Adam Price: Cabinet Secretary, I can understand why Tory Ministers are congratulating you for slavishly following their privatising agenda, but the fact that we are now poised to hand over responsibility for our national railways to a French-Spanish consortium of transnational corporations is surely not a source of celebration. It's a source of regret and political soul-searching by the Labour Party....
Adam Price: Alun Davies is right, of course, that in the near enough century of economic crisis we've witnessed in the former coalfield communities, since the collapse of the coal price in 1924, we've had a series of interventions and initiatives and strategies, and I think they can all be summed up, really, as micro progress and macro decline. The question that I think we must pose to him, and I'm sure...
Adam Price: It's a pleasure to follow the Chair in presenting, I think, very comprehensively and cogently, what is, I think—we all have to accept—a pretty damning report. And, indeed, it's hard to think of a more damning committee report or, indeed, a more damning auditor general report, which accompanied it. On the face of it, as he said, the Government accepts all our recommendations, but when you...
Adam Price: It’s a great pleasure to follow the Chair of the committee. It’s difficult to know what to say about this policy, because it’s a policy that had mixed objectives in mixed areas, and the results have also been very mixed, as the Chair mentioned. Altogether, we could differentiate between the enterprise zones that were created as a result of specific opportunities, and then those...
Adam Price: Thinking particularly about a post-Brexit scenario, it was very interesting the evidence that we heard from the chair of the Haven Waterway zone talking about the potential with regard to free ports and free economic zones, because that, actually, is a policy idea where there is strong evidence globally that it works. It's much more specific than the broad-brush enterprise zone idea....
Adam Price: Given the current level of interest rates and annuity rates, a debt service liability of about £150 million, over the course of 30 years, would unlock about £2.5 billion, using the kind of innovative financing method like the MIM that the First Minister referred to. Do you think that represents value for money, and, if it does, shouldn't we be much more ambitious in terms of the scale of...
Adam Price: Thank you, Cabinet Secretary and Professor Barry for showing so starkly, truth be told, how badly Wales is being treated—that is, a country that has 5 per cent of the population, as we heard, and 11 per cent of the rail network getting 1 per cent of the investment. Of course, this has been true for many years.
Adam Price: I mean, forget Crossrail, we in Wales should be livid because of the way that we're being treated.
Adam Price: I do welcome the vision set out in the document, and Professor Barry putting forward £2 billion-worth in current net terms over a period of 60 years. The risk, of course, is that, at the current rate, it’ll take 60 years before we see these benefits emerging. Now, what he says, of course—and I sincerely wish the Cabinet Secretary all the best in making the case for Wales—is that we...
Adam Price: It’s my pleasure, also, to rise to thank the auditor general for his service. It is characteristic of him, to tell the truth, that he’s innovating, even in leaving, because I think he’s the first one of the auditors to propose a farewell letter that provides, in one place, an overview of the landscape that he has been observing over the last eight years. It is very useful, and it’s...
Adam Price: Thank you, Llywydd. It gives me great pleasure to present this annual report on the Assembly Commission’s official languages scheme for the fifth Assembly. The Commission has set the aim of being an institution that’s known for providing excellent bilingual services that are innovative, and to be a body that’s an example for other bodies in Wales and beyond. It’s good, therefore, to...
Adam Price: Thank you, Llywydd. There are so many interesting comments and questions and I’m very grateful for those, but it won’t be possible for me to respond to them all in the next two minutes, so please forgive me for that. But, I will certainly ensure that you will get a reply. In terms of the lack of time for scrutiny, well, to a certain extent, I’m to blame for that. I’m not going to...
Adam Price: Will the First Minister make a statement on the proposed plan for the M4 relief road near Newport?
Adam Price: The First Minister is right, of course: there is a broader political purpose at work here. In creating these two vast conurbations, Mersey Dee in the north, Severnside in the south, straddling the Welsh border like a colossus, they're there to reintegrate Wales into England's political economy. But this has been part of your Government's agenda as well. Can the First Minister honestly say...
Adam Price: It depends on if you listen to someone like Klaus Schwab from the World Economic Forum—or Mark Carney over the past few days—to decide at which pole you are in terms of pessimism or optimism in terms of the potential of automation to destroy jobs. But everyone would accept, of course, in terms of the need for skills, that this is the greatest revolution we have seen for generations. Does...
Adam Price: I think the active travel Act provides us with, yet again, a salutary lesson about the dynamic, or possibly the absence of a dynamic, in Welsh politics. It's Welsh politics that is inactive, in the sense that we pass a series of good intentions written into law that have wide consensus, because, actually, the reality of Welsh politics is that we share many of the same values—it's the...
Adam Price: Yes, certainly.
Adam Price: I do. You know, we all evolve and maybe, becoming a father, you start to think about things differently. We say some of the right things and some of the same things. Action speaks louder than words. We need to set a target first to be up there with those small countries—up with Cambridge, which is spending at this level. Finally, in terms of accepting recommendations in principle, I...
Adam Price: In the 1960s, the American writer James Baldwin argued for a new politics of love. It was a brave call at a time when freedom riders were literally being lynched in cold blood and hot rage. Hannah Arendt wrote Baldwin a letter in response arguing that politics and love must be strangers. She saw in it a slippery slope to sentimentalism and the banishment of reason. When you leave the door...
Adam Price: Diolch, Llywydd. Has the Welsh Government entered into a guarantee fee arrangement with Aston Martin in relation to its St Athan facility?
