I’d like to thank the Minister for his statement today, and also to place on record my thanks to the Minister and other members of the Valleys taskforce for visiting my own constituency and carrying out a consultation exercise there.

This morning, I chaired the cross-party group on industrial communities, where our guest speaker was Dr Victoria Winckler of the Bevan Foundation. Many of the ideas that we discussed there have actually been mentioned in your statement today—for example, the importance of strategic hubs. Also, within the economy committee, we’ve taken evidence and looked at the importance of growth poles or strategic hubs to make sure that wealth and prosperity is spread across the area, particularly in light of the city deals. I would like to ask the Minister when he would be in a position to provide us with further information about the location of the other strategic hubs that have been referred to in the statement today.

I also welcome the reference to the importance of transport and infrastructure. Of course, the south Wales metro has the potential to be transformational in its impact on the south Wales Valleys, but we mustn’t forget the importance of road links as well. So many of the northern Valleys have already benefited from the dualling of the Heads of the Valleys road, with my constituency and that of my colleague Dawn Bowden being next on the list to benefit from that improvement.

I’d like to ask the Minister how he sees that tying in with the provision of public transport to link up the northern Valleys, and also to link up the different city regions as well. For example, if you take the Cynon Valley and its neighbouring constituency, Neath, with my colleague Jeremy Miles, we have tremendous links there in terms of local economies, but, by being in two separate city regions, there could be a danger that the need for that infrastructure could be overlooked. So, will that be something that the Valleys taskforce will be looking at?

Finally, I welcomed the reference to the importance of the foundational economy within your statement today as well, but I’d like to flag up the fact that social care and childcare are two areas where I feel that we could really make significant inroads in lifting up the living standards of many of our working-age population. For example, we know that Karel Williams, in his work on what Wales can be, has done a lot of work there around how social care could be used to deliver economic benefits to regions. And I think, particularly with our childcare offer that we have on the table here now in Wales, that is something else that we could look at to roll out and offer more sustainable, good-quality jobs.