Diolch yn fawr, Llywydd. One of this Government’s key areas of focus is on nurturing the everyday parts of our economy. The industries and firms that are there because people are there, the food we eat, the homes we live in, the energy we use and the care we receive: these are the foundations of our economy. They account for four in 10 jobs, and £1 in every £3 that we spend. And they are well-being critical. That is to say, the fallout from their disruption goes beyond economic impacts and would undermine safe and civilised life.

As we head into increasingly challenging economic conditions, our focus on the foundational economy is intensifying because it's the part of the economy that can be more resilient to external economic shocks. Even if a change in the global economy tips the attitude of a large multinational company against investing in Wales, the foundational economy remains. And fostering it is within our power—the levers are devolved and can be pulled relatively quickly.

My colleague Ken Skates has set the direction in the Welsh Government’s economic action plan to shift away from a sectoral approach to economic development to one focused on place. The plan's emphasis on inclusive growth places a greater importance on making the communities we live in stronger and more resilient.

Over the last year, we've been working together to design an approach to nurture the foundations of our local economies, focusing not just on economic outputs, but on the quality of people's experience of everyday life. This is part of a movement that is taking place in cities and regions across the world. In Barcelona, the city region is developing a strategic plan for foundational basics, and in Austria their equivalent of the Trades Union Congress has a foundational campaign under the slogan 'a good life for all'.

But the Welsh Government is the first in the world to adopt the foundational economy approach at a national level, and, in fashioning a distinctively Welsh approach to this movement for change, we are focusing on three key areas. Firstly, experimenting: we've created a £4.5 million foundational economy challenge fund to trial ways of growing and improving this part of the economy. Over recent weeks, we've announced 52 innovative projects across Wales that we are supporting, from food and social care to construction and regeneration, and from applicants in the public, private and third sectors. They are now experimenting with different approaches, and we'll be creating strong communities of practice to spread what works, and to learn from what doesn't. And I want to include projects in the Arfor innovation fund. These schemes, which we agreed with Plaid Cymru as part of the last budget agreement, are focused on supporting the Welsh language through the local economy, and they fit within the foundational economy approach. So, it's important that they are part of the learning networks that we are creating.