Thank you very much, Chair. Thanks for the invitation to come back before you today, and for the welcome for our new team. I would like to mention the Wales Office Minister Claire Hughes, who is unable to be here today, but she is specifically supporting our work in north Wales and speaking for my Department on Welsh language media. Also, if I may, I will say on the record a big thank you to Glynne Jones, who was the Wales Office Director for 13 years. Glynne served 13 Cabinet Ministers during his time in public service with the UK civil service, so he is enjoying his well-deserved retirement. We have had a very busy period delivering on the priorities I set out for you last year, and providing the Welsh Government with the largest settlement in the history of devolution has been the foundation for the progress we have made. Ending austerity has helped public services in Wales to recover. We have had an unrelenting focus on tackling the cost of living. We have seen wage increases in real terms. Six interest rate cuts have meant significant savings in mortgage payments for Welsh households. Inactivity is down on the year. Wages are up on the year. Unemployment is down on the year. All those measures are moving in the right direction. The scrapping of the two-child limit at the Budget will benefit 69,000 children in Wales, and other measures we have announced to tackle child poverty will see well over 250,000 families—in fact, 320,000 families—in Wales benefit from the first ever sustained, real-terms increase in the universal credit standard allowance, which I am very pleased to say passed through the Commons last night. Though many of those households are working families, there is £150 to come off energy bills, and the increases to the national minimum wage and the national living wage mean that, since we came into government, if you are working full-time on the national minimum wage, in April your pay will have gone up by £2,300 a year and, for 18 to 20-year-olds on the national living wage, that rise is £4,000 a year, which will make a significant difference. Since we last met, I have delivered my top priority for 2025. We spent a long time at the last session talking about rail. There has been historic funding of at least £445 million into Welsh rail, and that is going to help Wales’s economic potential materialise with new stations, more and faster trains on the key lines across north and south Wales, connecting people with the new, well-paid jobs that we are creating. You mentioned inward investment. We have seen nearly 2,500 new jobs created last year through foreign direct investment. That is an increase of 30% on the previous financial year, and I will be ramping up that work following the spending review settlement, which is providing funding to the Wales Office to promote Welsh investment opportunities and exports from April. In November, I delivered on my commitment to bring new nuclear to Wylfa. That announcement with the Prime Minister was that Wylfa will host the UK’s first fleet of small modular reactors, supplying power to the grid by the mid-2030s and clean power for around 3 million homes. Most importantly, from my perspective, there will be 3,000 direct jobs coming from this, with thousands more in the supply chain. It is one of the biggest public investments in Welsh history. I am sure we will talk about many aspects of the industrial strategy, but I particularly wanted to mention the defence growth deal. That is going to build on Wales’s unique strengths in autonomy and aerospace, creating really high-skilled jobs that are positioning Wales at the forefront of next‑generation defence capabilities to keep the United Kingdom secure. On steel, I want to put on record my thanks to the Wales Office team for everything they have done to deliver £102 million of transition board funding to steelworkers, their families and local businesses in Port Talbot and the surrounding region. The Committee knows that, when we came into government, that was a day one, critical, urgent priority because of the potentially catastrophic legacy we inherited. Our work is not finished by any means. We still have people to come out of the steelworks, but I am really pleased to say that we have not seen any spike in unemployment claims in the area. I am continuing our efforts to secure a steel strategy that delivers for Wales. None of that has been easy. I have just rattled through what has happened on the priorities, but we all know that real achievement is never easy. I just wanted to end on this point. I want to make it very clear that none of that is achievable without partnership delivery with the Welsh Labour Government. That has been critical to supporting the success of my priorities for the Department and UK Government priorities. We are all here to work for the people of Wales, to improve the economy and their living standards and opportunities, because people in Wales deserve nothing less.

