During January's debate here on the 'Our Valleys, Our Future' delivery plan, I noted that the value of goods and services produced per head of population in the west Wales and the Valleys sub-region was still bottom across the UK, with the Gwent valleys second only to Anglesey as the lowest in the UK. I also noted that the Bevan Foundation's 'Tough times ahead? What 2018 might hold for Wales' report said that unemployment performance was unlikely to be enough to boost those parts of Wales where unemployment stood well above the UK figure, such as Merthyr Tydfil and Blaenau Gwent, that there is nothing to be gained by pretending that all is rosy, and that performance was also unlikely to help young adults, with more than one in eight 16 to 24-year-olds out of work in Wales as a whole.

This plan includes within it an action: working with people who live and work in the south Wales Valleys and with the Cardiff region and Swansea bay city deals, UK Government, businesses and the third sector. In January, I asked how you were monitoring to ensure, if you believe you should, that this involves true co-production, turning the power thing upside down, if the Welsh Government is not to repeat the approaches of the last 18 years, thereby enabling people and professionals to share power and work in equal partnership.

Today's statement by the Bevan Foundation that the 'Our Valleys, Our Future' programme to improve the south Wales Valleys is bland and not reaching those who most need it is concerning. How do you respond to their statement today that this amounts to more of the same? How do you respond to their statement that recent investment in Taff's Well and Nantgarw was not in core Valleys areas? You state that 1,000 people started employment programmes. How many completed them? How many went into employment, of those 1,000? How do you respond to the Bevan Foundation's statement today that the target to get 7,000 into work sounds really impressive, but, if you look a bit deeper, that it's not very ambitious at all, that it's around about the numbers achieved over the last few years, and that if we carry on doing more of the same, the Valleys won't change? How do you respond to their statement that unemployment is 25 per cent of young males in some areas, and that there have been job losses in retail and small factories? And how do you respond to their statement that they are puzzled as to how the Welsh Government could live with deprivation virtually on its doorstep, without sufficient proposals to push investment and skills?