Diolch, Llywydd, and thanks to everyone who contributed to what turned out to be a fairly lively debate. It warmed up a bit at the end, but it was interesting all the way through, I must stress that. 

Michelle Brown opened the debate. She talked about the lack of relevant information for prospective students when they're going through the school system and the lack of information regarding things like comparison of courses and the details of likely earnings—the kind of information that you really want prospective students to be able to have so that they can compare different universities, different courses. This is surely a good thing. Obviously, the Minister addressed this point in her contribution at the end, so I will go back to what she said when I come on to sum up her remarks. So, that point was raised by Michelle, who says that there isn't enough adequate information for students going through the system—prospective university students. I'm aware that the UK Government is starting to address this issue, so we will await developments in that direction.

Other points made by Michelle: the student loan system is not financially sustainable because the earnings that many graduates are now making are not what was predicted when these schemes were modelled back in the 1980s, so, effectively, many loans will have to be written off in the long term. Student debt is rapidly rising was another point that was made, and it is now possibly the greatest form of debt that we have in the UK, or at least greater than many forms of debt that were previously regarded as being dangerous, such as credit card debts and so on. We are now reaching those dangerous levels with student loan debt. And the other point that was made was that there are not enough graduate jobs to go around, so we are now having too many students graduating and there are not the high-paying graduate jobs for them to go into. I would add that that's a problem not just in Wales, but in the UK as a whole.

Darren Millar: I think he broadly agreed with many of the points that were made by us. He did also concentrate on the issue of the brain drain—too many graduates leaving Wales. But, of course, that is also related, as I'm sure he made this link consciously, to the lack of decent graduate jobs in Wales, because he cited the statistics that 40 per cent of Welsh graduates who remain here are ending up in non-graduate jobs, leading to the unfortunate term that we have today—he didn't mention the term—of GINGO: graduates in non-graduate occupations. Darren made another good point: he emphasised the roles of FE colleges in their interaction with businesses, because they have better links, traditionally, with the private sector. So, that is an important point. Bursaries for nurses were cited as a manifesto commitment that the Conservatives made in the past, and also the need was made clear for high-level apprenticeships in Wales, which everybody agreed with. That's not in our points, but we do agree with that.

Llyr Gruffydd for Plaid Cymru acknowledged that the issue was, indeed, pwysig iawn—very important. He noted statistics showing that the skills gap in medicine in Wales was growing and that we needed the Welsh Government to make an assessment of student statistics on targeted intervention to see how well that worked. That could include things like dentistry and veterinary courses for extra funding for students, and we agree with those ideas. We would broadly support those initiatives, as indeed we would support the call that Plaid have made in the past for a medical college in north Wales—things like that. These are important things that the Welsh Government should think about. 

Caroline mentioned that we need HEFCW to review all of the information relating to graduates and publish the results so that we do have a transparent overview of the results of graduates leaving courses and what their likely earnings are going to be. Caroline also noted the shortage in Wales of NHS specialists in various disciplines, not just doctors and nurses, and this can be addressed by abolishing tuition fees in these targeted areas. There is also the need to encourage young people, again, into vocational education, and two issues that sprung to mind from Caroline's contribution—the phrase 'parity of esteem', which I know the Minister has used, and other Ministers have used it recently, so that needs to be something meaningful, not just a word form; and I think we need to perhaps review the careers advice that school pupils are given as they go through the system, and we perhaps need careers officers to interact more with the FE colleges and the vocational side, so we do have school students directed in those channels, rather than always being directed towards universities.

Now, the Government Minister, Kirsty Williams, she mounted a rebuttal of our proposals and cited that the Government's policies were working. She cited the Diamond report and its welcome by the various stakeholders in the education establishment but, of course, many of the people in the education establishment like the idea of funnelling more and more students into higher education, so that may have been an element that you missed. She also stressed the fact that the least affluent students will get the most help, but she does seem more focused on getting more students into higher education. The whole point of our debate today is that the expansion of higher education is not working.

We've also had a slight—[Interruption.] We've had a—[Interruption.] We've had a bit of a—[Interruption.] We've had a bit of a dispute—. We've had a bit of a dispute over this issue of transparency of information. The Minister has made a case that there is enough information for prospective students. Darren Millar did challenge that in his intervention, so that is something that we can perhaps investigate at closer detail in another forum. Thank you again, everyone, for contributing to the debate, and diolch yn fawr iawn, Llywydd.