Lee Waters: Although the responsibility for broadband rests with the UK Government, and is not a power devolved to Wales, we continue to engage regularly with colleagues in Westminster to ensure that Wales benefits fully from roll-out initiatives including the £5 billion 'Outside-In' full-fibre deployment programme and through collaborative funding of support schemes.
Lee Waters: We continue to support the economy throughout Wales, including the Swansea city region, with our COVID-19 commitment, ensuring those who are in need of financial support are able to get it. We are also pressing on with the Swansea bay city deal, which will boost the region by £1.8 billion over the next 15 years.
Lee Waters: Our strategy is to lay a strong and positive foundation for change across the area. To date, the Tech Valleys programme has made commitments of over £27 million, which will facilitate at least 600 sustainable jobs. The Transforming Towns programme, too, has a strong Heads of the Valleys focus as part of its £110 million investment.
Lee Waters: I think that's an excellent and timely point. I was just reading earlier the report from Sheffield Hallam University by Steve Fothergill and Christina Beatty on the impact of coronavirus on older industrial Britain. I believe that they are soon to speak to the cross-party group on industrial communities that Vikki Howells chairs. They were making the point in their report that the downturn...
Lee Waters: Today, we are setting out the plans that will guide our economic recovery from the coronavirus pandemic. The COVID crisis has shown us very clearly the importance of an economy that is more resilient to external shocks. It has underlined the critical role played by key workers, and the importance of everyday goods and services to the well-being of our communities and to our economy. The...
Lee Waters: Well, my goodness, a dozen or so questions, which is going to be impossible to do justice to in the time. So, I'm not sure which one of the dozen Russell George really wants me to answer, because I can't answer them all. So, let me try and give an answer in the round. He rightly quoted me using the Basque phrase of 'building the road as we travel'. I'd originally road tested a more flippant...
Lee Waters: Cheap, cheap points, which on the one hand makes contributions in the Chamber welcoming our different approach, and on the other hand in political propaganda belittling it. So, I was disappointed to see that, but not surprised. But what we're really trying to do is—. He asked what we'd learnt, and I think through the provision of PPE—. He nods his head, but he can't score cheap political...
Lee Waters: Well, thank you for that and for the endorsement of an experimental approach. Just to take the final point first, I think it's a really legitimate point about businesses in the food sector falling between the food division and the economic development division, and one of the challenges of the foundational economy is it does cut across a number of different silos. And I think that also speaks...
Lee Waters: Thank you. I entirely agree with that analysis, and the point about key workers, I think, is very well made, and it helps address one of the questions we have: what is the foundational economy? It's a clunky phrase; it's not a terribly elegant political concept. But I think people can see now who key workers are, and how valuable they are, when the chips are down especially, and how they have...
Lee Waters: Well, this is a pro-business agenda. It's pro local business, small business, grounded firm, and we want capable Welsh firms to grow, to innovate, to have higher productivity, to export. This isn't about some sleepy backwater of the economy that we want to keep sleepy; we want to disrupt this part of our economy, where fair work is a part of its features and higher wages too. Thinking of...
Lee Waters: I think one of the exciting things about the agenda, which also is one of the most difficult things about the agenda, is the richness of its diversity. There are so many different elements to it, but at its heart it is about iteration, experimentation. So it's in that co-operative, guild spirit of local enterprise and adaptation to local circumstances. And so that's why community ownership...
Lee Waters: Last week, I launched our economic resilience and reconstruction mission, which offers grounded optimism for the future and will help our people, businesses and communities succeed and flourish amid a backdrop of incredibly difficult circumstances. Three hundred and nine business in South Wales West have received £6.8 million via our business development grant, amongst other funds available.
Lee Waters: The Welsh Government continues to provide emergency support for businesses in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Our latest restrictions fund has already seen over 4,415 grants paid to businesses in Rhondda Cynon Taf, totalling over £14.1 million. We are actively considering the economic position and exploring further options for supporting businesses.
Lee Waters: We made a COVID commitment to support people into education, employment or training. We acted swiftly and, in July 2020, invested £40 million in jobs and skills to boost front-line services and programmes, to support individuals at risk of redundancy, or seeking new or alternative employment or skills.
Lee Waters: Three million pounds of funding has been made available to towns throughout Wales following a study by the Centre For Towns. Merthyr Tydfil has been awarded £834,549 to provide a grant scheme for businesses, which will support with enhancements both internally and externally to aid business trading in response to the pandemic.
Lee Waters: Yes, I completely agree. I think digital is a really important part of how we've regenerated town centres and how we create a data-based policy approach. So, there's already been support for the town and enabling towns. For example, Rhymney town centre has had a £30,000 grant to enable Caerphilly, to enable them, to introduce free Wi-Fi provision in the town centre. We're doing this now...
Lee Waters: Yes, thank you very much, Dirprwy Lywydd, and I must thank the committee for their considered report and the way that they conducted the inquiry and everybody who has made a contribution to the debate this afternoon. As Mike Hedges has put it, what COVID has done has supercharged what was already happening. And we don't want to return by default, simply because we haven't put in place an...
Lee Waters: I'm pleased to say that the report's recommendations were broadly in line with the plans that we are already developing within Government, and we are working on a set of recommendations and a report that will be available—a strategy—for the next Government in September or October. And it is a complex piece of work to think through all of the different elements to it. Today, we have...
Lee Waters: Diolch, Llywydd. On 19 March, I was proud to publish the Welsh Government's new Wales transport strategy. It sets what we consider to be a bold new vision for transport in Wales over the next two decades. And the context for the document is very clear: we are in the midst of a climate crisis, and it is time—indeed, it is urgent—that we turn the broad consensus that now exists for action...
Lee Waters: Dirprwy Lywydd, a number of points to address there, and obviously I'm conscious this is the penultimate session of the Senedd before the election, and Russell George is in election mode, and I obviously factor that into my response. It's a different Russell George who chairs with great consensus the Economy, Infrastructure and Skills Committee, and the same Russell George who signed up to a...
