Can I echo the thanks that my fellow committee members have already extended to the committee Commission staff and everyone who’s engaged with the work of the committee? I think there is some very useful evidence in the transcripts that may not have made its way through to the report, which it would bear reflecting on.

I also welcome the Cabinet Secretary’s response. I wish he had felt able to go further in relation to the land for housing and in relation also to acknowledging an ultimate statutory destination, if you like, for the commission, but I also appreciate the fact that he’ll return to that question in his review in due course.

I want to comment briefly on three aspects of the work of the commission and its implications. The first is the 30-year horizon over which the commission intends to work. We heard, both anecdotally in discussions and formally, how important that was for investors and for the industry generally in terms of resource planning, financial planning and, indeed, skills planning. So, I welcome the long time frame over which it will work. Any business knows that there’s greater certainty in the early years than the outer years, but, nevertheless, I think that visibility is important. I also welcome it because I think it actually increases the prospect of political consensus around some of the projects that will inevitably be proposed. Having a solid base of evidence in the public domain over time, available for reflection and challenge, is bound to maximise the opportunity for political consensus to be reached where that’s possible.

I would say, though, that a 30-year time horizon is no small task. It’s not yet 30 years since the worldwide web was invented, and if any of us can think of a more transformative development in recent decades—I’m sure we can’t. It’s a significant task to do that, whether it’s in the marine renewable sector, in terms of the challenges we face for energy distribution, how we fuel our vehicles, what our ports will be doing, and how the internet of things becomes an indispensable part of everyday life. Imagine a world where 10G connectivity is absolutely essential in all parts of Wales to deliver in-home healthcare, which may by then have become the norm. There are all sorts of challenges, which are, at this point beyond imagining. I think it’s important, therefore, that we will have some free thinkers on the commission, and that we won’t be forgiven for building yesterday’s infrastructure tomorrow. And given the pace of rapid technological change, the 30-year period has never been longer than it is today.

I want to speak briefly about the composition and the approach to the work of the commission. As well as the free thinkers, whom I mentioned, we’ll also need people on the commission with hands-on experience of delivery: people with the imagination to think ahead. Reflecting the comments that Vikki Howells and other speakers have made today, despite the fact that social infrastructure isn’t part of the remit, I think it’s important that we have people on the commission with an understanding of social infrastructure, because it’s vital to understand the interconnection between economic, environmental and social infrastructure, even if that’s not a formal part of its activity.

I’ll venture to say as well that I don’t think this is a time just for the familiar faces. We should be bold and we should seek the best available people from wherever they come. I would like, personally, to see experience of international infrastructure on the commission itself. I happen to think that the quality of the people we’ll be able to attract to the commission correlates very closely to their confidence in the independence of the body. Whatever the formal structure is, I hope the Cabinet Secretary will reflect on that in the arrangements of the commission generally. I think it’s absolutely integral that members of the commission have full confidence in its independence.

The third point I want to make is on its role as a challenge partner. It’s not a delivery body: it’s an advisory body and it exists to advise the Welsh Government principally, and in that sense to be a challenge partner to the Welsh Government. But I also hope that other public bodies with an interest and a responsibility for infrastructure will engage in the same way with the work of the commission, and that it can present useful challenge to some of the assumptions in our local authorities, the NHS and in our city regions. I hope that is welcomed by those bodies. No public body has a monopoly on wisdom, and certainly not over a 30-year horizon. Provided that’s a credible challenge, I think it would be a useful contribution to Welsh economic life, and I hope that other public bodies will engage in the same way the Welsh Government has promised to do.