6. Will the First Minister make a statement on the work of the Valleys Taskforce in Blaenau Gwent? OAQ54832

I thank the Member for that question. The Blaenau Gwent Valleys taskforce initiatives include £500,000 to establish Parc Bryn Bach as a gateway site for the Valleys regional park. At the same time, the areas will benefit from the foundational economy challenge fund, the empty homes grant and, in the new year, the integrated responsive bus pilot planned for Blaenau Gwent.

I'm grateful to you, First Minister, for that response, and also to the economy Deputy Minister, who's been leading on many of those initiatives. I'm also grateful to the economy Minister for his words and meetings in this last week about developments with Thales and with TVR. The Welsh Government has committed significant resources and made a number of statements on supporting the investment in TVR and supporting the growth of the Thales presence in Ebbw Vale, and we're all very pleased to see those investments taking place within the borough. But we're also looking at the overall framework of Tech Valleys, and it's important that the commitment that was made by this Government to £100 million investment over the coming decade to change completely the economic future, not just of Blaenau Gwent but of the whole of the Heads of the Valleys region, is delivered and that we can see those elements of delivery falling into place over the coming period. First Minister, can you outline to us how you expect Tech Valleys to be developing over the coming 12 months and the investments that you anticipate seeing being delivered in that time frame?

Llywydd, I thank Alun Davies for that and for the continued interest, of course, that he takes in these matters. He will know that I, together with Ken Skates, met with senior figures from Thales on Monday of last week, including the chief executive officer of Thales UK, and they were very keen to talk about what they have already achieved through their presence in Ebbw Vale.

It was very encouraging indeed to hear of the work that they are doing with young women in particular in schools in that area and the very deliberate efforts that they make as a company to make sure that the jobs of the future that they will create are genuinely gender agnostic, and are as equally available to young women as they are to young men. They've taken, as the Member will know, some very practical actions to make sure that that can happen. They did talk to me about further investments that they hope that we will be able to make alongside them to go on making the national cyber security centre a vibrant part of that local economy, remembering that south-east Wales has the greatest concentration of cyber security companies anywhere in the United Kingdom, attracting very real interest from international investors in that as well.

As for TVR, we continue to work closely with that company. I was very pleased to see that they took part in the automotive forum, the major meeting of the forum that we held last week as part of the Aston Martin formal opening. There is money available from the Welsh Government to invest alongside TVR in premises in the Blaenau Gwent area. We need the company to be in a strong position to guarantee that they are also able to put on the table the private investment that is necessary to make a success of the infrastructure investment that we would make as a Government. Those discussions are being led, as Alun Davies said, by the Deputy Minister, I know that he is happy to meet and give you a more detailed briefing on where the discussions with TVR have currently reached.