4. Statement by the Deputy Minister for Economy and Transport: Update on the Valleys Taskforce

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:25 pm on 8 December 2020.

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Photo of Lee Waters Lee Waters Labour 4:25, 8 December 2020

Thank you for the generous comments. I, of course, will be addressing his point about how we've met the targets, and I'm confident that we will have done that, despite the most challenging of circumstances. On the Tech Valleys, this is a subject we have addressed in this Chamber before. I'm confident that we will have—. Obviously, it is a 10-year project, but we will have, by the end of this Senedd term, the beginnings in Ebbw Vale of a tech cluster. We are investing significantly in property, because that was one of the things that the local authority and the Tech Valleys board have identified as a real issue in the Heads of the Valleys area. So, we are investing in new property and in rejuvenating existing property to create an offer. We have created, with the location of Thales on the former steelworks site, a cyber capacity. I'm hopeful that we're going to be able to get 5G on the site. We're working very hard on that and have had significant advances, but we're not quite over the line on that yet. But, once we have those things in place, I think then there's a genuine tech offering in Ebbw Vale that makes Ebbw Vale and the surrounding area stand out, and I think can begin to repay the promise and the potential that we offered with the announcement of that project. But I would also say to Alun Davies that we want to look beyond Ebbw Vale to the whole Heads of the Valleys area, recognising that this is an economic ecosystem. We are doing work, particularly, in supporting existing firms, rather than just trying to attract new firms in. We've done a piece of work to improve the productivity and resilience of grounded firms in the area, and I think there's a lot more we can do in that.