2. Will the Minister make a statement on the Welsh Government’s strategy to invest in the economic development of towns in the Heads of the Valleys? OQ56004

Thank you. Our strategy is to lay a strong foundation for change across the region. I updated the Senedd yesterday on the progress we have made with the Valleys taskforce. In addition to that, the Tech Valleys programme has made commitments of over £22 million to help create 600 sustainable jobs, and our £90 million transforming towns programme has a strong Heads of the Valleys focus too. 

Deputy Presiding Officer, I'm grateful to the Minister for that update, and I was grateful to him for his statement yesterday. The coronavirus has affected our communities and our lives in profoundly different ways and it's made us challenge many assumptions that we've accepted over many years. One of the most profound potential impacts and longer term impacts of the coronavirus has been a challenge to the notion and the concept that cities will continue to develop, and that city centres are the only places where business can properly be transacted. This means that, for the first time in many decades, we have an opportunity to create a renaissance for towns and villages and communities, and Wales, if it is anything, is a nation of small towns. I hope, Deputy Minister, that we will be able to create a strategy to underpin a renaissance for the towns in the Heads of the Valleys. When I think of my own constituency, my own home town of Tredegar, and of Ebbw Vale, Brynmawr, of Abertillery, Nantyglo and Blaina, we've all seen difficult, difficult times over many decades, and this is an opportunity that the Welsh Government really needs to grasp and promote and drive forward over the coming years.

Well, I agree with that. I think towns are facing a swirl of change. There's no doubt that digital disruption has had a huge impact, was already under way before the pandemic, and the pandemic has certainly accelerated that. But on the other hand, as Alun Davies rightly points out, there are opportunities from changes in attitudes and behaviours. It's one of the reasons why, when we set our target for 30 per cent of people working from home after the pandemic, we've identified alongside it an opportunity to place some of those workers within town centres into core working hubs. People will no longer have to travel to commute to work. Many will choose to do so, and it will be a mix of remote and flexible working, we hope, but there's certainly an opportunity for towns to have a different role, and I think that's what I would say here—that all people involved in the sense of place and the role of town centres have a responsibility to rethink what towns are for. We're certainly putting a significant amount of infrastructure investment in place. We've committed £6 million to Blaenau Gwent alone under the transforming towns fund, which will unleash a further £4 million. That's a £10-million pot to regenerate the towns just in Blaenau Gwent. We have adopted a town-centre-first principle in public sector investment decisions. Certainly, we know from the foundational economy projects that the public sector can have an anchor role within town centres to draw in other activity. But he's right—all of us need to think strategically about how to marshal these forces for the good of towns.

Last month, Wales saw the largest increase in unemployment in the UK due to the effects of the coronavirus pandemic. There's been a substantial increase in the number of people within the Valleys taskforce region claiming unemployment benefits—for example, the unemployment benefit claimant count increased between March and October 2020 by 68 per cent in Blaenau Gwent, 71 per cent in Torfaen, and 65 per cent in Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney. The retail vacancy rate in Wales has also increased from 15.9 per cent to 18 per cent in the third quarter of this year, the largest jump anywhere in the UK. Given that the best way to improve people's lives, not just in the Valleys but obviously in the whole of Wales, is through providing long-term, sustainable and skilled employment opportunities, what specific targeted support will you provide to Valleys towns, and what plans do you have to extend the number of enterprise zones in these areas?

The evidence on enterprise zones is mixed, and certainly the economy committee's report on them a few years ago reinforced that. We set out yesterday the activities, specifically in the Valleys taskforce area, on a whole range of interventions around placemaking, and we have set out considerable financial support for those businesses in distress because of the pandemic. We've also set out a recovery plan to make sure that, when we emerge from the pandemic, we have an emphasis on remaking our economy in a better way.

This is a really important matter raised by the Member. I have a question about priorities for funding in the area, because transforming town centres and providing better public transport is obviously key. I've been raising concerns with the Government about the cost of dualling an 11-mile stretch of road on the A465, which has increased from the original estimate of £428 million to £1.2 billion mainly because of the decision to use the mutual investment model. As I've said every time I've mentioned this, I welcome investment in our communities, but I do question whether spending £1.2 billion on 11 miles of concrete is justified when so many people in the area are living in poverty. The annual cost of repayment will be more than the annual budget of Communities First, the Welsh Government's flagship anti-poverty scheme, which it closed and never replaced. So, I'd ask the Minister what assessment was made by the Government, if any, of other means of improving that stretch of road that would have improved road safety without costing all that money?

I'm sure the Member is deliberately putting me in a difficult position, because she knows full well my view on investment in roads versus sustainable transport, and certainly in our Wales transport strategy we've set out that, in future, we want to shift our emphasis towards modal shift. In terms of this particular project, as she knows and as the First Minister has pointed out to her, the mutual investment model is a more sophisticated approach than she gives it credit, and the figure quoted involves the whole-of-life maintenance costs, which are significant. But she is right to say, in terms of addressing transport poverty for some of the most challenged communities in the country, we do need to make sure that we do more in future to help people who don't have a car, rather than reinforcing car dependency.