of all political parties to get on board with trying to persuade people to get some common sense put into some of these universal service obligations.

Anyway, turning to what we’re doing, we’re working very closely with Ofcom, the UK Government and the network operators to deliver better digital infrastructure with what we’ve got now, right across Wales. We’ve been trying to improve broadband coverage right across. Also, you have to bear in mind that the increasing demand for mobile data has complicated the picture. When we started these programmes, broadband and mobile were two very different things, but now they’re not. So, the technology has moved very substantially as well, and we’re very keen to keep on top of that.

I’m hosting a round-table meeting later this month, which will include representatives from Ofcom and industry, to discuss how we can improve mobile connectivity in Wales. That debate will focus not only on the plans of industry to expand mobile coverage and capacity, but also explore all the levers we have available to us here in Wales. Obviously, one of the primary levers there is the planning regime. I’ve commissioned some research to look at changes and proposed changes to planning in England and Scotland on mobile phone infrastructure, how they apply to Wales, and alternative approaches appropriate to our topography and population density in Wales. Just to put that in English, I’m not all that certain that the people who live in our national parks really want a 250 ft mast every 10m in order to get mobile connectivity. So, clearly, there’s a trade-off between what you want to get and what you have to have in order to get it. We want to make sure we get that right for the people of Wales. Russell George, I know, has problems with other types of masts with generators on the top, and I’m not too sure that his constituents would be all that happy with masts carrying mobile signals either.

So, we know we want to do it, but we want to do it right. We want to make sure that we get that balance right and that people get the connectivity, but not at the expense of other amenities, which is why people live in the national parks and want to come and visit us in the first place.

So, we’re doing that piece of research. We want to get it right for Wales. We know that having access to the digital technologies, and the motivation and skills to use them effectively are more important than ever, and people’s perception of what they’re prepared to put up with to get that is changing. So, we do want to get that right.

In terms of digital exclusion, we’re very committed to tackling digital exclusion and improving digital literacy, which aren’t quite the same thing. So, I’d like to thank Mohammad Asghar for his contribution, but just point out that basic digital literacy—the ability to actually get online, organise some files and folders, do some basic things with public services and so on—is not the same thing as having the skills necessary to work in a digital economy. We need both of those in our society and we’re working very hard to get them.

We have a digital competence framework that I hope all Members are familiar with, and which we have just recently launched. Indeed, I visited a pioneer school in my colleague Mike Hedges’s constituency on Monday morning to look at the digital competence framework in action, and it was very impressive indeed. I’m sure that Members will all have schools in their areas that will be able to show them how that’s working. I think that it’s important to realise that Donaldson is really working well in Wales, and that the advance we’ve made here in Wales of saying that literacy, numeracy and digital competency are the basic frameworks of a modern education are alive and well and very much at the forefront of educational thinking in Wales.

We’re also delivering our Learning in Digital Wales programme, including Hwb, the all-Wales platform for schools, and increasing broadband speeds for schools as part of the programme.

We need to get a buy-in, though, for all organisations and wider society so that we can achieve a truly digitally inclusive nation. So, during a recent oral statement I made on this issue, I provided Members with an update on time frames of possible future intervention to further extend superfast broadband. Work is well under way with plans to launch a further detailed formal open-market review process later this autumn. Once we’ve got the outcome of that review, we’ll be in a position to confirm both whether and how a new procurement to provide access for further premises can be taken forward. I’ll provide more information on that as the process continues, as I’ve said in my statement. I’ll make sure that Members are kept up to date.

I just want to correct the misconception, though, that Superfast Cymru has slipped. The completion date was moved back and it was due to projected negotiations between the UK Government and the EU on the national broadband scheme. Members will recall that that further 40,000 premises followed an open-market review and it was in line with similar contracts of this size. So, there we are.

Just to round this off—and I’ve said it lots of times and I’ll say it again—I make the same offer that I made to everybody at the end of my statement: if you have specific problems in your constituency, I’m very happy to come with you and explain how we can address them. In terms of the overarching programme, we are very much on top of BT. I have very regular meetings with them. We are in regular touch about their performance to the target dates. I assure Members that they are not under any impression that I am complacent about their ability to deliver the contract. I share Members’ frustrations about the slipping timescales for individuals, but my issue is whether the whole contract delivers overall, and I assure Members that it will so deliver, or BT will pay the very serious financial consequences that arise as a result of that failure and we will then use that money to make sure that their failure is covered off. However, I will say on behalf of BT that they are very co-operative with that, that they come to the meetings with full information and that we have no reason to think that the contract will not be successful in its outcome.

I think Members have been invited by BT to a further update on that, which I’m hoping to attend myself. BT are also very helpful in coming out to Members’ constituencies with me and explaining some of the details on the ground. Overall, I want Members to understand that this is actually a very successful contract, that actually Wales is at the forefront of digital inclusion and digital literacy and digital connectivity, and that although some of the figures seem low, actually they’re very high. I recently had an experience in a European capital city where I could not get my phone to connect to anything at all. So, I do think we’re in danger of talking ourselves down. I understand Members’ frustrations, but, actually, we should be very proud, as all of us are, of the commitment of the Welsh Government and the place of Wales in the digital future for the twenty-first century.