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

Diolch, Llywydd. First Minister, six weeks ago you stated that your Minister would have no difficulty in publishing the report into Kukd.com. Despite your reassurances to this Chamber, the report hasn't fallen into my hands, as your Minister says the appropriate clearances have not been given. What are the clearances that need to be given, and when will the report be published? 

Well, the report is in the final stages of receiving those clearances. Llywydd, of course, reports that end up in the public domain have to be cleared. They have to be cleared for accuracy. They have to be cleared by legal services to make sure there are no legal impediments to publication. That is the normal and inevitable procedures of Government in any part of the United Kingdom. That procedure has been undertaken since I last spoke on the floor of the Assembly. We are near the end point of that, and, once they are completed, then the report will be published. 

Well, this has been going on for three years now, First Minister, and we should see that report as soon as possible.

And whilst we're talking about Welsh Government's use of taxpayers' money, as you know, First Minister, the Wales life sciences investment fund has a target investment of £100 million to attract and grow life science businesses that are based, or will be based, here in Wales. I fully agree that this fund is innovative and is helping to bring skilled jobs to Wales. However, I hope you will join me, First Minister, in my concern of how the fund is being managed. Since 2016, the fund has been managed by a fund management company run by Arix Bioscience plc, which has made nine investments so far. However, it's been reported that six of those investments have been made to companies where Neil Woodford is a shareholder. It is also worrying that Mr Woodford is a major shareholder in Arix Bioscience, with a 24 per cent stake in the company. First Minister, do you agree that it is unacceptable for people to be shareholders in the company that gives out taxpayers' money and in the companies that benefit? And do you share my concerns that this individual is now being investigated by the Financial Conduct Authority? And what action will you be taking to make sure that Welsh taxpayers' money is invested appropriately? 

Well, Llywydd, let me start by welcoming what Paul Davies said about the nature and purpose of the fund. The fund has been innovative and, because it is innovative, it has been subject to very regular and significant scrutiny—a full Wales Audit Office review, an independent mid-term review, a series of reports on progress and options by the Development Bank of Wales. It's also, of course, a regulated fund; it's regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. Now, if the leader of the opposition has specific concerns, he should raise them. And if they are specific concerns, we will investigate them. If they are general, smeary concerns linking names of individuals, previous things that have happened and things that are nothing to do with the fund, then I don't think there's anything in what he has said today that I can see is specific enough to be investigated. If he has specific concerns, of course we are open to hearing those, and, of course, they would be investigated. The general conduct of the fund has always been scrutinised independently by the organisations that we have here in Wales and at a UK level, and the FCA has never raised a concern about the conduct of the fund.

First Minister, this is about openness and transparency and how your Government makes sure that information is in the public domain and that our taxpayers' money is being invested appropriately. It's quite clear to me that your Government has failed to listen to the report of the Wales Audit Office in 2016. Three years ago, the auditor general said, on the Wales life sciences investment fund, that

'aspects of its establishment, governance, oversight and early operation were flawed and poorly documented' over the conflict of interest of the previous company that managed investment, sending moneys to companies of which Sir Chris Evans was also a shareholder.

First Minister, once again, it seems to me that your Government is failing to be transparent with the people of Wales. Why, therefore, following the report of the auditor general, did your Government allow Arix Bioscience to take over the managing of the life science investments? And why did Finance Wales not learn their lesson and thoroughly scrutinise future investments? Because it seems to me that your Government is making the same mistake again.

