Questions Without Notice from Party Spokespeople

Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Climate Change – in the Senedd at 1:47 pm on 22 June 2022.

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Photo of Julie James Julie James Labour 1:47, 22 June 2022

Diolch, Delyth. I completely agree; a digital strategy is absolutely essential to doing that. You're absolutely right; we are committed to having at least 30 per cent of people working from home or near home—so, much less commuting time and hopefully much less polluting commuting type. In order to do that, of course, we have to provide them with facilities to be able to do that, both digitally and in an office environment. We are looking, as you know, at community hubs in various places in Wales to enable that to happen, and, actually, the social part of that is a big deal as well, because people can become isolated at home.

The Deputy Minister for Climate Change, Lee Waters, recently outlined in the Chamber the fact that we've changed slightly our digital strategy for Wales, having had a very successful roll-out of Broadband Cymru, because actually this isn't a devolved area. We've intervened, because otherwise the UK Government would not have, and we would have had a large number of premises without any reliable broadband. But, recently, we've had another look at that, and we've had some success in getting the UK Government to look again at its strategy. They've just introduced a number of promises, which we hope will come to fruition, and we've been reusing some of our money. Very recently, in answer to a question from Rhun, I think it was, Lee Waters announced the work with Bangor University, for example, which is a really interesting new innovation that may well bring much better connectivity to people across Wales. 

So, we broadly agree. We continue to put pressure on the UK Government, and we are targeting our own money much more specifically at premises—the white premises, as they're called—with no connectivity at all, rather than upgrading people who have connectivity to full fibre with our money, because we think that the UK Government should step up to its responsibilities and do that.