Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:32 pm on 15 March 2022.
Well, Llywydd, I thank Alun Davies for that. As I said in my original answer, Blaenau Gwent and the Member's constituency is at the heart of the Tech Valleys programme, but it isn't a programme that stops at Blaenau Gwent. The Heads of the Valleys road, as Alun Davies has often said on the floor of the Chamber here, is the single largest investment in a road infrastructure scheme undertaken during the whole of the devolution era. The continuos dual carriageway it will create will connect the midlands to south west Wales and the M4. It will reduce journey times. It will improve road safety. It will add resilience to the network, and sections 5 and 6 alone will generate £400 million-worth of expenditure in Wales, but particularly in those communities to which Alun Davies referred in his supplementary question.
And the Member's right, Llywydd, to draw attention to today's figures—the employment and unemployment figures published today—showing once again that the employment rate in Wales has risen faster than the employment rate across the United Kingdom, that our unemployment rate is now lower than the unemployment rate across the United Kingdom, and fell faster than the United Kingdom, and that economic inactivity rates in Wales improved at a faster rate than they improved across the United Kingdom as a whole. We need to make sure that those benefits being felt across Wales are felt as well in the northern Valleys. That's why my colleague Vaughan Gething has brought together the leaders of the five local authorities that span the Heads of the Valleys road, and with them identified five key priorities. The Welsh Government has put hundreds of thousands of pounds on the table to support the development of the first priority—strategic sites and premises—and I'm very pleased to say to the Member that, yesterday, the cabinet of the Cardiff capital city deal agreed £1 million to support the other four priorities, over and above the £30 million that they have earmarked in their budget as a ring-fenced fund for northern Valleys developments. All of that, I hope, Llywydd, gives residents in the Member's constituency confidence that the Tech Valleys programme and its investment will go on bringing prosperity to Blaenau Gwent, but to the wider northern Valleys communities as well.