Questions from the party leaders now. The leader of the opposition, Paul Davies.

Diolch, Llywydd. First Minister, when will you make a decision about the future of the M4 relief road, given that the inquiry's report is now on your desk?

Well, as the Member knows, advice has been published. That makes it clear to me that a decision on the M4 relief road is captured by the civil service rules of purdah. I'm unable—the Government is unable—prevented by the right-and-proper rules from making an announcement that could have an impact upon a local by-election of that sort. So, there will be no announcement from me. I am unable to make any announcement until that by-election is concluded.

Well, it seems to me that it's one excuse after another, First Minister. Last time—[Interruption.]—last time, last time—[Interruption.]—last time I questioned you about the relief road in this Chamber, it was as clear then as it is now that, even though successive Welsh Labour Governments have dithered on this topic for nearly 20 years, you are still struggling to find the accelerator and deliver an answer to the nation. Welsh businesses, commuters and others have come forward in support of a relief road for this choking artery at the heart of Wales's economy. And yet, despite paying £44 million for this inquiry, we're still waiting for a commitment from you and your Government. If you're still not willing to give us your answer, First Minister, on the findings of last year's inquiry, it's time that you added transparency to this process by allowing other Members of this Chamber to see the recommendations of that report as soon as possible. Will you commit here today, First Minister, to sharing this report as soon as possible, which I would remind you was paid for with public money, so that this Chamber can scrutinise and debate this matter appropriately? And if you are going to share this report, when will that be?

I think the Member will want to think carefully about some of the things that he has said. The reason that we have a by-election is not because of anything that the Welsh Government did, but because of the death of the sitting Member of Parliament. There's nothing in that that can be laid at the door of the Welsh Government, as somehow holding up proceedings.

And as to what he said at the very beginning, surely he understands there are rules—there are rules—about the way in which these decisions can be made. I am as bound by those rules as any Member of Parliament, any member of his Government in Westminster, would be if similar circumstances had happened in a by-election in another part of the country. Those are the rules. It's nothing to do with being held up here; it's because of the way in which decisions are properly made. As to making the report available, when that is possible, I'm absolutely happy to make it available as soon as it can be. As soon as the rules allow for that to happen, the report will be made available to Members. But we will do it in line with the way in which the proper conduct of Government is carried out. I think he understands that, really, and I think his questions ought to reflect that.

First Minister, the people of Wales are getting restless with this waiting game. You should have delivered a solution for the commuters and communities around the M4 a long time ago. It's time for you to stop dragging your heels and offer further reassurance by telling us how long the people of Wales will now have to wait before they see this project become a reality. Now, you've touched on the forthcoming by-election, but let me remind you, First Minister, we were told in this Chamber at the end of last year that a decision was going to be made by the previous First Minister, but we are still waiting. So, could you therefore today, First Minister, confirm whether this Chamber is still going to have an opportunity to vote on this project, given that we were promised a vote on this project before Christmas of last year?

Llywydd, the commitments that were given as far as the involvement of this Chamber is concerned have not altered. The Member is quite right to say that the previous First Minister would have wished to have made a decision had he been able to do so, but he too was following the proper procedures that have to lie behind a decision of this magnitude. I say to the Member again, when he reads out his notes about dragging feet, there is no dragging of feet here. The circumstances in that by-election have altered, the by-election itself puts a constraint on my ability to announce any decision. And I'm afraid, impatient as he may be, he will find that he is bound by the rulebook just as much as I am.

Leader of Plaid Cymru, Adam Price.

Diolch, Llywydd. First Minister, last week, in your speech to the Scottish Labour Party conference, you stated that social class, rather than geographical accident at birth, is the single most powerful factor in shaping peoples's lives. But, surely, seen through the prism of Welsh experience, poverty and place are hardly unconnected. Poverty is indeed the single most important determinant of life outcomes, as John Griffiths said, but poverty is unevenly distributed, and is particularly concentrated in Wales—and that's, of course, after two decades of devolved Labour Government.

