I'm grateful to you, Deputy Presiding Officer. Members will be aware that I agreed to bring forward this debate following question sessions before Christmas, when Members sought the opportunity to have a wider and deeper conversation about the Valleys taskforce and the work that the taskforce was leading and undertaking. I'm grateful to you, Deputy Presiding Officer, for allowing us to table this debate as early as possible in the new year.

I will say at the outset that the Government will be accepting all amendments except amendment 4. Paul Davies, in his amendments, sets out quite clearly, in many ways, many of the challenges facing us in the Valleys of south Wales and many of the challenges facing the people in the communities of the Valleys of south Wales. He does so very clearly and quite eloquently. The purpose of the taskforce, of course, is not simply to rehearse those difficulties and those challenges, but to provide answers to them.

We do not support the amendment tabled by Rhun ap Iorwerth because we do not wish to create a quango in the Valleys of south Wales. We do not wish to create another level or layer of complexity within the geography of public service delivery in the Valleys. What we want to do is ensure that all the resources we have available are focused on delivering, and front-line delivery of, our aims, objectives and ambitions that we have outlined in the last year or so.

The purpose of the taskforce—. And I think it's very important that we clarify the purpose of the taskforce, because I think, in some quarters, there's been some misunderstanding over this. The purpose of the taskforce is to shape and to bring the full weight of Welsh Government resources to bear on the issues facing the Valleys, and the communities and the people of the Valleys of south Wales. The purpose of the taskforce isn't to establish new bureaucracies, or isn't to establish new forms of delivery, but to shape the approach of Government and to use all the power and resources available to Government, to use the resources of people, of expertise, of knowledge, of experience, the resources of finance that we have available to us, but also, and perhaps most critically, the resource of influence and the resource that Government can bring to bear in bringing people together—the power of acting as a catalyst for change, the power of bringing people together to look for solutions to questions that have been facing us for some generations—and then to use that power of Government in order to set out clearly how we wish to address the issues facing us, and to do so in a particular way.

I was very clear 18 months ago, when we established this taskforce, that I wanted it not to be a group of politicians or civil servants meeting in private, almost in secret—a conclave of politicians presenting the awaiting electorate with the answers to all the problems that they hadn't even thought of. What I wanted it to be was a process that involved, and which sought to actively involve, people across the whole of the communities of the Valleys, but also to hardwire accountability into what we were doing. One of the first questions I was asked, and one of the first answers I gave, when we established the taskforce, was to confirm that all our papers will be made public—the agendas, the papers, the presentations, our meetings, would all be put into the public domain. People would be able to understand and to see and to follow our work, to influence our work, to guide our work.