I want to be clear that this work is long-term systemic culture change, and I call on Members of this Senedd, and our wide range of partners, to support us in this journey. It won’t happen overnight, and we cannot do it alone. Our budget improvement plan clearly sets out the steps we are taking to achieve our programme for government commitment. As part of the gender review in 2018, we engaged with world-leading Nordic nations, learning from their approaches to gender budgeting. We learnt about the need to focus on undertaking pilot activity to help us improve the way we assess the impact of our budget decisions, understand the true impact that our decisions are having, and in turn improve what we are doing to achieve the outcomes that we are seeking. Pilots will provide us with valuable understanding of what works and what does not.

In 2019, we launched our first pilot, personal learning accounts. PLAs embed a flexible approach to delivering learning to help address some of the barriers faced by people trying to improve their own opportunities in the workplace. We chose PLAs because there is a focus on industries with a gender effect, and we saw positive initial findings. Through the ongoing evaluation, we have identified some key lessons around the challenges of sustaining positive results when activity is scaled up from local provision to a national activity. We are working to ensure that gender budgeting remains at the heart of programme design and delivery and is not just seen as something that is nice to do.

Our commitment to gender budgeting has been given added momentum by the programme for government commitment and we have now undertaken two further pilots in areas of active travel and the young person's guarantee, each specifically chosen to provide different learning to ensure that we can refine a Welsh gender budgeting approach. While still in the early phases of development, they have already highlighted the importance of doing all we can to proactively engage and improve the way policy is delivered and is being designed, recognising the long-term nature of this work.

Our engagement with other countries leading the way in gender budgeting has been, and continues to be, invaluable in helping guide our work in embedding this in Wales. From the early Nordic exchange to our ongoing engagement with countries such as Canada and New Zealand through the network of well-being Governments, we are not only learning from those who have gone before us but we are also sharing our own experiences to support them in their journeys. This engagement has also served to remind us that whilst many of us, myself included, are impatient for change, this change will take time.

Looking closer to home, we are pleased to work with experts here in Wales such as the Wales Women’s Budget Group and our own budget improvement impact advisory group. I have been pleased to work with the Senedd's Finance Committee to further explore and understand the benefits of gender budgeting in supporting our long-term journey of budget improvement. These groups provide us with knowledge, support and constructive challenge as we continue to progress. We are bringing together this learning through our many strands of work to not only inform our approach, but also to support partners across the Welsh public sector to help us make our vision of a gender equal Wales a reality.

In concluding today’s statement, I am delighted to share with the Senedd the cross-Government work that is under way to explore the potential for a focused package of work in gender research linked to health. Later today, you will hear the Minister for Health and Social Services outline her vision for what a good-quality health service should look like to support women and girls. It is my ambition that by working together across Government we will establish Wales as a world leader in tackling gender bias in healthcare.

The only way we can address mistakes of the past is by working collaboratively and in co-production with those we are intending to help. Over the coming months, we will be engaging with a range of stakeholders to design a plan through true co-production with gender budgeting at its heart. This will ensure that we focus on the issues being faced by women every day and identify solutions that will make a tangible difference to women's lives across Wales. This is the beginning of our journey and it's one to which I'm fully committed. I look forward to today's discussion and to hearing colleagues' suggestions as to how we can work together to truly embed gender budgeting in all of our work.