On intergovernmental relations, we have had really close working across the two Governments. This is across all strands: me with the First Minister, the Prime Minister with the First Minister, Ministers in the Wales Office with Ministers in the Welsh Government, and officials talking to each other every day, not just in the Wales Office but across all UK Government Departments. We have a range of shared priorities—the NHS in Wales, growth funds, rail, the economy—and, very helpfully, our missions are aligned with the First Minister’s missions in Wales. That really meaningful and impactful collaboration has meant that we have been able to deliver the results I talked about in my first answer. These are things like inward investment, steel, rail and reforming our approach to the regulation of water, for example, which I know you have a particular interest in. We are taking forward recommendations from the Cunliffe report, which was jointly commissioned and will make a big difference in Wales. One thing that does not get talked about much, but is indicative of the good relationship, is that for every single piece of legislation where we have needed a legislative consent motion from the Senedd, we have secured one. That is an illustration of how well the relationship is working.

We work very closely with relevant Departments across the UK Government—the Department for Business and Trade, the Foreign Office, No. 10 and the Treasury—and you will know that we have done a number of very significant trade deals with India, the EU, the United States and South Korea. The trade strategy that we have published is unambiguous in pursuing quicker and more practical deals, which will help to deliver a real impact for Welsh businesses. Certainly, as a Department, we have prioritised deals with Wales’s largest markets. The United States is our single largest country of destination. Over 1,000 businesses in Wales export there. These are deals that will benefit businesses from a wide range of industries in Wales, such as car making, aerospace, steel, life sciences, farming, food and drink, and defence manufacturing, to name but a few. That work has been done across Government. In terms of future-proofing, I suppose you might call it, against the disruption and the geopolitical situation, it is very clear that countries and trading blocs are moving to protect their domestic industries, and we must do the same. The trade strategy commits to expanding powers to defend our domestic manufacturers from unfair trading practices. There are several that are very well known to all of us. The UK-EU summit in May has committed to linking both the UK and the EU emissions trading markets, with detailed negotiations beginning last month. On the UK-EU deal, we have Nick Thomas-Symonds as the Paymaster General leading negotiations. The agrifood and SPS deals will be very important for us in Wales. I have mentioned some of the sectors with the US trade deal but, for India, we have seen tariffs being reduced on premium Welsh products and services, including lamb, aerospace, luxury cars and whiskey as a result of those deals.

Those are always part of the conversation. We are quite lucky in that we have MPs from Wales in ministerial positions. The International Trade Minister is a Welsh MP. As I said, the Paymaster General is a Welsh MP. We have two Welsh MPs in the Foreign Office in ministerial positions. I am an adviser to the Board of Trade. I am also on the interministerial group for trade, along with the Welsh Government, and we work closely with the Welsh Government in the work they do around inward investment. There is a holistic approach to it all, making sure that the sectors that we know are important to Wales are at the forefront of the discussions.

I was just going to say that Welsh food producers, for example, should save thousands in costs, because it will speed up exports and imports. I will hand over to the Minister, because this is her area.

I absolutely understand the value and the crucial role that Valero plays in your constituency. I have had a number of discussions with them myself, and I know what their concerns are. Our refining capacity is really important to our energy security and to our resilience, but it is also important to the industrial base across the UK, and that will lead into growth across all regions of the UK. I know that DESNZ has established a dedicated team to work with stakeholders across Government and industry. We welcome continued engagement from the industry, and particularly from Valero. At the Budget, we committed to considering the feasibility and the impact of including refined products in the CBAM in future. We are engaging with industry on the process for potential inclusion. There will be a call for evidence shortly to try to shape the UK’s long-term strategy for the downstream oil sector. There is a real focus on it, and I know that Valero are playing their part in that.

Please pass on our best wishes.

