We move on to the next item on the agenda, which is the statement by the Minister for Lifelong Learning and Welsh Language on an update on the ministerial taskforce for the Valleys. I call on Alun Davies to move the statement. Alun.

Thank you very much, Deputy Presiding Officer.

When I launched the ministerial taskforce for the south Wales Valleys in a statement to the National Assembly in July, I committed to updating Members about its progress. The taskforce has held its first meeting, meeting local stakeholders and receiving presentations on a range of issues. The second meeting later this month will have a specific focus on jobs and prosperity. I will repeat today what I said in July: I am determined this taskforce will have a positive and lasting impact on people’s lives and on our Valleys communities. We know that achieving change will not be easy. Many of the issues facing our Valleys communities are deep-seated and long-standing. They are the result of generational changes and will take time to reverse.

I intend to draw upon the strengths of our Valleys communities. We must be mindful that the Valleys are not a single homogenous area, but are areas that are achieving economic renewal, encouraging employment figures and improvements in skills, educational attainment, health and well-being. I want to build on these foundations. I have been struck by the energy, commitment and passion of the taskforce members. Members have been drawn together from a range of different sectors. This is helping to provide a real balance of views and to provide challenge where appropriate. The taskforce members are also providing us with a wealth of experience in areas that are crucial to our ambitions. We have already begun to harness that expertise to kick-start our thinking. I am also looking to continue to strengthen the taskforce and will make a further statement on the membership of the taskforce when appropriate.

The taskforce has a clear remit to drive change, and this includes challenging and shaping future delivery. In particular, there is a strong recognition that community-led engagement is fundamental. If the taskforce is to have a real impact on jobs, improving skills, educational attainment and health outcomes, then its work and priorities need to be driven and developed in collaboration with local people and local communities.

Following the first meeting, which was held in September in Trehafod in the Rhondda, four key challenges have been identified, which will underpin our work. Firstly, positive communication and community involvement; secondly, increased access to good-quality jobs and increasing employability skills; thirdly, better integration and co-ordination across public services; and finally, maximising benefits from structures and organisations already working with and in the Valleys. These priorities will act as an initial platform to drive real change.

Engagement and empowering communities to identify local priorities is a fundamental principle at the heart of our approach. I do not underestimate the scale of the challenge this represents. The Valleys are a complex patchwork of communities, and they will all have a view—and sometimes differing views—and competing priorities, but that only emphasises the importance of doing everything we can to give people an opportunity to express those views. We should be prepared to use innovative techniques where they can offer new insights. We are, for example, exploring the option of working with researchers to collect real-time information about people’s attitudes, aspirations and priorities. We will consider a targeted campaign to raise the profile of the Valleys.

We need to both safeguard and create jobs to drive a more vibrant Valleys economy. The next meeting of the taskforce, on 28 November, will be a jobs summit, allowing us to focus on employment. We will be involving private and public sector employers, and we will look at all of our policy levers that are available to ensure that they are aligned to deliver economic growth. Jobs are key to our ambitions, but we will also need to make sure that the people living in Valleys communities have the skills they need to compete for those jobs, and they need to be able to access those jobs.

The Cardiff capital city deal, city regions and the Swansea Bay city region provide real opportunities for Valleys communities. Capitalising on the city deal will include harnessing the full possibilities offered by the south Wales metro. Flexible, affordable and integrated transport throughout and across the Valleys will be vital for our future. Our commitment to the metro is clear, but I do not believe that we should be satisfied with simply delivering the metro. We will need to work with our local partners to identify the other investment opportunities that the metro will make possible. This is a once-in-a-lifetime development for the Valleys, and we must make the most of it whilst at the same time ensuring that those communities not directly served by the metro are not left behind.

I also feel that we should not feel constrained to limit our interventions to those initiatives that we’ve used in the past. We need to be innovative in our thinking, and we should be prepared to use the Valleys to test new approaches. Why not use the Valleys to develop new ways of linking the people who need jobs with the employers trying to fill vacancies? We are already exploring whether there may be more flexible ways to respond to those needs. The taskforce provides us with a new way of looking at these issues, and it provides new ways to identify the key partners who will support our delivery.

There are examples of excellent practice all over the Valleys that we can build upon. We have already heard from projects making a real difference for their communities, but we’ve also heard some very clear messages that those projects are all too often having to overcome some bureaucratic barriers. We need to be prepared to challenge those barriers and to remove those barriers, but I don’t want the taskforce to simply offer commentary from the sidelines. Our early discussions suggest that there is scope for us to pilot new forms of project delivery. I want us to examine how we might join up existing programmes to even greater effect. I would welcome any comments that Members may care to make on this and other matters. I am intending to make a further announcement on this aspect of our plans in the near future.

