1. Will the Minister make a statement on the Welsh Government's progress in implementing the recommendations from the Economy, Infrastructure and Skills Committee’s report on Selling Wales to the World? OAQ54517

Thank you. We're making good progress implementing the recommendations. For example, I have focused on growing exports in the international strategy, and an export growth strategy is part of that work. You will have noticed, I'm sure, that the first recommendation, establishing a specific post both for international relations and trade and a post on Brexit, was one of the first acts of the First Minister on taking office.

Thank you, Minister, for your answer. I did also notice that during the external affairs committee on 23 September, you did seem to suggest then—and I think you're backing this up in your answer now—that the Welsh Government would be placing more emphasis on supporting exports rather than attracting inward investment. If that is correct, I wonder if you could explain the rationale for this approach and provide your view of the relationship that exists between export and investment in terms of delivering benefits to the Welsh economy for those different business sectors.

Well, I think it's really important to underline that in no way are we moving away from encouraging investment into Wales, but it's pretty clear at a time of this kind of economic flux, where we don't know what our relationship will be with our nearest economic partner, that it makes sense for us to focus on exports, as indeed the Foreign and Commonwealth Office has done and the Department for International Trade has done. And therefore, what we've done, we've been very pleased to have received additional funding from the funding that has come as a result of Brexit to help to encourage more exporters from within Wales, particularly targeting small and medium-sized enterprises, and we've been making considerable progress on that and we're delighted that there has been a very positive response.

I wanted to focus on recommendation 5 and the remit of overseas offices and how they should be communicated to businesses and how they can be maximised. I know, for example, that you have three offices in India, but I'm also aware of many businesses with Indian bases here in Wales who don't have any communication whatsoever from Welsh Government, and they do their own missions to India, and would welcome support, I think, from Welsh Government to know how they could be able to link up with those offices. So, what is the remit, and if they are doing work with businesses, what are those businesses, and how can we make sure that businesses that want the support of Welsh Government in these countries are getting what they deserve?

Thank you. Last week, I sent a very clear notice of the remit of those offices to the responsible committee to set out exactly what our expectations are of those overseas offices. We've got a much more robust method of ensuring that we are looking at the performance of those offices. In fact, we have appointed a new performance manager who has to come up with bespoke plans for each of those 20 offices overseas. Of course, we're trying to increase the visibility of those offices, and that's something that I'm sure you'll have seen in the international strategy. We've made sure that there's visibility for them, that people know that they can approach them directly. So, we're very keen to make sure that those companies in particular in Wales, and we don't have to be there holding the hand of any company that wants to go and export abroad, they can do that directly, and we would encourage them to contact the Welsh offices overseas directly. 

Question 2, Rhianon Passmore.