Higher Paid Workforce

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:08 pm on 13 June 2023.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 2:08, 13 June 2023

Well, of course, I agree with Mike Hedges that the universities have a very important role to play in that. In Veeqo, in his own Constituency, that I visited with the Member for Swansea East, the 80 highly skilled technical roles that that business supports rely on their relationship with the university to attract graduates to those businesses. The general point that Mike Hedges makes is a very important one, Llywydd: we need more jobs in highly paid sectors here in Wales. And the strategies that the Minister for Economy is pursuing, the innovation strategy that was launched with the then leader of Plaid Cymru back in February and the investment that the Minister announced only last week in this area are designed to support those highly paid sectors that we have here in Wales. And we have them, Llywydd, as well. The tech and cyber sectors that the Minister made a statement on in front of the Senedd last week is one of those. Video games—there's a cluster of video game developers in Swansea itself. Fintech—another sector in which there is strong growth here in Wales. The media sector—Cardiff has the third largest screen sector in the United Kingdom after London and Manchester, and paying wages above that median Welsh figure. So, the Welsh Government's strategy has a real focus on identifying those sectors, helping them with the things that the Welsh Government can provide—and that is essentially investment in skills and in infrastructure—and, where there are nascent industries, as there are in Paul Davies's constituency, for example, we are investing there in the marine energy sector, powerful investment. Those will be the jobs of the future, and they'll be the sorts of jobs that Mike Hedges was asking about. 

Minister

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constituency

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