The decision on Wylfa was one I was absolutely delighted to be part of. To have the Prime Minister, the Chancellor, the First Minister and the Technology Secretary at Coleg Menai to make that announcement, and to include in it the AI growth zone for north Wales, was a really significant moment. It is really important not just for everybody on the island, but everybody across north Wales and the whole of Wales, because this will be transformational. If I may sum up how it will impact the people you have talked about, Ann, I stood in a room with a load of students from Coleg Menai. I do not think they knew what was going to be announced. They were all standing there, looking at us and thinking, “Who are this lot? Why have they come here?” The Prime Minister started speaking about what Wylfa will mean for them, and it was almost like lightbulbs had gone on around the room. He did not just talk about the engineers who are going to be building those small modular reactors. He talked about the people who will be working in marketing, accountancy, project management and all the other jobs that are going to come with this. Those students are going to be part of it, because work will start this year. There will be 3,000 direct jobs, thousands more in the supply chain and the possibility that, in the future, we are going to have more modular reactors on the site, because there is the space and capacity to do more. That will create more jobs. We have a really good record, as you know. Anglesey is a nuclear island. It has heritage in the industry. There are specialists who have worked in it in the past with skills to pass on. This gives every child on that island the opportunity both to learn and earn on the island and not have to move away, so it is a huge difference for them.

It will be in the 2030s. Work is already under way in the Government and with Great British Energy Nuclear and Rolls-Royce, which is the landmark selected company to work on this, to reach contract signature. Once that is done, GB Energy Nuclear will bring together developer capability and undertake project design and permitting activities. As I have said, we expect initial site activity to begin in 2026 and for it to be operational from the mid-2030s. I saw a couple of days ago that for the first company, in terms of design or development—the pre-work, anyway—the £25 million contract has been signed. It reminds me that I met another student at that announcement who told the Chancellor and me that his father had worked in the old nuclear plant. He had been made redundant and has never worked since. He was going home that day to tell his dad that he was going to get a job in a nuclear plant. That is what it is going to do for people.

Yes, of course. We have established two. I was delighted, because we thought there was maybe only going to be one, but there are two. That is great news. Each one is backed with £5 million of investment in local AI adoption and skills. North Wales is linked to the Wylfa announcement and along the north Wales corridor. We expect just shy of 3,500 jobs to come online as a result of the growth zone and, in south Wales, about 5,000 new jobs for local communities. That is already the home of a really significant, growing tech industry. That major investment in the region is going to help cement the UK’s place as a global leader on AI. We have a Welsh MP as Minister for AI and online safety, and he is living his best life at the moment. We have worked very closely with the Welsh Government. We sought their views on the location of the zones. We jointly announced them. The Cabinet Secretary, Rebecca Evans, and I were at Cardiff University with the Technology Secretary to announce the south Wales one. I have mentioned that the Prime Minister and the Technology Secretary were at Wylfa to do the north Wales one. I am very sure that the development and delivery will involve extensive engagement, because some of the key policy levers are, in fact, devolved to the Welsh Government. Those are things like planning and skills. There will have to be—and I am absolutely certain there will be—extensive engagement. We will be going into the delivery phase. We will have joined-up governance and delivery arrangements with the Welsh Government, with local authorities and with industry, so that decision making and resolution of any issues that come up can be done quickly, with the whole process streamlined from the outset.

We have fantastic universities in Wales that are absolutely brimming with talent. It is the research and innovation that goes on in the universities that creates the start-ups that then go into the scale-ups, which feed companies such as Vishay and KLA in your constituency. They are some of the best-paid jobs in the whole of south Wales. You are very lucky that they are in Newport West and Islwyn. AI adoption is going to come right across all sorts of industries. It has felt for a long time as if AI is a thing that is sitting over here but, in fact, it is going to affect every part of our lives. It does affect every part of our lives. I go to see businesses every single week. They are all thinking about how AI can help them, whether they are big manufacturers or the smallest businesses, which make up a significant proportion of the Welsh economy. AI adoption is going to be big. It is going to be extensive. It is going to improve efficiency and productivity, and it is going to give opportunities for people right across Wales. Creating those zones where people can innovate, build their businesses and work alongside other businesses that are doing adoption is going to make that difference.

As I said, we talk to each other all the time, and we talk about all aspects of our work and their work. That includes policing in Wales. The Wales Office contributes to the Policing Partnership Board for Wales, and the Welsh Government sit on that board as well. We will discuss forthcoming announcements and all sorts of things around changes in policing, and that is the case with the Home Office police reform White Paper, which is extensive. There are some big areas to consider in that, and there will be the consultation and the independent review on structures.

