Economic Development in Newport

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:22 pm on 14 January 2020.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 2:22, 14 January 2020

Can I thank John Griffiths for that, and absolutely to endorse what he said about the positive future that is there for Newport, and the enormous efforts that are being made across the public and private sectors in the city to create the sort of future that will offer prosperity to its citizens? The Welsh Government is already investing in the National Cyber Security Academy, making sure that we develop the next generation of work-ready cyber-security experts. We're involved in the Office for National Statistics Data Science Campus, and that's a really big opportunity for Newport to make sure that it is at the forefront of the UK-wide public and private effort to gain from the investment that is being made in data science research.

And Newport has so much to offer in all of this. I'm just going to take two examples from the supplementary question that John Griffiths offered: the commitment of its local workforce. When I, with the Minister for the economy, met with the full board of Construcciones y Auxiliar de Ferrocarriles, the train manufacturing company, they said to me that they were hugely impressed by the quality and the commitment of the workforce that has been recruited to that new industry in Newport. They'd come directly from the factory, they'd spent the whole day there, and they said if they had one take-away from their visit to Wales, it was about the quality of the people who they had been able to recruit to work in that industry.

In terms of connectivity—final point, Llywydd—when I was in Japan in late September of last year and met a whole range of major Japanese companies, many of them are attracted to investment in Newport and the south-east of Wales because, from their point of view, being an hour and a half by train from London means you're practically on the doorstep, and distances that seem long to us—to them, that was something that was absolutely on Newport's side.