Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 2:55 pm on 28 February 2023.
I very much welcome this statement. If you study successful nations and regions, you find three common themes—the three legs of a successful economy. Innovation, research and development is leg 1, entrepreneurship is leg 2, and high-quality education and highly educated graduates is leg 3. I've got two questions. How are the Welsh Government working with universities to support research and innovation? What financial support is the Welsh Government giving to support testing and patent applications? Without the patent, the benefit of innovation is lost, and we know in Britain, quite often, we've innovated and other countries have actually turned it into a very successful industry.
We've had mention of Finland, which I think has had great successes, but Finland also gives you a warning. Nokia were the biggest makers of mobile phones in the world. You can't buy a Nokia phone today. You can get it wrong as well.
Can I just throw out three areas that you perhaps can think about? Cambridge, Silicon Valley in California, and Mannheim—these are successful areas. Perhaps we can learn from them as well.