3. Will the Minister explain how the Welsh Government will measure the success of Cwmni Egino? OQ58178

Thank you. Cwmni Egino's long-term success will ultimately depend on the realisation of key projects at the Trawsfynydd site that deliver local benefits. These will be assessed through a community benefits framework developed over the next 12 months in consultation with the local community under the company's social value charter. All of this, of course, is reliant on UK Government investment being made in a nuclear future within Trawsfynydd. 

I thank the Minister for that response. Now, anyone who follows the story of the nuclear sector in this country—and I do in detail—will know that Rolls-Royce is the only option considered by the Westminster Government to develop small nuclear modular reactors, SMRs. Now, of course, this close relationship between the Westminster Government and Rolls-Royce comes as a result of the fact that we need to secure the skills and supply chain for the Dreadnought submarine programme, which is hugely expensive, and that's what actually drives the new demand for nuclear. The SMR Rolls-Royce proposals are 450 MW and the company has made it entirely clear to me in our meetings that the infrastructure doesn't exist in Trawsfynydd to locate one of the SMRs, never mind more than one. Given that an SMR cannot come to Traws, therefore, what is the point of Cwmni Egino?

I don't share the Member's assessment that there is no SMR future in Trawsfynydd. We've also, though, been looking at not just the possibilities of SMR but actually the real need for the potential for research, and, indeed, radioisotope generation, which, of course, is crucial for a range of areas of our health service. And, actually, we know that radioisotope generation is declining within the wider western world and Europe, and there's a real need to do that, and Trawsfynydd is a potential site. We think it's the best site available within the UK.

So, actually, we have a range of opportunities to continue to press around the Trawsfynydd site. Cwmni Egino has been developed to make sure that we can capture as many of those local opportunities as possible. It was a relatively surprising announcement when the Prime Minister, at the Welsh Conservatives' conference, announced there would be further investment in the Trawsfynydd site, and, actually, the fact that the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy had been having conversations with Cwmni Egino just before that announcement to make it clear that they wanted to do that. We need to see the headline announcement convert into practical reality, both in Trawsfynydd and further afield in terms of a nuclear future on Wylfa as well. The direction is a positive one; it's actually the delivery on it that I'm most interested in being made real and then making sure there's genuine local benefit for local people, but also the wider Welsh economy as well.

A future for steel—there really should be a role for Welsh steel to go into any kind of new nuclear future, whether in Traws or Wylfa, or both, ideally. So, I remain committed to trying to do the right thing to generate that local economic benefit, and I look forward to having a more constructive conversation with the Member and with the Member for the Wylfa constituency as well, on Ynys Môn, and indeed regional partners who I know will, no doubt, maintain a real interest.