I thank you for those questions and I couldn't agree more about the importance of having these kinds of jobs in our town centres, in terms of footfall in town centres and ensuring that we do have vibrant town centres. So, this news has come as a great disappointment. I completely agree with your comments about Better Jobs Closer to Home, and it's actually something that Julie James brought to the attention of the DWP in one of her earlier letters, where she says,

'These decisions go completely against the Welsh Government's policy for Better Jobs Closer to Home and will impact on some of our most deprived communities. We're working cross-Government to support people into employment in these areas and we also provide strategic investment to attract good jobs with clear career pathways for employees in our most disadvantaged areas. Therefore, the relocation of the DWP staff based in Cwmbran and the other offices earmarked for closure is a significant shift of good jobs in direct contradiction to this policy.'

So, Welsh Government is completely in accord with your assessment of the situation, in terms of it being very much opposed to what we are trying to achieve for the Valleys. 

You're quite right, David Hefin, that the Tories just don't understand the Valleys, and for this reason Julie James actually got a map of the Valleys out in order to demonstrate to Damian Hinds in a meeting that transport in the south Wales Valleys isn't perhaps as straightforward as you'd imagine it would be. But these arguments about how difficult it is for staff to be able to get the Treforest site just clearly didn't ring true to him, so they didn't have any impact on the decision that was made. 

In terms of any potential job losses, I would just give the Welsh Government's commitment that we would work proactively with individuals through our ReAct programme, and other programmes, in order to support people into new employment, but clearly this isn't where we would like to be.