I thank the leader of the opposition for his comments. I suppose the question he didn’t ask, which I’m sure will be asked, is, ‘What is the point of this document?’, which I understand. Well, he is right to say that the document itself will of course be fleshed out. The point of this document is it provides Members of this Assembly and the public with the framework within which decisions will be taken. Of course this will guide Ministers. All decisions that will be taken by Ministers will be measured according to what’s in this document, and the ambitions in this document and the five priority areas. As I mentioned in the statement itself, there will be further action plans that will be developed in the course of the next few months.

He talked about how to work across the public sector. We will, of course, be looking to introduce a local government Bill that will help to drive greater consistency in local government.

Coming to the point he made last, he is right to say that we wish, as a Government, to have decisions taken as close to people’s communities as possible, but we have found in the past—this drove the previous legislation that was not successful—that that leads to massive inconsistency, where some councils are unable to deliver services in the way they should. One council, Anglesey, was taken over because it failed so completely. At one point, six councils—six local education authorities—were in special measures over education. Now that can’t possibly be right. How, then, do we resolve that? The local government Bill will seek to do that in order to drive greater consistency, to help councils to deliver better, and to deliver consistent delivery across regional footprints. I don’t think anyone can pretend that we’ve had a robust system of local government for the past 20 years where every single council has always delivered to the level that people would expect. That clearly isn’t so. So, whilst it’s important have local decision making, we must guard against there arising, because of that, huge inconsistency, and the Bill will help to ensure that doesn’t happen.

He talks of economic statistics. We can trade this back and fore. As I said earlier on in First Minister’s questions, the unemployment rate now is 4.3 per cent. That is not the full figure; there are still too many people who lack security of employment. That I understand. But we’ve been successful in drawing investment into Wales that we’d never have had before. Aston Martin is one example. We’ve managed to save our airport; that would have closed, bluntly. In the days before devolution, nobody would have saved that; now it’s prospering. Our steel industry—we were able to act as strong advocates for our steel industry in order to make sure that those jobs remained in Wales. ProAct and ReAct: they were world-leading schemes, and they helped to keep people in jobs when the recession started to bite at its strongest—jobs that would otherwise have been lost.

He makes reference to the fact, and it’s there, that there are regional differences in GVA in Wales. One of the problems in the areas close to Cardiff is that so many people live in other counties but work in Cardiff. Now, I live in west Wales and the Valleys. Because I work in Cardiff, I’m counted as an economic drain—some people might say that’s true anyway, but an economic drain on west Wales and the Valleys, because I’m paid in Cardiff and I work in Cardiff, and that’s part of the problem. So many people come in to Cardiff to commute it depresses the GVA of the areas around it in a way that doesn’t really exist elsewhere in other areas that previously had Objective 1 status. That’s not the whole explanation, of course, because the other way of driving up GVA is simply skills. Now, one of the issues we get asked by potential investors is, ‘If we come to Wales, have your people got the skills that we need to be successful?’ And that increasingly can be answered positively. In the past, skills were not seen as important; it was low pay: come to Wales because pay levels are low. Well, those days are finished. Now we want to make sure we draw in investment on the basis that our skill levels are high.

But, of course, the great challenge for us is that our biggest export market is the European single market: 67 per cent of our exports go there. We can’t replace that. It’s impossible to replace that. And why would we want to replace it in any event? It’s an enormous market on our doorstep. The US cannot replace it; it’s smaller and it’s further away. Japan cannot replace it—again, further away and smaller. And so the challenges of Brexit—and we’ll come on to them; this will be a debate we’ll have, of course, for months and years in this Chamber—have to be examined through the telescope of ensuring the best possible access—participation in the single market, full unfettered access to the single market, but the easiest access to the single market that we can have for Welsh businesses, because that is their biggest market and cannot be replaced easily.

He mentioned ‘healthy and active’—there are challenges in every health service. England has just registered the highest number of people on waiting lists ever, and there are challenges that England faces as well. We know in Wales that we’ve seen improvements in some areas where waiting times have come down. In other areas, there is work to do. We’ve always acknowledged that. But we know that independent reports have shown that the health services across the UK are roughly on a par.

‘Ambitious and learning’—he mentioned that. Well, I’d argue that we see the difference now. Our GCSE results are the best ever. I was looking at the graph for GCSE results in the days before devolution, when less than half of young people got five A* to Cs at GCSE, and that figure now has climbed well beyond that. There’s been an enormous difference in that time. GCSE results are the best ever. We’re seeing reductions in the attainment gap. The pupil deprivation grant has made differences across Wales and that is something that is working for so many young people.

Finally, on ‘united and connected’—. Well, the answer I always give when people say, ‘Well, the Assembly’s in Cardiff; what does it mean for the north of Wales?’—I say, ‘Well, there are three Cabinet Secretaries in the Government who come from north Wales constituencies’. That is an enormous level of representation. There’s nobody in the UK Government from a north Wales constituency. But the voice of the north is very, very strong. It has to be. There are 60 of us here. At least a quarter of the Members, as I count it, come from the north. Of course that voice is strong; the same for rural Wales, the same for the mid and west of our country—a much stronger voice than ever existed in the days before devolution. I hear what he says about devolving to the regions. Again, I suspect the Secretary of State’s view and way of doing that is a little different to his. I think the Secretary of State’s view is, ‘Let’s bypass the Welsh Government and talk to councils directly’. That is not a view, obviously, that we share, even though we accept the principle of devolving as much as possible.