Diolch, Dirprwy Lywydd. Cabinet Secretary, you were doing so well in that speech, right until the very end, and making so much sense until that little message from the Corbyn mothership was slipped, probably by a member of staff, into your speech. I can't imagine you really believed that comment about austerity at the end. I think you'd probably be harsher on the—. I won't get you into trouble, so I won't continue.

Can I thank everyone who has taken part in today's debate? At the start of my contribution, can I point out that this debate is in no way designed to downplay the importance of other modes of public transport, such as rail and such as buses? We're not suggesting, Lee Waters, that you can purely road-build your way out of a problem, as was believed too often throughout the 1950s, the 1960s, the 1970s and beyond. We have many debates in this Chamber about the need to improve our rail network and to develop metro systems both in the south of Wales and also, increasingly, in the north. And this is indeed vital to the future economic well-being of Wales. But we do—and this is where I do agree with Ken Skates—need a mixed approach, which you mentioned at the start of your contribution, Cabinet Secretary, a balanced approach that recognises the need to have a fully maintained and modern, smart road network, as Adam Price called it. So, we need to work towards that.

In opening, Russ George welcomed progress with the long-awaited Newtown bypass, a cause that you have championed now for as long as you've been here, Russ—and before. You did lament the sluggishness of some other schemes. The problems that we've mentioned today by and large affect urban and rural Wales. It is a frightening statistic that Cardiff suffers more than any other city in the UK from off-peak traffic congestion. So, businesses here are being disproportionately affected by a lack of accessibility. 

Both David Rowlands and Mark Reckless mentioned Rover Way. I can tell that you travel along that road probably as much as I do, Dave. The road to nowhere, as you called it. I think I was the first person to call it that, back in the last Assembly in a budget debate. I also mentioned at the time the roundabout to nowhere and the budget to nowhere, but I was laying it on thick at the time because it was a budget-setting time of the year. But, that road, believe it or not, was part of, or is part of, Cardiff's peripheral distributor road project, which was first begun in 1978, 40 years ago today. We've been waiting 40 years for the completion of that peripheral road, once described by Paddy Kitson, the former chair of South Glamorgan County Council's environment committee, as the city's necklace of prosperity. Well, it may well eventually prove a necklace of prosperity if the actual links finally link together and it does go right the way around.

But I had concerns back in that budget—it was part of a budget deal, for those of you who weren't here in the last Assembly, between the Liberal Democrats and the Labour Party at the time. Part of that was to start progress towards the completion of that peripheral necklace of prosperity, but I questioned the validity of building one phase of it and whether in fact that did prove value for money. For all of those of us who travel on that road now, you can see that it's not just that road that is congested at peak times; the adjacent roads are congested as well. Even the coast road along through St Brides to Newport is also affected. So, there's a lesson to be learned there about taking short-term political decisions that get you a headline at the time, but, over the months and years ahead, don't actually get you to a position where you are having an integrated transport plan, which I know the Government would like to have.

We've mentioned the Newtown bypass. The A465 Heads of the Valleys improvement scheme is to be welcomed and promises to massively improve journey times along this route when completed. As the local AM for that current part of the scheme, I know all too well the problems that have been associated with delivering it. Yes, the Clydach Gorge section is a major engineering challenge, but the scale of the overspend that we're looking at, mentioned by Lee Waters in his contribution, and the length of the expected delays, are concerning. You do sometimes get the impression it's a case of, 'Get it built at all costs, whatever the timescale.' Just because a project is complex and just because it presents certain engineering challenges doesn't mean that you should throw all amounts of money at it, regardless of the cost and regardless of the timespans that are involved, and there is concern that the 2018 budget doesn't seem to make enough provision for a likely overspend. So, we do need assurances that this is all ultimately affordable.

If I can just mention the Government amendment briefly, it directs us to the national transport finance plan, which the Cabinet Secretary referred to, and on the face of it, that five-year programme of transport capital funding sounds all well and good. Of course, the problem is that too often in this Chamber we're faced with plans, however long they might be, that through the mists of time get forgotten, left on dusty shelves and they don't actually deliver the objectives that once we would have wanted to see. So, we do need to make sure that public money is being well spent and we're not just throwing money at something that ultimately isn't going to work. 

Integration is key to the development of a successful, efficient, modern transport network. I've long called for a metro hub at the Celtic Manor, as the Cabinet Secretary will be aware. This will provide a good point in south-east Wales from which additional transport links can then be developed out to rural commuting areas such as Monmouth and, indeed, beyond. But, of course, in the first instance those secondary additional services will most likely be bus services making use of existing roads and bus lanes. So, once again, we see the importance of maintaining the integrity of those roads. It's not simply a question of saying that you can put everything onto light rail, you can put everything onto a rail metro network and you don't need to maintain the existing roads. We need a balanced system. 

In closing—I'll move to a close, Deputy Presiding Officer—I want to say a little about procurement, which hasn't, I don't think, been mentioned by Members today. I appreciate that it isn't specifically within the Cabinet Secretary's brief, but I do feel we need a renewed infrastructure procurement policy. A Wales Audit Office report last November called for clear improvement in how authorities procure services at a national level, and only around 20 per cent—23 per cent—of Welsh Government spending on construction works in 2016-17 were won by Welsh firms. That's simply not good enough. Whatever the infrastructure project is that you might be talking about—and in this case it clearly is our road network—we need to make sure that we are procuring from Welsh firms, and going back to Suzy Davies's comments in her contribution, make sure that we're making most use of the local situation, procuring locally and making use of the local road network was well. Because it's not just about the national road network—the motorway network—it's about getting the most use of our rural smaller roads, which in many parts of rural Wales are crumbling away. 

So, in closing, Deputy Presiding Officer, can I thank everyone who's contributed to this debate today? I think it's been a very worthwhile debate, and I think that what's come out of it is the need for us to make sure that we do have a balanced transport plan, and a balanced approach to providing future transport needs for Wales. If we don't get this right, then in the medium term and the long term the Welsh economy will suffer. None of us here want that to happen, so let's start that progress towards the future now and make sure that we have a road network in Wales that complements our public transport in Wales, and that provides the people of Wales with the commuting and transport needs they most need.