Our priority for policing—Simon is gone, so I can say this—is fixing the mess that got left behind, I am afraid. That is why the Safer Streets mission is one of our key missions. It is why we are funding more police, putting more police into neighbourhood teams, and it is why the funding settlement that has recently been announced is such good news for Wales. For Dyfed-Powys, it is nearly £171 million, an increase of 4.5%. For Gwent, it is an increase of 4.2%. In north Wales there is a cash increase of 4.3%. South Wales Police has a cash increase of 3.9%. That is all to deliver those extra officers, make people feel safer and reduce crime and antisocial behaviour, which we know blights some of our communities. We are making good progress on bringing down serious crime. We have the strategy on violence against women and girls, which I am sure the Minister can say something about as well. Those are our priorities. The Policing Minister has been very clear that we believe the current system works best for communities in Wales.

I want to say that the changes are no reflection on the individuals who have held office as PCCs. It is just that the model did not work. We have the rather embarrassing record of having a ballot box at a PCC election in Wales several years ago in which nobody voted. The abolition is about creating a new governance and scrutiny structure. There is going to be a consultation, so that everybody in Wales can participate and give their views, and so that we can come up with what works best for Wales. It might be slightly different from how things operate elsewhere, but everybody will have their say on it. We want to make sure that our forces are absolutely accountable to the communities they serve.

I certainly do not have a fixed view on it, and I do not think the Home Office has a fixed view on it at the moment, because it is going to be looked at across the piece. If you talk to chief constables, they have different views on it as well. I know, for example, that the North Wales chief constable is very concerned about cross-border crime. We know that that economic corridor across north Wales into north-west England is also essentially a crime corridor as well. In south Wales, we have the issue of county lines. There are significant things to consider around cross-border working, but the Home Office wants to reduce the administration costs of having 43 or 44 police forces across England and Wales. There needs to be a model that works for the public, that keeps people safe, that tackles the kind of organised crime that we are seeing growing in Wales and in England, but also keeps that local connection, so that people have neighbourhood policing, police they know, who know their areas and in whom they feel confident.

Thank you for the question. We made a number of manifesto commitments around devolution and we have delivered on some. We are continuing to work on others. I can say this today, which is quite helpful, because there has been one development that I want to alert the Committee to, which is around tax devolution. Since 2018, the Welsh Government have wanted to introduce a vacant land tax, so that we can incentivise house building and support economic growth. We know that there are pockets of land that are just being held forever and ever, and we need to bring them into use. When the request had been made to previous Governments to do this, it had been refused. I am really pleased to tell the Committee today that we are agreeing to devolve the powers necessary for the Welsh Government to introduce a vacant land tax. That will be subject to a joint consultation, a consultation by both Governments, which we will publish in the near future. This is the first such example of new tax power devolution to Wales. I am very proud we introduced devolution in the 1990s. We have protected and defended the settlement, and we will strengthen devolution in ways that will make a tangible positive impact for people in Wales. This is one of the areas where it can do that.

On the Crown Estate, the UK Government’s position is well known. We do not agree with the Welsh Government on the Crown Estate. That is mature devolution. You can have differences of view. Certainly, I know I have answered a significant number of questions at Wales questions in the Chamber about the Crown Estate, as have DESNZ Ministers and Treasury Ministers. At the moment, the Crown Estate is working well. Introducing a new entity would, at a critical time, risk market fragmentation, damage investor confidence, complicate existing processes and delay further development offshore. Having had such a significant delay in previous years under previous Governments, where an auction round could not be run to get anybody to do any development in the Celtic sea, we have had three successful leasing rounds through the Crown Estate in the Celtic sea. We would also, if it was devolved, lose access to the Crown Estate investment that comes from revenues in England. We do not want to jeopardise what is essentially our new industrial revolution in Wales, floating offshore wind, which is estimated to support 5,000 jobs, deliver a £1.4 billion boost to the economy and all the supply chain jobs that go with it. You mentioned youth justice and probation, did you not? We had a commitment in our manifesto to consider devolution of youth justice and probation. Both Governments have agreed to work together to look at options relating to governance and funding of youth justice services and partnership arrangements on probation services. That work is currently under way. I have been part of that. Ministry of Justice officials are meeting with the Welsh Government, and officials between the two Governments are meeting as well. That work is currently going on.

