Sustaining Rural Communities

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:19 pm on 8 January 2019.

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Photo of Nick Ramsay Nick Ramsay Conservative 2:19, 8 January 2019

I'm not au fait with the rural observatory, either, First Minister, you'll be pleased to know, so I'll ask you about a different aspect. I'm sure you'd agree with me that sustainable rural communities require a sustainable transport infrastructure. I often joke that you could have hopped on a train in my village of Raglan back in 1955 and travelled to Cardiff to work or to shop. Sixty years on, it's a much more complicated situation, even though we now have such innovative concepts as the Cardiff city region. Can you update us, now that you're in post—and congratulations on that—on your Government's plans to develop the south Wales metro? Where do we go from here, and how do we make sure that rural communities and outlying towns, such as Monmouth in my constituency, are well and truly on that metro map so that all areas of south-east Wales are able to benefit from the development of the metro?