5. Will the First Minister make a statement on the economy of the Heads of the Valleys? OQ55336

The appointment on Friday of a preferred bidder for the construction of the £500 million sections 5 and 6 of the Heads of the Valleys road is an important milestone in the future of the economy in that part of Wales. It will deliver economic and community benefits in a post-coronavirus recovery period. And of that £500 million, £170 million is expected within the local supply chain alone.

First Minister, I'm grateful for that, and of course we're also still waiting to finish the section from Gilwern to Brynmawr, and I think that will be welcome when that is completed. But we all recognise the human impact of the coronavirus and we know that there's already broad and deep support for the approach the Welsh Government is taking. But we need to continue to provide this support for people for the post-COVID era, and what's going to happen to employment particularly at that time. In Blaenau Gwent, we all know of people who are fearful of losing their jobs; we see the uncertainty around the future of the festival park in Ebbw Vale, and we know that there remains an urgent need to invest in strategic sites, such as on the Rassau or Rhyd-y-Blew. I would therefore ask you to work alongside me and other Members who represent these constituencies, to deliver a jobs plan for the Heads of the Valleys that will secure employment immediately and in the long term.

Llywydd, thanks to Alun Davies for that important set of questions. He will be pleased to know, and I know his constituents will be, that the Gilwern to Brynmawr section of the Heads of the Valleys road is now 85 per cent completed, despite the real challenges, the geological challenges that there have been in that part of Wales. I'm concerned as he is, I know, about the festival park site in Ebbw Vale, and we're working closely with the local authority there to see what can be done to address the announcements of last week. We continue to progress our plan for the high-tech cluster on the nearby work site and to prepare other sites so that they are in a good position to attract jobs into the Blaenau Gwent area.

But to just respond for a moment, Llywydd, to the general point that Alun Davies made: we should—all of us—be concerned at the jobs impact of coronavirus. I'm thinking of the 30-year experience of some communities in Wales to recover from the 1980s and the deliberate loss of jobs in those communities then; coronavirus isn't a deliberate action of course, but its impact can be profound. And I want to give Alun Davies, and others, an assurance that the Welsh Government will be relentlessly focused during the rest of this Senedd term on doing everything we can to support employment in those areas, so the scarring effect on young people in particular, in particular parts of Wales, is avoided as much as we can possibly do, by harnessing our actions with those of others to support those local economies and those local jobs.

Leanne Wood. Your microphone, Leanne Wood.

Thank you. First Minister, with news this week that there are 15 people chasing every single job in the Rhondda, and that comes on the back of the news that there are two towns in the top-20 most vulnerable to economic problems following COVID, then it's clear that there needs to be a specific jobs plan for the Rhondda. We've already heard how we need a new, sustainable drainage system, how we need a mass tree planting strategy, and we also need things like renewable energy. Can you please tell us what investment you plan to make in the infrastructure of the Rhondda, and how you intend to reverse the situation whereby people in the Rhondda have been ignored by successive Welsh and UK Governments since the 1980s?

Well, Llywydd, it's nonsense to suggest that the people of the Rhondda have been ignored; they certainly haven't. And if they have, then she'll be asking herself what she herself has done as the representative of that area to put it right. It wouldn't be a very proud record for me as a representative to stand up and say that my area had been ignored, and it hasn't been—she knows it hasn't been.

But, I want to reply to the substantive and sensible point that she made that, of course, our concerns have to be for those parts of Wales that are particularly vulnerable to an economic downturn. We are working very hard inside the Welsh Government to bring capital money together, and capital projects together, so that if, as we hope, the UK Government responds in the Chancellor's statement in July by putting a new set of investments into infrastructure to create jobs, but to create the conditions of the future, that we are as well placed as we can be to have projects ready to use that money and to use it for the advantage of communities across Wales, with a particular emphasis on those places where the coronavirus impact will be felt the greatest. And that certainly does include the Rhondda, and it certainly does include a number of the measures that Leanne Wood mentioned in the opening part of her question. She can be assured that those things are very much part of our thinking and will continue to be so.