Once again, can I thank Paul Davies for stepping into the breach and for his questions this afternoon? If we start from the point of principle, I think that addresses many of the issues that you’ve raised. Establishing a single authority to oversee the whole of post-compulsory education and training, I believe, will improve strategic planning; it will help prevent duplication, which has occurred, and unhealthy competition; but it will also address gaps in provision where students and learners have not been able to fulfil their aspirations, because those opportunities haven’t been available. I expect it to promote collaboration between institutions, making it easier, for instance, for a learner to be able to move seamlessly between work-based learning and FE, FE and HE, schools and FE, so that collaboration would create pathways that really, really do focus on the needs of individual learners at all points during their educational journey. As well, crucially, we need to strengthen links between schools, but also employers. It’s crucial—crucial—that we get this right, and the current system, at the moment, can be devilishly, fiendishly difficult for employers to engage with and to know whom to work with. So, again, this is one of the reasons why we need to have this single authority.

Now, I believe if we do that, it will enhance support for learners as well as getting better value for money. At this stage, some very initial financial planning is being undertaken, and this is a genuine consultation about how the TEA will actually work and how it will be constituted. So, therefore, at this stage, it’s difficult to be able to put a figure on it, but we do know that the current system can often be wasteful. You will also be aware, with regard to funding, that despite the difficult situation we find ourselves in, we have been able to find additional resources for HEFCW this year and, of course, one of the whole rationales behind our Diamond reforms is to put the funding of HE in the round, for both institutions and individual students, on a more sound and sustainable footing going forward. That’s one of the rationales behind our reform programme.

So, at this stage, I will admit that there will be mainly questions about how the new authority would operate, and we will give careful consideration to those in the consultation. I’m hopeful that the consultation will be able to begin in the spring and—I’m sorry—I didn’t really answer Llyr’s question about the timescales. We would look to seek to have a legislative opportunity in consultation with the legislative liaison committee that exists between the Government and Plaid Cymru, but I have applied for a legislative slot that would see this process, hopefully, complete within a three-year time frame. You’re right; potentially, there are human resource issues that will need to be carefully and sensitively handled as we take this process forward. Therefore, I am giving myself quite a broad timescale for doing it because it needs to be done right, and avoid some of the pitfalls that we have experienced in bringing organisations together in the past. We need to learn the lessons of that and to make sure that it’s done successfully, going forward.

Paul asked about the hierarchy of need and who gets priority. The whole point of having this organisation is that there is, indeed, parity of esteem within the organisation. So, this isn’t about prioritising FE over HE, or work-based learning over learning in a university or college. The whole point of this is that there is intrinsic value in all these learning and educational opportunities. We need to plan that on a strategic basis. I truly believe that—and it was in the feedback from Hazelkorn herself—both the FE institutions and HE want to see themselves as a single system, but often it’s difficult to do that. Bringing people into one organisation, I believe, will help to address some of those problems that they themselves have identified. Second, in having this authority, with learners at the centre, it will allow the progression that I’ve talked about earlier. Thirdly, other systems, such as in New Zealand, and to a lesser extent, maybe, Scotland, that parity of esteem is the central guiding principle within the organisation itself. That leadership then reverberates throughout the system.