7. Will the Cabinet Secretary make a statement on the Swansea Bay City Region deal? OAQ(5)0136(FLG)

Well, thank you very much, of course, for that question. The Swansea bay city region deal aims to boost the local economy by £1.8 billion, to generate almost 10,000 new jobs, and build on the many indigenous strengths of the whole region.

Thank you for that answer, Cabinet Secretary. Now, when the city deal was first developed, the notion of developing the internet coast was very much based on building a digital superhighway connecting the UK and North America, with a transatlantic broadband cable landing at Oxwich bay on Gower. Now, that element now receives less attention than it once did. Can you update us as to the latest position as to the delivery of the transatlantic cable and its importance for the success of the city deal?

Well, Llywydd, the Member is absolutely right that the cable was an integral part of the discussions that began the Swansea city deal, and the leadership that Sir Terry Matthews provided was very much connected with that idea of the internet coast. As the Member will know, the city deal, as finally agreed, has 11 specific projects at its heart. Two of those projects run right across the whole of the region area—that’s investment in digital infrastructure and initiatives to make sure that we develop the skills and talents of those people who live right across the Swansea bay region. The connector, and the way in which it will influence the deal as a whole, will now form part of the development of those project plans, because the final versions of them have to be approved by both the UK and the Welsh Governments, as well as the regional Cabinet that will form part of the governance of the deal.

Well, the leads taking this bid through faced some very rigorous due diligence from both the Welsh Government and the UK Government, and I’m sure that you’ll have envisaged certain milestones being set to mark progress promised, firstly in terms of delivery of that governance structure that you were just talking about, and secondly in terms of the sort of metaphorical spades in the ground, if you like, the actual beginning of spending of money on those projects. When is the first of those milestones in each of those two areas due to be reached and what mechanism is Welsh Government using to monitor progress against its own expectations for the outcomes of the deal?

I thank Suzy Davies for that. She’s quite right to say that the investigation of the deal was a rigorous process involving both Welsh Government and the UK Government. As a result, there are a series of mechanisms either already in place or now to be confirmed to make sure that that sense of rigour continues in the development of the deal in the future. So, the city deal delivery team, which is the on-the-ground team, have to provide quarterly reports of their activity to the UK Government and to the Welsh Government, and we keep on track with it in that quarterly way.

As I said to Dai Lloyd, the 11 projects will not be finally signed off until the submission of full business cases to all partners, and we have an agreed implementation, monitoring and evaluation plan that will be put into practice now, post the local government elections and the coming together of the partners again, so we can be sure that, in advance of implementation, we can all be confident that the deal will deliver in practice the very real promise that it holds out for people right across the Swansea bay city region.