Minister, may I ask for a statement from the Welsh Government about the Future Valleys consortium and its contract regarding works to complete improvements to the A465 Heads of the Valleys road? In November 2020 your Government confirmed that the Future Valleys consortium had been awarded the contract to take forward improvements to sections 5 and 6 of the A465 Heads of the Valleys road, following its appointment as the preferred bidder five months earlier. It is now reported that one of the directors of the Future Valleys consortium was formerly finance director of Dawnus Construction, a firm that collapsed in 2019, with debts of nearly £50 million.

As well as the hundreds of private contractors from Wales and throughout the UK who were affected by the collapse, some public sector bodies have now lost out, including Powys County Council, which lost £1.3 million, and your own Government, which lost £0.5 million. Legitimate concerns have been raised regarding this appointment, which has resulted in someone involved in one of the biggest corporate failures in Wales now monitoring the expenditure of millions of pounds of public money on a major infrastructure project. Therefore, can we have a statement from the Minister about the appointment process that brought about this situation in the interest of transparency and accountability right here in Wales? Thank you, Minister.