Can I thank the Cabinet Secretary for his statement today and the publication, indeed, of the future trends report—another first for devolution, although maybe not quite as groundbreaking as some firsts that we’ve had? It’s probably, I’m afraid to say, Cabinet Secretary, not going to be the talk of pubs and clubs across the nation, but I take your statement in the spirit that you meant it, and hopefully it will provide some use in the area of policy decision making.

This is clearly part and parcel of the future generations Bill, and, as we know, there have been concerns across parties in this Chamber about the implementation of that Bill and whether it’s actually delivering its objectives out there on the ground. I think the jury is still out on that, and, hopefully, this report, if you’re right, will help to steer the course ahead with the future generations Bill and will shed some light on some of the murkier aspects of it.

Cabinet Secretary, you said that this report is trying to cover a huge range of areas in a relatively short space, ranging from climate change, population to health statistics. How confident are you that this forecasting—the set of questions, as you called it—is going to be accurate enough in any way to be of use for the decision-making process? I think what I’m trying to ask you is: I understand that you’ve had to provide this report because of the future generations legislation—are we not just going down the road of a box-ticking exercise? Will this actually be worth the time that has clearly been spent on it?

You said honestly that the report is not intended to provide a set of predictions, but is designed to prompt readers to formulate their own response. I must admit, again, I’m not entirely sure how useful that process can be. I hope you can persuade me of it. And particularly in the area of environment, I quote:

‘there are a wide range of climate change scenarios and models’.

That’s from the climate change section. Well, yes, clearly, there are. I think we know that. That’s not really a prediction and it’s not even really a question; it’s just stating where we are with that. I can’t see how that assertion really is going to provide any meaningful input into the decision-making and policy-making processes in the short term but, again, maybe you can tell me how it will.

It is clearly the culmination of extensive collaboration—I don’t doubt that—between Government departments and outside bodies; a lot of work has been done on this. You said towards the end of your statement that this is the beginning of work to improve decision-making capabilities. How do you envisage that work progressing? You’ve said about building up a database. What tangible form will that database take? Will we be seeing future reports? Is there a requirement for future reports? I’m not sure. Will there be a different means of building up that database? Will it be for the Government departments to do that, or will it be centrally collated? And will there be an evaluation of this? I know that you can’t evaluate the future until it’s happened—clearly, I’m not suggesting you could—but, at some point in the future, it will be quite evident whether the predictions or questions in this report are hitting the mark, or whether they are way off. It is likely that they will be somewhere in the middle, but at what point do you intend to assess whether this actually has been a useful process and whether it is aiding the future generations legislation in rolling that out?

Finally, Cabinet Secretary, it does seem to me—and I think you would accept this—that this report does ask as many questions as it answers. I think it would be helpful if you could clarify how you do intend to build on it, clarify how you intend to evaluate it and at what point in the future you will look back and say, ‘That was actually a very worthwhile exercise’, or, ‘Perhaps there was a better way to proceed at that point.’