Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:57 pm on 27 September 2017.
No, there were too few sectors. One of the problems we faced was—and it was an issue I remember discussing with my former colleague Ieuan Wyn Jones, as Deputy First Minister—that in years before that, attempts had been made to attract investment in any area and, of course, you can’t do that. Unless you can show you’ve got a track record quite often it’s very difficult to attract another investor in the same field into your country. So, the decision was taken to have sectors. Yes, we increased that to nine because we saw new sectors appear over the years and sectors becoming stronger over the years. The issue that we need to focus on as well is the issue of regional disparity. That’s been raised and it’s a fair point to raise. How do we do that? Well, we need to make sure that we have regional economic plans and also regional delivery structures. We don’t have them at the moment.
If we’re going to talk about devolving powers downwards, perhaps financial powers as well, which, you know, is an idea that deserves careful attention, we have to be clear that the regional delivery structures are there; they are not there. The local government Bill will give us the opportunity to do that. It’s not possible for 22 local authorities to be able to deliver effectively on their own. That’s why, of course, we need the regional collaboration. That’s what the Bill will do. And that, of course, gives us the opportunity, then, to start looking at how we can empower other levels of government to be able to improve economic conditions in their own areas.
With regard to health, again, the leader of the opposition says, ‘Well, everything’s gone backwards’—it hasn’t. I mean, diagnostics waiting times have improved, ambulance waiting times have improved. If you look at cancer, if you want cancer treatment in Wales, you are at least as likely to be getting good cancer treatment as quickly as anywhere else in the UK, if not better. The reality of the situation is we spend 7 per cent more on health and social care: it’s a figure that we’ve used in this Chamber—it is true. And we know, of course, that when it comes to recruitment, the campaign we’ve put in place is bearing fruit. We are seeing training places now being filled in a way that wasn’t the case, perhaps, a year or two ago. That will strengthen the health service over the next few years here in Wales.
In terms of some of the other issues that were raised in the course of the debate—education: well, I have to say, you know, I heard what Mohammed Asghar said. I was in school in the 1980s, in a comprehensive, and I can tell him now, I remember those days when schools were never built, they were never maintained, we had a Conservative Government cutting over and over and over again the education budget, we had performance levels going down; I never want to see those days again. I’m happy to take him to schools all round Wales that are brand new being built. I’m happy to show him the work that’s been put in. I’d like to show him the work that’s coming through via the leadership academy. I’d like to show him the consortia that are delivering now. The reality of the case was that we did not have consistent delivery of education across all local authorities: six of them were in special measures at one point. The system didn’t work consistently across Wales. Yes, we had some excellent examples of delivery, but there weren’t enough of them across Wales. Now we have the consortia, we are seeing improvements—best GCSE results we’ve ever had. If you compare where GCSE results were in the 1990s—