Today in the House of Commons, the UK Chancellor of the Exchequer announced a £1,000 business rate relief for the pubs in England, no doubt under pressure from his own back benches. Whilst the pub can indeed in some communities be the last business standing, having seen the closure of the shop, the primary school, and the community centre, I hope that we in Wales can be a bit more discerning in how we keep the glue of community cohesion together. It’s a pity we don’t have a more vociferous voice giving rate and rent relief to fruit and veg shops, which are much more at threat than pubs, rather than the purveyors of alcohol, with all the attendant problems that can cause, as well as the opportunity to socialise with our neighbours.

I’m distressed to hear that the main fruit and veg shop in the community of Llanedeyrn, which I represent, is considering giving up after over 20 years serving the community because she’s said that she’s simply not going to be able to afford the increased rent once the shopping centre is redeveloped and the rents inevitably go up. So, that is a huge cause of concern as to how that community is going to be able to access fresh fruit and vegetables in the future. And we can see that many of the corner shops that do survive in communities rarely offer any real, fresh food.

Some three years ago, Cardiff Council was forced to stop employing the couple of staff who ran the community café in the community, which provided fresh food for people who often lived alone and didn’t any longer have the capacity to cook their own meals. Although there was an initial attempt by a voluntary organisation to run it from outside the community, that foundered because they didn’t have the commitment or the organisation required to run a consistent, reliable service. So, it withered on the vine. So, I’m hopeful that the renewed community bid to reopen the café can both be glue to keep our community together, but also a mechanism for promoting real food to families who often never prepare food at home but simply buy processed food and serve it up without any input themselves, and also to provide work experience for young people who may need a better understanding of the requirements required to work in the retail industry.

Looking at the health service, Wales is a major trainer of doctors, nurses, and other allied professionals. Although these services are highly valued by our communities, we nevertheless have a persistent shortage of nurses, midwives, doctors, and other health professionals who want to stay and work in Wales. This is a conundrum that we really need to get our heads around, because, at the moment, the only people who benefit are the employment agencies, who charge very large premiums on supplying us with extra staff.

So, I was very pleased last night to hear from the vice-chancellor of Swansea University, who attended the Milford Haven event, that Swansea University is working with Abertawe Bro Morgannwg University Local Health Board and others to recruit more Welsh-based students to enter into the health profession, as it’s much more likely that these people are going to want to stay and work in Wales. I think that’s an excellent example of how we can be boosting the foundational economy.

But I also want to reiterate the challenge that’s involved in automation. The experts tell us that a third of all existing jobs at the moment are going to be done away with as a result of automation. I have to say that I think we need to ensure that we can use automation to enhance the foundational economy rather than simply seeing it as a way of eliminating staff. There are so many jobs that remain undone in our society that we need to be able to re-vive those resources, to liberate them, so that we can tackle some of the things we’ve already discussed today, whether it’s domestic violence, healthy relationships, fire safety, decent homes—these are things that we really need to think about deeply as to how we’re going to ensure that automation is not a way of simply cutting services, but of enhancing services, and replacing jobs that can be done by machinery with better jobs done by people.