Can I thank the Member for his questions, and also for recognising that there are inherent risks in meeting market failure insofar as business support is concerned? I do believe that, as a result of implementing 10 procedural changes that have been recognised by the Wales Audit Office, we have improved the system of monitoring and evaluating the risks applied to requests for business support. It’s not the case that due diligence was rejected outright. It was that the due diligence was considered alongside the potential benefits, and therefore the investment panel made a recommendation on this basis to the Minister. But, as I’ve already said, it’s accepted that the advice that was given by the investment panel was wrong. They got it wrong, and this has been recognised from within the civil service.

I think we need to reflect on the context—the economic context—against which the decision was made. There was an appetite to ensure that we had economic growth at a time when we’d just come off the back of severe problems caused by the financial crash, and therefore the appetite for risk was perhaps greater than it might be today, where we have been able to build up economic growth over a number of years, improve employment levels now to near record levels, drive down unemployment rates to below the UK average—indeed, to a record low. And where we can now say with confidence that, as a consequence of business support during the fourth Assembly term—where I do recognise there were some failures—as a result of the support, we ensured that 97.4 per cent of those businesses thrived and succeeded. That is way above the Welsh average across the economy, and, indeed, even better still than the UK average.