<p>Swansea Bay City Region</p>

Part of 1. 1. Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government – in the Senedd at 2:12 pm on 21 September 2016.

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Photo of Suzy Davies Suzy Davies Conservative 2:12, 21 September 2016

Yes, can I also be associated with those remarks? And Mike Hedges is quite right to say we’re all rather concerned about this.

The membership of the board is pretty evenly balanced between public sector and private sector, but there’s no place on it for business membership groups like the Federation of Small Businesses or other key organisations that really could help maximise use of local supply chains in what should be an ambitious vision for this region. I met the Association of British Ports at a recent reception in Cardiff Bay and was surprised to hear that, at that stage, they’d not been involved in any discussions on the city bay deal vision at all. Could you remind the Assembly how the membership board was decided, and do you have any concerns about whether the very individualistic nature of the representation of the private sector—and I make no comment about the individuals involved—compared to the more corporate representation by local authorities might be limiting the speed at which the deal is progressing at all? It’s going to take a major buy-in from a wide private sector in the bay to advance any ideas for a potential ‘Mittelstand’, for example, and I just don’t see any sign of this stuff being publicised to any of us. Thank you.