I thank Llyr Gruffydd for those important questions, and I'll begin by referencing the agreement that we have with Plaid Cymru in our co-operation agreement, which is to explore how to set those meaningful targets to increase the Welsh public sector procurement from its current level. As a first step, we will carry out a detailed analysis of the public sector supply chains and promote the purchasing of made-in-Wales products and services, and that's going to be an important piece of work. But, actually, we understand at the moment that the percentage of Welsh procurement spend is around 52 per cent. Well, that's the figure that we're able to publicly share. However, we don't consider that to be an accurate representation of the amount of procurement spend that goes into Welsh companies. Obviously, there are a number of reasons for that, one of which being it's based on the postcode of the invoice address for the suppliers being in Wales, and, obviously, there are several limitations to that approach, because it doesn't take into account the supply chain that sits underneath the prime contractor.

At the moment, we're not able to do a more detailed analysis of the supply chain because we don't collect the data to enable this. But during the last year, we've undertaken a discovery exercise to help us improve our digital procurement systems, and that's to get them ready now to support our procurement reform and, in particular, transparency and other important drivers, such as the social partnership Bill. So, as part of that work, we're working on the implementation of the open contract data standard, and that will improve the transparency throughout the procurement cycle, and then the aim is for that then to give us a level of data that we need to get a much more clear picture of the spend that is staying in Wales. And we do have a member of our procurement team undertaking an assignment as part of their Chartered Institute of Procurement and Supply qualification to look at spend specifically in Wales. So, as we move forward jointly with Plaid Cymru on this particular piece of work, I know that we will be getting better-quality data to support that work, which I think is important for us to really understand the difference our decisions will be making as we move forward together on that. 

Llyr Gruffydd asked about the capability and capacity of the sector. I know that there are many excellent people working in the sector, going out of their way to try and get good value for public money, and doing more now in the space of getting that social value. As the profession does seek to navigate that increasingly complex landscape, we do need to be investing further in capability and capacity, and that's one of the reasons why we've introduced a programme whereby we're funding 50 individuals from across the Welsh public sector to undertake the practitioner and the advanced practitioner programmes of the CIPS corporate award. All of those individuals have committed to remain in the Welsh public sector for the long term, and I think that that's really important, because often we train up people who leave then to work elsewhere, and take all of that knowledge with them. And we've also got four students who are now in their penultimate year of their logistics supply chain and procurement qualification at the University of South Wales, and they're being offered one-year placements in procurement departments across Wales, including in Welsh Government. Again, that's with the aim of keeping those talented people here in Wales and here in the Welsh public sector.

So, there's a lot going on in the field of capability and capacity, including preparing a suite of core commercial e-learning modules, which will be important, as are the early discussions that we're having around exploring options to establish a national procurement apprenticeship programme, which will be quite exciting, and the possibility of a procurement mentoring programme for Wales as well. So, again, lots happening in that particular space. 

Then there was a question about what are the fundamental principles underpinning all of this, what we really want to achieve through procurement. Well, in March 2021 I published the revised Wales procurement policy statement, and that sets out the strategic vision for public sector procurement in Wales, and that was written in partnership with our stakeholders. It aims, really, to help us define our progress against the well-being goals that we are pursuing for future generations, and it has the future generations Act at its heart. The key to its delivery, really, will be in collaborative working, and we aim to refresh and review that statement regularly with partners, to ensure that it is a true reflection of how we are moving towards that shared ambition for public procurement in Wales. 

Welsh Government has published an action plan to underpin delivery against the statement's principles, and that's published on our website. We're now encouraging buying organisations, either individually or in a collaborative way, to also publish action plans of their own. 

And then finally on this, the proposed social partnership and public procurement (Wales) Bill's statutory guidance will take into account that the Wales procurement policy statement and the associated action plans place contracting authorities under a duty to deliver socially responsible outcomes through procurement that places fair work and social value at the centre, rather than being focused on financial savings.

Areas in which we're keen to look particularly—so, Llyr Gruffydd mentioned steel and food; I'm also very keen to do more work on timber, and this is something that we're looking at across Government. And also we're doing a wider piece of work looking at those supply chain voids that I referred to in response to Peter Fox, so we can identify those opportunities to grow Welsh businesses to fill those gaps.

Then, in terms of the legislative reform, I know we have principled fundamental disagreement on that, but we have had written assurances from the UK Government in this respect. Also, we're exploring which parts of the UK Bill we want to carve out Welsh Ministers from, so work is going on in that space as well. But I do know that officials are meeting very, very regularly with UK Government on this, and are interrogating the detail very, very carefully.