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

First Minister, why has your Government increased the loan facility to Cardiff Airport by £21.2 million? 

Well, we have increased the loan payment because of the success that Cardiff Airport has established during the time that it has been in public ownership and because we want that success to continue and to grow. 

Well, let's be clear, First Minister—since the Welsh Government purchased Cardiff Airport back in 2013, it has already invested over £90 million of public money. Now, with this extra £21 million,  that's twice the amount that the Government paid for it, and what have been the results? Yes, passenger numbers are increasing, but not above the 2007 levels. However, even with the increase in passenger numbers, the airport continues to make a loss. In its latest financial statement, the airport revealed that its losses have increased to £5.71 million. Now, in my former profession, First Minister, if a business case came to me with these figures I would want to see a clear plan of how it could make its way back into profit and the viability of the business before providing further loan facilities. The airport currently owes £38.2 million, and yet your Government is extending this by £21.2 million when the airport is clearly losing millions of pounds. What business plan—what business plan—has your Government received to convince you that this loan facility is appropriate and that this is the best use of taxpayers' money? And can you reassure the people of Wales that this is not just offering a blank cheque to the airport and that this money will ultimately be repaid to the Welsh taxpayer?

Well, Llywydd, the airport has, as the Member knows, a draft master plan, which provides exactly what he is asking for, and that is a plan that the Welsh Government endorses. We invest in the airport in order to make sure that Wales has a vibrant asset, which we need for our economy in the whole of the south of Wales. We are very confident in what the airport can achieve. The Member will have seen that only today TUI, the largest firm of its sort in the United Kingdom, has announced 15,000 new holidays to be sold from Cardiff Wales airport next year, bringing further passengers and further new business to that airport.

What would help the airport, Llywydd, would be if his Government would allow air passenger duty to be devolved in Wales. What would help would be if his Government would allow our airport to have the same advantages as large airports across our border are able to have. Smaller regional airports are squeezed in the United Kingdom by the United Kingdom's regional policies and their approach to those airports. There's a great deal the UK Government could do to support Cardiff Airport and it resolutely refuses to do any of them.

Well, let me remind the First Minister that I'm not the only person who thinks that this situation needs to be turned around and that you must now look at introducing a different business model to make this airport successful after six years of nationalisation. Your very own director general for economy, skills and natural resources recently made it clear that, in order for it to be, or revert to be, a wholly commercial endeavour, its business model would need to be very different. But it seems to me—[Interruption.]—it seems to me that you carry on doing the same things hoping for a different outcome by offering a blank cheque.

Now, First Minister, people will argue that this additional loan for the airport could have been spent on funding our vital public services. Twenty-one million pounds indeed could go a long way—£21 million could help pay for the salaries of more than 400 GPs, or nearly 900 nurses, or indeed 700 teachers. Your Government's plan for the airport relies solely on increased passenger numbers, and yet, whilst passenger numbers are slowly increasing, the airport's losses continue to grow faster. That does not make any sense. More passengers should mean more income for the airport. Why is it therefore going wrong, First Minister, and is your Government still aiming to return this airport to private ownership, and, if so, what target date have you set to achieve this?

Well, Llywydd, the degree of short sightedness expressed in that question is breathtaking, as well as the degree of ignorance about basic business models. You can't pay nurses out of capital loans, can you? The idea that you can is absurd. You clearly could not possibly do so. The money that we have provided to Cardiff Airport, if you totalled it all up, if you total every penny of it up, is less than his Government is spending on an advertising campaign about Brexit. Where is the money for nurses and doctors coming out of that £100 million, I wonder?

Llywydd, there are 4,300 airports in the world from which scheduled flights are part of their operation—4,300. Of those, 14 per cent are in private ownership. So, Cardiff Airport is in the same position as JFK airport in New York, Schiphol airport in Amsterdam, as Charles De Gaulle Airport in Paris. The model that we have in Wales is the model replicated around the world. It makes sure that the Welsh public has an airport that they need, that its economy needs, and we will invest to make it a success, where he would have closed it down.

