It’s a pleasure to speak in a debate that had its own cinematic trailer, which featured Professor Karel Williams on his visit to the Pierhead that Julie Morgan mentioned. It’s an unusual personal honour to be elected to represent, here in the National Assembly for Wales, your community and the one in which you were born and brought up. It encourages reflection on what the place that’s always been home can be.

As an academic, I’ve been interested in business and the roles small firms play in our economy. I’ve interviewed for my own research many business owners in south Wales and the west of England. However, in preparation for this debate today, I took a walk down Hanbury Road and High Street in Bargoed, and I reflected on the businesses that operate there, from Rossi’s cafe and Chisholms’ carpets to Thomas’s pet and garden supplies, which has been there since the 1950s. I took time to appreciate their existence, the role that they’ve played in my background and in my life as I went to school at Heolddu.

Indigenous businesses, buffered but unbowed, provide goods and services that contribute to our everyday lives. These businesses, rooted in our different communities, are far from immune from global economic shocks, but they are the necessary foundation to our local economies. As noted in the motion, small firms can thrive in such an environment and are less likely to leave, and, instead, can become embedded in their local supply chains. Here, they can grow and contribute to regeneration within our town centres.

My own understanding of this is heavily based on the concept of social capital. Whereas human capital refers to the knowledge and skills held by the individual, social capital refers to the extent to which that individual can gain further benefits from the knowledge that exists in their environment. Small businesses know this intuitively and connect with each other in a way that simply does not happen with larger firms, and, indeed, there is more of a hostile experience with larger firms. Using what is termed ‘bridging’ social capital, described also by Mark Granovetter in his seminal work as ‘the strength of weak ties’, firms form economic relationships that become social in nature and participants gain personal understanding, abiding trust and a deeper knowledge of one another. You may have seen it when you use local businesses and the way they talk about ‘we’ and ‘us’.

There’s a body of research that suggests that transfers of knowledge between small firms influences growth and this itself is influenced by the business network that supports social capital. It’s been argued that in order to be beneficial in the long term, networks need to be extended beyond local social contexts, and this is important, because the topography of the south Wales Valleys has been a barrier to this, and the consequence has been low-paid, low-skills work in the foundational economy.

Our environment encourages us to think in terms of our connections with the city, rather than looking to our eastern and western valley neighbours. And, alongside my colleague Vikki Howells AM, I advocate a change in our thinking and our language. We should consider our communities from Cynon to Blaenau Gwent as the northern valleys, connected and interdependent places, and not spokes linking to a vibrant city hub. By doing so, we will gain a better understanding of how we can regenerate our economic prosperity, tackle infrastructural challenges, and grow social capital. A foundational economy should stretch across the northern valleys.

In his evidence to the Economy, Infrastructure and Skills Committee’s inquiry into the rail franchise and the metro, Dr Mark Lang—mentioned already by Adam Price—cites the fact that there is a

'lack of international evidence to support the view that transport investment leads to positive economic or social outcomes’.

He also raises concerns that a

'lack of a detailed spatial understanding of South East Wales against which to plan an integrated transport network’ can be inhibitive. It’s as well to voice these concerns, and the committee will consider them in detail.

I don’t dispute the view that cross-valley connections alone will assist growth. But, if our communities are to prosper, if we are to connect in a way that we haven’t in my lifetime, if we are to harness the potential of our reserves of social capital, then we need to make these connections to that social capital, across the northern valleys.