5G Coverage

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:05 pm on 3 May 2022.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 2:05, 3 May 2022

I do hope the Member finds time to put what he's just told us into a letter that he can send to the Minister responsible for these matters, who is a Minister in Whitehall, not in Wales. As I tried to explain as simply as I could in my original answer, responsibility for these matters lies with the UK Government. It is not a matter devolved to Wales. The Welsh Government has stepped in to provide some test-bed facilities to check how 5G technologies can develop, for example, in rural locations. Our 5G Wales Unlocked programme had a focus on Raglan in the Monmouthshire constituency and in Valleys areas too, where that same programme was able to test out how 5G technology can best be deployed in Ebbw Vale as a test bed for Valleys communities.

That is the job that the Welsh Government can do. We can help to make sure that the technology is best deployed in Wales, but the deployment of the technology is for the UK Government. It is their responsibility. I don't see that the Member has a particularly relevant point to make in asking what the Welsh Government can do. I'll remind him that he stood on a manifesto only a year ago that said that Welsh Conservatives would eliminate any spending by the Welsh Government on responsibilities that were not devolved, which would mean that there would be no expenditure of any sort on 5G or any other broadband matters. Fortunately, we didn't take that advice and neither did the Welsh population.

Ofcom tell us that the roll-out of 5G technology is going well in Wales and that that is particularly true at the moment of the urban belt around the south Wales coast. It's going predominantly well in Cardiff, Newport and Swansea. I hope, for the reasons that the Member set out, that it continues to go well, because it does, as he said, enable a series of very important policy objectives here in Wales to be pursued. But the responsibility is very clear, and I hope that he will, at the same extensive length that he set out his points in front of us, put them to the Ministers who are actually responsible for them.