It is in the interests of both the Welsh and UK Government that the settlement we have clearly defines our respective responsibilities and delivers for the people of Wales. Our focus is on delivering the commitments in our manifesto. We set them out in advance. We are working through them, and we have made progress in a number of areas. For example, we have provided funding for the economic inactivity trailblazers in Wales and a statutory role for the Welsh Government in the management of the rail network. We have restored the Welsh Government’s decision-making role on post-EU structural funding for the new local growth funds, and we have also updated the fiscal framework and the flexibilities for the Welsh Government. We are also working with them, for example, on water regulation reform, which I alluded to earlier, and on taking forward the Cunliffe report recommendations. Our focus is on delivering the things in the manifesto. We have done some extra things, which I have mentioned today, but that is where our focus is, rather than legislation.

I am not entirely sure what formal requests would involve, but I have certainly outlined what our manifesto commitments are. We were very clear and transparent about what we would deliver in government. As I said, we have delivered some of those already. We are currently working on other ones, and there will be further to come that are in the manifesto, which we will get to before the end of this parliamentary term. I do not accept the characterisation that has been suggested around political attacks. The fact is that we are very transparent about what we are doing on devolution. It was in our manifesto, and we are delivering that.

I am going to hand over to Minister McMorrin, because health is her portfolio.

We definitely want to continue the success of last year, with the 30% increase I mentioned and the close to 2,500 additional jobs. It is coming up to quite an exciting point for the Wales Office because, for the first time, we have funding to promote Welsh investment opportunities and exports around the world. At the moment it is called Brand Wales, but the whole programme will be designed to increase the exports from Welsh businesses and the inward and foreign direct investment to Wales. We can name particular companies. In the Chair’s constituency, the American semiconductor companies have set up in Wales and been hugely successful; that is one of our greatest inward investment stories. There is huge soft power potential with Welsh culture and the Welsh diaspora. I do not know about you, but everywhere I go, I always meet somebody from Wales, and they know somebody who I know. The diaspora is spread far and wide. We have, as a Government, extensive overseas networks that we can use in order to facilitate that inward investment. In terms of the programme and the funding, I can give you a heads-up on what I expect it to include. We are working very closely with Welsh Government and local partners to make sure we have clear and consistent investment propositions for Wales. This is not about duplicating anything that Welsh Government or other Government Departments do; this is to complement the activity and draw it together so that we have a really joined-up approach. It will involve a series of targeted and focused overseas visits and events in key markets, so not spreading ourselves thinly, but looking at key markets overseas where we have the best possibility of landing inward investment. There is going to be a fund that the overseas network can bid into so that they can deliver activity to promote Wales and Welsh trade and investment opportunities. That is the first time there will ever have been a budget for them to do that. I am quite excited; there will be lots of them queuing up for it. I have been meeting key stakeholders throughout, including companies that have already invested in Wales from abroad, to understand from them what worked, what did not work, where they think we could do things slightly differently to make it work better, and building on their expertise and feeding that into the programme design.

That goes back to the point I was making about not spreading things too thinly. Obviously, we have the industrial strategy. Eight sectors have been identified as those sectors in the UK where there is the potential for very significant growth but also, just as importantly, very fast growth. We in Wales have a number of strengths in nearly all of those sectors. There is also the defence growth deal; we have huge skills, expertise and specialisms in autonomy and aerospace, where we will be looking for more inward investment as well. There are a number of Government Departments that we work with closely, and will do as part of this programme. Obviously, there is the Department for Business and Trade. We are working with the International Trade Minister Chris Bryant, with the Foreign Office and the Welsh Government, who have people posted in some of the embassies around the world, but also with existing investors and the diaspora as well. There is huge potential here. We had seen some really great figures last year on inward investment, but I am confident that we can do even better, and particularly in bringing investment that brings high-skilled, secure jobs. We want to see average wages rising in Wales, and long-term secure employment that has the potential for growth in the future as well.

