Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. It’s my pleasure to rise and move the motion in the name of Paul Davies on the order paper this afternoon, in relation to the document that the Welsh Government brought forward last week, ‘Prosperity for All’, which the First Minister introduced as a statement in the National Assembly here. And, obviously, we had the education tranche statement yesterday to put a bit more meat on the bones of the original statement. And the document obviously tries to encapsulate what the Welsh Government will be seeking to do in the weeks, months and years left to this Assembly and how people, by 2021, would be able to judge the Government and the effects that that Government has had on the people of Wales.

The debate today is moved on the basis that, obviously, the document is so light on the indicators that the people of Wales will be able to use to benchmark the progress that this Government has had in improving the outcomes in health, education and the economy and a whole field of other areas that the Welsh Government has responsibility over. And it is to try and tease out from the First Minister some more detail as to exactly how this document will differ from previous documents that successive Welsh Labour Governments have brought before this Chamber and previous Assemblies when looking to, obviously, map out how the Government is seeking to improve education, the economy, and health.

We will not be supporting the Government’s amendment to the motion and we will be supporting the two amendments tabled on behalf of Plaid Cymru.

If we take the economy to start with, and the questions that I put to the First Minister during his statement last week, no-one actually wants to see Wales get poorer, and we do all want many of the proposals that are put forward in this document to actually succeed. But when you’ve had a Government in place for 18 years and you look at the economic outcomes here in Wales, they aren’t something that we can particularly celebrate. Time and time again, I’ve used GVA—and other politicians in this Chamber have used GVA—as a good benchmark to see exactly what the economic performance is of Wales. And the First Minister uses an example of himself, being a resident in Bridgend, but obviously working in Cardiff, as a distortion to those figures—it doesn’t really show the full picture. Well, actually, if you take Wales’s GVA as a total, it amounts to some £55 billion. That means that Wales accounts for about 5 per cent of the UK population, but it only produces just over 3 per cent of the UK’s wealth—this after 18 years of Labour in Government.

Now, from this document, it would be good to try and understand how the Welsh Government will seek to push those percentages higher, which, ultimately, then, will have a dramatic impact on the wealth of the country, and, in particular, the wealth of individuals, by pushing up take-home pay rates here in Wales. If we look at the GVA figures around Wales—and I used, in my response to the statement last week, Anglesey as a good example—Anglesey’s GVA stands at £13,411. The Gwent valleys, for example, is £13,608, and the central Valleys area is £15,429, and Cardiff and Vale, then—the disparity—£22,783. But you look at other areas of the UK that have successfully, over the years, increased the GVA rates. If you take the GVA rate in Anglesey, it has only grown by 1.3 per cent, but, by contrast, if you take the Wirral, for example, just across Offa’s Dyke, that has grown by 5.5 per cent. Tower Hamlets, for example, has grown by 3.5 per cent. So, it can be done in areas that you could say have struggled over the past. And this document that was presented by the Government doesn’t offer you any encouragement to believe that this Welsh Government will have any more success than previous Welsh Labour Governments.

If we look at take-home pay, for example, the average take-home pay for someone in Wales is only £492. The UK median weekly wage is £538. If you could get up to the average here in Wales, imagine how much more money would be circulating in the entire Welsh economy. Twenty years ago, Welsh and Scottish workers had identical pay packets of £301 per week, but, 20 years later, a Welsh pay packet contains £492, whereas a Scottish pay packet contains £535. That’s £43 a week extra in a pay packet in Scotland as opposed to Wales. Again, I refer to the document and I cannot see how the Welsh Government will be closing that gap. It’s fair enough for the Welsh Government to point out that their budget is not as big as they would like it to be, but, if that capital was introduced via take-home pay into the Welsh economy, think what a difference that would make here in Wales.

We also look at urban regeneration in particular as a way of driving economic growth and cities, in particular, being the engine for growth for regions. Yet, if you look at the way the Welsh cities are identified in the league tables—Cardiff, Swansea and Newport, for example—they rank among some of the worst-performing towns and cities in the UK in relation to GVA, export activity, and employment rates. In Cardiff, the employment rate is 69 per cent, ranking Cardiff 48 out of 63 towns and cities. I’m as proud of Cardiff as any Member in this Chamber, actually, as I have the huge privilege of being a regional Member who represents Cardiff; I want to see the youngest capital city in Europe being the most successful capital city. But, when you look at those sorts of numbers, you can’t refer back to the document and actually find a route-map that will show how the Welsh Government are going to move Cardiff and the other cities forward.