Plaid Cymru leader, Adam Price.

First Minister, we all want to get to our destination quicker and in greater comfort, and promises made to Welsh train travellers in this regard should be promises kept. Transport for Wales said that outdated Pacer trains would be taken out of service by the end of this year, but we now know, as you confirmed last week, this commitment will not be met. Pacers will also remain in service on the busiest routes in northern England next year, despite an identical commitment to phase them out there. The Labour leaders of greater Manchester, Sheffield city region and Leeds have accused the train operator there of treating passengers like second-class citizens. In Wales, passengers are compensated for delays of 15 minutes or more; will Transport for Wales compensate travellers, in the same way that Labour is calling for in England, for new trains that will be delayed by months?

Well, the reasons why Pacer trains have to retained into 2020 here in Wales are the same reasons why they have to be retained on the northern franchise as well, because of the failure of train manufacturing companies to honour the contract signed with them, where we would have had those new trains already here in Wales and ready to go onto the network. They haven't arrived, despite signing contracts to say that they could be delivered, and Pacer trains will need to continue for a short while longer, until that capacity arrives.

What Transport for Wales is about to do is to announce plans to improve fares across their entire network from January 2020. Parts of that have been announced already, Llywydd, as you know—extending free travel to under-11-year-olds, under-16s being able to travel off-peak free when accompanied by an adult, and extending half-price fares to 18-year-olds down to 16 to 17-year-olds as well. But that will come with additional reductions in fares in parts of the network when Transport for Wales makes its January announcement, and that will be some compensation for people who were promised by private providers that those trains would arrive and where those promises have not been kept by them. 

So, if I follow the First Minister, what I think he's saying is that the reason for the extension of the use of the Pacer trains—it's not just a legacy of the last franchise, it's a consequence of some of the procurement decisions and the problems with that made under this one. Now, can you confirm that Arriva ordered four to five-car Flex trains, as I think they're called, and that Transport for Wales extended that order to nine trains? Can you confirm whether or not these electric trains with a diesel engine that are on order actually work or not? And, if they don't, has Transport for Wales built in any penalty clauses to the deal with the supplier, Porterbrook trains, and is there a cancellation point that gives Transport for Wales the option of pulling the plug on that deal? And have Transport for Wales and the Government made any analysis of the cost implications of having to keep these older Pacer trains in service in relation to the maintenance costs?

I thank the Member for the question. There are some details in there that he'll understand I'm not likely to have immediate access to. He made an important point in the beginning, that some of this is legacy stuff from those years of Arriva and their underinvestment and the decisions that they made about rolling stock. I'm told by my colleague, the transport Minister, that safeguards are built into the contracts that have been signed by Transport for Wales in relation to the new rolling stock that we're going to have here in Wales. I told the Chamber last week of my meeting with CAF, who have set up their train manufacturing centre in Newport, and how those trains, made in Wales by Welsh workers, will be running on Welsh railways before next year is out. I will check the detail of the Member's question, of course, and make sure that he has an answer to the specific points he's raised with me. 

What I actually said was that it doesn't appear to be a legacy problem. If you— through Transport for Wales, if the Government has procured a technology that doesn't actually work, then it's you who should have done the due diligence, and the responsibility lies with you.

Now, transforming our twentieth-century rail infrastructure demands a radical approach overall. If I wanted to make the 36-mile journey from Pontypool to Treherbert without going by car, I'd almost be better going by bike as by train at the moment. At this time, on a Tuesday afternoon, the train journey takes over two hours. Now, travelling east-west within the south Wales Valleys is as difficult as travelling north-south in Wales as a whole, and for the same reasons—Beeching and the legacy of an extractive economy that prioritised moving product over people. Isn't now the time, First Minister, to turn that on its head and, as Mark Barry and my party have proposed, connect the Heads of the Valleys not just by road but by rail, creating a new corridor of development with a 50 km rapid-transit crossrail for the Valleys?

