We now turn to questions from party leaders. The leader of Plaid Cymru, Adam Price.

Diolch, Llywydd. First Minister, the ministerial code says Ministers should apologise if they say something that is wrong. Why should your Deputy Minister for Economy and Transport have to apologise for saying something that is right? [Laughter.]

Well, Llywydd, I don't believe that to be the case. 

Which bit? Are you denying—? The BBC is reporting that the economy Minister apologises for his comments about the Welsh economy. I must say, reading the report—reading Ken Skates re-interpreting for us what Lee Waters really meant—was a bit like reading that famous tweet by Andrew Adonis extolling the virtues of Jeremy Corbyn's Brexit policy. Now, I can understand your difficulty with the first part of Lee Water's statement,

'For 20 years we've pretended we know what we're doing on the economy—and the truth is we don't', though I think he is absolutely right that conventional thinking has failed, and it's failed here in Wales more clearly than anywhere else. But the second part of his statement in simply a statement of fact that you've achieved static gross domestic product, in relative terms, over 20 years. The Government in which you were a senior adviser set a target of achieving 90 per cent of UK income per head. In fact, we're now in the low 70s—exactly where we were, as Lee Waters says, 20 years ago. Surely it should be the Welsh Government as a whole that should be apologising for that, not your deputy economy Minister for simply pointing it out? 

Well, Llywydd, let me put the record straight here. When Lee Waters was reported, he was speaking in an unscripted way in a discussion with an audience, and I want Ministers in a Welsh Government who are able to debate issues with others and who are able to provide challenge to Government itself in the way that our policies are carried out. The truth about the Welsh economy over that 20 years is that we end it with the highest levels of employment we have ever had. We end it with the lowest levels of economic inactivity we have ever had. We end it with one of the highest levels of business growth that we have ever had. We have the best regional performance in creating jobs through inward investment of any part of the United Kingdom. We have exports rising in Wales again last year, by 7.5 per cent. These are the facts of the Welsh economy, and I was very pleased to meet Ieuan Wyn Jones again last night and to hear him talk about the time that he was in charge of the Welsh economy and the policies that he pursued there. I noticed that when the Member, as he does, casts his wide glance across 20 years, he never reminds us of the fact that his party was in charge of the economy during the time that he just told me everything was failing throughout. I don't agree with him. It wasn't failing then. It hasn't failed through the 20 years either. Where Lee Waters was absolutely correct was to point to the fact that, in an economy that is challenged by austerity, that is challenged by Brexit, that is challenged by automation, that is challenged by globalisation, the ways in which all Governments have responded to economic challenges over the last 20 years will not themselves be sufficient for the next 20 years, and therefore we will need new solutions, new experimentation, different ways of addressing these challenges, and, in that, he was absolutely correct.

Look, if you are saying you welcome, actually, critical challenge for Ministers and going off script, why has he been asked or has he felt it necessary to issue an apology? Talking about automation, the last thing we want is Ministers that act like robots. Lee Waters is correct in his analysis, and actually, as you mention Ieuan Wyn Jones, Ieuan, when he was Minister, published an economic strategy that said the economic model, emphasising foreign direct investment over indigenous investment, emphasising grants over loans, was the wrong model. Ieuan was right then; Lee Waters is right now. Unfortunately, policy has not changed, and that's the reality that I think has been laid bare by Lee Waters's comments. Now, one of the consequences of this, as the Wales Governance Centre points out today, is the fiscal gap between the revenue raised in Wales and public expenditure. Do you think that closing that gap and, by implication, the income gap between Wales and the rest of the UK, should be an explicit goal of your Government? Will you set a target this time that you will endeavour actually to achieve?

Well, I think closing the fiscal gap is a proper ambition for any Welsh Government. It would certainly have to be an ambition for a Government led by the Member that seeks to take Wales out of the United Kingdom, because then he will have to find a way of explaining to the Welsh electorate how the £13 billion that is spent in Wales above that which is raised in taxes here in Wales is to be filled by his Government when that £13 billion is no longer available to spend on public services here in Wales. So, yes, the Member makes an important point, but the importance of the point really is—for any party that seeks to take Wales out of the United Kingdom and then to ask the question—how will people in Wales manage then, when they have not just a bit of a gap, but £13 billion-worth of a gap that his party would have to find a way to fill? And they can't, and they know they can't, and they will have to explain it.

The leader of the opposition, Paul Davies.

