Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:47 pm on 24 September 2019.
I thank the Member for that, which is a prescient question given the work that my colleague Ken Skates is doing on a regional economic approach, and that we now have leads in all the areas for regional developments working with the Minister for Finance and the Minister for local government, creating those new footprints, doing all the work that our colleague Huw Irranca-Davies is doing to lead a new regional economic approach for funding post Brexit. We need to bring those things together, to have common footprints for them, and to add those different strands together in a way that adds up to a genuinely regional approach. And I absolutely recognise the work that Mike Hedges has done in always supporting the Swansea city deal because of the transformative effect it can have not simply for the city of Swansea, but for the whole region that Swansea helps to lead.