Rhun ap Iorwerth: Thank you very much, Llywydd. Yesterday, I drove from my constituency, in Anglesey, to Cardiff in a twenty-first century car, which was electrically powered—a Renault ZOE. Unfortunately, the charging infrastructure for Wales comes from the last century. I failed to travel straight down and had to come through England in order to charge. That’s clearly not acceptable now. Plaid Cymru has...
Rhun ap Iorwerth: Will you take an intervention? I'm sorry to interrupt, and I'm grateful to you for taking an intervention, but, similar to Bethan Jenkins, I realise that you have a speech to go through, but what do you think? How far do you think Wales could go in terms of pushing the agenda on building a new energy future and being innovative in doing so?
Rhun ap Iorwerth: Again, you gloss over certain terminology: 'access to the European single market'. Again, this is not about splitting hairs. The House of Commons next week will have an opportunity, as you know, to defeat the UK Government on a number of amendments that could protect the interests of the Welsh economy. One of those will be on a Lords amendment to keep the UK in the single market through...
Rhun ap Iorwerth: You gloss over it somewhat, but you did reiterate what the Labour Party position is there, which is that, upon leaving the EU, we should have a customs union as opposed to the EU's customs union. This really isn't about splitting hairs—you're talking about a new customs union that would have exemptions from certain EU laws. Now, I'd argue that that is just about as unworkable as Theresa...
Rhun ap Iorwerth: Thank you very much, Llywydd. Having full access to the European single market through membership of that market, including the customs union, is crucially important for businesses in Wales. Sixty per cent of Wales’s exports goes to the EU. We’ve heard this week that the European Union has started to advise businesses in Europe to think twice before using car components from the UK from...
Rhun ap Iorwerth: Deputy Presiding Officer, I was told off earlier for speaking for too long, so I’ll keep my comments very brief. There have been three years now since special measures were put in place and your statement is quite honest, truth be told, that very little progress has been made over those past three years. You use the words yourself: 'some evidence of recovery', 'some recent progress'. I...
Rhun ap Iorwerth: Surely the time comes, after three years of special measures, when special ceases to be special and you move into a state of permanent underperformance. So, I think the key questions at this point in time are: what are the signs that patients should look for? What are the signs that staff should look for to show that Betsi Cadwaladr health board is getting back on track? Because, the evidence...
Rhun ap Iorwerth: Four years.
Rhun ap Iorwerth: So, Plaid Cymru doing Wales's rail down—the context is quite important here. It's successive Labour and Conservative UK Governments that have done Wales's rail down: the Conservatives, who've recently rowed back on electrification; 13 years of Labour Governments before them that failed to get any electrification done, north, south, east or west; a Labour Government—I think I'm...
Rhun ap Iorwerth: I'll start, if I can, by referring to what the First Minister said earlier today in suggesting that Plaid Cymru somehow is doing Wales's rail down. I think we're all excited about the prospect of hopefully getting some more decent trains at some point. I have no doubt that KeolisAmey have put together a very impressive bid, and I congratulate them on landing this lucrative deal. So, is...
Rhun ap Iorwerth: 'If that is a requirement to allay public perception, we would be very happy to do that.... We could make it more transparent in terms of how that assessment is done'.
Rhun ap Iorwerth: If they proposed that there was a more transparent way to do the assessments, then we should have capitalised on that opportunity, I think, to move ahead in the most transparent way possible. NRW said on 30 January that they had asked the licence holders to consider doing more sampling at depth on a voluntary basis. On 27 March, despite that, NRW let us know as a committee that the licence...
Rhun ap Iorwerth: I will speak briefly about the work that we did as a committee. I'm grateful to the clerks and the team for their work in putting a report together, and doing that in a short time. It's important that we do remember what that timetable was. The licence was approved back in 2014 following an application two years before that, if I remember rightly, but this didn’t come to the public’s...
Rhun ap Iorwerth: It's a damning indictment of your Government, as I say, that, if you are continuing to spend more, we're getting less results in terms of full-time equivalent nursing numbers, as I have factually stated, based on your Stats Wales figures. I am merely aligning myself with those facts as your statisticians put them forward. Now, we also know that the Welsh NHS continues to demonstrate a heavy...
Rhun ap Iorwerth: Let me turn to figures from the Nursing and Midwifery Council. Incidentally, they show EU nurses leaving the UK in droves because of concerns over Brexit—hugely worrying, but that's for another day. The general Welsh data shows over 300 fewer nurses in Wales since 2012-13. Now, cynics might say that what I did there was to pick a starting point to suit my narrative. Its data actually does...
Rhun ap Iorwerth: Diolch, Llywydd. At the end of last month, Cabinet Secretary, you wrote to all Assembly Members explaining that the party opposite's claim of falling nurse numbers at Betsi Cadwaladr, a claim based on freedom of information data, was wrong. You instead claimed that Betsi, like the rest of Wales, had seen an increase in qualified nurse numbers. Now, we've looked into the Stats Wales figures,...
Rhun ap Iorwerth: Will the Cabinet Secretary make a statement on training young people in Ynys Môn for future local job opportunities?
Rhun ap Iorwerth: Will the First Minister make a statement on the use of single-handed care?
Rhun ap Iorwerth: Steffan, we're thinking about you and we wish you every strength. We will be there on 14 July walking in Cwmcarn, raising funds for Velindre hospital.
Rhun ap Iorwerth: We will show our support on 14 July in that walk to raise money for Velindre in your name, Steffan. But, you know, we cannot tackle the issues that we are addressing today at a walking pace; we have to tackle bowel cancer head-on. Our message to Government—I think we've made it clear: bring down the screening age, give more people the opportunity for early diagnosis, really address with new...
