Llywydd, can I begin by welcoming the reports that have been seen today of progress in discussions between the UK Government and the European Commission on the Northern Ireland protocol matter? At the heart of that will be the issue of regulatory alignment, to which Joyce Watson has referred. In order to be able to make sure that Welsh exports get unfettered access to the European Union market, our European Union neighbours will need to know that the standards of those goods do not undermine the rest of the single market. So, if progress has been made in the way that's been reported, I certainly welcome that, and it would, I hope, prefigure a different approach to the whole relationship that the United Kingdom needs to have with our nearest and most important market.

As far as Welsh exports are concerned, I thank Joyce Watson for drawing attention to the fact that the value of Welsh exports has recovered beyond pandemic levels. It's a real tribute to the activity of those who work in this field, because the barriers have been real and the barriers continue to exist. Just one word of caution on the figures themselves, Llywydd, which, of course, is that the cash value of exports has been driven up by inflation as well as by the volume of exports. So, there may be a small amount of gloss on those figures that we will need to take into account.

The Welsh Government will go on supporting our exporters in the first half of this year; there are 15 different trade missions planned between now and the end of June. Some of those will be sector specific; there are food trade missions, there are trade missions in the field of games development, which has become such an important part of the UK economy, there are trade missions in the field of aerospace as well as multisector missions. They will go to Dubai, to the United States, to South America, to Japan, to South Korea and to a series of destinations in Europe. And the Welsh Government's support to our exporters will be there to make sure that the success to which Joyce Watson has drawn our attention can be continued from last year into the first half of this.