5. Will the Minister outline his priority sectors for economic development in Mid and West Wales? OAQ(5)0050(EI)

Our economic development priorities for all parts of Wales are set out in ‘Taking Wales Forward’.

Thank you for that response. Ensuring that our rural communities are technologically connected is crucially important for all sectors of our economy. Given that a report was published today that highlights the fact that mobile network for towns and villages in Mid and West Wales is poor, has the Government given any comment on the idea of giving new guidance to local authorities that would enable them to relax their planning rules and regulations so that we can build taller masts—as has been agreed in England—up to 25m, so that we can improve the signal in those areas?

I’d like to thank the Member for her question. Of course, mobile connectivity is a non-devolved area. Where we have been able to directly intervene through Superfast Cymru, we have made great strides. Superfast Cymru will see Wales become the most connected nation in western Europe, and in parts of mid Wales, such as Powys, 63 per cent of properties are now able to access it. We’ll be working through to 2017 to ensure that the remaining 37 per cent of premises are able to access fast and reliable broadband.

It’s also worth pointing out that properties in mid Wales are achieving far higher average broadband speeds than across Wales as an average. In parts of Ceredigion, for example, the average speed is above 65 Mbps.

As I mentioned, mobile connectivity is non-devolved, but we are continuing our engagement with the mobile network operators to identify what can be done to expand coverage throughout rural parts of Wales, and that includes pressing Ofcom through meetings, and indeed through consultation responses, to use its regulatory powers to improve mobile coverage across Wales, including calling for geographic coverage obligations to be included in future auctions of spectrum, not just coverage obligations that concern the number of individuals who are able to access mobile networks.

One of the areas that should certainly be a Government priority area is your enterprise zones. In Pembrokeshire, around the Cleddau, you have an enterprise zone where you have to pay a toll to go from one part of the enterprise zone to another, and then pay another toll to come back. I’m talking, of course, about the tolls on the Cleddau bridge—the bridge that spans the two parts of the Haven Waterway enterprise zone. Do you still intend as a Government to turn that bridge into a trunk road? If you do intend, as was your previous intention, to proceed with that, how, therefore, will you abolish those tolls?

I’m intuitively opposed to a tax on travel by taxing bridge use, which may actually be raised shortly in a future question from Mark Reckless. In terms of the particular bridge that the Member mentions in the enterprise zone, I’ve not yet investigated trunking that particular route, but it is something that I would be keen to give consideration to if it can, in turn, lead to a growth in the local economy.

Cabinet Secretary, would you please outline to us the chain of command in terms of decisions and sign-offs that applies in relation to the use of public money in driving forward economic development? I’d be interested to understand clearly from you your view on who deploys it, obviously from Welsh Government on down through the chain of command, who signs off and conducts the due diligence and who is responsible for then monitoring the outcomes of said due diligence.

Ultimately, I am responsible for signing off decisions and I’m responsible for ensuring that due diligence has been carried out by my officials and by my heads of sector teams. If the Member has any specific concerns regarding decisions that I or any of my predecessors have taken, I’d very much welcome any notice of that.