The Valleys Taskforce

Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Economy and Transport – in the Senedd at 2:12 pm on 13 February 2019.

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Photo of Lee Waters Lee Waters Labour 2:12, 13 February 2019

Well, I don't think anybody is under any illusions about the scale of the task ahead of us. There has been over a century of economic decline across many of these communities, and it's going to take a multigenerational approach to tackle the deep underlying causes of that. The Valleys taskforce has performed a really important role over the last couple of years. I pay tribute to my colleague the Assembly Member for Blaenau Gwent for the work he's done. And a lot of it has been under the bonnet within Welsh Government, which is not terribly sexy but is essential for delivering the next stage of reform. The bringing together of the different parts of Government with a focus on the Valleys and getting them to think about how they can deploy programmes in the Valleys to address these projects has been going on with some results, and the master planning I mentioned and the development of integrated strategic transport hubs are examples of something that'll take many years to pay off, but it's work that's happening now, started by Alun Davies, that is going to be essential for the level of change we need to see over the coming decades.

In terms of what we can deliver over the next two years, as I've said in answer to Hefin David, I do think there are some tangibles that we need to focus on. There is a comprehensive set of proposals in the delivery plan, which we're looking at how we can prioritise. I also think that one of the exciting bits of the delivery plan is the work around entrepreneurship. I've been speaking to a number of experts in the last couple of weeks about how we can build upon that, and I'll be holding some workshops in the coming months to see how in particular we can grow businesses in the Valleys through that work.