3. How are Welsh Government actions transforming the digital landscape of Islwyn? OAQ52905

Thank you for that. A range of activity is under way in Islwyn and throughout the wider borough of Caerphilly relating to digital. This includes Welsh Government’s significant investment in the new, state-of-the-art high school in Islwyn through our twenty-first century schools programme, and increasing broadband availability through the Superfast Cymru programme. 

I know that the leader of the house has herself been instrumental in ensuring that the Welsh Government's Superfast Cymru programme has already transformed the digital landscape across Wales, with more than nine out of 10 premises now being able to access superfast broadband. How important, then, does the Welsh Government believe it would be for the communities of Islwyn that decent broadband would be available on an open network with a choice of providers?

Yes, I absolutely agree that it's absolutely essential. The entire programme has been done on the basis that we provide the base infrastructure and that the person who ends up providing that—so, BT Openreach in the case of the first superfast programme—provides that as an open-access network, and every ISP who wants to have access to that can have access to that.

In some areas of Wales—not Islwyn, I have to say—there are some restrictions around the number of ISPs offering services, because we have the highest penetration of fibre to the premises anywhere in Europe—coming up for 49,000 premises—and ISPs are taking a little while to catch up with that. But as the programme rolls out, more and more ISPs are coming online and the price is going down, as you'd expect, exactly as it did when broadband first rolled out and the ISPs caught up with that programme. So, yes, the entire programme is tendered on the basis that the Member outlines and it's a fundamental tenet of ours that that publicly provided infrastructure is available for all ISPs.

Many people in Islwyn would like to access digital employment opportunities in and around Newport, and both the UK and Welsh Governments have supported the creation of these. We have the Office for National Statistics Data Science Campus ,and I'm pleased to hear that Ken Skates will be visiting the next-generation data centre—the largest in Europe—on Monday. But, for many, the biggest challenge is transport, and because the M4 is clogged with through traffic, instead of its original purpose of a northern distributor road for Newport, it's harder than it would be for many in Islwyn to access those opportunities. Will your Government actually deliver on the M4 relief road that you promised in your manifesto?

That is not in my portfolio—the M4 relief road—so I'm not the Cabinet Secretary who should be asked, but, obviously, the point of the broadband programme is to enable people to work in better jobs, closer to their home and not to have to commute on polluting forms of transport to destinations far away. So, a very large part of the reason that we've put this investment in throughout Wales is to allow very well paid jobs to be delivered closer to people's homes in their communities so they don't have to suffer the commute that the Member so eloquently outlined.