Diolch, Dirprwy Lywydd. I'm very glad to have the opportunity to respond to this motion today. I absolutely welcome the broad consensus that marine energy is a pillar of the economy in Wales and will become ever more so in the coming decades, and I very much associate myself with many of the comments made by Members in this debate. The Welsh Government supports the motion.

The Welsh Government's unwavering commitment to marine energy has been acknowledged by the sector. International companies invest in Wales, they say, for this reason, as well as the ability for them to bring together world-class teams of Welsh workers. Welsh manufacturers are winning repeat contracts for construction of marine energy devices, and are keen to see the Government continue to foster confidence and growth in this sector.

The Welsh Government has, with funding from the European Union, invested more than £100 million in more than a dozen marine energy projects across north, south and west Wales. Our £31 million investment in tidal energy technologies to be deployed within the Menter Môn Morlais demonstration zone includes support for Magallanes, Morlais's first berth holder to secure a contract for different support. These new opportunities sit alongside the 726 MW of generation across RWE's three offshore windfarms, already sustaining hundreds of jobs.

We are working with companies like these, new and established, as well as with other Governments and with sector bodies, through partnerships like the Celtic sea cluster, to realise, for the immediate and longer term, economic opportunities. This includes, but is not limited to, supporting the further growth of the skills base in Wales, and strengthening our infrastructure to support the expansion of manufacturing, as is called for in the motion. Our industrial policies are only part of our focus on marine energy, with energy planning and environmental protection also being important areas of our responsibilities that are vital to sustaining the marine energy sector's ongoing success.

So, Dirprwy Lywydd, having established the strong consensus around the importance of offshore marine energy, and the commitment of this Welsh Labour Government to continue to support its success, I'd like to turn to the wider context in which we operate, and particularly the role of the UK Government in enabling the green revolution to which the motion today refers.

The key difference between the approach of the Conservative and Labour Parties, in the pursuit of fostering the industries of the future, is that we believe that Governments should take an active leading role. We believe that our ambitions will not be realised if instead Government are asleep at the tiller, as their Westminster colleagues sometimes appear to quite literally be.