I’m grateful to the leader of the Welsh Conservatives for his kind words and welcome for the statement this afternoon. Can I say to him—? When the First Minister asked me to take on this responsibility of co-ordinating and leading this work, I was very, very clear in my own mind that in creating a Valleys taskforce, we don’t want to create another quango or we don’t want to create another sort of delivery machinery in its own right, but that what we needed to do was to bring together the existing functions of Government and to ensure that all parts of Government take on a responsibility for delivering in the Valleys of south Wales. The taskforce itself then brings a focus and is a catalyst for action to enable those things to happen. We certainly don’t want any further complex delivery structures, and we don’t want duplication. What we want is a clear focus on the Valleys of south Wales. So, it was very, very clear what the First Minister—and he clearly agreed that we needed a taskforce in order to drive this work, rather than delivering it itself. And so the cross-governmental working and the ambitions and objectives that we have will be delivered by Cabinet Secretaries and Ministers, and will be delivered by Welsh Government acting in order to deliver on its existing programmes, but also acting as a catalyst to enable others to deliver and bringing others together. So, I’m very, very clear—and I welcome his recognition of that—that this is something for the whole Government to deliver upon.

There have, of course, been a number of different Valleys initiatives. I remember sitting next to Robin Walker at an event before Christmas, and he was discussing the work that his father had done in the Valleys some years ago. He mentioned how much his father had enjoyed that work, and how he felt he’d needed and wanted to contribute to the economic future of the Valleys. So, we do need to learn from what we’ve done in the past, and recognise that we do need a much wider focus on the Valleys than we’ve had perhaps before.

I also agree that people who live in Valleys communities absolutely need the confidence to know that this is more than simply words, and that we will deliver on the promises and the undertakings that we are making. I want to ensure that we do have a delivery plan—a delivery plan with clear targets, with clear actions and clear timescales. For me, it is absolutely essential as a Minister that I’m held to account for the undertakings I give, both to this place and elsewhere, that people are able to hold me to account by ensuring that there’s information made publicly available to enable others to hold us to account, and that we have clear targets and clear timescales. That means that we can have a much richer debate about what we’re seeking to do, both within this Assembly term and subsequent to that. So, we will have a delivery plan published in the autumn. I will ensure that there is Government time made available for a further statement or debate to ensure that Members have the opportunity to question us on that, and I will ensure that we have all the information made public to enable that accountability to be a rich debate about how we take this area of policy forward, and not simply a more antagonistic, perhaps, sort of accountability that we see all too often.

In terms of local jobs and what that means, clearly, the south Wales metro will be a means of ensuring that we are able to enable people to move to find work where necessary, to have different opportunities for work and skills, and to receive education and services. But also, we need to ensure that we have those jobs available to them where they live as well. One of the great opportunities that I see with the development of the A465 dualling project is that we’re not simply building a bypass for the towns of the Heads of the Valleys, but we’re actually investing in a northern corridor, if you like, where we will have and we need to have an economic development plan to create and to stimulate economic development at the Heads of the Valleys, which are the areas that have benefited least, if you like, from other economic investment programmes, so that we will be able to create and stimulate local work and local economies there in the Heads of the Valleys, as well as further south.

In terms of local jobs, one of the debates that’s been taking place in this place, and that has been led by a number of different Members on many sides of the Chamber, has been the place and the role of a foundational economy in the future, and this is something that I hope we will see greater investment in over the coming years. The deep place study of Tredegar, which was published some years ago now, outlined how the foundational economy can, of course, help sustain work—it can sustain jobs—but also ensure that wealth remains within a particular community as well, and I hope that we’ll be able to learn the lessons of that and apply that approach in some of the things that we’re doing in the future. But I also hope that, through investment in transport, we will be able to reconnect the Valleys and Cardiff to ensure that we do have a single economic area where people can move for work, should they choose to do so, but where work is also available much closer to home where needed and necessary. So, it is a choice whether we travel to work, not a compulsion and not something that people are forced to do. We will create new opportunities and we will say in this programme that part of those opportunities will be public sector jobs that we want to create in the Valleys, and we’ve already started that process.

The strategic hubs themselves will be different in different places; what might work in Ebbw Vale might not work elsewhere. And so you will see a construction of a strategic hub, which reflects the ambitions of that place and reflects the needs of that area and that region. It might well be different in different places—in fact, it will be different in different places. The investment that we will generate from Welsh Government into those different strategic hubs will be different investment in different places and will take a different form. What is clear is that we will need to make that investment in a timely fashion in order to ensure that we do meet the targets and the ambitions that we set ourselves.

I know I’m testing your patience, Deputy Presiding Officer—