Leanne Wood: Diolch, Llywydd. First Minister, on Thursday, people will go to the polls in what is a very important election. It’s been noted how you’ve airbrushed your UK party leader out of your campaign, and how you have issued a separate manifesto. There are two Labour manifestos—three, if you count the Scottish manifesto that was referred to earlier. In the interests of openness, transparency,...
Leanne Wood: You say there are no differences. First Minister, there are differences in the two manifestos, but I’ll come back to that shortly. Your party leader has been described variously as ‘the man who broke the Labour Party’—that was Chris Bryant—a ‘lunatic at the top of the Labour Party’—that was Owen Smith—‘hard left’ and ‘out of touch with the electorate’—that was...
Leanne Wood: They always trot that one out, don’t they, when they’ve got nothing left? First Minister, you must be very desperate to play on people’s—
Leanne Wood: I want to come back to this point about the differences in the manifestos between you and your UK Labour leader. Zero-hours contracts bans, tuition fees scrapped, the railways in public hands: that’s what’s in the UK manifesto. Labour is in power here and none of these policies have been implemented. Can we get a commitment from you now that you will give your unmitigated support to those...
Leanne Wood: First Minister, the NHS is our most cherished public service. All of us rely on it and it’s the single largest spending commitment in the Welsh budget, which reflects its importance to our people. Are you satisfied with the financial governance of the NHS?
Leanne Wood: On Friday, it was announced that four of the 10 NHS organisations have failed to break even over the three-year financial period. Now, we know that three health boards have been placed under targeted intervention, and a fourth is being monitored. You mentioned that you introduced three-year budgeting in order to try to solve those problems, but we are still seeing these deficits emerge over...
Leanne Wood: A situation where four out of seven health boards aren’t meeting your targets isn’t one that can be described as financially sound. This is about how the NHS is being managed, it’s about supporting the staff and the patients of the NHS by ensuring that the service is in good financial health. It’s about health boards meeting the statutory duties that you have set out. Now, in March,...
Leanne Wood: No guarantees.
Leanne Wood: I’d like to thank Paul Davies for bringing forward this Bill today. Plaid Cymru stood, in the last Assembly election, on a manifesto that called for legislation to protect and promote the rights of people with autism, their families and their carers, and this proposal would do exactly that. So, I’ll be voting in favour of the proposal, and I hope that it’ll pass today so that the Member...
Leanne Wood: Will the First Minister make a statement on the Welsh Government's plans regarding zero hours contracts?
Leanne Wood: Diolch, Llywydd. The negotiations for the UK to withdraw from the European Union have now begun, and the importance of those negotiations to Wales is beyond doubt. In the first quarter of 2017, our trade surplus with the EU increased to £2.5 million. I’m of the view that the UK election a fortnight ago did not deliver a mandate to leave the single market. Do you agree?
Leanne Wood: First Minister, on a visit to Airbus on Deeside, the company told me that their two key priorities for the UK’s future relationship with the European Union were, firstly, that there should be no tariffs on their goods and parts, and, secondly, that they should be able to benefit from freedom of movement of skilled workers. We’ve recently heard warnings from Airbus that a failure to meet...
Leanne Wood: First Minister, you are all over the place on this. [Interruption.] Labour MPs are using the term ‘single market membership’. Chuka Umunna has said that access to the single market doesn’t go far enough. Your shadow trade Secretary, Barry Gardiner, has spoken of reformed membership of the single market—membership. Now, there are implications for Airbus from both of those positions...
Leanne Wood: I wanted to speak briefly in this debate to make an appeal to all Members here and to everyone who might aspire to become an elected Member in the future. A lot has been said about immigration and many people in the immigration debate confuse refugees with free movement of people in a way that isn’t helpful. The way in which this debate has taken place has, in some instances, left a very...
Leanne Wood: Diolch. I think you do have some further questions to answer about this, but I understand there’s an urgent question coming later, so I’d like to ask you about another aspect of the economy, and that is in relation to education and skills. Many concerns have been expressed to me by teachers about their workload, and, linked to that, growing sickness rates. Many people are considering...
Leanne Wood: Well, perhaps if you’d had unity on the question of devolving pay and conditions within your own party before now, we might have got somewhere with that. But I’m concerned about your refusal to face reality. I’m not really surprised, but I am concerned. First Minister, the words I used, ‘crisis’, were not my own words. They were the words used by the National Union of Teachers. Back...
Leanne Wood: So, you’re kicking it off again into the future then. The situation, First Minister, is worse than you are prepared to admit. The overall number of trainee teachers has dropped every single year since 2011, and the correspondence and conversations that I’ve had with teachers show that there is a deep problem here. From your answer, I’m not convinced at all that you’ve got plans to...
Leanne Wood: I had a sense of déjà vu when I saw this legislative programme: minimum alcohol pricing; banning letting agents’ fees; mandatory regional working for local councils and the new childcare offer. They’re all Plaid Cymru policies—four out of the five Bills. But my charge here is not plagiarism; my charge is complacency. These are areas where the Government could have taken action, in...
Leanne Wood: The DUP deal keeps Theresa May in power through a confidence and supply agreement, and the size and the scope of the deal is unprecedented—£1.5 billion, including £1 billion of new cash, and flexibility of £500 million of existing funding, with no indication as to where that money is coming from. Well, perhaps it’s magic. The Barnett formula has been bypassed completely, and we...
Leanne Wood: There have been changes. My point is that we are always last. We are always at the back of the queue. We must be honest. We must be honest among all parties in this Chamber. I would say the United Kingdom is not working for us. Too often, as in this case, it is working against us. The first step for us here is to admit that the UK, the Westminster system, is not delivering for Wales. It is...
