James Evans hopes the appointment of a “Minister for Delivery” will help the Welsh Government achieve greater success in hitting its targets.

The Brecon and Radnorshire MS asked at the Senedd how the Delivery Minister, Julie James, will ensure that Cabinet Secretaries deliver on the Government's priorities.

He told Ms James: “It is good to see that, after 25 years, the Welsh Labour Government have finally decided that they need to deliver for the Welsh public and appointed a Minister for Delivery.

“House-building targets have been missed, NHS waiting lists are getting longer and education standards are dropping - not the sort of delivery that the Welsh public were hoping for.

“I'm very interested to learn how your role will work and how you will ensure that Cabinet Secretaries will deliver on their priorities as set out by the First Minister.

“You’ve supposed to have been delivering for 25 years, and I'm sure the public would love to know how you're going to deliver now.”

Ms James said it remains the responsibility of the relevant portfolio Cabinet Secretary to lead delivery of the Government’s priorities.

She said: “My role will be to provide additional capacity to support my Cabinet colleagues by bringing people together across Government to find innovative ways of driving delivery of our priorities at greater pace.”

During what became a lively part of the session, Ms James said she would be “more than happy to come with a list of Welsh Government achievements” and said the last time she was asked to do that she had to be cut off as she’d run out of time “because of the large number of things” that have been delivered over the last 25 years.

Amid noise and sounds of disapproval and laughter from the opposition benches, Ms James then took aim at the Conservatives.

“The absolute truth is that you cannot have decent public services without decent public service funding, which we have been deprived of for 14 years,” she said.

“What we are trying to do here is maximise the scarce resource we have to deliver on our promises for the people of Wales - something we have always done and that is very scarce on the opposite benches.”