Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. First Minister, thank you for your statement this afternoon. One thing both you and I must be contributing to the local economy is buying our suits in the same shop. I notice we’ve got the same suit, but you extended to the waistcoat, you did. [Laughter.] I won’t expect any quips.

I welcome the statement. Obviously, it’s a progression on from the programme for government that the First Minister put down last year, and, as the First Minister says in the statement, to a point, how can you disagree with many of the points that are within the statement and the document that he’s brought forward, because a lot of it is the motherhood and apple pie that traditionally comes out with these types of announcements? I noticed in the closing remarks from the First Minister that, over the course of this term—I’m assuming—more meat will be put on the bones of some of these announcements by various Cabinet Secretary statements in their particular portfolio areas. So, I suppose it is fair to expect, obviously, to receive more information as the term progresses.

But at the start of the statement, the First Minister does identify the need for greater working in the public sector to make the public pound go that much further, and one of the things constituents get driven to the extremes over is how they can’t get various parts of the public services that are meant to be there to help them to work in their own interests—and I use health and social care as an example—and they come to their Assembly Members. I’m sure many AMs in this building have had the experience, and they just can’t work through why these services will not work to enable them to get the treatment or the services they need in the right place. So, what I would ask the First Minister, given the experience and that he was the First Minister that put in place the Williams commission, about local government reform, in the last Assembly, where a huge amount of effort was put by the then Government into reforming local government to try and make a better way of working, as they saw it at the time, and to work on the proposals of the Williams review, how he believes this Government will be any more successful in driving reform of the public services here in Wales that will create, as he says in his opening remarks in the statement, a more collaborative way of working to deliver public services across Wales that benefit the user as well as the service itself.

I also take the four points that he highlights here—a prosperous and secure Wales, which obviously no-one could disagree with—but actually, when you do look at the economic numbers over the last 18 years, because he has been part of the Government that has been in power here in Wales for the last 18 years, in that particular section if you look at the economy, for example, where we all remember the target that was set in the early years of devolution of a 90 per cent target for GVA, today that figure has shrunk to 71 per cent of GVA. How on earth can we have any confidence that this is not just another cut-and-paste exercise and that we will see the improvements we want to see in the economy of Wales to put us on the way to becoming the powerhouse I know Wales can be if it was afforded the right leadership.

We have heard this time and time again. We have had had four different economic strategies coming forward from the Welsh Government: ‘A Winning Wales’ in 1999; ‘Wales: a Vibrant Economy’ in 2005; ‘Economic renewal: a new direction’ in 2009; and now, we are going to get the new direction of travel from the Cabinet Secretary when he makes his statement around his vision for the economy. And yet, as I said, when it comes to GVA, for example, the figures are painfully stubborn, lagging well behind other parts of the United Kingdom. If you look at regional inequality when it comes to GVA, Anglesey, for example, stood at £13,411 of GVA. In the Gwent Valleys, it was £13,681. Yet in Cardiff and the Vale, for example, it stood at £22,783. Again, after 18 years, how can we have confidence that the Government will be able to move the needle so that these inequalities across Wales will be levelled out and you don’t get such great differences in our communities—north, mid and south Wales?

And then you look at our exports, for example, which the First Minister has talked about very often—about the exports and the importance of promoting Wales abroad. This is something we agree with him on, and we offer our wholehearted support. But if you look at exports to the United States, they have fallen by 13 per cent. If you look at exports to India, they have fallen by 22 per cent. If you look at Japan, they are down by 55 per cent. Again, how will the Government be reversing these negative numbers when we need, with the Brexit process, to be looking more globally at the trade we want to encourage so that our economy can pick up and real take-home pay can increase here in Wales?

Then, he talks of a healthy and active Wales in the second segment of the statement he has made today. We know that one in seven people in Wales are on a waiting list, regrettably. We heard over the summer recess that there has been a 400 per cent increase—and that is worth repeating: a 400 per cent increase—in people waiting 12 months or more for a procedure here in Wales. In the health board that the Welsh Government have direct control over—Betsi Cadwaladr—it has gone from zero to a 1,250 per cent increase in the people waiting 12 months or more. So, again, when you read the rhetoric in the document that’s launched in conjunction with the statement he has made today, how can we have confidence that the journey the Government is undertaking—this Government that he is leading today—will start tackling these huge inequalities in our society?

Then, the ‘Ambitious and Learning’ chapter of the document that he launched today, and the third part of four that he has addressed in his statement talks of, on page 15:

‘Still, there is too much variation in the attainment of school leavers’.

I see the Cabinet Secretary for Education agreeing with that and shaking her head in agreement. This is coming from a Government that has been responsible for education for 18 years—and I hear the Cabinet Secretary say, ‘But not me’. I take that point, in fairness, but I did believe that it was collective responsibility, and so it is one Government. How are we to believe that the bold and fine statements in this document will actually improve the attainment levels of children the length and breadth of Wales when, after 18 months—18 years, sorry, not 18 months—your own document says that there is, and I will repeat that again, still

‘too much variation in the attainment of school leavers’?

Finally, in the ‘United and Connected’ segment of the four that you identified in your statement, it is important that all parts of Wales feel that the Government is governing for them. Irrespective of whatever colour that Government might be, that is what we are celebrating at this moment in time: 20 years of devolution and 20 years of local decision-making. But it is a fact, historically, that some Governments that the Labour Party has led here have sought to drive nation building ahead of what is best for that particular part of Wales. I well remember, when I first came into this Assembly, in particular in the field of health, there was this drive to send patients from north Wales to south Wales for treatment, when there were good cross-border links already in place for north Wales patients to access that treatment in Manchester, in Liverpool, where the natural alliances and the natural flow of people over the years had built up. I do hope that the First Minister will support my call, in the devolution of responsibilities to whatever regions that require them to increase their economic footprint, but, above all, the delivery of public services, that this will be best delivered locally, rather than the centralised Cathays Park model that we have seen time and time again, historically, being looked at as the more favourable option when it comes to decision making here in Wales. There are many, many—