I do pay tribute to the activities of Lee Waters on this, in particular around automation and robotics. And, when you look at the figures that are projected over the next 10 years, 15 per cent of jobs are factored in to be lost because of automation and robotics in the workplace. By 2037, only 20 years on, 35 per cent of jobs that we understand as jobs today will not be in the workplace. Again, this document does not address those real challenges that, ultimately, if addressed correctly, could make Wales a far more prosperous and ambitious country.

If we move into health, a constant debating point in this Chamber, and rightly so when nearly 50 per cent of the Welsh Government’s budget is allocated to health and social care and projected to go above 50 per cent in the coming years to 57 per cent—. When we look at waiting times, for example, where it’s not unreasonable—that’s most probably the biggest benchmark that most people measure the success or failure of our health service to respond, because, if we have a condition identified, we want it treated in a timely manner. But yet we found out only last week that 450,000 people are on a waiting list here in Wales—one in seven people on a waiting list—as opposed to other parts of the United Kingdom, which do have their challenges—all parts of the modern health service in the western hemisphere have challenges—. But, time and time again, our waiting times are deteriorating and, equally, when you flip the coin and you look at the financials of the health service here in Wales, where four of the health boards have a combined deficit of £146 million in this financial year, I just cannot, when I refer back to this document, which will be the guiding principle of the Government’s actions on health, be able to understand how this Government will be addressing the real, challenging issue of getting on top of the waiting times here in Wales and addressing the financials in the same breath.

It is difficult to reconcile the equation where the financials are running out of control and the waiting times are running out of control, with the recruitment crisis we see in GP practices, and, indeed, many consultant posts, especially in rural health, as identified by my colleague from Preseli Pembs, in Withybush hospital and other hospitals, and sustaining services so that we can have a health service that addresses the health needs here in the twenty-first century.

And I would have appreciated far more meat on the bone when it comes to air quality, for example—something that we’ve debated in this Chamber. I’ve gone specifically for this area because we know we have 2,000 premature deaths a year because of poor air quality here in Wales. Those are preventable deaths, but yet, in Stage 2 of the Public Health Bill, the Welsh Government chose to strike down a Conservative amendment that would have greatly enhanced the ability of that piece of legislation to make real progress in our communities in Wales on this pressing issue. Again, when I refer back to the document, other than fine words—warm words—around public health, I really cannot see where this document will improve the life expectancy of people here in Wales. So, I’d be grateful if the First Minister could enlighten me as to exactly what gains in public health he would like to be marked against when it comes to 2021 and the close of this fifth Assembly.

I’ll close my contribution by addressing the education aspect of the document as well, which, to its credit, identifies that too many children are lacking the opportunities when they leave school and, in particular, not getting the grades that they require. This is after 18 years of Labour in Government. I appreciate—I’ve congratulated the Cabinet Secretary on her appointment, and I’ve congratulated the Cabinet Secretary on some of the measures that she’s been taking, but we cannot go on, time and time again, with the PISA league tables indicating that we are not making progress when we are internationally benchmarked against other education systems in Europe and the world. And that is something that, when you try and refer back to the document, which—. As I’ve said, the Cabinet Secretary yesterday highlighted in her very speech—in her statement, sorry—the historical lack of focus on leadership, and those were her words in the statement. That clearly does rest at the door of the Welsh Labour Government.

There is not a Member in this Chamber who would want to see our education system go backwards. We have seen strategy after strategy come forward from successive education Secretaries, and I can well remember, week after week, Leighton Andrews standing in that very position that Mick Antoniw sits in at the moment, introducing ‘bold’ reforms to our education system that would transform the outlook and the prospects of Welsh students. Yet, when we look at where we are today—some five, six years on from many of those reforms—we haven’t made the progress when you internationally benchmark us against the other education systems that we are rightly compared against. It is important that, when initiatives are brought forward—. And this Cabinet Secretary got rid of the Schools Challenge Cymru initiative, which was only some two years into its seven-year scheme of delivery. Ultimately, it was introduced for 2014, had a life expectancy to go to 2020, but was wound up by the Cabinet Secretary. That is no way to give education professionals, parents and pupils the confidence that initiatives and policies that are brought forward by the Welsh Government will last, will make the impact, and will make the improvements that we want to see.

Again, you refer back to this document that is there to map out how the Government will take forward public services here in Wales, and you cannot—you cannot—have any confidence that this document will be any more successful than other documents brought forward by successive Governments here in the Assembly. I look forward to hearing the First Minister’s response, and I call on the Assembly to support the motion before the house this afternoon, which merely seeks to actually mark where we will be by 2021. Because, if you just use this document, you will not be able to do that when it comes to the close of this fifth Assembly.