Well, Llywydd, the Member complains about openness and transparency and then proceeds to quote a document that was published in the public domain as open and transparent as you can be. And I explained to him earlier the many different ways in which that fund has been, in an open way, observed, reported upon and lessons learnt during its progress. All those things are available in the public domain. The leader of the opposition needs to decide which question he wants to ask. He started by asking a question about transparency and openness and then quoted from a publicly available document, so I don't see what his problem is there. [Interruption.] He then suggests—I can hear his friend next door to him doing his best to help him to find the right question to ask. He then thinks that the right question to ask was about lessons learnt. The Welsh Government accepted every recommendation made in that WAO report, and the implementation of the fund since that time has never been criticised by the FCA—the Financial Conduct Authority. So, as I say, if the Member has specific difficulties with the fund that he thinks should be investigated, they will be investigated. If he simply wants to use general suggestions based on nothing other than reports in newspapers that something has gone wrong, there's nothing there to investigate and there's nothing to support the observations that he's made this afternoon.

Plaid Cymru leader, Adam Price.

Diolch, Llywydd. First Minister, why did the taskforce the Welsh Government established to save Ford Bridgend in October 2017 meet 10 times in the first 10 months of its existence and then meet just once in the last 11 months, in March of this year, nearly two months after the company announced 1,000 job losses? How did you move from an average of one meeting a month to around one meeting a year? Now, I understand the argument is that there was a lot more engagement happening with the company outside of the taskforce meetings. So, can you say during 2018, in the run-up to the January announcement, how many times did Ministers meet with Ford executives?

Well, it's kind of the Member to answer the question as well as to ask it. His first question to me was why did it meet 10 times rapidly and then with a gap between the next meeting. The clue, Llywydd, is in the title. It was a taskforce; it had a task and it went about it rapidly, and it met very regularly and involved all the people who needed to be involved in discharging its terms of reference. It developed a proposition for vacant space at the site, and all parties to the taskforce then concluded that those propositions were better taken forward outside the taskforce itself. That is exactly what happened. I met Ford in the first weeks of becoming First Minister, as I met with the trade unions and as I met with local management at the site as well. The conclusions of that taskforce have been taken forward in a whole series of ways and engagement between the Welsh Government, the local workforce and the company has been consistent throughout.

In your own list of ministerial engagements and meetings for last year, there is only one meeting listed there with Ford during that entire crucial year. Now, when I asked earlier this month if you would fly out to the Michigan headquarters of the Ford Motor Company, you said your preferred plan of action was to meet very soon with senior Ford Europe decision makers, because this was a Ford Europe decision. Have you now met face to face with those Ford Europe representatives? And can you say why you disagree with Len McCluskey of Unite when he says that, ultimately, the decisions around Ford UK are made around the boardroom table in Detroit?

Llywydd, not only have I had a direct conversation with Ford Europe, but I have also had a direct conversation with representatives of Ford in the United States as well. And that was a conversation that involved not simply the most senior staff at the USA level and the most senior staff at the European level, but it also involved Ford UK as well. The Member can be quite assured that this Government does everything we can to do our best to put the careers of people who work in Ford at the top of our agenda, and everything we do is dedicated to finding ways forward where that dedicated, loyal and skilled workforce can see a future for themselves and their families.

In terms of what happens now, have you studied recent developments around Ford's closure of its French plant in Blanquefort announced last year, with the loss of 850 jobs? A buyer was found by the French Government that put together an investment package, but the Ford Motor Company blocked the sale on commercial grounds, leading to the loss of those 850 jobs. Would you support a policy of temporary nationalisation if Ford proves similarly obstructive here? And while we hope that the new taskforce you've now established is more persuasive in relation to Ford than the old taskforce proved to be, what message would you like to send to the Ford trade union's national joint negotiating committee that is meeting today, I believe, to consider UK-wide strike action?

Llywydd, Ford will be a key member of the group that we have set up to work on what happens as a result of the announcement made. They will be part of—and they gave this absolute assurance that they would play a major and constructive role in helping to secure whatever we can for the future of that workforce. My message to the trade unions is the one that I have already given to them when I met them face to face—that we will stand with them in making sure that their futures are at the forefront of everything we do. And when I speak to those Ford workers, I will give them an assurance that it is their careers that are most important to us in all of this and that, unlike the Member opposite, we are more interested in securing their careers than in advancing his own.

