Questions Without Notice from Party Spokespeople

Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Economy and Transport – in the Senedd at 1:50 pm on 8 May 2019.

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Photo of Ken Skates Ken Skates Labour 1:50, 8 May 2019

He talked about bingo this week; I'll give him the full house. Let's talk about GVA, shall we? There's this great figure that I can quote here. Since devolution, Wales has had the fifth highest increase in GVA per head compared to the 12 UK countries and English regions. Let's talk about gross value added per hour worked. Since 2011, which is the year, of course, that we returned to having just a Welsh Labour Government, Welsh productivity growth has been the highest of all UK countries and regions. I'll move on. Unemployment: the number of people in unemployment decreased by 31,000 during the course of the last 20 years. The figure between that, 270,000 in terms of activity of people who were not active back in 1999, but who we have been able to train up to get the skills to get into employment and to stay in employment as well. And it's worth just saying that the unemployment rate has decreased more quickly in Wales than in the UK since devolution. I think the statistic is something like 3.3 per cent down in Wales, compared to, across the UK, just 2 per cent.

Of course, underemployment is a key concern of the Welsh Government. It has to be. That must be the next great objective—to ensure that people are employed to the level that their skills enable them to be employed at and to ensure that they are receiving a fair wage for that work. That is why we established the Fair Work Commission. The Fair Work Commission has now reported. The Fair Work Commission has done excellent work in terms of assessing the future nature of work, and we'll be looking at each and every recommendation and the implementation of those recommendations, to ensure that we drive up the quality, the sustainability and the security and the remuneration of work in Wales.