Diolch, Llywydd. First Minister, can you give us an update on maternity services at Withybush hospital? 

Services at Withybush hospital continue to be based on a midwife-led unit. I've seen reports in the press that suggest that that midwife-led unit is somehow not to be part of the service provided by Withybush in the future. My understanding is that that is not the case—that discussions go on with staff in Withybush on how better to integrate the midwife-led unit with community midwife services. That seems to me to be a sensible ambition for the health board—to make the best use of the staff it has and to offer the best services to the people who need them. In all of that, there is no suggestion that the midwife-led unit will not continue to be available 24 hours every day.

First Minister, senior management at Hywel Dda University Health Board have made it absolutely clear in comments today to the press that they are planning to change maternity services at the hospital, and it is a disgrace that the maternity services are being reduced to an on-call, out-of-hours service despite your previous comments that they weren't. Let me remind you what you said to me in March in this very Chamber, and I quote: 

'there are no proposals of any sort to make a change in the service provided there.'

This is just symptomatic of your Government's approach, isn't it, to our Welsh NHS? You tell us one thing in this Chamber but what you actually do is completely different. So far in our exchanges we've spoken about Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board being in special measures for more than four years, and Cwm Taf Health Board entering special measures, and now we see, in the last few days, Swansea Bay University Health Board in the news. The former chair, who I think you know quite well, First Minister, Andrew Davies, has been scathing at the micromanaging of the health board by your Government. Do you agree with him that the degree of scrutiny is not actually helping the health board sort out its problems?

Llywydd, the Member asked me a first question about the detail of a single unit in a single hospital in one part of Wales, and expected me, as I'm keen to do, to be able to answer that question. He then wants to accuse the Welsh Government of micromanaging the health service in Wales. He really cannot have it both ways. The Welsh Government quite rightly takes a proper interest in the discharge of health board responsibilities, and when health boards face challenges, as, for example, the Swansea Bay health board faced challenges over this last winter in making sure that there was access to emergency services for patients in that area, it is absolutely right and proper that the Welsh Government takes a direct interest in that, and we do so in the winter in particular because we are able to assist health boards in making sure that patients can be directed to that part of the health service where facilities are most immediately available to them. 

So, I don't have any apology to make for the fact that the Welsh Government takes that direct interest. We do so on behalf of patients in Wales. But it's impossible, Llywydd, for the Member to assert on the one hand that it is wrong for the Welsh Government to take an interest in what health boards do and then expect to ask questions here about very detailed matters that are, in the end, the responsibility of that health board. 

Well, this is another health board, First Minister, which is not doing very well, because the accident and emergency waiting times for the health board are 19 per cent below your target—once again, one that has never been met—and complaints about the health board have risen by 29 per cent in 2018. What I find shocking, First Minister, is that Andrew Davies talks about the constant focus on short-term targets, micromanaging by Welsh Government officials, with, as Mr Davies puts it, a degree of scrutiny that is

'not actually helping them get on sorting out the problem'.

Now, in our previous discussions, your health Minister has dismissed the idea of setting targets to get Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board out of special measures, and he's made clear that he won't set arbitrary targets to improve services for local people. So, why, First Minister, is your Government micromanaging one health board but letting another one struggle on? Is it the case that your Deputy Minister for Economy was correct—your Government doesn't know what it's doing?

Llywydd, the health Minister was 100 per cent correct when he said that we will not set arbitrary targets. Why would we possibly do that? We set targets that we think make sense for the clinical benefit of patients, and if I had answered the Member in the winter, when he asked me questions about ambulances waiting at Morriston Hospital, by saying that this Government is not interested in short-term targets, I can imagine what he would have said about that. That’s the reason why the Welsh Government took a strong interest in the performance of the then Abertawe Bro Morgannwg health board over the winter. That’s why we were engaged on the telephone making sure that everything that could be done was being done, to make sure that there was flow through that hospital, that patients were able to be discharged out of ambulances into the A&E department, seen in a timely fashion, discharged home wherever possible. Those are proper targets. Those are targets that are not arbitrary. Those are targets that focus on the clinical needs of patients, and the Government will never step back from doing what we can do to assist health boards to discharge those targets and to help them to make sure that they are focused on meeting them for patients’ benefit.

Leader of the Brexit Party, Mark Reckless.

Last week, the Minister for International Relations and Welsh Language belatedly issued a statement on a visit to Dublin. She said:

'The main focus of my visit was a one-to-one meeting with the Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs, Simon Coveney.'

