5. Will the First Minister provide an update on the work of the Valleys taskforce? OAQ(5)0550(FM)

Yes. It’s met on four occasions and an outline delivery plan will be published in July, addressing three priorities: firstly jobs and skills; secondly, integrated and improved public services; and, thirdly, community and personal well-being. The plan is being shaped, of course, by feedback from the initial public engagement events.

First Minister, depressed wages and high unemployment have been blighting the Valleys for at least three decades, so the obvious question is: what’s taken you so long? Places like Maerdy and Treherbert are desperate for investment and well-paid jobs, and the commute to Treforest, or further afield from the Heads of the Valleys, is a joke. There were two trains cancelled this morning. If the city region and the Valleys taskforce prove to be yet more false dawns for these communities, there’s a risk that real damage will be done to this institution and to devolution, not just to your Government and the Labour Party. How do you intend, as head of this Government, to ensure that actions match the rhetoric and real benefits are delivered to the Valleys? And what will you do if another two or five or 10 years go by with no noticeable improvements in these communities?

Well, transport is key and that’s why the metro is so important. It takes an unacceptably long time at the moment to travel from Treherbert down to Cardiff. The service is also not seen as reliable and the leader of Plaid Cymru has given an example of that happening. From next year, we of course will specify the franchise. We’ve not had an opportunity to do that before. We will also be able to move forward with the metro, to have more convenient, more comfortable and more frequent services and also, of course, to connect the Rhondda Fach via bus services into Porth, for example, to make sure that bus services connect more frequently with the train services going through the Rhondda Fawr.

Now, that is one way of getting people to jobs in Cardiff, but it’s not just about that. We know that 11 million people go through Cardiff Central every year. It is about making sure that it’s easy to get from Cardiff up into the Valleys as well, so that investors don’t see the Valleys as being physically distant from Cardiff, which I’ve heard. They’re not, we know they’re not, but that’s the way, sometimes, they have been perceived and we want to make sure that we have a transport network that shows that our Valleys communities are able to attract more investment in the future, as well as people also being able to access employment wherever that might be.

First Minister, as has been highlighted, the Valleys taskforce is looking at areas of transport that you’ve identified, and, of course, there are Valleys to the west that don’t even get involved in the metro aspects. I’m very pleased to welcome that the taskforce is actually looking at all the Valleys, including those in the west, including the Afan valley, and I know that there’s been a meeting in that area. But tourism is important in the Afan valley, and it’s industries such as that that are going to drive the regeneration of those Valleys and the skills you’ve identified. Will you ensure that the taskforce looks at the development of those skills to ensure that local jobs for local people can happen through the tourism agenda?

Absolutely. We know that Afan Argoed has been a major driver for tourism at the top of the Afan valley. Glyncorrwg, of course, is seeing the benefits both of the fishing lakes and also cycling routes, and that is something we intend to develop further in the future. It’s hugely important as well that we don’t forget that transport links are important wherever the particular valley might be, and that means, when we get control of the buses next year, we’ll be able to look at how we can improve services in the Afan valley and on the buses as well. We know that trains went in 1970, but, certainly, it is an opportunity for us now to create an integrated transport system across Wales, not just in some parts of Wales, to benefit people who live in the Valleys.

First Minister, I’m told that, to date, there have been nine engagement events, five targeted events, and four further formal engagement events are planned, and the Cabinet Secretary has attended, or plans to attend, each and every one of these engagement events. Can you confirm that that is the case? I would ask how these views are being fed back in and possibly whether you could report back some of that feedback to the Welsh Assembly. And, if, indeed, Cabinet Secretaries are attending these events so regularly, I do commend that as very good practice.

Yes, that is the plan. It’s hugely important that people see these events as worth coming to, and, if they have Government Ministers at those events, I trust they will feel that that is the case. I think it’s right to say that, in the initial events, there was a great deal of frustration that people wanted to get off their chests, and that is inevitable. Now, what we’re finding is that people want to move on and see what can be done to improve their quality of life, whether it’s transferrable skills—we know that skills are hugely important across Wales. Skills are the key to raising GDP, and we know that unemployment is, on paper, less of an issue than it was, but GDP per head is still an issue, and that is something that we will focus on very sharply over the next five to 10 years and beyond.