First Minister, can I genuinely welcome the attempt to try and join up the different areas of Government activity? Governments are often criticised for silo thinking, and I think the Government deserves some credit in this document at the way that it’s tried to bring together the different strands of its programme and strategy. And I look forward, when the action plans are published, to take forward the detail of this, to seeing how that will work in practice.

The one area in particular I wanted to focus on was around automation, which does cut across a range of portfolios and areas, and will profoundly impact everything that we do. And I sense that the Government at all levels is not quite ready for the storm that is being unleashed around us. We’ve already seen the impact of the closure of the Tesco call centre in Cardiff and its move to Dundee, which I’m told was almost entirely motivated by considerations around automation. There is an acknowledgement in the strategy that the best defence will be people with the ability to work better and smarter than machines and able to solve the problems that they can’t. And, of course, skills is an important part of dealing with automation. But that does miss out the opportunities as well.

Yes, it’s right—the Bank of England formula suggests that some 700,000 jobs in Wales could be under threat, but if we harness automation, there are opportunities for us too, in terms of the manufacture, the design and the roll-out of the robotics. I had a fascinating visit to the College of Engineering at Swansea University last Friday, where there is very innovative work taking place in Wales on this agenda, and a visit the week before to EBS Automation Ltd in Dafen, who are doing some remarkable work. So, there is a positive story to tell, but the point the First Minister made just a moment ago was striking, in criticising the failure of previous Governments to respond to the anticipated job losses from the coal and steel industries in the 1980s, and the failure to plan for what they knew was likely to be an adjustment in the economy. And I think we face a similar generational shift. We know there are going to be significant disruptions to the way we organise public services and the economy, and we must get ready for it, and it must be across all Government. And I hope that he will lead that work in Wales.