Part of 2. Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Local Government and Public Services – in the Senedd at 2:29 pm on 29 November 2017.
Cabinet Secretary, I suppose you and I kind of represent the arc of the Valleys, the former coalfield area—you representing the eastern Valleys, me representing the west. I was wondering if the geography, really, of this strategy at the moment is out of kilter. As we've heard from the leader of my party, really, there are areas in the Rhondda, Cynon, et cetera, which are not represented at all in the seven strategic hubs, which, to my mind at the moment, seem to have been chosen, if not quite at random, certainly in an ad hoc way, both in their location, but also, possibly, in their sectoral focus. We did have the announcement yesterday about two entrepreneurial tech hubs, which will be in the south-western Valleys and in the eastern Valleys. And there are also the community hubs—an unspecified number of community hubs—that we'll have there as well. But, even if you look at the map, Cabinet Secretary, Ammanford is actually outside the map, and many of the other western Valleys are actually not included within the definition of the Valleys area. So, surely, shouldn't we have actually, in order to underpin the strategy, a strategic development plan looking at the geography of the Valleys, making sure, for example, that these hubs are calibrated, in terms of the new metro stations, with the areas of investment? And who's going to deliver all this? With all these hubs, surely we need a hub of hubs, Cabinet Secretary—an agency or team of people who are going to deliver these 68 action points. And what's the provision currently, and what's the connection with the city deal? Because it seems to me that the Valleys taskforce and the implementation plan are over here, the city deals are over there, and there doesn't seem to be much interconnection between the two at the moment.