Part of 2. Questions to the Minister for International Relations and Welsh Language – in the Senedd at 3:02 pm on 6 March 2019.
Diolch yn fawr. I will be producing a written statement on my visit in the next few days, but just to make it clear that one of the sectors that I was really targeting and looking at was the cyber security sector where we already have a great deal of expertise. One of the things, as a follow-up, that I'm very keen to do is to speak to our higher education establishments and further education establishments to just see what precisely they are offering in terms of the courses that they are providing to people.
The message we got very clearly is that, actually, there's a real shortage of people with cyber security skills, so if we produce those cyber security skills here in Wales, those companies will come. They made that absolutely clear to us so what we now need to do is to make sure that the kinds of courses we are putting on are absolutely relevant to what businesses and the market are looking for. So, that's a conversation that I'll be having in the next few weeks, just gathering together, knowing exactly what's happening, and seeing if there is scope to expand that opportunity. And I hope that some of those colleges in the Valleys will also engage in that development, because there's a whole world out there that is looking for skills in this area, and we've got to remember that Welsh young people are as bright, as clever and as able as anyone else in the world, we just need them to believe that and give them the courses where they can develop that expertise.