Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 2:22 pm on 18 September 2018.
Leader of the house, the Welsh Government's lack of transparency over the ongoing delays to the second phase of Superfast Cymru is causing concern. I would be grateful if you could bring forward a statement on this. Over the summer recess, as you know, I've written to you on a number of occasions in an effort to understand the reasons behind the delays to implementing phase 2 of the scheme, which has been underpinned by £80 million of public money, and was supposed to be awarded to the successful bidder by the end of July this year. All you have said so far is, and I quote here, is that
'Work on the procurement exercise for the successor project has been complex, with a number of unforeseen issues arising during the process, and that due to commercial confidentiality I'm unable to update you on the complexities and issues which have occurred.'
The excuse of confidentiality is not good enough. There's a significant amount of public money that has been devoted to the scheme, there are thousands of premises that remain stranded, and the question has to be asked as to why the Welsh Government didn't ensure that there was a seamless transition from phase 1 to phase 2 in the very first place. So, there is so very little detail on when the contract is going to be awarded, let alone on when it's going to be implemented. I think this is very, very poor, leader of the house, and can I ask you to bring forward an urgent statement so that we can have some answers to this question?