And I'm very grateful to successive Ministers for making those statements, and for making it clear their commitment to the Tech Valleys initiative, and for ensuring that we do have the investment not just in Ebbw Vale, but in the Heads of the Valleys that we require and that we need. And I'm also very clear, as I said in my opening remarks, about the purpose of that.

The purpose, for me, is that we as a Government and as public bodies invest where there is market failure, and invest in an agile, fleet-of-foot way to ensure that we are able to support business and to support the creation of work opportunities and enterprise where that is possible. I want us to be able to use the power of Government to address the poverty that exists in the Heads of the Valleys, to underpin economic activity, which doesn't happen in the Heads of the Valleys in the same way it happens in Cardiff Bay, and to do so in a sustainable way.

I remember—it's one of the advantages or perhaps, Deputy Minister, the disadvantage of being in this place for over 13 years now—a number of Ministers coming to make these statements; I've been one of them myself. I remember Leighton Andrews speaking very, very convincingly about the need for investment in the Heads of the Valleys to be sustainable, to be sustainable in terms of the overall climate emergency, but to be sustainable in terms of funding, sustainable in terms of the economy, and sustainable in terms of delivering jobs that aren't 'here today, gone tomorrow', dependent simply on grants, as they were in the 1980s.

But we need to go beyond that, and one of the ways that I hope Government can operate—. And this is the purpose of the debate this afternoon: to seek from Government not only confirmation that the Tech Valleys project is going to live up to the ambitions that successive Ministers and the current First Minister has outlined for it—and has been outlined in Government statements, press releases and policy documents—but that it is more than simply an investment in an individual property portfolio, that it is a part of an industrial strategy that can lead to any renaissance across the Heads of the Valleys. 

One of the reasons why, when I was first selected to fight the Blaenau Gwent seat in 2009, we campaigned hard over that two years from 2009 through to 2011 to ensure that the dualling of the A465 went ahead as we'd planned, was to deliver economic development to the Heads of the Valleys. We weren't simply asking for that dualling project to go ahead for any other reason, but for the economic benefits that it could accrue to the Heads of the Valleys. We know, and we knew that there was a terrible, terrible safety record on that road—a horrific safety record on that road—and we certainly wanted it dualled in order to save people's lives. 

We knew that it wasn't a significant piece of infrastructure that was required that would serve our needs in the future. But we also knew that if we were able to persuade Government—and I'm pleased to say that we were able to persuade Government—that this investment would take place, then it was always seen as part of an industrial strategy to deliver the connectivity that we require in the Heads of the Valleys, to link us to markets and to link us to ensure that we're able to deliver the sort of economy and economic activity that we require. And this connectivity, of course, was also linked to the investment that Welsh Government has made in superfast broadband as well.

But we need to ensure that we maximise the potential of this, and I hope that the Government, and the Minister in replying to this debate, will be able to confirm that the Tech Valleys initiative is the initiative that we agreed, though it will clearly evolve and change, and emphasis will change over time—I recognise that; I recognise what these things do over time. But, fundamentally, we need to be able to have the knowledge and the security of knowing that these ambitions and objectives that we set ourselves in 2017 will deliver the growth and the skills and the large-scale investments, and that the foundations for the activity that we want to see will be laid through this. And I hope that we will also be able to have a timescale for this, because we've had a number of different ambitions laid out to us, in terms of timescales, but I think we need to understand in more detail how that's going to happen. 

I hope, and I'll close with these remarks, that we'll be able to meet the challenge that Victoria Winckler set me, in fact, as a Minister, back in 2018, when she said that there needed to be more focus on the Heads of the Valleys. I agree with her, and I thought her criticism and her contributions at the time, were perfectly fair and reasonable contributions, and, had I not been sitting on the front bench, I might well have made them myself. I think those were fair and reasonable criticisms to make.

But the focus on the Heads of the Valleys cannot, and must not, come and go with individual Ministers. It needs to be an enduring part of the Government's legacy and an enduring part of the Government's programme. I hope that the Minister, in replying to the debate, can confirm that the ambitions of the Tech Valleys programme remains the priority of the Government. I hope that he will be able to confirm that the timescales and the ambitions and the deadlines are there to be met and I hope that, in doing so, we can together create an industrial economic and social and cultural renaissance in the Heads of the Valleys. Thank you.