Diolch, Dirprwy Lywydd. I wasn't expecting to be called quite so quickly, but I've got my papers together.

Can I thank the economy committee for bringing forward this excellent report, with the daffodil on the front, as Russ George said? It's a really good read. I'm obviously not a member of the committee, but as a former Chair of what was then the Enterprise and Business Committee back in 2014, when I last did that job, I don't think I would ever have envisaged that we would be having this sort of debate today or that this report would have been produced. The sorts of issues that I had to deal with as Chair of that committee, and the Members had to deal with, seemed pretty significant and large at the time, but compared with what we're dealing with today, in the face of the economic shocks facing Wales and the world, those seem quite small by comparison. So, this is, as the Chair said, a timely report. These are immensely challenging times, and as the Chair says in his foreword, we need to learn the lessons of previous recessions as we build back better, fairer and greener. Previous recessions have seemed bad enough and hard enough as we've been going through them, but of course the scale of what we face here potentially dwarfs anything we've seen in living memory, so it is important we learn the lessons as they were in those recessions.

Could I make just a couple of points? I've just been reading through the recommendations, and fully agree with recommendation 1, that we need to harness entrepreneurial activity and business start-ups as a way to drive economic recovery. We've seen an enormous amount of Government support, both UK Government and Welsh Government support and funding for the private sector over the last year, I think it was, as Russ said, that we first labelled the pandemic and the lockdowns began, and that's been totally the right thing to do, and acceptable, but of course, that can't go on forever, so we do need to start looking to put the private sector back on its feet, reopening as soon and as safely as possible—certain sectors, anyway—and then making sure that those businesses and SMEs are able to drive the economy forward.

Recommendation 3 urges adaptability to key future shocks like climate change. I think that's probably been one of the most worrying aspects of this whole pandemic—this pandemic has been challenging enough as it is, and the economy has been reeling from it, but, of course, when you put on top, then, other potential impacts such as climate change, and other unforeseen shocks that we've got to guard against, for the next five, 10 years the world economy is going to be in a pretty sensitive and delicate state, so I think you're quite right, Chair, to say in your report that we need to make sure that we boost the resilience as much as possible.

We talk a lot about building back better, but we've got to make sure that that happens in practice. I've raised this with the economy Minister, and indeed with the First Minister, I think on a number of occasions, and yes, we all agree we need to build back better, build back fairer, grow back greener, and I'm the first person at the front of the queue to say that those things are necessary, but let's make sure that does happen in practice, and we don't just lapse back into the old ways of doing things. We've seen some enormous changes, in terms of road traffic, for instance, over the last several months. I know that the road traffic on the trunk road network is 60 per cent higher at the moment compared with what it was in the previous lockdown, but it's still way down on where it was, and those normal pinch points, such as the M4, which was mentioned in questions earlier—well, you can drive on there at rush hour now, and it doesn't seem to be causing half the problems it did.

So, there are ways to build back in a way that we don't really need to put the investment into the actual physical infrastructure as much as we used to. So, broadband is going to be key to this—let's make sure that as many people can work from home as possible. Let's get that broadband infrastructure in place. In terms of the road network, developing electric vehicles, great for the environment, great for solving the problems of climate change—let's get that charging infrastructure in place and let's all move forward with the plan. Yes, we all have different views here, from our different parties and our different ideological beliefs, but I think all of us share a common aim that we want to come out of this with Wales being in a stronger and better position than it was before. There are not just challenges here, there are opportunities as well, and thank you very much Chair, Russ George, for bringing forward this excellent report. I'd urge everyone to read it because I think it does contain within it the seeds of how we are going to grow back and make Wales a better place in the future. Diolch.