Thank you very much, Joel, and thank you for your good wishes. I just think it’s very important if we just set in context why we are developing these national milestones. They're set out as our expectations of progress against the national indicators, and they do help us to understand the current scale and pace of change, and whether we’re on track. I think what’s most important about the point we’ve reached today, where I’m making this statement, is it comes as a result of extensive consultation, consultation with a good response. I think all of those have been published today—you’ve seen the consultation responses. That consultation sets out proposals for these nine national milestones that we’re considering today, which assist Welsh Ministers, but all public bodies, in assessing progress towards the well-being goals.

They were interesting comments, I would say, on eliminating the pay gap—interesting comments that, in terms of the responses from the consultation, suggest that support for the intention and focus of this national milestone was very high, with 95.4 per cent of responses in agreement with the overall response. I think if you look at the outcome of the consultations, the responses that came from the third sector, for example—a large proportion were from the third sector, about a third of the responses, the public sector, as well as individuals, higher education, trade unions, a whole range of other stakeholders came forward to respond to the consultation. But I will say that, just in terms of the particular issues on the pay gap, this is very important in terms of the elimination of the pay gap, and it’s important that it’s about ethnicity as well as disability. You focused on gender issues. I think it’s also recognising that we’re working to secure more robust and reliable data on the pay gap, and particularly for all protected characteristics, because I know, as you said, that you want to ensure that this is about achieving a fair and just response to this milestone in terms of eliminating pay gaps, which we know is critically important. We will always revisit milestones as data becomes available, particularly in relation to the protected characteristics.

This is about a shared endeavour. Yes, for many, it may seem that 2050 seems far away, but it is such an issue in terms of the pay gap being so entrenched that we can’t resolve it overnight. We don’t have all the policy levers, such as employment law, which is reserved, and also there are very many wider socioeconomic factors in terms of the achievement of milestones. I’m sure you will be very pleased to hear that we’re implementing an equality data unit, and working with other analysts to look at improving the evidence in terms of the data that’s required. But I would say, particularly regarding the public sector equality duty, reviewing that, working with the Equality and Human Rights Commission, the UK Government EHRC, is crucially important. You have focused on gender. In April 2021, the gender pay gap in Wales, based on median full-time hourly earnings, was 5 per cent, unchanged from 2020. For part-time employees in Wales, the gender pay gap was 0 per cent, and of the 11 UK countries and regions where men earn more than women, Wales has the second smallest pay gap. But we have a big pay gap in terms of disability, and I'm sure you would recognise that. We also have to to address the ethnicity pay gap as well.

I'm glad you've focused, as well, on the milestone that at least 90 per cent of 16 to 24-year-olds will be in education, employment or training by 2050. This is also where we do need to look at the prospects for not just the Welsh Government's employability plan, published in 2018, but also recognising that the employability of our young people will be hugely enhanced by the young person's guarantee across all protected characteristics as well. But what is important is that we're looking at the annual population survey series, and that's broken down by age and disability, and to look at this in terms of gender, age, disability, ethnicity. We have to look at the equality issues, as well, in terms of achieving this. We will look to, I'm sure, next year's 'Well-being of Wales' report, because that will of course start to identify whether we are making progress and how we are making progress—and that's for the whole of Wales; all our public bodies—on these national milestones.