2. Will the Cabinet Secretary make a statement on how the Cardiff Capital Region City Deal will benefit the northern Valleys? OAQ(5)0097(FLG)

With governance arrangements agreed, now the Cardiff capital region city deal must move to identify, prioritise and agree projects, interactions and interventions that benefit the region as a whole, including the northern Valleys. I want to congratulate all 10 local authorities on ratification of the deal in a timely and effective fashion.

And, Llywydd, I should declare an interest as a member of Caerphilly County Borough Council. A few weeks ago, I voted in favour of Caerphilly County Borough Council accepting the city deal.

Member of the Senedd:

Well done.

Thank you. Last week, I chaired a cross-party group on small and medium-sized enterprises, and the guest speaker was Professor Karel Williams from the University of Manchester. He raised the concept of the city region and made particular reference to Greater Manchester, and he said that while it works as a concept in many ways, Wales would do well to learn from some of the problems that they’ve encountered there. Chief among these was the fact that the economy of Manchester city centre is a lot stronger and more prosperous than the outlying satellite towns. I believe in the city deal, but I also believe we need to make sure it benefits the communities of the northern Valleys, and, for me, they are the towns and villages that aren’t signposted on the M4 or the A465. These areas have not benefited from public or private investment on the same scale seen on the M4 corridor and Heads of the Valleys, and, therefore, how will the Cardiff capital region deal ensure, going forward, that they do?

I thank Hefin David for the question. I agree with him completely that there is a great deal to learn from work that goes on elsewhere. I was pleased myself to accept an invitation from Professor Karel Williams to give a lecture at the Manchester Business School recently, sharing the experience from Wales to match the experience that they are able to offer us. One of the ways in which I believe the Cardiff capital city deal will meet the question that the Member poses is that, along with our White Paper on local government reform, we propose to create a new statutory duty on such regional bodies to focus on best outcomes for the whole of the region. And that will mean taking a view of responsibilities that are not simply aligned with the particular part of that geography that any individual comes from, but to be focused on what matters for the region as a whole. I will certainly cover the parts of the Cardiff capital city deal that he has highlighted in his question, as he did in the short debate that Nick Ramsay brought to the floor of the Assembly on 1 February, when Hefin David focused on the Caerphilly business park and models there that can be used across the region as a whole.

I thank the Member for Caerphilly for raising this important question. I was interested in the response of the Cabinet Secretary where he talked about the statutory duty. To what extent will that statutory duty impose provisions for equitable redistribution of wealth across the Cardiff capital region? Will there, for example, be an expectation of the capital region to create designated growth poles across the capital region so that in-built in that economic plan is a necessity to invest in the peripheral areas of the capital region, so that we can turn the Heads of the Valleys area, for example, into an arc of prosperity rather than a corridor of underinvestment?

Those are very interesting points that the Member raises and they were reflected to an extent in the Greg Clark report on growth and competitiveness across the Cardiff capital region. In the end, Llywydd, it will be for the cabinet, which will now be formed as a result of a vote that’s been held in the 10 local authorities, to make decisions that benefit the region as a whole. They will bring forward projects for which there will now be a proper process to interrogate and agree those projects. The point I made in relation to the question from Hefin David was that we will bring forward proposals through the White Paper to legislate so that it is clear to people who are around that table that they must focus on the needs of the whole of the region when they are making those decisions, albeit that each one of them will represent one of the 10 component parts of that city region board.

One of the opportunities identified by the Cardiff capital region is that it will enable people, particularly in disadvantaged areas, like the northern Valleys, to take advantage of existing education and training programmes and opportunities. What discussion has the Cabinet Secretary had with ministerial colleagues and local authorities in the Cardiff capital region about assisting young people with the travel costs associated with accessing education and training now that the Welsh Government has cancelled its bus discount scheme for young people?

I discuss with Cabinet colleagues a whole range of such matters, both in my capacity as local government Secretary, but also in my capacity as finance Minister for the Welsh Government, and the Member can be assured that those matters are regularly kept under review.