Speeches by Stevens.

“The situations in Scunthorpe and Port Talbot are and were very different. In Port Talbot, we had a private company that wanted to invest, complete a transition and make a commitment, and was willing to work with us to do that. We managed to secure a very good deal, including not only the building of the electric arc fu…”

“I am sure that that would be fine.”

“We were able to secure funding for Brand Wales in the spending review. What I hear from businesses is that they feel that over the past few years we have not been promoting what we do in Wales well enough abroad—that there is some work that goes on, but we could do an awful lot more. That is why we put a bid into the s…”

“Absolutely, yes.”

“It was very special. That shows the strength and focus of our negotiating teams. The situation with the tariffs and the changing nature of the negotiations with the United States is not easy to deal with, I am sure. I am not in the centre of it. I put my views into the DBT team and the Secretary of State leads on that.…”

“You missed a treat.”

“No, absolutely. We were the first country to do a deal with the United States. We have done a trade agreement with the biggest economy in the world, the fastest growing economy in the world and our largest trading partner, the European Union. I do not know whether you were at President Macron’s address yesterday—”

“The discussions are ongoing. There are intense discussions ongoing. There was a deadline this week, which has been shifted by President Trump to 1 August. That gives us more time to resolve an issue that we know is there. We are absolutely determined to reach an agreement. I know that everybody is working very hard to …”

“Absolutely. We promised that we would look after our steel communities and that is exactly what we are going to do. We hope that all the things around, for example, port redevelopment, floating offshore wind and the industrial strategy will drive Port Talbot to be a clean energy hub, creating thousands and thousands of…”

“Where we are in terms of the timeline is that we expected that the transition within Tata, and the restructuring, would have been much further along the line by now. In fact, there are quite a lot of people still working at Tata who we originally anticipated would have left by now, so that is good news. As a board, we …”

“No, not that I am aware of, but I know that work is starting on it pretty imminently. I would hope that it would not be too long, because now that we have the funding secured, we have to get on with delivering it. We have the advantage that the projects that you referred to, for example the Burns report, the changes on…”

“Let me start with the £445 million. At least £445 million was announced in the spending review. You will recall that, in the lead-up to the spending review, there were some major transport announcements in English mayoral combined authority areas. There is a Barnett consequential from those to Wales of just over £200 m…”

“The funding is there in order to support businesses, particularly SMEs, of which we have a huge number in Wales. Over 96% of our businesses are SMEs. It is support for them and support for places to make sure that our villages, towns and cities are safe and pleasant places to live, but also to help growth in local area…”

“We now have a multi-year settlement on local growth funds, protecting that 22.5% share of the UK pot and the quantum. We had a manifesto commitment that there would be a role for the elected representatives of Wales in the future SPF funds. The Prime Minister made a commitment about decision making for the Welsh Govern…”

“That is a matter for the Welsh Government and the Welsh Local Government Association to determine between them. Under the funding arrangements, spending per head of population in Wales is £1.20, compared with £1 for the rest of the UK, so there is already an uplift in relation to that. On the national insurance contrib…”

“I am not sure that I would agree with the assessment that local government will face cuts. There have been record budget settlements for Wales in the autumn Budget last year and in the multi-year spending review, so there will be nearly £5 billion extra for the Welsh Government to spend on public services, and local au…”

“We said that we would review the framework, so we will review it in its entirety. There are different settlements and arrangements for the different nations. Scotland and Northern Ireland have had theirs reviewed. We have not had ours reviewed. That is why we made the promise to do it. It could have been done in previo…”

“Yes, it is a manifesto commitment to review it. It is important. We have had a year, and quite a busy year so far, but we are in discussions with the Welsh Government about it. We have to spread our priorities out over the parliamentary term, but I am very clear that the framework is out of date. It was set up a decade…”

“Absolutely, and there is more to come. In our manifesto, we made a commitment about devolving employment support to Wales, so that decisions about how those sorts of programmes are designed and led are made as locally as possible. On those trailblazer projects, local leaders in the local authorities are designing the s…”

“You have set the statistics out, and some of it is quite strong in terms of its impact. I think there are two factors driving those statistics. They do not explain the whole picture. It is partially our ageing population. We have areas that have been deindustrialised, where there is a legacy of industrial disease and i…”