The future has still got to be about equipping our people, our places and our businesses to adapt to change in order to face the future with confidence. Members may be aware of the report I published just before Christmas, which set out a range of recommendations for transforming public services through the better use of digital. And one of the key conclusions of that report, developed with an expert panel, is the need to equip the public sector with the appropriate skills to seize the opportunity of digital technology.

Last year, the economy committee, chaired by Russell George, commissioned an inquiry into the impact of AI and automation and the Welsh Government accepted many of the recommendations of that report, of how Wales can adapt to the changes and opportunities of the fourth industrial revolution, and now we are working to implement them.

The general consensus of all these reports, as well as research from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the Bank of England and many others, is that technology is transforming and will continue to transform the way we work, live and do business. The pace of change will be dictated by forces beyond our control, but Government has an important role in equipping people with the skills needed and providing the enabling infrastructure to ready the public and private sectors for the changes we are facing. This skills shift isn't just about developing digital or ICT skills. The economy and employers will require a more complex set of skills to underpin it—advanced problem solving, interpersonal skills, creative thinking, team working. These will all be heavily used in the future of work, and it's these sorts of things that machines cannot do—only people can do. 

We do, of course, have to futureproof the workforce insofar as we can. The automation of repetitive and predictable tasks is not new; this has been happening since the industrial revolution. What is new is the range of tasks and sectors that will be affected and the speed by which they'll be affected. The main impact, traditionally, has been in manufacturing. In the future, and as we speak, that is spreading right across the economy. Bill Gates has said that we tend to overestimate the pace of change that we'll see in the next two years, but underestimate the pace of change we're likely to see within the next 10 years. I've expressed concerns and organised round-tables on the impact these changes will have in professions like law and accountancy—fields previously untouched by automation, but now facing that change with some ferocity.

At the same time, of course, it's important that we're able to understand that there will be new opportunities in fields such as precision agriculture and the application of new technology to food production. But as well as concentrating on high-risk job roles, we should also appreciate that certain occupations, particularly jobs in social sectors such as health and care, may not be as significantly impacted by automation, but they, too, will be affected. More and more jobs there will be assisted by machines. And even people in those jobs that we consider to be outside the technology sector, they too will need the skills to be able to work alongside the technology.

Now, it's fair to say that employer investment and engagement in training remains a challenge for Wales as it does in other parts of the UK. Government cannot be the sole financier of post-compulsory education and training, and you'll need to create a system that incentivises employers to invest alongside the support made available via Government. We need to commit to genuine lifelong learning; the path from work to education and back again should be easy for any person in Wales. We change jobs and careers—especially in this game—more often than we ever have done before, and being able to retrain to meet the needs of the new jobs is essential, and the coming pressures of automation reinforce and accelerate this need.

I want to close, Dirprwy Lywydd, by summarising some of the actions that the Welsh Government are taking to address these challenges. Our employability plan sets out a range of measures to support individuals to upskill and to adapt their skills to the changing needs of the labour market, and we have asked Professor Phil Brown, of Cardiff University's School of Social Sciences to lead the review on the implications of digital innovation on the future of the workforce, and he is due to publish his interim findings in the coming weeks, and I'm sure we'll be debating them in this Chamber. The Welsh Government's new Working Wales programme will provide support to people of all ages to overcome barriers and gain the skills to get and keep decent jobs. And we're continually upgrading our apprenticeship provision by widening the learning opportunities available, and we have backed this commitment up through increasing revenue in the budget for the next financial year, to support delivery of the apprenticeship scheme in Wales. Pilots will also commence shortly to test a revised approach to personal learning accounts. This will allow employed individuals to fund personal vocational retraining in sectors where there is a skills shortage. We're working with stakeholders to finalise how these pilots should operate. This is all captured by the new economic action plan, and underpinned by innovative programmes such as Be The Spark, which I know many Members will be aware of, and if you're not, I'd encourage you to get in touch with them; they're quite an inspiring programme to help tech start-ups by stimulating and engaging everyone in the Welsh ecosystem to support innovation and drive entrepreneurship.

'It is no good trying to comfort ourselves with the thought that automation need not happen here',

Harold Wilson said in that speech, and he was right. We can't halt automation, so we must harness it. Diolch.