Thank you. And I move those amendments, as mentioned. Of course, openness and transparency are key things that my Welsh Conservative colleagues and I have long expounded the virtues of in this Chamber. A debate on increasing openness and accessibility of data is long overdue. Our first amendment aims for the Welsh Government to work with public, private and third sector organisations to improve data sharing and reduce duplication in data collection across Wales. Time and again, as AMs, we meet with organisations, particularly in the health and third sectors, and they raise issues of data duplication or non-collection with us. A classic example is that we’re on our second poverty enquiry and, throughout all the workshops, whenever we’ve met with witnesses, they’ve been very concerned about how data is collected across various organisations, how it is then shared and how the Welsh Government themselves collect and store data.

For such organisations, as well as us as politicians, open data is, of course, a valuable tool for policy development, scrutiny and competition. For example, the Equality, Local Government and Communities Committee found in July this year that some of the key weaknesses of the Communities First programme actually stemmed from policies that were developed and performances being monitored in the absence of any actual appropriate data. Further to this, our second amendment seeks to ensure that data collection focuses on obtaining the right information to influence and deliver positive changes in policy. As noted by the parliamentary review of health and social care in Wales, debated in the Chamber last week, data needs to be published for the public to enhance transparency, understanding and trust in the system. Our third amendment therefore calls for local authorities to follow the fine example set by the Conservative-run Monmouthshire County Council. They publish all expenditure—something we will be pushing for further in the forthcoming local government legislation.

Llywydd, open data is essential to policy progression, service development and public accountability, yet, sadly, there are other basic areas in which the Welsh Government’s commitment to open data fails. And, isn’t it interesting—I didn’t get my chance to ask the question to the First Minister earlier—but in freedom of information requests that are used because of the lack of open data, the Welsh Labour Government only responded in full to just 46 per cent of those requests. That isn’t good enough for an open and transparent Government at any level.

This summer, the Cardiff Open Data Institute found failings on the Welsh Government’s part in relation to the national procurement service, stating that it has no open data plan. The work on the digital framework does not consider the Government’s open data plan at all, and this is a pity because open data and procurement are perfect partners. And, of course, Leighton Andrews, a previous AM here, has actually compiled this report and I’m not sure that Members are, perhaps, even aware of this report. This has been out and published since March of this year. How this relates to local authorities, or to the people out there—our electors and taxpayers—I have no idea.

One aim of the plan is to increase the Wales openness rating to four stars by May this year. Yet, nowhere on the website is this rating even noted, and the UK open government partnership national action plan 2016-18 notes that work in this area needs to be ongoing until the end of the year. The Welsh Government has been reluctant to publish information relating to the sale of land by the regeneration investment fund for Wales, as well as information on ministerial and Cabinet decisions on the Circuit of Wales.

Finally, the open data plan aims to reduce the need for FOI requests and to reduce the need to aggregate data to respond to data collection requests. Yet, the Welsh Government, only months ago, insisted on disapplying legislative measures for public bodies to proactively publish facilities time through their Trade Union (Wales) Act 2017. And I’ve mentioned about how badly they respond to FOIs themselves.

Llywydd, we are supportive of the aims of this debate and this plan, yet I am concerned that this document is just empty words and hollow sentiment. I therefore call on the Welsh Government to commit to ensuring that the yearly progress report on this plan by the office of the chief digital officer will be debated in this Chamber on an annual basis to ensure that all parties here are able to actually effectively scrutinise this strategy.