8. Will the Leader of the House make a statement on developing digital infrastructure in Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney? OAQ52173

Yes. I announced a suite of measures in my oral statement on 30 January to further extend fast broadband coverage across Wales. And the mobile action plan I published last October set out how we will work with others to improve mobile connectivity as well.

Thank you, Cabinet Secretary. I know that you agree that it's vital we continue making sure that all our communities can benefit from broadband and digital roll-out. So, can I ask you what further benefits you feel will arise for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney in particular from the recent Tech Valleys announcement, which is clearly going to be based in the Ebbw Vale area, but is hoped will have a benefit across the whole of the Heads of the Valleys?

Yes, that's £25 million over three years to look at digital innovation, particularly in the automotive field, and my colleague the Cabinet Secretary for Economy and Transport is also very involved in this. We're also looking at the exploitation of the 5G possibilities, especially on fleet, and in Blaenau Gwent they've been successful in securing a UK Government grant for exploiting 5G technology and data collection. I believe they are about to attach it to their fleet so that they get better data on the state of all of their roads and refuse collections and so on. So, we will be looking with interest to see how that innovative technology works. We've appointed, as I said earlier to Russell George, I think it was, Innovation Point to advise, stimulate and co-ordinate activity on 5G in Wales.

As I said earlier, Merthyr and Rhymney will be particularly benefiting from the Valleys taskforce's three ways forward. The three pilots that we're looking at, if I didn't say earlier, are: an Uber-style operation, run by the public sector, for NHS non-urgent patients to get to hospital appointments and so on, which we're very excited about; rolling out the Lle Government geographical database to allow SMEs access to that open data to see what they can come up with by way of innovative use of it; and rolling community Wi-Fi out in various points, small shopping centres, villages and so on, to see what we can do by way of data collection.

And there are some really innovative things there around allowing people to put digital vouchers online, for example, for sale offers and so on. It allows the traders to see which of those have been successful and which have not, because you get direct feedback from whether somebody uses it or not because they bring it into the shop. So, there's some really good stuff.

There's a really good example of a community Wi-Fi system in Llandrindod Wells, if Members are interested in visiting. When you go there you can log onto it and it tells you all kinds of information about what's available in the shops and what vouchers are available and so on—very, very useful indeed. So, there's some really good innovations coming; all based, of course, on our massive investment into the broadband infrastructure that underpins all of this.

Thank you very much, leader of the house.