Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. I again welcome this debate; I don't think we talk about the Welsh economy enough.

We have, in Britain, London and the south-east of England amongst the wealthiest regions in Europe, and west Wales and the Valleys amongst the poorest. The only regions and nations to make a net contribution to the Treasury are London and the south-east. We also know that Cardiff provides substantial employment for the surrounding areas. Listen to the radio in the morning travelling in to Cardiff and talk to people travelling on the Cardiff Valleys lines—you've got the traffic jams continually coming in, you've got people crammed onto trains. I'm sure that if Leanne Wood was here she'd interrupt me and say she's got personal experience of that. But should large parts of south Wales solely commute to Cardiff? 

If we were having this discussion 50 years ago, we would be in a country where coal and steel employed hundreds of thousands of people, where in Merthyr they'd be talking about Hoover and in Neath Port Talbot they'd talk about BP as major employers. The decline of steel and coal and other major employers have left a huge gap in the Welsh economy, which has not been adequately filled.

We know three things about the Welsh economy. Firstly, we are poor at developing medium-sized companies into large, but Admiral has shown it can be done. Secondly, that we underperform in terms of employment in key economic sectors associated with above-average wages—ICT and professional services are two. Thirdly, that economic wealth is not evenly distributed across Wales.

I speak as someone who has enthusiastically supported the Swansea city deal and I am pleased with the way it is generally progressing. The aim of the Swansea city deal is to address the integrated universal themes and challenges of energy, health and well-being and economic acceleration by harnessing the transformational power of digital networks and the asset base of Swansea bay. It is estimated that the city deal investment could lever in a total of around £3.3 billion of output and £1.3 billion of gross value added for Wales, while supporting around 39,000 jobs in the region. Even if the city deal fulfils every ambition and all the investment and jobs materialise, it will not solve the economic problems of the Swansea bay city region.

Can I just talk about, as I often do, one key industry that is not geographically constrained and has the ability to generate huge wealth, and that is ICT? There is a tendency for ICT companies to cluster together, not just in Silicon Valley—and if you've ever looked at a map, Silicon Valley's got nothing special about it apart from the fact that some companies started there and more and more went there. It doesn't have any of the great advantages. We had steel in south Wales because we had the coal and we had the iron ore—they have not got great advantages. But we know they cluster together. They're also around Cambridge university—you'll say, 'Well, we can't really be compared with Cambridge'—but also, computer games around Dundee. Now, I'm sure there are very few places in Wales that can't be compared with Dundee. In Wales, medium-sized enterprises in the sector have performed strongly with a 92.8 per cent increase in turnover between 2005 and 2015. There is a need to turn some of these medium-sized ICT companies into large ICT companies. We know that ICT is a high-paying sector and that superfast broadband roll-out across the Swansea bay region is making it possible for ICT companies to develop.

With the quality of ICT graduates being produced in the Welsh universities, it has to be a severe disappointment that Wales has a lower proportion of its population working in ICT companies than the rest of the UK. If we are to make the Swansea bay city region and Wales an obvious home for ICT, then we need to keep these graduates. We're turning out these excellent graduates and London, Birmingham, Manchester and Cambridge are getting the benefit of them. We need Wales to get the benefit of them. If Wales had the same proportion of its population working in ICT as the UK as a whole, it would have approximately 40,000 more ICT employees than it has. That would have a huge effect on GVA across Wales. 

Developing an economy is about developing and promoting high-value economic sectors. We will not develop a successful economy and high GVA on low pay and seasonal work. We therefore need a strategy for targeted investment in order to get these highly paid jobs. Is it possible? Why does Mannheim in Germany have a GVA approximately three times that of west Wales and the Valleys? Why does Aarhus in Denmark have a GVA approaching twice the GVA of west Wales and the Valleys? Why are these places successful? Because they actually have projects and plans, and they are good at certain things. What we need to do is work out what we're good at, and develop accordingly. Far too often, we talk about trying to have other—. If I asked what the main Welsh economic sectors were, I think it added up to about 80 per cent of the Welsh economy last time I looked. We need key sectors, and to promote key sectors.

Finally, if you keep on doing the same thing, you will keep getting the same results.