Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Economy and Transport – in the Senedd at 1:46 pm on 22 January 2020.
Can I just deal with the final point first, Llywydd? We have administered the help of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development to examine key performance indicators and to monitor outputs in terms of economic development in Wales. But in terms of looking at the record on employment and the economy over the last 20 years, in addition to us now having the lowest level of unemployment since records began, we also have at or near to record numbers of people in work; inactivity rates have been coming down consistently over the last few years. We now have, in this Assembly term alone, 75,000 apprenticeship opportunities established and taken by ambitious people in Wales. In contrast to that, across the border in England, apprenticeship figures have fallen off a cliff, because they ripped up an established method of providing apprenticeship support and introduced a bizarre mechanism of taxing businesses for employing people.
I'm confident that as a consequence of our interventions, including those by Business Wales, we have been able to establish a strong and resilient business community in Wales that is employing people at record numbers and driving up GVA and productivity rates at a higher and faster rate than the UK.