Can I thank you, Presiding Officer, for accepting this topical question? And it would have been helpful, I think, if the Minister had brought an oral rather than a written statement on this matter. Of course, I read your statement today, Minister, and, as far as I'm concerned, from reading the statement we are going back to square one, with another expert commission appointed to look at alternatives to the Welsh Government’s own proposals after, as we learned from the statement today, £114 million of public money being spent or wasted on developing proposals for a two-year long independent public inquiry. I would agree with the comments in your statement today, Minister, that the Welsh Government does need to find a solution quickly, so I do have a number of questions.

What will be the timetable for the expert commission to report? What budget will you be allocating specifically for the works of the expert commission? Who will appoint the members of this commission, and how long will this recruitment process take? And will you commit to abiding by the commission’s conclusions or will there be capacity for this expert commission’s reporting to be disregarded? Minister, you’ve told this Assembly that it is essential that we plan transport holistically and that we do not see transport modes in isolation, and you went on to say that, if you were to maximise the capacity on the metro, the maximum you could remove from the M4 was only 4 per cent. Do you think that any alternative proposals you make will remove more than 4 per cent?

The First Minister pointed out yesterday that a series of fast-tracked targeted interventions to alleviate congestion on the M4 will be made in the interim period, and your statement today has alluded to that. If the Minister thinks that short-term measures are effective, why have they not previously been implemented when they could have been in place years ago?

And finally, Presiding Officer, the Minister has previously said, and I quote here, that piecemeal and useful improvements have been undertaken over time, but they’ve only postponed the issue— they’ve only postponed the issue—this piece of infrastructure needs a major long-term upgrade. So can I ask: does the Minister now believe that such a major infrastructure upgrade on the M4 will no longer be needed?