I’d like to congratulate the Member for Caerphilly for securing the debate and being elected the chair of the cross-party group. It seem to me that we’ve been talking a long time in Wales about creating a ‘Mittelstand’ without actually moving that and progressing that agenda forward. I think that’s going to be crucial when we look to new projects on the horizon, such as the Cardiff capital city region and the Swansea bay city region and the metro for the south-east because, if the vision for the metro is simply to make it easier to move people from outlying towns to the centre, then we will have missed a great opportunity to develop the SME sector in the country and lay firm foundations for the economy.

What about the parts of the country that are not covered by city regions? The geography of Wales demands that we have a national approach to regional policy, if you like, and of course, within that, to create growth poles within our region so that it’s not Cardiff that will dominate, surely, the entire focus of the capital region in the south-east; there are growth poles in fantastic towns like Caerphilly, like Pontypool, Merthyr Tydfil and elsewhere. So, if we want to move the country forward with a strong ‘Mittelstand’ and a strong SME sector, there has to be a nationwide focus to regional policy and local development as well.