Absolutely. I’m very disappointed that the DWP announced last Wednesday the decision to close the Llanelli benefit office and the job centres in Mountain Ash, Pyle, and Tredegar. Relocating jobs will affect about 150 staff, we understand. I’m also very disappointed that they did not see fit to consult with the Welsh Government about alternative solutions prior to the final decision. I stated my profound concerns regarding this to Damian Hinds last week when I spoke with him on the telephone, and I’ve written several times, both before the general election and afterwards, about this.

We welcome the relocation of jobs of 93 staff based at the Porth debt centre, who will now go to the Tonypandy job centre as opposed to Caerphilly, as was announced earlier in the year. And, during our conversation, the Minister for employment also indicated to me that he’s opening what he described as a large modern building north of Cardiff to merge five small and nearby processing centres, but he didn’t give me any details of that, so I’ll be pressing him on that tomorrow. I did point out very fervently that we were not looking to consolidate jobs in areas of high employment, but actually we were looking to preserve jobs in areas of lower employment where the jobs were much more important and much needed. We had some discussion about the topography of Wales in that conversation, and about how perhaps lines on a map without the mountains in between weren’t awfully indicative of people’s ability to commute, and so on. I will be pursuing that with him tomorrow.

But the bottom line is this: we are very, very disappointed that we weren’t properly consulted, that our offers of help with keeping jobs in areas that badly need them were not taken up. I will be seeking constructively to work with him tomorrow about their plans for the future to see if we can influence them to make sure that existing jobs stay in Valleys communities and other communities where unemployment is a bit higher across Wales, and we will be reiterating our Better Jobs, Closer to Home policy, not consolidating people in big centres inevitably further away from where they live.