Welsh First Minister vows £1bn M4 upgrade will go ahead, despite uncertain Assembly backing

Carwyn Jones: insists M4 relief road black road is going ahead

Carwyn Jones: insists M4 relief road black road is going ahead

The Welsh First Minister has said in the country's media that the £1bn M4 relief road his Labour administration wants built will go ahead, despite uncertain backing from the newly-elected Assembly.

Carwyn Jones, speaking to the Welsh BBC radio after an alliance with the Liberal Democrats, opposed to the relief road 'black route,' a 14-mile alignment south of Newport city centre, and previously having got Labour to delay it, said: "The process of the black route is continuing. It will go to public inquiry."

The only party in the Assembly that might support Labour on the road is the Conservatives, with Plaid Cymru and UKIP, like the Lib Dems, in favour of an alternative 'blue route'. But Jones said: "The Conservatives have shown on willingness to strike deals... so it's very difficult to see us striking deals with the Tories."

But he insisted that despite the political backing for the £1bn project, his party would not support the alternative blue route. "We wouldn't support a blue route... it's dual carriageway, not a six-lane motorway, and that seems to me to defeat the whole object of a new road. Secondly, it goes past the houses where thousands of people live - literally past their gardens, past their front doors.

"Any part that supported the blue route can kiss goodbye to winning elections in Newport for a generation in my view. There doesn't seem to be an alternative... the biggest traffic problem we've got in the whole of Wales is not going to disappear." While the South-East Metro project was "hugely important," he insisted that "the traffic is going to get heavier and heavier" and "we have to find a way of resolving it".