You referred to falling life expectancy across the UK, but it is true, is it not, that life expectancy is falling in Wales faster than anywhere else—indeed, faster than anywhere else in western Europe. To depart from the language of a seminar here, let's spell out what that actually means: the chances of a child born today, which John Griffiths referred to, in Wales living to the age of 90 are significantly lower than they are in England. Will you accept that this now represents a full-scale public health crisis here in Wales?

I think the Member needs to be careful in the way that he deploys figures, because the evidence of falling life expectancy is very recent, and I don't think that you would sensibly project trends into a 90-year future on the basis of what we know so far. 

But I want to agree with the basic premise of what Adam Price has said. Of course, poverty has a shaping impact on people's lives, and that is why we are determined as a Government to do everything we can to address the circumstances of people who live in poverty, and to use the levers that are in the hands of the Welsh Government to make a difference wherever we can. And that's something that we have been doing since the start of the devolution era and which we are determined to go on doing, even in the very constraining circumstances that austerity puts on our ability to fund all the public services to the extent that we know those services ideally would require. 

Let's delve a little deeper into particular aspects of what I certainly regard as a growing public health crisis here in Wales. Take the incidence of diabetes: the numbers diagnosed in Wales with diabetes is increasing and now higher than anywhere else in the UK. The highest number of all in Wales and among the worst in the UK—8 per cent of the population—is in Gwent. Only last week, the Assembly's health committee said that Wales is facing a national crisis in terms of our children's health. The latest figures from Public Health Wales show an increase in the numbers of obese four to five-year-olds over the last two years, with 27 per cent overall now overweight or obese, compared with just 23 per cent in England. The lack of physical activity among children is a primary factor, but surely among the key drivers of this worrying trend are the limited role of physical activity in the curriculum and the lack of wider public health interventions against obesity. And, surely, in this context, the biggest inactivity of all has been your own as a Government. 

That was a question that was doing quite well until the end. So, look, where I agree with Adam Price is on this, Llywydd—that when you look at rising incidence of diabetes, when you look at rising incidence of obesity, the answer isn't, 'What is the health service going to do about it?' The answer is in that wider public health agenda that he outlined, and we look at the shaping causes that lie behind those figures. And they are to be found in poverty that drives people to have to shop in particular sorts of ways. So, diet and food poverty is part of all of this. The figures that were published of children arriving at the school door already overweight cannot have been caused by lack of exercise in school, because these children weren't in school at that point. But it is to do with ways in which people live their lives and it is up to Government to create the conditions in which people are able to take the actions that allow them to promote their own health into the future. So, it is that combination of actions that people themselves can take, but Governments have to act in order to give them the opportunities to act in that way. That is a public health agenda, and, to that extent, I agree with the points the Member was making. 

Obviously, the determinants of this public health crisis are complex, interrelated, multiple. They're the result of a toxic cocktail of low incomes, poor housing, poor diet, low physical activity and high pollution. Some of these matters are reserved at Westminster, but many of them are within your sphere of control. Let's take cancer, for example. In the last six years for which figures are available, the long-term decline in cancer death rates has slowed markedly in Wales. Over the same time period, the rate of decline in Scotland, which has a similar deprivation profile, has increased. Now, Public Health Wales has itself said that the causes of these and other changes to death rates are not fully understood and are being explored further. Now, can I suggest that doesn't exactly convey a sense of urgency? Can I put it to you that the need to understand what is happening here and find answers is a matter of utmost urgency? People's lives literally are at stake. Your spokesman's response to the health committee report was that the new school curriculum, due to come into effect in 2022, will include a focus on health and well-being. But that's three years away. Can we afford to wait three years when the crisis is happening to our children now?

Well, Llywydd, Adam Price is right when he points to some of the long-term trends that we are dealing with here. Every single generation since 1945 has been heavier than the generation that preceded it. And that has been true in times of economic success as well as times of economic decline. These are really long-term trends in which actions by Government cannot be expected to make a short-term difference. But we are not waiting for particular events in order to make a difference. We're already doing things. The Active Travel (Wales) Act 2013 passed by this Assembly makes a difference every day to the chances that children can walk or cycle to school. The actions that we are taking in the food field to try to make sure that those families that need the most help to make sure that they are able to access the type of diet that they need, to provide families with the skills they need in order to prepare food that is good for the long-term health of their children—those are programmes that are happening in Wales today. If there are more things that we can do, as we will through the new curriculum, of course we will do them. Because we want to focus, as I said, Llywydd, on those levers that are most directly in the hands of the Welsh Government and then to maximise the impact that they can have in the lives of families and children in Wales.

