Part of 1. Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Economy and Transport – in the Senedd at 1:55 pm on 2 May 2018.
I'd like to turn, if I may, to another transport-related issue. Last week, the Welsh Government afforded opposition parties the opportunity to be given a technical briefing on the proposals for the M4 relief road. I'm grateful to the Cabinet Secretary and officials for that. Last week, you issued a written statement providing us with an update, and in that statement you said that in recognition of the importance of this matter you were committing to a debate in Government time before a final decision is made by Welsh Ministers on whether the project goes ahead. Can you clarify, Cabinet Secretary, whether that debate will involve a meaningful vote on an amendable motion? I think that's the phrase that we use under these circumstances. When it came to the comparable projects at a UK level, the high speed 2 line, Crossrail, the third runway, in all those cases, it was Parliament that made the decision on a motion before the House of Commons. So, can you confirm that that will be the case in our case, and if we decline to give our consent that that will not be interpreted as us having made a consent decision and leading the project going ahead regardless?