Adam Price: You haven’t entered into the option agreement, then.
Adam Price: Will the Cabinet Secretary take an intervention?
Adam Price: I’m grateful to the Member for taking this intervention. The fundamental point, of course, is that the purpose of having an open data policy is that the data should be useful, particularly to citizens. One of the examples that is quoted by the Government on its website in terms of the open data plan is those tables that summarise grants over £25,000 per annum. The problem is that they are...
Adam Price: On that very point, I was wondering if it would be possible for the Minister to answer now or to have a word with her Cabinet Secretary colleague on whether open data, or a commitment to open data, will form a part of the commitment under the rail franchise, because there there is a very real gain to be had in terms of integration between bus and train services, if it is designed in such a...
Adam Price: I’m very intrigued by this new broad front that’s emerging between John McDonnell and Neil Hamilton; I never thought I’d live to see the day, quite frankly. But, Chair, could I just delve a little bit deeper? I was very interested and listening intently to what the finance Secretary was saying. In the wake of the shadow chancellor’s announcement about bringing these projects back...
Adam Price: Could we turn to the present, then? Because the Welsh Government obviously is involved in the use of public-private partnerships, yes, through the mutual investment model involving a minority share held by the Welsh Government, but the majority share, 75 per cent and above, is held by the private sector, using the Government’s own language, where ‘private partners build and maintain...
Adam Price: You raise another dimension: the creative asymmetry that sometimes, I think, characterises Labour’s policy position, sometimes saying one thing in Westminster or Brighton and another thing in Wales. We did have, I thought, a rather bizarre statement by the Labour leaders of the three largest councils in Wales, where they said they would support strike action by their own council staff...
Adam Price: Diolch, Dirprwy Lywydd. I rise to support the two amendments in the name of my colleague. One of them expresses, once again, our sense of deep frustration, which I know is shared more widely, that we still haven’t got the new economic strategy that we were promised. I remember the Cabinet Secretary saying in this Chamber a year ago that the economic strategy would be presented in the new...
Adam Price: Would he accept, perhaps, that the decision made in the last administration to increase the number of priority sectors from six to nine, which actually then covered two thirds of all businesses in the economy, was a mistake, because that doesn’t really sound like targeting as anyone would understand it?
Adam Price: Isn’t it true, though, First Minister, that despite what you said about unemployment levels—and that is welcome; they dipped below the UK average for a period in the early 1990s as well, didn’t they? But the problem is in terms of income, in terms of prosperity. You can choose any number of a basket of indicators, whether it’s average earnings, household disposable income, gross value...
Adam Price: It’s true to say, of course, that Wales has always been a nation where the need outstrips the resource that we have to meet that need. And that’s certainly true now for the reasons outlined by the Cabinet Secretary: austerity as a result of the policy emerging from Westminster. But it has been true for a longer period than that. Historians call Wales a ‘late nation’ in the sense that...
Adam Price: I certainly will.
Adam Price: Well, the additional money that was referred to was for marketing. I would like the Conservative Party to point out the areas that all these positive ideas that Plaid Cymru have brought to the table—which one of them do you disagree with? Do you think that there should be less money for the tourism sector?
Adam Price: In terms of the tourism levy, I think this is an idea that deserves to be explored. It is used widely—[Interruption.] It is used widely throughout most economies. Many of them have bigger tourism sectors than us and they use it to invest intelligently in the skills and infrastructure necessary to have a successful tourism economy. It’s called investing in the future of your country, and...
Adam Price: Before you close, could you, and I’ve been listening intently—? On this central question, which arises in other contexts, of course, is it a system that centralises power with the Government or a system of a commissioner or a commission, which is independent of a Government in order to give the credibility and the confidence to our Welsh speakers that their rights are being...
Adam Price: There is major work to be done to reach the objectives of the language strategy. There are gaps, certainly. And the promotion agency is one of them. Our party called for the creation of that kind of agency and it certainly was a strategic error to get rid of that element. But in trying to fill that vacuum, the risk is that we then weaken severely the part of the system relating to regulation,...
Adam Price: Does the Minister at least consider that it’s clear evidence that there are deficiencies in this White Paper that everybody that represents Welsh campaigners, Welsh speakers, say that they’re concerned that this White Paper is going to weaken the rights of Welsh speakers? You would listen to Stonewall if it was a matter of the rights of gay people. Why aren’t you listening to the Welsh...
Adam Price: One of the key conclusions of the FSB report is that Welsh Government economic policy has relied too heavily on attracting foreign direct investment. That’s not just true of this Government; it’s true of Welsh economic policy going back 50 years to when Cledwyn Hughes produced ‘Wales: The Way Ahead’ in 1967. It hasn’t worked. At best, it’s been a short-term sticking plaster; at...
Adam Price: Is the First Minister aware that Wales is responsible for producing most industrial graphene in the world? We’ve been in the carbon business before in Wales, of course, but it is good to see that we are in the vanguard with this industrial revolution. Two companies from Ammanford are responsible, by the way. Would it be possible for us to meet with officials in the department for the...
Adam Price: Can we have a statement, in Government time, on the validity of the recent intervention by the Public Services Ombudsman for Wales in the debate on the Government’s White Paper on the Welsh language? The ombudsman has published his own response to the White Paper—the only one that appears on their website—making the case for shifting complaints functions from the commissioner to his...