Deputy Presiding Officer, I am also concerned to ensure that wider Government initiatives will help deliver on our ambitions. The recent statement on community resilience made by my colleague, the Cabinet Secretary for Communities and Children, provides a useful reminder for the taskforce about the importance of public services working together but also involving the third sector. This includes putting people at the centre of local delivery. The board we have established at official level to support the work of the taskforce provides us with a mechanism for making sure that we identify and capture other areas of policy development that may cut across our work.

I will emphasise again that my approach to the work of the taskforce is as much about bringing together work already under way as it is promoting new work. I have no desire to develop parallel or competing delivery structures for the Valleys. I want us to identify those policy initiatives that can make a real difference, and then I want us to develop the most effective delivery structures to implement those policies. I will continue to work closely with all of my ministerial colleagues on this work, and the taskforce will continue to provide a mechanism for helping us to ensure that our response is as coherent as possible.

Deputy Presiding Officer, it is still early days but I am pleased to reiterate that the taskforce’s forward work programme will build in outcomes and evidence to measure change. This will include a focus on well-being to reflect what people and communities are feeling and telling us. Our work will be led and influenced by what those communities tell us. I will continue to update Members as the taskforce’s work progresses and evolves in the coming months.

I thank the Minister for his statement this afternoon. The Welsh Conservatives welcome the setting up of this taskforce for the Valleys. The Minister said that the taskforce members have been drawn from a range of different sectors. However, I’m concerned that the membership of the taskforce is heavily weighted in favour of the public sector rather than the private sector. Given the importance of inward investment, entrepreneurship and skills to delivering economic benefits to the Valleys, why does the taskforce contain so few members with business experience?

The Minister referred to the first meeting in September. I have read the minutes of this meeting and was surprised that no mention was made of the importance of digital infrastructure to growing the economy of the Valleys. Research into the extent of digital exclusion in Wales shows that disparities in access to minimal speeds of broadband, 4G connectivity, internet skills and internet users determine how likely a community is to be digitally excluded. Merthyr Tydfil, Caerphilly, Blaenau Gwent and Torfaen all have a high risk of digital exclusion at present. How will the taskforce, across Government, in this and other areas, ensure it delivers positive results?

The Valleys benefited from millions of pounds in structural funding from the European Union and yet these communities had the highest percentage of votes to leave the European Union. People simply did not feel the benefits of EU funding. How will the Minister engage with these communities to ensure this taskforce meets the needs and aspirations of the people to deliver tangible benefits rather than just throwing money at the problems?

The statement set out four key challenges that the taskforce has to achieve. When will the Minister be in a position to provide targets by which we can measure the success of his progress in the fields of education, health, poverty, housing and economic development? Deputy Presiding Officer, finally, I welcome his commitment to develop clear and accountable outcomes for each of these priorities and look forward to receiving regular progress reports from him in future on what he just promised. Thank you.

I think Members across the Chamber enjoy the regular lectures we have from the Conservative Party on the difficulties facing Valleys communities, much of which, of course, are the direct consequence of the policies of a Conservative Government. If you take, for example, the welfare reform programme that is currently going through the United Kingdom Parliament, you will see that the communities of the south Wales Valleys will be losing £350 million. That’s not £350 million being taken from various institutions and different bodies; that’s being taken out of the pockets of some of the poorest and most vulnerable people in our communities, and money that would overwhelmingly be spent in those communities as well.

So, I understand the point that the Conservative Member has made, but I’ll say this to him: the membership of the taskforce has been drawn to provide us with knowledge, expertise and also experience of the Valleys. Those of us who are from the Valleys understand the communities and understand what drives some of the issues that the Member has referred to. Let me say this: I will be looking towards strengthening the membership of the taskforce. I’ve given that commitment to a number of different Members and I will make a written statement on that when it is appropriate. But, we will continue to draw from the Valleys of south Wales and we will continue to ensure that we will engage and involve the communities of the Valleys of south Wales, and we’ll be led by the ambitions and the visions of people who live in the Valleys of south Wales. When I listen to the issues raised by the Conservatives about digital access and exclusion, of course the issues in the Valleys—and my constituency is a good example of this—aren’t the technical issues that he’s described, but more fundamental social issues about digital exclusion, which are far more difficult to address and which have been addressed by this Government in different guises and different projects over the last few years. What those projects, of course, have in common is that they’ve all been completely opposed by the Conservative Party.

