The National Infrastructure Commission for Wales

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:37 pm on 3 December 2019.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 1:37, 3 December 2019

Llywydd, I hear around the Chamber that other Assembly Members take a different view as to whether or not invitations were issued for them to be part of the publication of the annual report. I don't agree with the Member's assessment of it. It is important that the commission provided an evidence-informed baseline assessment in its first annual report. That is what it was asked to do. It identifies the three key themes of decarbonisation, connectivity, and resilience. It identifies 10 specific key issues that it says it is going to address, and asks for views, from Assembly committees and others, as to how they might best be resolved. It sets out three areas in which it intends to concentrate over the year ahead: in digital communications, especially in low-density rural areas; in renewable energy and connections to the electricity grid; and transport, where it wants to explore issues of capacity, congestion and decarbonisation.

I think the annual report is a solid start to the work of the commission, and what it will do is to respond to the report of the relevant committee, agreeing that the first state of the nation report should be in November 2021, and that it will report, as the committee recommended, every three years thereafter. The Government has undertaken to review the commission by May 2021, both its scope and remit. And I think all that demonstrates that there is an active programme of work that the commission has begun to get a proper grip of, and that there is a plan in place for it to continue to discharge that work over the years ahead.