Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 6:00 pm on 18 July 2018.
I hadn't intended to speak about immigration, but I think Gareth Bennett's remarks require some challenge, because I absolutely don't think that the issues we face in our economy are to do with too many people looking for work. I think it's much more about our attitude towards the people capital that we have and how we deploy it, and in the context of automation that's an extremely important matter.
I absolutely do disagree that unemployment is down to immigration. Without immigration, we would have serious gaps in our national health services—doctors, nurses, radiographers—as well as people working in the animal welfare industry, our vets, our engineers, as well as propping up the tourism and agricultural industry. This we will find out if—. I hope it doesn't happen, but if the UK Government completely messes up the negotiations with Europe, we'll suddenly find we have massive gaps in keeping our economy running and our services running. I just think it's completely misplaced to think that the challenges that people face getting appropriate work are down to immigrants. I think that they absolutely enhance the workforce and give us a better quality of services. The issue we have to address, though, is how to ensure that gangmasters aren't controlling people and exploiting them.
Last week, I and several Members met a delegation from the Basque Country, led by the President of the Basque Government. I know I'm not the only person who's been to the Basque Country to look at the Mondragon industries, which have been so successful in creating socially useful, extremely productive and successful industries. But, I do recall on a visit I had about two years ago that one statistic stuck in my mind, which is that, of all the employees that they have, they've never actually sacked anybody, because their human resources policies are so fine-tuned to the individual needs of people who might have mental health needs or training needs that they never need to let people go. They may need to encourage them to move to shift their career pattern, but that's a completely different matter. So, there's an enormous amount we could learn from Mondragon University to promote ethical employment practices across our businesses—private and public.
On the delegation, there were several people, including the Minister for economy. I was particularly interested in her description of the visit that Lesley Griffiths undertook to the Basque Country in June to look at their approach to the food industry, which, of course, is one of the four elements of the Welsh Government's foundational economy. I was particularly interested in the Basque approach to food, which is not just about promoting and marketing food for the tourism market and high-class restaurants that serve incomers. They also focus on the nutritional needs of their whole nation, with a particular interest in the fresh nutritious food required for key groups, namely children and elderly people—pensioners, both in residential homes and in their own homes—to ensure that they eat correctly, and also people with compromised health. She mentioned cancer and diabetes. I would add obesity, but I rather suspect that the Basque Country doesn't have the levels of obesity that we do in this country.
So, I think, looking at the food industry and the recommendations that the Government is only accepting in principle, we know that the food industry is a low-wage sector, considerably reliant on European immigrants to fill gaps in the workforce that other people don't want to fill because the wages are low and the working conditions quite challenging. But we need to note that they are crucial to the harvesting of fruit and vegetables, looking after animals in abattoirs, in the processing factories—in fact, in every aspect of the food chain. We need to worry about how we're going to replace them were these European immigrants to disappear.
So, I was concerned that many of the Government's recommendations to what is admittedly a long report are recommendations in principle. You talk about enabling plans, but not a lot of detail about how you're going to carry out some of the concerns that we have about the systematic discrimination against women, for example, either before or after they have children. In the Cabinet Secretary's response, I hope he can tell us what the outcomes were of the symposium on 13 July that is mentioned in a couple of your answers, or the Government's response.