Thank you for tabling the motion and for the range of contributions. I think the contributions show that, despite a clear consensus on the problem, there is no real clear consensus on the solution, because this is complex. There is a whole range of forces coming together. This is fundamentally about a changing marketplace, and James Evans in his contribution championed the role of the market in accelerating change, and we should also recognise that the market has also brought about many of the symptoms described by Members. The rise of supermarkets, I think, is one of the most significant forces to have shaped our town centres, when you think, inside the supermarket now, they sell almost everything that used to be sold by shops some 30 years ago in the town centre. The move, then, out of town, and then the move online have all come together to make town centres across the UK shadows of their former selves. And if it was as simple as Laura Anne Jones set out in her speech, as an issue of local political leadership, then you would expect to see a very different picture across the UK, but we do not. There are very similar trends right across the UK, and in fact right across the western world, as these forces have all been rippling their way through.

We have recently published a set of reports, one by Audit Wales and another that I commissioned from Manchester university's Professor Karel Williams, 'Small Towns, Big Issues', which sets down the challenge but also says we need a complex, joined-up intervention to tackle the range of issues at play here, and we are now working through that. I've pulled together a group of experts to go through this report in detail, to understand how we can operationalise this, and Janet Finch-Saunders points out one of the issues, which is around the issue of the resource for planning departments. That is no doubt a factor. There is no simple answer to that, because resource is tight. It's one of the reasons why we've been supporting corporate joint committees to be able to pool resource and expertise across a region, to help with common services. They're also looking at the issue of the role of landlords and rents, which clearly is a constraint for many.

The changing shape of a town centre and the fact that town centres, often, are surrounded by a 'doughnut', as Karel Williams describes, of low-income neighbourhoods, are driving a different cash flow into the town centre, whereas out-of-town is attracting higher income customers, which is in turn driving those type of shops and creating a spiral of decline. And we're seeing in those out-of-town shopping centres now an increasing hollowing out of empty units right across out-of-town shopping centres, across America and Europe, so these aren't forces that we face alone. And I think we do need to rethink the role of retail, both out of town and in town, and, as Sam Kurtz said in his contribution, the example of the 'town centre first' approach that we have championed in Carmarthen, of bringing public services into town centres to give footfall and to put services rather than just retail in the centre of where the shops and the town centres see their role. 

So, there are definitely changing dynamics at play. Many of these are complex. There is not a simple answer to a lot of these, and, as I say, we have set out, through an analysis by an independent academic, and now, through creating what they call an alliance for change, a commitment to work through these. But I think there are spots of optimism, and the example of Newport, I think, is one. I think Laura Anne Jones was overly harsh on Newport; no doubt it has struggled, as lots of towns have struggled. There has been some £30 million of Welsh Government investment in Newport. But I think the new revived market is an example of where the council has worked dynamically alongside the Welsh Government and the private sector, and we are hoping to see next month the opening of the new Newport market, with over 100 traders, a food court, a bar, workspaces, a gym and a rooftop garden, and I think that will create a positive dynamic that will attract people in and hopefully have a ripple effect.

But there's no point in kidding ourselves that there are either partisan or simple solutions at hand, and I think it behoves us all to try and work together to identify some things that can be done. If it was as simple as simply rejigging business rates, then we'd have seen a reaction before now, because we have put significant support in for business rates across Wales for some time and it hasn't made a great deal of difference, to be honest. So, the search for simple answers, I think, is going to be a futile one; we need to recognise the complexity of this, recognise the multiplicity of forces at play and try and work together through building alliances for change in all sectors across the country to bring about a fresh purpose for our town centres.