Part of 1. 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:40 pm on 24 January 2017.
Well, I think there are two issues about the industrial strategy. I mean, there’s little in it that could be disagreed with, but, of course, it’s a bit of a mishmash, because some of the pillars are actually devolved—they’re not the responsibility of the UK Government. Some of them are, some of them are mixed, so there needs to be greater clarity there.
Yes, I think there will be a temptation to automate further, which is why we need to focus very, very strongly on raising the productivity of workers across the UK, to make sure that employers are not tempted to replace human beings with machines because of a productivity issue. And that is something, certainly, that we will want to focus on very, very strongly—raising productivity levels, for example, to at least the level of Germany, to make sure that our working people in Britain are not disadvantaged because of those productivity levels.