Presiding Officer, Wales faces a skills shortage. Too many of our young people are not in education, employment or training. It is a sad fact that people in Wales are more likely to lack qualifications than people in Scotland or England. A lower proportion of people in Wales have a degree than any English region, bar the north-east. Educational attainment at the age of 16 in Wales has long been poorer than elsewhere in the United Kingdom, and indeed internationally. Wales has a higher level of functional illiteracy than England, and around half of adults in Wales lack functional numeracy skills.

We need to improve education and training in Wales for our young people, and also extend the opportunities offered to adults, our ethnic minorities, and the disabled. People from ethnic minority background are more likely to fail to achieve functional literacy and numeracy compared to the indigenous community around them. There is a higher proportion of people with no qualifications among those who are disabled. People with learning disabilities are much more likely to lack basic literacy and numeracy than the rest of the population of the United Kingdom.

The Welsh Government has declared that it aims to instill in everyone a passion to learn throughout their lives, and to inspire them with the ambition to be the best they possibly can, and yet the adult community learning budget will be reduced by £400,000 in 2018-19 and 2019-20. The budget for further education provision will also be reduced over the same period.

Presiding Officer, nearly a quarter of all the jobs open in 2015 were left vacant because employers could not find the people with the right skills and the right abilities to fill them. That is a sad scenario we face because of this Government's policies in the education and skills sector in Wales. We should be doing more now, especially in this Brexit scenario. We need more than 2 million managers—business managers—in the United Kingdom in the next seven years. So, we should be preparing ourselves: our apprenticeships, our skills and our training sector should have fully occupied and senior advisors and officials to teach and learn leadership and managerial skills in Wales to fulfill the vacancies in the United Kingdom, especially in certain areas like transport, education and the agricultural sector, which are devolved, and there's a huge shortage of skills.

We must set targets to achieve our aims. Minister, I think—I've got no doubt in your ability, but I think there is some lack of ambition and some sort of encouragement—. I can't understand. I heard my previous speaker on many areas which he was creating himself in such a way that Labour is not helping this country at all. I do not agree with what he said altogether, but the fact is Labour must invest in education and the training of our young children and young people, able, disabled, and ethnic minorities, which we need to make sure they are the ones who create the economy and money in the future, which we're all saying. And I heard everybody saying that austerity measures and this, that and the other. In true facts, the budget has been reduced by 1p in £1. If you can't survive on £1, 99p doesn't make a difference, but you must learn in life. You must accommodate. Brexit came out of the blue, and the fact is we are not prepared here. In my understanding, we need to invest in our education, our skills and our training sector in Wales and our next generation should be prosperous with only that attitude; otherwise, this budget is not going to fulfill our ambition. Thank you.