She goes on:

'In all my meetings with Irish government' there was

'continued incredulity that Wales could have voted the way it did in 2016.'

First Minister, isn’t that deeply inappropriate? How would people in Ireland feel if UK Ministers expressed incredulity about Ireland having voted for independence? Shouldn’t we instead be telling Ireland that if they want to avoid 'no deal', they need to move on the backstop?

Llywydd, on the one hand the Member complains because the Minister for international relations reports what she was told by senior members of the Government in the Republic, and then he wants me to instruct that same Government about attitudes that they should take to the backstop. The things that the Minister reported are the things that we know are said day in and day out about the attitude that the UK Government has taken to the whole Brexit negotiations and about its failure to recognise the significance of the border on the island of Ireland. I was lucky enough, Llywydd, to be able to discuss these matters with the Taoiseach at the British-Irish Council last week. These are really serious matters that affect the peace of communities on the island of Ireland, and simply to dismiss them and to tell another Government how they should approach this matter really does not measure up to the seriousness of those matters at all.

So, First Minister, you claim to want to avoid 'no deal', but the only measure that has passed the House of Commons has been one that the backstop should be replaced with alternative arrangements. And whatever your own views, surely you recognise that it is that backstop that is a massive barrier to reaching and passing an agreement that would allow us to leave the EU with a deal rather than without a deal. And there is nowhere more than Ireland, as well as parts of the United Kingdom—at least in the near term—that will have significant challenges if there is no deal. If we want to avoid that, surely instead of expressing incredulity about how our own country voted, we should be supporting the case for us to agree sensible arrangements, instead of a backstop that locks us into the customs union and single market unless they give us permission to leave that we cannot agree.

So, I see the Foreign Office have now extended its policy of making you travel by bus in Brussels to the Scottish Government, following the First Minister there promoting independence on a trip to the United States with Foreign Office facilities. First Minister, you talked just now of the £13 billion fiscal gap we would face if we were independent in Wales, yet you pal up with the SNP as if you lead a Government that wants to break up the United Kingdom in a country that voted 'remain'. [Interruption.] But you don’t, and we didn’t. First Minister, do you recognise that hundreds of thousands of people, who used to vote Labour, voted 'leave'? First Minister, haven’t you now betrayed them as a party of 'remain'?

Llywydd, let me try and find three points from what the Member has said to which I could try and make a reply. First of all, it is absolutely incumbent upon those people who talk about alternative arrangements on the border on the island of Ireland to come and explain to us how those alternative arrangements are to operate. It's no use just saying there are other ways in which this could be done. Those people who believe that have to come forward with a credible plan as to how that can be achieved. Nothing that I have read or seen or heard from the Member or anybody else who makes that assertion leads me to believe that there is a genuinely detailed, workable set of proposals that would allow the backstop simply to be evaporated at this point in the negotiations. If there are, people should bring those ideas forward. Mrs May asked, I know, time and again, to those Members on her own side who proposed that these things could be done to give her the information that would allow her to make that proposal credibly. They couldn't, she couldn't, and the Member here certainly can't.

Let me deal with the point that he made about the Foreign Office, because it leads to his point about the union. The Foreign Office's actions in relation to the Welsh and Scottish Governments have been crass in the extreme. I never go abroad to criticise the UK Government; I go to make the points that are made in this Chamber and that I make on behalf of Wales. If the Foreign Office believed for a moment that I would not say the things that I think are important to say on behalf of Wales by saying that I couldn't have a lift in one of their cars—a lift, by the way, that we pay for; it's not a free lift, we pay for it every time we use it. If they thought that that would lead me to change my mind, then that tells you just how detached that department has become from the realities of the way the United Kingdom operates.

That matters to me, Llywydd, because I believe in the United Kingdom. I want the United Kingdom to be a success, and I want Wales to be a successful part of a successful United Kingdom. But when the Foreign Office acts in that high-handed sort of way, then it simply hands a public relations coup over to those people who have a different idea of the future. And in the end, it is the unionists who pose the greatest threat to the union, because they will not take these matters seriously and they act in those foolish sorts of provocative ways. The Welsh Labour Government will go on making the case for the way that the United Kingdom can operate successfully the other side of Brexit, were that to happen, and it would be fantastic, wouldn't it, if those people who speak up as though they owned the union were prepared to take part in that sort of conversation?