Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. May I say at the beginning, in responding to the Cabinet Secretary, that I do wish him well in implementing the laudable aims of this strategy? I don’t doubt his sincerity and his personal commitment to that task.

However, where there is disagreement between us is the degree to which we can expect this strategy to be realised, because one thing that is true is that if we look at the history of the Valleys, going back to the 1930s in the last century, it’s been full of laudable strategies. In every generation, we’ve seen policy statements by the Government of the day, which try to offer redress for the deficiencies of the previous years. You could go back to the very start of the regional policy in the 1930s and Hilary Marquand’s book, South Wales Needs a Plan; it’s still true—that’s the tragedy. I hope that this will be the strategy that will allow those communities that we represent to turn a corner.

But, if we look back over time, the pattern that we see, in quoting Idris Davies, is

'The great dream and the swift disaster'.

We know of the Conservative Government’s scheme at the end of the 1980s, the two Valleys initiatives, but even since devolution, there was a scheme that was just as glossy that was published by the Welsh Labour Government 12 years ago, ‘Turning Heads: A Strategy for the Heads of the Valleys 2020’. Now, they’re excellent words, excellent ideas, and some of them similar to the ideas that are in this scheme—instead of a landscape park for the Valleys, there was a regional park for the Valleys.

We have to ask the question: why do we, every 10, 15 or 20 years have to have a new strategy? We have to have a new taskforce, or whatever we call it, because policy has failed in getting to grips with the deep-rooted structural problems in the Valleys. I understand the point, of course, and I agree with the Cabinet Secretary: nobody wants a quango. But the tragedy of the Valleys is—and we’re talking about a region that includes a population of around 750,000 people—there’s no structural or institutional shape given to it; there’s no regional entity for governance that’s been able to get to grips with the problems of the area.

It’s very similar to the Ruhr region in Germany, which is a very wide-ranging area with millions of people in it, but it also failed to get that unity and consistency with regard to policy, because there are around 53, I believe, local authorities in that area. What they have managed to do in the Ruhr, of course, is: at the turn of the millennium in the year 2000, they did create an economic development body for the Ruhr for the first time, and it’s still in existence today. I think that that’s one of the reasons why the Ruhr has been able to turn a corner: that they have that body—a body, by the way, that is accountable democratically. It’s not a quango; it’s accountable to the 53 towns and cities within the region. But it has been able to not just put together a strategy, but ensure that it has been realised. That’s my concern, truth be told: that we’re going to have the same debate in 10, 15 or 20 years on an excellent strategy, but one that hasn’t been implemented and realised, because the medium wasn’t there to ensure that it could be realised.