I will be perfectly honest. When I started in this role, I was astonished that the Wales Office did not do this sort of work anyway. It may be that some of that work was going on, but you could not see very obvious results from it if it was going on. That is why we put the bid in for the spending review. With Lord Stockwood, I met an Omani delegation that came to Wales. We are looking particularly at areas where we are working on future trade agreements with countries that would target their investment into Wales, as well as other parts of the UK. I thought you were going to ask a question about Wrexham, because that is probably the most famous inward investment of the last few years. I met the Swansea City investors, for example, last year. Our sports industry, if I can call it that, has huge potential in terms of inward investment. I would love it if somebody came in with a load of investment for Newport County. There are all sorts of places where you would not naturally look for inward investment where we have lots of opportunities in Wales. I really want to see us maximise those. It is a cross-Government effort across many Departments. It is about working closely with the Welsh Government and also with local authorities. If you can present a streamlined package to an investor, where the three levels of government in Wales can all provide something in terms of a package that will deliver that investment, then we know from experience, because of Eren Holding in Shotton Mill, that they will choose Wales over someone else.

I recognise what you describe. We all recognise it. Most importantly, the people who live in our valley communities are living and breathing it every day; they certainly recognise it. We were very clear when we came into government that we wanted to reduce inequalities across this country, because there are significant, embedded inequalities. We can see patterns in former mining communities, for example with Wales and the north-east of England. We want to make sure that wealth, investment and prosperity is spread around the whole of the UK. It should not all be going into London and the south-east. It should be spread right across the UK, and that is why we want to invest in every region of the UK. In terms of the south Wales valleys, for example, there are a number of things that we have done already in government that will and are making a difference. I talked earlier about the Welsh Government budget or financial settlement. There is investment that will go into public services, particularly into the NHS, transport, buses and new routes. There will be a bus fare cap in May if the Welsh Labour Government are re-elected. Both we and the Welsh Government have put investment into the core valley lines to get people to jobs that are being created, because we know there is no point bringing the jobs if people cannot get to them. There is the local growth fund, the Pride in Place programme, the defence growth deal and investment right across the board. There are also some of the things I talked about at the beginning regarding cost of living and support for people with the minimum wage rises and child poverty announcements that we have made to reduce that, the universal credit announcement, and the one thing that is universally welcomed in terms of what we are looking at in terms of welfare reform: the right to try for people. That will make a huge difference to these communities. Money is going into the Welsh NHS to bring down waiting lists. We are helping people back into work with the trailblazers, where we have devolved employment support, and with the money that has gone into that. On the growth deals particularly, Minister McMorrin might want to say some things about that, which will be very relevant to the question you have asked.

First, we are investing more than £500 million in Wales, which is really good news to help deliver jobs, growth and opportunity for communities right across Wales. It is being delivered in partnership between the UK Government, the Welsh Government, local authorities and others over the next three years. That also delivers our manifesto commitment to return the decision-making role over those funds to the Welsh Government. You said that there was a cut, but there is not a cut overall. In terms of the overall package, we protected the quantum that Wales received. We protected the percentage of the total funds available that Wales received. I will say it quietly because of my colleagues in the Northern Ireland Office and the Scotland Office, but we did better than any other nation of the UK. We have protected those funds for Wales. You mentioned the capital-revenue split. I might come to Ciarán on this, because he is the expert on how this is working. Ciarán Hayes: In terms of the capital-revenue split, you are right that it is much more heavily weighted towards capital than revenue. That is a product of the way the spending review settlement worked. There was more funding available for capital. There were very extensive negotiations between the Wales Office, MHCLG and the Treasury to get the maximum number possible, but the product of that is that there is a bit more of the split on the capital side than we would ideally like. The key thing here is that we want to work collaboratively with the Welsh Government and other partners to make sure we are getting the maximum value out of the funding as a whole. It is not just about looking at the funding as if it is completely ringfenced and cannot interact with anything else; it is also about looking at the extent to which that funding can link in with other pots of funding to achieve those wider objectives.

