We now move to the short debate. If Members are going, can they please do so quickly and quietly? Could Members not have conversations in the Chamber? If you're staying, please sit down. If you're not, please go quickly.

We now move to the short debate and I call on Mohammad Asghar to speak on the topic he has chosen. 

Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. When I came to the United Kingdom in 1970, I had done my BA in political science and sociology and was given the opportunity to study computers, or IT as it is called today, in London. IBM 360 model 30—it was much bigger than the Presiding Officer's whole table. In those days, computers were the size of almost a master bedroom, and it never ceases to amaze me how much technology has advanced since.

Recently, I read an article where the SpaceX founder and Paypal creator, Elon Musk, said something that I agree with very strongly. He said, it does not matter,

'If you're co-founder or CEO, you have to do all kinds of tasks you might not want to do...If you don't do your chores, the company won't succeed...No task is too menial.'

So, every skill that you learn in life will come in handy at some point. We may not see it at the time, but we will in time.

According to Sundar Pichai, the chief executive of Google—his words are that technology,

'is evolving beyond phones, and people are using it in context across many scenarios, be it in their television, be it in their car, be it something they wear on their wrist or even something much more immersive.' 

Undoubtedly, we live in a world where most of us cannot even function without our phones, tablets, laptops or PCs. I will admit I am not the most IT-savvy person on the planet, but I do know that the world is progressing at such a rapid speed and pace that we all here in Wales must keep up with it. Are we really doing it? You may remember that one of the arguments put forward in favour of devolution in the late 1990s was that Welsh interests were being neglected. Supporters of devolution claimed that this was reflected in the relative failure of the Welsh economy. They claimed Wales had too much reliance on the public sector for jobs, higher unemployment and a less skilled workforce than in the rest of the United Kingdom. These economic problems, we were told, could only be solved by tailor-made solutions created here in Wales. Today, after 20 years of devolution, it saddens me to say that Wales still has the weakest economy in the United Kingdom. Workers in Wales have the lowest weekly wages and unemployment remains above the UK average. And Wales has a serious skills gap.

Fifty-five years ago, the then Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, reflected on the pace of technological change and its implications for industry. He warned that, if the country was to prosper, a new Britain would need to be forged in the white heat of a scientific revolution. That is true of Wales today. We need to kick-start the economy by addressing the barriers to growth. The growing skills gap, particularly in the field of digital skills, is hindering the ability of companies to find the workers they need to develop.

As the director general of the British Chambers of Commerce said:

'Labour and skills shortages are set to be the biggest potential drag anchor on business in 2018, since ultimately it is people that make businesses work.' 

The Barclays digital development index 2017, which analysed 88,000 UK job adverts and 6,000 adults, claims that Welsh employees score among the lowest of all UK regions for their digital skills. This is important because Welsh employers are willing to pay a premium for workers with word processing, data analysis and social media capabilities. People’s level of digital prowess is fast becoming a key determinant of their earning power. According to Barclays bank, having digital skills can add more than £11,500 a year to your potential earnings in Wales. The internet has massively levelled the business playing field, particularly in terms of a company’s ability to reach their audience or market. It has also dramatically lowered the bar for entry to business so that, for many new businesses, their website is both their point of engagement and their point of sale.

I very much welcome our Prime Minister’s announcement of a digital initiative aimed at solving the digital skills shortage. The £40 million Institute of Coding is a partnership deal with leading tech firms, universities and industry bodies in an effort to bolster future digital skills in this country. The consortium is made up of more than 60 universities, businesses and industry experts. Employers will have a tangible input to the curriculum, working hand in hand with universities to develop specialist skills in areas where they are needed most. I am delighted that the Welsh Government has agreed to work in co-operation with Westminster by confirming that Swansea and Cardiff universities are to receive funding to expand coding in schools, colleges and communities.

Education is pivotal in ensuring we have the skills to get by in our digital lives, but the fact is that they are changing so fast that educators are struggling to keep up. Skills are changing faster than formal education providers can keep up. The industry is developing at such a rate that by the time the curriculum is crafted and approved by the various bodies and students finally graduate, you can be talking of almost a decade from start to finish.

We need a coherent and long-term commitment from the Welsh Government for 'digital Wales', from skills to infrastructure. However, Estyn say pupils' progress in digital skills has not kept pace with technology. They claim opportunities to develop ICT skills across subjects are limited in many secondary schools and in a third of primary schools. In just under two thirds of primary schools, there are important shortcomings in standards of ICT. I must admit, although most people are confident in using programmes such as those for word processing and creating presentations, their skills are often limited to a narrow range of applications. One of many concerns is that Welsh Government is failing to promote the benefits that apprenticeships can bring to students at an early stage.

Careers information in schools about apprenticeships is vital if we are to increase the supply of trained workers our economy desperately needs. There are currently issues with the quality and availability of careers advice, including the lack of trained careers advisors and the lack of knowledge of apprenticeships and vocational training by school staff. Schools also exhibit a tendency to encourage pupils towards study of A-levels rather than apprenticeships.

Further education and work-based learning organisations need greater access to schools to broaden the range of advice young people receive about their future careers. I am confident that this will go some way to tackling the worrying gender imbalance and under-representation of disabled people that we currently see in apprenticeships in Wales.

Deputy Presiding Officer, Wales needs to face the challenges and grab the opportunities presented by the modern global economy. At Google, whenever they plan on making an ambitious leap into a new product or service, they call it a 'moonshot'. You have all probably heard of that saying—'If you aim for the moon, you’ll at least land amongst the stars.' I think we need to encourage people of all ages and backgrounds, from all across Wales, to have the courage to aim for the moon and take their very own 'moonshots'. 

Deputy Presiding Officer, digital skills are our future, whether you work in health, education, transport—any department. Only within the last 20 years—just 20 years—digital development in all walks of life has changed the civilisation of the global economy, global industry, global—. Every walk of life is digital, digital, digital. So, we must get certain areas, whether they're strategical, informational, instrumental, or digital skills—we need other skills, and we need to train our children to make sure they're not lagging behind because the nation—. We have no shortage of money for education here, so if we have to develop our economy and the best future for our children and our generations, we must strongly emphasise and give them full support to get their digital skills fully covered in our curriculum. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Can I now call on the Deputy Minister for Economy and Transport to reply to the debate—Lee Waters? 

Thank you very much. Diolch, Dirprwy Lywydd. It only seems like a few months ago that I was standing up in this Chamber making a similar speech calling for the Government to take action on digital skills, and that's because it was only a few months ago that I was giving such a speech. 

I'd like to thank Mohammad Asghar for bringing forward this debate. It's important that we work across party on this agenda, and I was struck by his quoting of Harold Wilson from that famous speech in 1963. Harold Wilson went on to say that,

'the strength, the solvency, the influence of Britain, which some still think depends upon nostalgic illusions…these things are going to depend in the remainder of this century to a unique extent on the speed with which we come to terms with the world of change.'

This is as true now as it was then. I'm a strong advocate for making sure that Wales can come to terms with and adapt to the world of change that Harold Wilson talked about in the speech that Oscar quoted. Automation and artificial intelligence are going to bring big changes to the workplace and have been doing so underneath our noses. Any role involving repetitive tasks across all industries risk being automated. Our role is to see new technologies as a means to free-up people to do things that machines can't. As the new First Minister has made clear, we need to make sure we provide new jobs for the future and encourage companies to redeploy people whose tasks are taken over by AI so that their know-how and creativity can be harnessed to develop their businesses and support front-line services.

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.

Thank you very much. That brings today's proceedings to a close. Thank you.

The meeting ended at 18:27.