Leader of the Brexit Party, Mark Reckless.

First Minister, your Liberal Democrat Minister published on Thursday a statement further watering down school accountability in Wales. Her new measures will remove the emphasis on the level 2 inclusive measure for GCSE, despite that grade C to D boundary being so important for school and university, particularly in maths and English, when people consider future employment. Measure-specific targets will be removed and, instead, schools will determine their own non-specific targets. We're told that your Government, or at least the Liberal Democrat element, believes that these changes will provide greater autonomy for schools to self-improve. Don't they also give schools more scope to deteriorate without parents being able to hold them to account? 

Well, that is absolutely not the case at all, Llywydd. The plans that this Government has developed, and that the education Minister published last week, are about making sure that the way in which we assess the performance of a school represents the performance of that school in the round—that we give more trust to the professional workers who are there in the classroom and leading those schools to identify the matters that matter most in that local context. Of course, we will have outside accountability as well, but people on the ground, we believe, are best placed to make those individual decisions on how the greatest difference can be made for their school populations. The plans we have in place do that, and they do not for a moment step back from our determination to make education for every one of our children in Wales the best it can possibly be.

But if you don't publish the results, if you treat league tables as a dirty phrase, if you tell each school to measure what they like and hold themselves to account, how are parents possibly going to judge what schools are delivering and make decisions about where they want their children to go to school? The fact is that accountability measures in Wales—. Let's take primary schools, Kirsty Williams. We discussed this two or three years ago when I said that the measures available to compare primary schools were far less than they were in England, and you rightly pointed out to me that, actually, since 2014, Estyn had increased that accountability and had put the levels 4 and 5 for key stage 2 onto its report. Unfortunately, since at least late 2017, that, once again, appears to have stopped happening, and the accountability measures have gone backwards.

So, people increasingly fall back on the Programme for International Student Assessment, where the comparisons are absolutely awful. We are well below the average on all three of the comparators, where England is above it. We are 478 on maths, 490 is the average and it's 493 for England. On reading, we're on 477, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development average is 493, and it's 500 in England—and similarly on maths. Is it not the case that, under Liberal Democrat leadership, education in Wales has deteriorated further? It is harder and harder for anyone to call it to account because you won't publish the information to allow them to do so. Is it not a risk that things will deteriorate even further, because Kirsty Williams is letting schools mark their own homework?

Diolch, Llywydd. Well, I look forward to the Member's lecture sequence, where we can enjoy his views at even greater length. Of course, he makes two basic misunderstandings in his question. The first is that he has no idea about how collective Cabinet Government works. Every member of this Cabinet is an equal member of the Cabinet, and equally committed to it. His own semi-detached membership of many parties around this Assembly stands him in very bad stead in understanding that basic principle.

And he betrayed himself, in any case, in his first sentences. He betrayed himself with that first sentence, because what he believes in, Llywydd, is the marketisation of education. He believes in that league table approach to education in which we treat education as a commodity, in which we understand nothing of the value of it, in which we simply don't understand the way that parents have a much finer understanding of what goes on in their schools than he will ever have on their behalf.

When you look at the results that were published last week, not only in relation to the health service and public appreciation of health services in Wales, you will see there what parents in Wales make of the education that their children receive. It's a completely different picture to the one that he would seek to portray, and that's because, Llywydd, in the end, the Member has no idea of the way in which people in Wales value public services, have voted in favour of the approach that we have to public services. He comes with a completely different mindset. It is only weeks since, sitting in a different party there, he invited me to join with him in celebrating the life and work of Margaret Thatcher—[Interruption.] Well, I remember it.

When was that?

I remember the question very well, even if he doesn't. 

On climate change.

If he doesn't understand what that legacy has been here in Wales, if he doesn't understand just how far his views of the way that things should be done are apart from people in Wales, it's no surprise to me that he made such basic errors in the questions that he asked me this afternoon.