What I would say on that, Ann, is that obviously there have been rural communities included within the funding. The criteria for the funding are based on the Welsh index of multiple deprivation, so it is on Welsh criteria that the funding has been determined. It is a very Welsh programme, with Welsh criteria, for Wales.

On the £20 million fund, every local authority has had £1.5 million from the Pride in Place impact fund. I wonder about the example you raised about the bus service in the north of the constituency. That might be something the Pride in Place impact fund could help towards. Every single local authority in Wales has had £1.5 million. We have done the specific funding of £20 million going into 14 places in Wales, and then over £500 million in local growth funding.

First of all, there was a transitional year because, in the first spending review in 2024, we had a transitional year for the end of SPF. I know the Welsh Government have designed a transitional year in the new local growth fund that is replacing it. We and the Welsh Government were absolutely determined to make that transition as smooth as possible for local authorities. We have worked very closely with officials in the Welsh Government, and I have worked with Cabinet Secretary Rebecca Evans on this. We jointly wrote to all 22 local authorities in November last year, setting this out and saying, specifically, that we wanted to smooth that transition. As part of the work in developing the investment plan, which the Welsh Government develop for the funds, I know that they have been having regular discussions with local authority leaders as they prepare for that first year, starting in April. There has been very extensive dialogue. I am hopeful that transition will be as smooth as possible, because we absolutely understand some of the concerns that have been raised.

Certainly, the industrial strategy has a really powerful Welsh story at the heart of it, because we have strength in pretty much all of those eight sectors. That is where we are seeing lots of investment and job creation. For example, compound semiconductors are one of them. I have mentioned that, but there is also the industrial strategy, and the defence growth deal, where we have a footprint in Wales from the top five MOD suppliers. We have particular expertise in autonomy and aerospace, where we know there is massive potential for growth and jobs. On foundational industries such as steel, everything we have done to protect the steel industry in Wales, and to help it transition from the way steel was made in the past to the way it is going to be made in the future, is done on the basis not just of protecting the jobs in Wales but ensuring that we have that capability in the UK, because we are going to need it in the future. That is why the work of the transition board has been so important, making sure that people can stay in the steelworks and can go and get new jobs in the supply chain or set up businesses. The foundational industries are absolutely important. The steel strategy, which I hope we will see soon, will tell the story of what we want to see in terms of developing steel in this country in the future, because we know we are going to need more of it, not less. We want to increase the amount of domestic steel that is used right across the UK, as well as exports.

Skills is a devolved policy area, but I know that the Welsh Government are celebrating 100,000 apprenticeships in this Senedd term this week, and they have a skills strategy. I talked earlier about our universities.

Not at all, no. I would not just look at it in relation to skills; I would look at it in terms of the growth deals. We have some examples such as what universities are doing, the money that is going into transport infrastructure, and the linkage between universities and new industries. Courses are being set up specifically to train people and give them the skills to do the new jobs that we will see in the future. Renewable energy in Pembrokeshire is the most obvious example of that. I have met apprentices in various companies that are involved in renewables. We are seeing that this is a new area for people to get qualified in and get jobs in, enabling them to stay in the communities where they have been born and grown up. I do not accept that it is, as you describe it, condensing—or whatever term you used. Sorry, Henry, I do not accept that it is doing that.

It is not specifically on coal tips or coal remediation, but there are two projects. In the Budget, the Chancellor announced £4.23 million to clean up contaminated brownfield land adjacent to the Celtic freeport, and the transition board has given £8 million of funding to support the South Wales Industrial Transition from Carbon Hub—SWITCH—project, which is a bit of a mouthful. Essentially, it is going to clean up a load of land and establish an innovation district in Port Talbot that is going to support loads of jobs and generate a load of money for the local economy. Again, it is about being able to help those supply chain businesses innovate, get new customers, grow and create new jobs. There are two specific examples there of what we are doing around land remediation.