Part of 1. 1. Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Economy and Infrastructure – in the Senedd at 2:11 pm on 7 December 2016.
Thank you, Cabinet Secretary. The coming automation and robotics present huge opportunities, but also very real threats to jobs in Wales. On Monday night in Liverpool, the governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, gave a speech in which he said some 15 million jobs could be affected by automation. Using the formula that the Bank of England used in coming up with that figure, I’ve calculated that some 700,000 jobs in Wales could be at risk from automation. This is a crude calculation, but would the Cabinet Secretary commit to doing a proper study of the impact to understand the threat, but also the very real opportunity from this fourth industrial revolution?