Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. Can I begin by thanking Alun Davies for bringing forward this debate today? It's a genuinely interesting and timely discussion in a number of ways. I want to thank both Members for their thoughtful contributions. Most of my remarks will be about the Heads of the Valleys area, of course, because of where Alun Davies is from, as he regularly reminds us, and it has been a pleasure to hear him talk about the long history, both when I've been in Blaenau Gwent, as well as down here.

But, I would say to Tom Giffard and his contribution, if we are genuinely going to look to have a system where we can deliberately direct investment towards less advantaged areas, then there are real challenges in the approach that is coming, not just from levelling up, but on subsidy control and the Subsidy Control Bill going through the UK Parliament, which the Members here will want to take an interest in. Because if that does proceed on the current basis, it makes it much, much harder to invest in those less advantaged areas. Far from seeing a process where it is easier and more attractive to invest in those least well-off areas, we will find it even more difficult to do so. It's part of the challenge that we see, which Alun Davies referred to, about the broad label of 'levelling up' that no-one is going to disagree with, in essence, and yet the reality of the policy choices that are being made. I will come later on to a bit more about levelling up.

The reality is that much of the work that we have done in supporting the Heads of the Valleys, in particular, has been possible as a result of the work of the Welsh Government and partners in the third sector, higher education, the private sector and, of course, the voluntary sector, to deliver European structural funds. It has made a real difference. To put that in context, current EU funding programmes have helped to create 3,600 jobs and supported more than 2,000 businesses and helped almost 9,000 people into work, just in the Heads of the Valleys area.

It is because of this success that we have spent considerable time designing, with key Welsh partners, a framework for investment based on evidence and agreement, with clear priorities for Wales. This is what a Team Wales approach looks like, and we're looking to build on that and the work we're doing now, together with work that the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development are doing, so there's an honest broker to look at the international evidence of how we can have a successful approach to regional economic development.