Contrary to some of the opening remarks of Sioned Williams, I don't think there was anything near unanimity in the sector among stakeholders on the need for this Bill, and I encountered, through discussion, many stakeholders who said to me that a Bill really isn't necessary to achieve what you want to achieve. But then, you either commission a report by Ellen Hazelkorn and listen to it, or you don't. The Hazelkorn report, which was published on 1 March 2016, was very clear that legislation would be needed in order to provide a seamless education sector prepared for 2030, and I think the Government has rightly taken the decision to listen to the recommendations of that report in creating this Bill. And I think, actually, this Bill would have been introduced a lot sooner in the previous Senedd had it not been for Diamond, for Donaldson and the pandemic. We would have seen this Bill introduced, perhaps in a slightly different form, by a different Member of a different political party, but it would have happened, had it not been for those things.

So, I think the Minister, taking on this challenge, has indeed had a challenge, and it is a credit to his reasoned ability to listen, to engage, and to link with stakeholders in that the discontent that may have been out there has somewhat ebbed and now we are seeing practical engagement from the sector with this Bill. And I can say, as chair of the cross-party group on universities, that the Minister attended a rigorous, hour-long question-and-answer session with stakeholders, and answered every single question he was asked, and there were a lot of them. I was impressed by the detail in which he provided those answers, and I can see, in the response he gave in his opening statement today, that many of those questions have been answered by him, and that is a very positive thing to see.

So, first of all, in relation to research and innovation, he said in his opening remarks that amendments would be introduced to strengthen the duty of research and innovation in the Bill. He said that there would be amendments to strengthen institutional autonomy. I'd be interested to hear whether that would be a general duty or whether that would be specific amendments, and I think we need to see what those amendments would be.

And I think I understood that the power to dissolve certain types of institutions, those higher education corporations, would not be part of the Bill. So, can I just have some clarification there? Because what you could end up doing is that higher education corporations could be dissolved without the consent of those institutions, whereas other types of institutions wouldn't be subject to that. So, is he actually going to remove that power from the Bill, or is there another way of amending it?

Again, as a member of the cross-party group, there remain questions about this registration system, which have been raised already, particularly by the committee Chairs. In particular, is it the intention for the commission to be able to set different registration conditions for individual providers? And is there any risk that this could lead to institutions being treated differently or unfairly? So, that's a key question that I'd like the Minister to answer in his response.

Finally, I'll come to Jenny Rathbone's remarks. I met with the University and College Union representatives, who raised that issue of democratisation of individual institutions as well. I wonder whether the Minister might be interested in meeting with UCU representatives to talk about that, and perhaps myself and Jenny Rathbone might want to have a meeting with him to talk about this issue of democratisation. It's an interesting one, particularly Tony Benn's fifth test: how do we get rid of you? It would be an interesting thing to see vice-chancellors wondering whether their governing bodies were going to be asking that question, 'How do we get rid of you?' And I think it's something that anyone in power should fear that very question, as we all do, and have just done in an election that we faced last year.

So, these are some key questions that the Minister's gone some way to answering. Once again, I thank him for his positive approach, and also all the work that the committees have done in probing those amendments. But what I can see across the Chamber is a general positive approach to this Bill, which does seem to be commanding support, and I think that is a credit to the Minister.