In drafting this statement, and your proposed or announced way forward, what consideration have you given to the Welsh Government grant-funded ‘Valuing place’ report by the Young Foundation, which was only launched in the Assembly a week ago today, based upon research with people from Aberystwyth, Connah’s Quay and Port Talbot? It was commissioned and funded by the Welsh Government. It said that establishing a local network to help encourage, train, mentor, coach and connect people together who want to take local action, whatever their skill set or resource, should be a priority. We need to allow for positive development of place that is inclusive and participatory. As I say, that included the great population of Connah’s Quay, and is a very valued report that doesn’t appear to have been—not necessarily the report, but the recommendations of that report—considered in the statement you made today.

At risk of being accused of being party political, let me say that although the annual report on income inequality from the Office for National Statistics released last month said that there’s been a gradual decline in income inequality over the last decade—UK obviously rather than Wales specific—and although the Communities First programme, according to the Assembly Research Service, has had nearly £0.5 billion invested in it between 2001 and the end of last year, it is, I’m sure you’ll agree, regrettable that the number of working age people not in employment in Wales, in the latest published figures, has gone back up to 524,000 people, with Wales ranking tenth out of 12 UK nations and regions for poverty, and with the eleventh lowest weekly earnings.

You refer to the north and south Wales metros. Could you answer the question that your colleague the Secretary for Economy, Infrastructure failed to answer last week, as to when the Welsh Government will be responding to the North Wales Economic Ambition Board’s ‘Growth Vision’ document’s specific calls for internal devolution of some matters to help close that prosperity gap that widens the further west you go in north Wales? Because so much depends on that and, simply, the metro proposed by the Welsh Government will be a sticking plaster compared to the opportunities that could be delivered with both Governments and the region working together.

You identify, rightly, broad support for a new approach, focused on employment, early years and empowerment, and stakeholders’ emphasis on the importance of early intervention. Looking back—and I’ve just heard your comments, obviously, to Leanne Wood, Member for Rhondda Cynon Taf—do you now recognise that you could have perhaps taken forward the WCVA and the Centre for Regeneration Excellence Wales’s proposals, ahead of the last Assembly election, for what should follow post 2012, which is the model that my party had proposed? We were not proposing to scrap Communities First, but simply to develop that model, which detailed proposals for a vision that would be more effective at tackling deprivation, building stronger communities, fewer bureaucracy costs, more community ownership, and where community organisations in an area would be the focus themselves for services and activities to meet local need.

You refer to the Bevan Foundation statement that performance has been mixed, and poverty remains a stubborn and persistent challenge. Well, their submission, the ‘Communities First—Next Steps’ document, which I believe was drafted by the respected Victoria Winckler, also says that Communities First did not reduce the headline rates of poverty in the vast majority of communities, still less Wales as a whole. So, how do you respond, and you appear not to have done in your statement, to her, or their, statement, that a new programme should be co-produced by communities and professionals, and not be directed top down, i.e. by local authorities, and it should be based on a clear theory of change, building on people’s and communities’ assets, not deficits, and that local action should be led by established community-based organisations with a strong track record of delivery, and which have significant community engagement, again, not by the public sector directly? Although, clearly, corporate governance arrangements would have to be firmly embedded in that.

You refer to ensuring that lead delivery bodies have sufficient time and resources to plan the transition, and the need for recognising support for those who need it most, and, therefore, that support will not end with this programme. What consideration have you given, therefore, to the submission by Cytûn, Churches Together in Wales, where they said that any changes should be gradual rather than wholesale, where they highlighted a problem with staff working in Communities First receiving redundancy notices, or leaving early, losing the most experienced and best-qualified staff, seeking employment elsewhere and being lost to those communities when they’ll be the people desperately needed during the transition period?