7. What are the First Minister's priorities for improving research-based education in Wales? OQ56375

I thank the Member for that question. The Welsh Government's priorities include direct investment in high-quality education research, to ensure that policy makers get the best advice, teachers have the best evidence to guide their practice, and pupils and students have the best possible learning experience.

Thank you for that reply. Clearly, the Reid review recommended that, due to Wales's historic underinvestment in research and lack of private research economic base, the Welsh Government should lead on this by increasing funding via a future of Wales fund with some more significant funds—at least about £30 million. But, last year, your Welsh Government only put £7 million into this particular fund. Last year, your Government also cut forecast funding growth to the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales for Welsh universities to cover more expensive premium courses, many of which are in the science, technology, engineering, mathematics and medicine area, and Wales also spends less gross on research and development than other UK countries, sadly. This has to change, in my opinion. Can you outline for us here today what you plan to do to rectify this underinvestment in research, particularly through universities and colleges, to make sure that Wales can be on a level playing field with the rest of the UK and the rest of the world?

I don't think the Member gives a rounded account of the success of the Welsh research sector. The success it has had in drawing down funding from Horizon 2020 is entirely beyond what you would expect of a research community of the size we have here in Wales, and through European funds more generally, we have invested hundreds of millions of pounds in research capacity here in Wales. Part of that in recent years has been improving the capacity of the sector to draw down funding from UK research councils, and we have research examples here in Wales where the draw-down from the research councils on a UK basis has been increasing in Wales. But, as well as drawing down more funding, it is the impact of the research that we can be particularly proud of, because Welsh research is highly impactful. In the research citation indices that universities use, Welsh research has an impact 75 per cent above the global average and 12 per cent above the UK average, and Wales's share of the top 5 per cent of the most highly cited publications is twice the global average. These figures were very persuasively set out by our chief scientific adviser Professor Peter Halligan when he and I were involved in opening a new research institute at Swansea University last Friday—an institute I know the Member will be interested in, the successor to the Morgan Academy. The sense of ambition there at the university to draw further funding to continue to provide impactful research says to me that the sector continues to be in robust health here in Wales.

And lastly, question 8, Caroline Jones.