The final report of the Valleys taskforce has been published, and stakeholder views include saying that the taskforce, and I quote,  

'had a fairly limited direct impact upon the Valleys communities.'

It also highlighted a lack of resources. Another direct quote from the report's conclusions: 

'The VTF started out with a very ambitious set of aims and objectives but lacked the resources and capacity to deliver on these effectively.' 

A key issue raised was

'whether the VTF ought to have been established from the outset with an adequate level of revenue and capital funding in place to enable it to achieve its ambitious aims and objectives.'

As the Senedd Member for the Rhondda, I have consistently pushed for more investment, including for a specific proposal for an exciting, well-skilled co-operative of former Burberry workers on that site to set up clothes manufacturing. The taskforce has missed this opportunity and many others, and it has neglected large areas of the Valleys that really need economic development. 

Have lessons been learned from this experience? The Rhondda has been let down by successive governments in London and in Cardiff for decades now. Doesn't this show that the only way that the Rhondda will get the economic development that the people there deserve is with a Plaid Cymru Government? Do you accept that now?