I always start from the point of trying to—. Especially as somebody, if we want to out ourselves as being someone from the Valleys, I want to start from the point of where we can make improvements, but I do fear—and I want to be constructive—I do fear, having read this, that it is a commentary from the sidelines. I see quite a lot of pretty words, I see a lot of talk of collaboration and communication, but I don’t see where we can deliver outcomes.

I want to know, from the £50,000 that you have devoted to this particular taskforce, how you will turn around those communities for the future. Have you, for example, looked at other European countries and whether they have similar set-ups, and how they then lead to transformational change? Because we have recently heard from the communities Minister—as you didn’t directly talk about in your statement, but indirectly talked about—with regard to Communities First that we are having a consultation potentially to end that particular programme. So, I need to understand from you, as Minister, how that fits into the wider debate about what you say about how we can talk about what’s already there and how the schemes that are already working—projects that are in our communities currently—how they will then be able to take some of these ideas from the taskforce forward if Communities First no longer exists in the way that it once did and that it’s going to change for the future.

I, personally, do still have concerns about the make-up of the taskforce. Many of them are associated with the Labour Party and I would have liked to have seen a wider approach to the membership. So, I look forward to your written statement on that. I would have liked to have seen, from the first meeting happening in the Rhondda, some new ideas around how you would have engaged people in the Rhondda by the fact that the taskforce was actually happening there. There are new ideas from the Electoral Reform Society, from others working in the sector, in terms of engagement as to how then they could have actually participated in that first taskforce meeting, which I personally didn’t see. If there was something, then I apologise to you for that.

I do see that there are mixed messages also in this statement. You say on the one hand that we need innovative thinking, but then you say at the end of the statement that it is as much about bringing together work that is already under way. What is it and what is your vision for this? I think Steffan Lewis, my colleague, previously mentioned the metro and how we can help people in the Valleys to not only get to Cardiff, but to actually bring jobs to the Valleys. I want to understand from you what mechanism you have to influence the metro scheme so that it can be not only taking people out of their communities to work, but putting jobs back in there for them.

We’re not opposing what you’re doing outright, but I think what we need to see are tangible outcomes and measurable outcomes from you for this. You will have had two meetings by the end of the year, so I predict you may have about 10 meetings a year. What are those 10 meetings going to be able to deliver for the long-term future for our Valleys communities? Because nobody—well, I speak for myself, but there are people in this room who want to see the areas that we’ve mentioned prosper, but we do not want another talking shop to be created, which some people have come to me to say—not my words; they’ve come to me to say that—and so I would urge you to hear that from them and to make sure that it does not end up being what they predicted.

I agree very much with many of the points made by Bethan Jenkins, and I understand the sincerity of the way that she’s expressed those points. Let me say this: it is my absolute determination that this taskforce will not be simply a talking shop, and will not provide the commentary from the sidelines that she’s described. Clearly, in establishing a body there are a number of conversations that you need to have about how that body will operate and the structures within which it will operate.

I would say to the Member for South Wales West, as well as to other Members in the Chamber today, that it would be useful to look at the minutes of the meeting that we held last month and to keep an eye on the website, because we will be operating in an entirely transparent way where the papers, agendas and minutes of each meeting will be made public and you’ll be able to understand exactly the sorts of conversations that are taking place.

In terms of the budget that is currently allocated to the taskforce, I expect that to be spent largely on engagement activities, in some ways using some of the mechanisms that the Member has described, but also to look at some of the innovative ways in which we are able to conduct engagement and involving people in decision taking and decision making, which currently isn’t done. The Member will see from the Valleys taskforce website that we have already started doing that, and given that some considerable thought. But I do recognise that we do need outcomes and outputs from that as well, and certainly I hope to be able to further update Members on what those outcomes will be.

In terms of the potential conflict, if you like, between innovative thinking and work under way, I was very clear—and I want to repeat this, because this is absolutely essential—that, in creating a Valleys taskforce, what we are not doing is creating a parallel delivery mechanism for either present policies or, potentially, future policies for the Valleys of south Wales. Any taskforce of that nature doesn’t and cannot have the capacity of Government departments and Government delivery mechanisms to do that, and we would fail. So, I do not want to do that, and that is not what I intend the taskforce to be. What I hope we’ll be able to do is to work alongside existing structures, existing programmes, existing mechanisms of delivery in order to ensure that they do deliver for the Valleys of south Wales.