Leader of the UKIP group, Gareth Bennett.

Diolch, Llywydd. First Minister, I'm very interested in a message that went out from Trade and Invest Wales recently. As you know, Trade and Invest Wales is a marketing initiative run by your Welsh Government. They seem to be pushing out the message to potential foreign investors that workers in Wales earn up to 30 per cent less than workers in other parts of the United Kingdom. Is it your official strategy to market Wales to companies abroad as a low-wage economy, whereby firms can come into Wales and set up shop here and pay their workers extremely low wages?

Llywydd, that was not a message put out by any Minister. It is not a message that should have been put out, and I can assure the Chamber that it is not a message that will be repeated.

So, it was just a mistake. Okay. Well, whatever strategy your Welsh Government does come up with, claiming that you are trying to improve working conditions in Wales, is likely to be undermined by the real situation we have here in the job market, which is that, in general, wages in Wales are very low and 20 years of a Welsh Labour Government haven't done anything to change that.

I see that yesterday your Brexit Minister brought out a statement asserting that we needed to keep freedom of movement to the UK even after Brexit. This means that even after we leave low-skilled migrants will still be able to flood into Wales from eastern Europe, keeping wages low. Wages in Wales will never rise unless we take active steps to cut off this flow of cheap, unskilled labour. So, why is your Welsh Labour Government so determined to keep the cheap labour force flowing into Wales? 

Well, Llywydd, let me correct the Member in the first place, because he repeats an old canard about the Welsh economy. The truth of the Welsh economy is that, while we have more low-paid jobs in Wales, when a person in Wales is doing a job they get paid comparably with what that person would be paid for doing the same job somewhere else in the United Kingdom. It is simply not the case, as he suggested at the outset, that, somehow, wages in Wales are generally depressed.

Let me say that I completely agree with what my colleague said yesterday. The continuation of jobs in the Welsh economy—in businesses, in public services and in our universities—depends upon our ability to go on attracting people from other parts of the world to come and make their futures here in Wales. The message we want to give out to the rest of the world is that they are welcome here. They play a really important part in our society and in our economy, and messages to the contrary are actually to the detriment of those people who are already living here and their economic prospects.

I think the truth is, First Minister, that you want to set up your Fair Work Commission that you mentioned earlier, and pretend that you are committed to improving pay and working conditions in Wales, when the reality is exactly the opposite. The truth is that you want to keep pay and working conditions low in Wales by allowing companies to keep accessing cheap foreign workers. 

It's amazing to me that it's the Labour Party and a Welsh Labour Government, which are supposed to stick up for the rights of Welsh workers, that are doing this. I've asked you this before, First Minister, and I'll ask you it again: would it not be now more appropriate if you renamed your party the 'cheap labour' party?

Well, it was a cheap remark the last time the Member made it—I'm surprised that he doesn't have at least somebody alongside him to advise him on not repeating the same mistake twice. Let me give him the example that I've given him before. It's a real-world example—it was put to me directly by the employer. This is someone who runs a large and successful business in the middle of Wales, in a place where there is sparsity of population. In order for that business to succeed, as it has succeeded for many years, he needs 100 people to make his business work year in, year out. Eighty of those people he is able to recruit from that local community. In order for the business to run, he has to recruit 20 other people and, indeed, those 20 other people are not to be found locally, and they come from outside Wales. It is the jobs of the 80 people who are already there that depend upon the 20 people who come from elsewhere. That's why those people are welcome to be here in Wales. Far from, as the Member suggests, those people being somehow to the detriment of Welsh people, our ability to persuade people from elsewhere to come and be part of our successful economy is part of the success we will have, and we as a Government are determined to go on giving the message that those people will be welcomed. They're welcome now, they'll be welcome in the future, whatever our relationship with the rest of the world will be.