4. Will the Minister provide an update on the Welsh Government's economic strategy for the Heads of the Valleys? OQ58182

Thank you for the question. The Welsh Government continue to work in partnership with local authorities and the Cardiff city deal to co-develop a programme of economic interventions that will strengthen the economy in and around the Heads of the Valleys.

I'm grateful to the Minister for that response. One of the most important elements of the economic strategy in the Heads of the Valleys, of course, is Tech Valleys, which is in my constituency. Will the Minister confirm the budget of £100 million for that project?

Yes, the budget still remains in place. There are challenges, as the Member knows, with our broader financial envelop, but we still expect to be able to spend that money on developing and delivering Tech Valleys, which I see as a catalyst for wider development in the Heads of the Valleys area. I know there were some concerns about whether that money would be dissipated. Actually, we see that as a block to build on in wider development and before the recent local government elections in the autumn, we were able to do some work across the broader Heads of the Valleys areas. Now that we've gone through the election process and we have a more settled picture across local government—with some changes in leadership, as the Member is aware, within his constituency and local authority—I look forward to that stability converting into practical action. Actually, local authorities have a real challenge at present because of the very short timescale that the UK Government has set to have investment programmes agreed for shared prosperity, and that will take up a lot of time, energy and effort, and local authorities need to work together. What I hope will come from that though is to reignite and to make sure that there is a deeper and better understanding of the need to work together across the region, including the Heads of the Valleys, in delivering those plans, and not a return to a more parochial approach that I don't believe will serve the Member's constituents well or indeed those constituents—[Inaudible.]

Minister, one of the aims of the Heads of the Valleys economic strategy is to capitalise on investments on the A465. Last week, during the business statement, I referred to the Future Valleys consortium being awarded the contract to take forward the improvements to sections 5 and 6 of the A465 Heads of the Valleys road in November 2020. 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 over £50 million. As I stated last week, hundreds of private contractors from Wales and throughout the UK were affected by the collapse. Some public sector bodies also lost out, including Powys County Council, which lost £1.3 million, and your own Government, which lost £0.5 million.

Minister, legitimate concerns have been raised regarding this appointment, which 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. What assurances can you provide, Minister, that this appointment process was subject to full and stringent scrutiny? And will you confirm that you have total confidence in the Future Valleys consortium to actually deliver the improvements to the A465 that are so vital to the Heads of the Valleys economic strategy to achieve its full potential? Thank you.

Well, there have been real challenges in the construction sector, and Dawnus and others have suffered real distress through that. My understanding is that there was proper due diligence done around all of the appointments, and I don't have any reason to support the allegations and the attacks that are made, by insinuation, in the Member's comments. If she has real evidence about the individual, and that individual's conduct, as opposed to an association with an enterprise that was ultimately unsuccessful, then I'd be really interested in hearing what those are. But, of course, if we just think back to one of Jack Sargeant's comments earlier about the consequences of failure, actually one of the things we need to do within our broader culture is not to have entirely the same stigma around businesses that don't succeed and people's ability to start again. I don't see people refusing to listen to Jamie Oliver on a whole range of things or to eat in his restaurants, despite the fact that he's had restaurants that have collapsed and gone under. So, there's a challenge here about what we expect from people when their businesses don't survive, how they treat their suppliers, yes, but equally what we then do in terms of the integrity of people to then undertake future enterprises and indeed their engagement with Welsh Government programmes.