I'm not convinced that this statement brings anything new to the table today, and I think the evidence for that is the attack that the Cabinet Secretary just made. Cabinet Secretary, you always seem to attack when you don't have any answers.

Anyway, you finished your statement today by saying that the delivery plan in front of us today cuts across all Welsh Government departments and all of your Cabinet colleagues' portfolios, so I'll use this opportunity to ask some questions today about how the Welsh Government's wider policy agenda affects the ambitions that you set out in your plan. 

A major element of supporting priority 1 of the delivery plan, which is to create good-quality jobs and the skills to do them, is, as you mention, the Welsh Government's childcare offer. Now, this offer will provide 30 hours of free early education and childcare to working parents of three and four-year-olds for 48 weeks of the year. As my Plaid Cymru colleague Llyr Gruffydd has consistently argued, by limiting the offer of free childcare provision to working parents only, you are actively creating another barrier for economically inactive parents from returning to work. This has also been supported by the children's commissioner, who stated that

'children whose parents are not employed will fall even further behind their peers if they miss out on this provision.'

Your target of helping 7,000 economically inactive and unemployed people in the Valleys into work was so that you could bring the Valleys parts of the local authorities in question up to the same levels as the rest of Wales. Cabinet Secretary, your Government's childcare offer will not support this aim. In fact, it'll make the situation in the Valleys even worse, leading to even more families being left behind. Therefore, as a member of the Government, what representations have you made to your colleagues to urge them to expand the childcare offer to all parents in Wales?

The problem in many of the Valleys communities is not the number of jobs, it's the quality of those jobs. It's the low-skilled and low-paid nature of many of those jobs and the fact that way too many of them are insecure jobs. The target of supporting 7,000 people into employment by 2021 is, of course, to be welcomed. However, without bringing new industries and developing existing ones to grow further, you may well support 7,000 people into employment on one hand, but the insecure nature of the labour market in the Valleys might well result in those job losses elsewhere in the same area. Therefore, can the Cabinet Secretary provide a target figure of how many jobs will be secured in the period up until 2021 as well?

Last week, the Welsh Government lost a vote in the Assembly calling for no more cuts to further education and lifelong learning, a sector that has been a persistent target for the cuts, now, over many, many years. If we are serious about reversing the long-term decline in the Welsh economy and raising skills, incomes and productivity, then the further education sector is absolutely crucial. A major element of the taskforce's delivery plan skills agenda will depend heavily on the Welsh Government's employability plan, for example, which will place demands and expectations on colleges and the wider skills and learning sector as crucial delivery partners. However, in reality, nobody can take these plans and sentiments forward when the funding isn't there to support these priorities. Therefore, how confident are you that the funding is there to deliver the training required to upskill the Valleys' labour force?

Now, I'm sure I don't need to explain to anyone how difficult it is to travel on the Valleys lines at the moment. It simply cannot carry on as things stand. That's why I welcome the development funding secured to commission the feasibility and design of new integrated transport hubs to ease travel opportunities into the new strategic hubs. Specifically, I welcome the commitment to looking at improvements in infrastructure as part of the metro development. Much of the focus with the metro development with regard to the Valleys is how best to connect Valleys communities with Cardiff, instead of considering how we connect the Valleys to each other. The idea for the Valleys circle line was not included in the next phase of the metro development. Therefore, can the Cabinet Secretary commit to ensuring that part of the development funding will go towards the feasibility of pursuing the creation of a circle line for the Valleys?