Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 5:50 pm on 25 September 2019.
Yes, I understand that, but I don't think you responded to the assertion that I made to you that it seems very extraordinary to many people that you make an economic argument to stay in the EU, whilst not making the same economic argument more powerfully because of the importance of our economic links across the UK.
Now, in terms of the Welsh Conservatives' position, we've already put on record that we support the devolution of rail and more responsibility for the rail system here in Wales, and I would concur very much with some of the comments that you made particularly about the lack of responsiveness of Network Rail to want to make sure that there's sufficient investment and maintenance here of our railways across the country. I've found them very difficult to deal with at a constituency level, and I've no doubt that that is a view that is shared in common across this Chamber. We also, of course, support—in a different way and take a different position than our party in terms of the UK position—air passenger duty being devolved to Wales, because we think that there are economic opportunities that we can wrest from the devolution of air passenger duty. I think there's also potentially a case to devolve some telecoms matters to Wales, for example, as well. We know that the Welsh Government has been responsible for the roll-out of the superfast broadband scheme, and that has been relatively successful in many ways, whilst still having some shortcomings in rural parts of my own constituency. But, again, I think there's a good case to be made that more responsibilities could come to Wales in respect of telecoms. We already have planning responsibilities for things like the height of masts et cetera, for mobile telephony, and it makes absolute sense to me to make sure that those things are put together in some sort of way, I think, in terms of the situation going forward.
We also recognise the strategic importance of the M4 and the A55 and other roads in Wales to the UK network, and I think you can make arguments both ways in terms of who might be responsible for those, but we certainly want to see more investment in our roads, because improved transport connections do help to drive prosperity. We can't ignore the fact that when you're better connected with areas that are prosperous, you tend to do better economically yourself. There's very strong evidence that that is the case, and that's why we believe that roads like the A55, the A40, the M4 and those strategic north-south routes in Wales are incredibly important in terms of the need to get that better connectivity across the country.
So, we're happy to acknowledge those things in this debate, and I do think that if we can have a good-natured debate, then there may be some consensus to be able to take some of these things forward in the future.