Well, first of all, Llywydd, the Member is quite wrong if he thinks that the legacy of Arriva, and the years of neglect that were inflicted on Wales by that franchise and by the failure to account for any growth in passenger numbers during it—if he thinks there isn't a legacy issue there that has to be dealt with, then I'm afraid he needs to read up a bit on the history of that.

I don't accept that the technology doesn't work. I've said that I will investigate his questions. That doesn't mean for a minute that I accept that there is a problem simply because he asserts that there may be one. And the Welsh Government is investing enormous sums of money to complete the Heads of the Valleys road so that there is a link across east-west in that part of Wales. That demonstrates completely this Government's commitment to Valleys communities and to connectivity between them.

Leader of the Brexit Party, Mark Reckless.

First Minister, your future generations commissioner, Sophie Howe, has announced that GCSEs are not fit for purpose and should be scrapped. She claims this is necessary as the new curriculum replaces what she characterised as the 'silos' of traditional subjects with six areas of learning and experience. The co-author of her White Paper, Professor Calvin Jones, says they struggle with the idea of a public standardised exam that gives pupils a grade. Instead, they want schools to focus on teaching the skills of empathy, emotional intelligence, artistry, creativity, care giving and carbon cutting. Does the First Minister agree with their vision for the future of education in Wales?

Well, I agree that the introduction of the new curriculum requires a new qualifications framework to go with it—it's why Qualifications Wales is doing exactly that. I thought the contribution from the future generations commissioner, as ever, is an important contribution to the debate, as I thought the report today from the Welsh Youth Parliament on the same subject was particularly interesting and useful. It describes the danger that Welsh schools produce 'A* robots', by which it means that they teach their pupils very well to pass exams, but those children aren't necessarily equipped with the sort of thinking skills, the sort of critical capacity, that we know employers tell us that they are looking for in young people entering the workplace. I thought it was particularly interesting that that point of view comes from young people themselves. The Minister is meeting the Youth Parliament on Friday to discuss their report. Taking that and the work of the commissioner together, they will be important contributions to thinking about the way in which we have a qualifications approach that goes with the radical new curriculum we are introducing in Wales.

But do our schools teach pupils very well to pass exams—or at least sufficiently—on the current results? One change we are having, which I should welcome, which the education Secretary put out this morning, is we are seeing a 2.75 per cent increase in teachers' pay and 5 per cent for the newly qualified, and, I think, £12.8 million in the current year to support that. However, would the First Minister agree that this may be too little, too late to address the deep crisis we see in teacher recruitment currently?

Will he also consider whether lower standards of education in Wales compared to England, at least on the results that we are able to compare and the Programme for International Student Assessment ratings, reflect more than just relative spending priorities? May they not also reflect progressive policy and a lack of rigorous comparison of achievement among pupils, schools and UK nations? Estyn reports have dropped their key stage 2 comparisons among schools; Welsh Government has got rid of their target for five good GCSEs, including Maths and English or Welsh; and we've seen our GCSE A to G grades diverging from the 1 to 9 they now have in England. Is the final stage in ending accountability for this Government's failure in education simply to abolish GCSEs?

Well, I certainly don't agree with that, of course, Llywydd. A* grades in A-levels in Wales in the summer were the best in any part of the United Kingdom—the very best, better than any part of England, better than Scotland. Welsh young people achieving the very top grades in examinations and outstripping anybody else—I don't regard that as a failure of our system. And his Gradgrind approach to education, that it's simply there to factorise children through a system so they come out at the end of it, not as young people who've had a breadth of education, not as young people who are taught to think critically, not as young people who are able to understand, argue and to participate in that wider way, but just have a set of qualifications, that's not my idea of education, because I want our children to have both. I want them to have successful qualifications, but I want them to have an education experience that will fit them for life in the twenty-first century, and that's what our curriculum will provide.