Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 6:19 pm on 1 November 2016.
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?