I met earlier today with the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government in order to discuss how we will ensure that these delivery mechanisms are streamlined and do not duplicate work that is already under way, and how the taskforce will add value to the ambitions that are already being described by people such as those working with the city region and the city deal. At the same time, I’ve met with and discussed with the Cabinet Secretary for the economy and transport in order to have exactly the discussions that the Member’s outlined in terms of the metro. Now, I and the Member sitting next to her from South Wales East both come from Tredegar, a community that will not be served by the metro in terms of the rail services, but does need to be connected to the metro in terms of bus services and other forms of public transport. We recognise that we need to have a very significant investment in public transport to enable people both to access jobs, but also to remove, if you like, the perception of distance that currently exists, particularly here in Cardiff, that the Valleys are a long way away and that it takes a lot of time and is very difficult to reach those communities, whereas in fact a fast-access transport system will start to change those perceptions and will have, I believe, a very positive impact both on jobs and also on life within the Valleys.

But I do undertake that we will publish clear targets and we will continue to update the Chamber on the initiatives that we’re taking.

I will make one comment: we received this statement just 10 minutes before Plenary. It’s hardly a basis for good scrutiny and to make comments on this statement, but using a little bit of crystal ball gazing and some historical evidence, I would like to say, as a constituent of the Valleys, it saddens me that, yet again, we have to embrace a new ‘Valleys’ strategy. I put the word ‘Valleys’ in inverted commas as if the Valleys are, in some way, different from other—and again it pains me to say it—deprived areas of Wales. Peter Walker’s Valleys initiative way back in 1988 began a saga of such targeted plans, followed by David Hunt’s Valleys programme and several other such projects by the Labour Government itself, culminating of course in Labour’s Heads of the Valleys programme, which seems now to have faded away. I therefore hope that this latest strategic initiative will not prove to be as bereft of real economic improvements as its predecessors. What is so different about this project that makes the Cabinet Secretary so convinced it will succeed where others have so patently failed, or will this prove, yet again, to be another costly publicity stunt?

I’m not sure whether I should be grateful for those comments or not. Let me say this: UKIP has a rather curious track record in these things, where the voting record of its elected Members doesn’t always match the rhetoric employed at different occasions. The leader of UKIP in this place never stops reminding us that he was proud to vote for the 1981 budget that led to extraordinary levels of poverty and to de-industrialisation in the Valleys of south Wales. The UKIP Member sitting adjacent to you on these benches was very happy as a Conservative to vote for austerity, which has led directly to the loss of the £350 million from some of the most vulnerable people in the Valleys of south Wales, which I referred to earlier. I listen to what UKIP has to say and then I look at their voting record, and I have to say that there are few organisations that have a record of being so destructive for the communities of the south Wales Valleys as UKIP.

You ask what is different about what we’re embarking upon today and those initiatives of the past. Let me say this: this is an initiative that is led by people in the Valleys, from the Valleys; that is led by the visions and the ambitions for people in the Valleys, from the Valleys; it encompasses the whole of Government and not simply a department of Government; it brings together all the different ambitions and visions of this Government for the communities that we seek to represent and the communities from which we were born. And let me say this: we are absolutely committed to ensuring that we will deliver for those communities and that we will invest in those communities in the same way as you have sown the seeds of economic de-industrialisation in those communities.

I thank the Minister for his statement, which I welcome, and I thank him also for advance notice of the statement, which, speaking personally, gave me plenty of time to read it in advance. He’s mentioned in his answers so far—and he’s reiterated it in the statement, which I welcome—the commitment to engaging with the communities to shape the work of the taskforce. Can I press him a little on that? In his mind, what does that look like? What would a constituent of mine in the Neath valley, for example, feel was their relationship to the taskforce? What will they be asked about, and in what will they participate in shaping? So, if he can elaborate on that I’d be grateful. The second point is in relation to the question of public transport. He’s indicated the approach to connecting communities that aren’t on the metro. There are parts of the western Valleys who feel very far from the metro. So, can he comment on public investment in public transport in that part of the Valleys as well, please?

I think it’s very important that we ensure that people across the whole of the Valleys feel that this is a structure that speaks for them and on behalf of them. I think sometimes there is a danger that we will focus in on the central Valleys of Glamorganshire and the eastern Valleys of Gwent. I think it is important that the western Valleys of Carmarthenshire and of Glamorgan that you represent also feel that they’re a part of that. I certainly will be making a great effort, personally, to ensure that that happens. Certainly, as somebody who has already sat in this place to represent the Gwendraeth valleys and the Swansea valley, I will ensure that that happens and that no part of these communities is forgotten or left behind.

