Yes, absolutely, and he’s anticipated my point really. These shimmering cathedrals of modern retail have an important part to play, of course, and we wouldn’t want people going elsewhere and going further afield to have those kinds of experiences, but when we look at the picture of some of the smaller towns that, traditionally, are particularly associated with smaller businesses and, indeed, as he rightly says, some of the centres within cities as well, we see a different picture, and it is a more negative one. So, large falls in footfall in places like Aberystwyth, Caerphilly and Holyhead, et cetera. That’s partly to do with the effects of online; it’s partly to do with the competition from out-of-town shopping centres as well. We do see, overall, that there has been a significant decline in the number of retail businesses within many of our towns and cities within Wales, and, of course, we have a higher vacancy rate compared to England, for example: about 15 per cent in June this year compared to 11 per cent or 12 per cent in England and Scotland.

So, the challenge of the changing pattern of retail certainly is a very, very important one for us in Wales, and we need to respond to it. Part of the response has to be, as we’ve discussed many times in this Chamber, looking at the issue of business rates. It doesn’t seem to me right that we are actually taxing people that are in physical retail premises effectively at a higher level than those that are trading online. So, we need to have, I think, a more innovative response to that.

In the amendment—we’ve linked this to a wider potential, which is to turn the whole of Wales into an enterprise zone. We need to build some competitive advantage, some comparative advantage, for our businesses overall—that’s small, medium-sized and others. It’s not an original idea, I must confess, making the whole of Wales—as the Cabinet Secretary knows, but I’m not referring to the article in ‘The Spectator’. Actually, it was the Ulster Unionist Party that recently called for Northern Ireland to be made an enterprise zone as a whole, so I’m not sure that’s the kind of Celtic alliance that my friend behind me would have supported. But good ideas can come from any direction, and, certainly, we need to be looking at coming up with new and innovative ideas that give our businesses, particularly the small and medium-sized businesses and start-ups, et cetera, that kind of edge.

Procurement—again, a key issue. We obviously have rehearsed many times the importance of the public sector, and I think my colleagues will refer to that, but I would also urge us to look at the private sector. Let’s look at what our large private sector businesses can do as well in terms of local procurement. Why could we not actually have a buy local and buy Welsh campaign that includes the private sector and have a kitemark for corporate local responsibility, if you like, so that we know that, even when we are shopping or having business with larger businesses, they themselves are actually locked into a local supply chain? The Romanian Government have just passed a Bill that insists that 51 per cent of food in local supermarkets in Romania is part of what they call the ‘short supply chain’—that is, it’s basically part of the local food system. And they are still within the European Union. It’s a much more creative interpretation possibly than we’ve had up until now in terms of EU procurement rules. If they can do it, then, certainly, we can as well.

The development bank, the national infrastructure commission—these new institutions that we’re going to create absolutely need to listen to the needs of small businesses. Small businesses haven’t always had—they have the FSB now, but they haven’t always perhaps had the lobbying power of large businesses. Sometimes, when we look then at creating these institutions, the needs of small businesses are ignored. I’m glad to see that the business case for the development bank, in particular, is emphasising the need of providing loans to microbusinesses. Similarly, with the national infrastructure commission, I know what the small businesses in Wales think is the pressing infrastructure need. It’s not actually the bottlenecks of the M4, it’s the bottlenecks in our digital infrastructure, it’s the inability to get connected to the same extent that businesses around the world are. That’s where, I’m sure, they would like to see us invest.