2. Will the First Minister provide an update on Welsh Government plans to improve trunk roads in Monmouthshire? OAQ53683

I thank the Member for that question. We continue to work with Monmouthshire County Council on options to improve the flow of traffic along the A48 and the A466 through Chepstow. Several trunk road locations will also be considered as part of the current speed limit review.   

Thank you, First Minister. I think you’ve anticipated that I was going to ask about the A466 in Chepstow. Actually, I wasn’t on this occasion, for once. [Laughter.]

Yesterday, I was delighted to attend the topping off ceremony at the new Grange university hospital in Cwmbran, along with the Minister, Lynne Neagle, Alun Davies—I think we all had time for a selfie atop the new building with neighbouring AMs as well.

The project is looking good, and we hope that it will provide a first-class patient experience when complete, but attention is now turning to the transport links to that new critical care centre, because it will cover a much larger area than the existing critical care centres at Newport and Abergavenny, the latter of which covers south Powys as well. We know—and I’ve asked the Minister for transport about this in the past—that there are problems with the A4042 between Abergavenny and Cwmbran, particularly at Llanellen, south of Abergavenny, which is prone to heavy flooding. I don’t think we’ve got a solution to that problem yet. I wonder if we could have an answer as to what has been done to alleviate flooding at that point so that constituents of Kirsty Williams in Powys will be able to get down to the new critical care centre by ambulance, as well as my own constituents, and also a wider look at trunk roads around Monmouthshire and Gwent to make sure that all patients, whichever part of that area they come from, are able to access the new facilities at this critical care centre as they would hope to do.

Can I thank Nick Ramsay for that follow-up question? I’ve become a good deal more familiar with the trunk road system in Monmouthshire as a result of his persistence in putting this question into the ballot in recent weeks. [Interruption.] It has indeed. It would eventually.

He will know that a series of actions is being taken by the Welsh Government. The trunk road speed limit review that I mentioned in my original answer will look at over 600 sites across Wales, including a number of very important sites in the Member’s constituency. That is part of a further effort we are making in a £24 million investment in our pinch-point programme designed to address those specific problems that can occur on any road and to find solutions to that.

Transport to the new hospital has been integral to the planning of that site from the very beginning. It was one of the issues that were put forward as being on the side of that site when it was first proposed. And it is entirely in everybody’s interest to make sure that patients from the whole of the catchment area are able to find their way in a timely fashion for the treatments that that fantastic new centre will now provide.

I’m grateful to the First Minister for that earlier answer. Prior to visiting the new hospital in the Grange, I visited the site of the A465 dualling between Gilwern and Brynmawr, and I spoke to people there about the progress they're making. And when that dualling project is completed, we will have spent something like £500 million in this Assembly delivering on our manifesto pledge to deliver economic benefits for the people across the whole of the Heads of the Valleys.

First Minister, it’s important for us that we maximise the value of this to those communities that run alongside the A465. None of us wants to build a bypass, what we want to do is to build an investment in the future economy of those communities to ensure that we can ensure that we do have the investment that we need to address the poverty that we see all too often in the northern Valleys area. Can you commit, First Minister, to ensuring that we do have an economic development plan that runs alongside the dualling of the A465 to ensure that we do maximise the benefit and maximise the impact of that investment for the people who live in the Heads of the Valleys?

Well, can I thank the Member for that supplementary question? He's absolutely right to draw attention to the massive investment that this Government will have made in dualling the A465. As he says, it was never a transport project; it was always an economic development project. That was the basis on which the dualling has been carried out in order, at that top end of Valleys communities, to make transport access easier and to ensure the prosperity of those communities into the future. Now, I know, because he himself was much involved in it, that, as a result of the work that is going on there, an impressive range of community benefits has been secured during the construction period, with training for local people, employment for local people and work packages for local businesses. The point that Alun Davies makes is that, beyond the construction period, we have to go on making sure that the investment made in the road continues to provide economic opportunity. There was a meeting last year with officials, together with local authorities, business leaders, the Industrial Communities Alliance and the Bevan Foundation, to plan how to maximise the economic opportunities that dualling will provide. As a result, the Welsh Government has commissioned the University of South Wales to bring forward a set of ideas, proposals, priorities and so on, so that we can ensure that the road delivers exactly what the Member for Blaenau Gwent has said—long-term prospects for the economy of that part of Wales.