But, in order to answer the questions directly, let me say this: I believe that we need to be engaging at a number of different levels. We need to have a very deep and broad understanding of communities. We all come from different parts of the Valleys and have our own perspectives. Certainly, I will be investing in research that provides us with, I hope, a very rich view of what people are thinking and saying within the Valleys communities. We will certainly invest in that sort of research. Also, I will be investing time in speaking to people, speaking with people and organisations across and throughout the Valleys, listening to what people have to say, listening to what concerns people and what their ambitions are, whether it’s in the Dulais valley, or the Neath valley, or the Gwendraeth valley, or even the Sirhowy valley. And we will continue to do that.

In terms of public transport, clearly transport will be, and continues to be, an absolutely fundamental issue. We have transport links in the Valleys that are overwhelmingly north-south, and we do need to ensure that the cross-valley transport systems that we have at the moment continue to see investment and are able to provide connectivity for people wherever they happen to live, in order to deliver connectivity to skills, to training, to education, to jobs and to work, but also connectivity to ensure that people are able to access services as well, and we will be doing that.

I’ve considered carefully some of the comments that have been made today, and, listening to Jeremy Miles, it’s not just the western Valleys, but the northern Valleys that are important too. Communities like Deri, Brithdir, Tir-phil, Pontlottyn and Rhymney actually exist in my friend’s Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney constituency—Dawn Bowden’s constituency—but people in Bargoed will be far more familiar with those communities than they would be with those in the south of my constituency in Caerphilly, such as Llanbradach or Ystrad Mynach; they would connect closely with those. The other thing, of course, is that people in Bargoed, Tir-phil and so on would feel less affinity with the Rhondda and Blaenau Gwent. It reflects the linear nature of the communities. One of the success of the Manchester city region is that it was a concentric area. What specific things are you going to do to connect this linear set of communities? It’s a real challenge, and I think it’s one of the things that the city deal will find most difficult. Perhaps you could provide some specifics on that.

My second question: I notice you’ve got academics on the ministerial task group, which is really important, but just because academics are on there doesn’t necessarily mean that the universities themselves are fully engaged. So, how are you going to tie in the universities to make commitments to this programme?

Finally, I’ve set up a cross-party group on small and medium-sized enterprises, where we’re specifically thinking about how we can generate business in the northern Valleys. So, the Conservative Member for South Wales East, Oscar Asghar, is very welcome to join that cross-party group if he’d like to focus on the private sector in the northern Valleys.

I’m sure that kind invitation has been heard by the Member.

Can I say that the Member for Caerphilly makes some very, very important points about the nature of the Valleys as well? One thing that unites all of us, in our different ways, from the Valleys of south Wales is that we have an acute sense of place, and the place is important to us. How we look out on the world is determined by the point at which we were born, where we live. My view, looking across to the Rhymney valley or elsewhere from Tredegar, will be a very, very different view from the point of view of people in Williamstown looking over the hill back at us. And I accept that. I accept the challenge that that gives us, but I would also argue that that gives us a very real strength as well. One of the great cultural triumphs, if you like, of the Valleys is our ability to recognise the importance of place and how place can drive quality of life and what we want to achieve. So, I certainly will be aware of that.

But, the challenges facing the northern Valleys of south Wales are particular. If we look at the numbers and the statistical analysis that we’ve received on economic activities, we will see that, in the southern parts of the Valleys, we’ve seen some real growth, we’ve seen an increase in jobs and we’ve seen an increase in prosperity. And there is a point at which those increases in prosperity stop, where we see some really very difficult and deep-seated issues. They tend to be in the communities of the northern Valleys and I think we do need to take a very clear-sighted look at that. The conversation I had earlier today with the Cabinet Secretary for the economy was very much focused on how we reorder our economic priorities to ensure that we use all the different policy levers available to us as a Government to ensure that we do and are able to prioritise economic development in the areas that need it most. And the communities of the northern Valleys are communities that certainly need that focus.

In terms of the wider issues on the city deal, I think it’s important that the conversation I had with the Cabinet Secretary responsible very much emphasised the importance of the city deal, as in what Cardiff can do to support the Valleys and how we can bridge the gap between Cardiff and the Valleys to ensure that we do create a more cohesive economic region and at the same time recognise that universities can and should be a key part of an industrial policy that helps to sustain and invest in sustainable growth. I hope that all the institutions of further and higher education will be focused on that, and the role of Government is to sustain that, to bring that together to enable us to have the sort of economic impact that we want to see.

Thank you very much, Minister.