Adam Price: Finally, can you explain why—? Reading the runes of where the Government is in all this—and I accept that, in terms of the statutory process, the due diligence is being gone through—you seem poised to ignore the judgment of the Future Generations Commissioner for Wales who says that the Government has vastly exaggerated the economic benefits of the relief road, and that's been echoed...
Adam Price: I have a great deal of interest in what the Minister is saying. Accepting of course that there is such a thing as different versions of the truth, does he accept that in this case, of course, the difference is that people are deliberately manipulating the information and conveying information that they know isn’t true or genuine?
Adam Price: Thank you, Llywydd. Twice over the past few weeks—in a Confederation of British Industry conference and in an interview with Guto Harri—you have referred to the increasing numbers of successful Welsh businesses that are selling out to companies outwith Wales. You said that you want to follow the mittelstand system in Germany, where indigenous companies grow and develop from small...
Adam Price: In terms of the scale of the problem, perhaps I can provide the First Minister with some information. Since the summer of last year, the civil engineering company Alun Griffiths from Abergavenny has been sold to Tarmac. Gap Personnel from Wrexham, one of the five largest recruitment companies in Britain, has been sold to Trust Tech from Japan. Princes Gate, from Pembrokeshire, one of the...
Adam Price: Is part of the problem the overemphasis in terms of Government policy on inward investment? Two years ago, you referred to attracting Pinewood to Wales as one of the main successes of your economic policy. Yesterday we heard that only 20 per cent of the proposed economic benefit has actually come to pass. Your economic director said that more transparency in this case would have been useful,...
Adam Price: Diolch, Llywydd. First Minister, are you content that the RAF are training Saudi Arabian pilots at RAF Valley on Ynys Môn, teaching the techniques that can be used in the conflict in Yemen?
Adam Price: You say that it's a non-devolved matter, but are ethics non-devolved? Is morality non-devolved? Where does it say in the Government of Wales Act 2006 that matters of conscience are reserved to Westminster? Thousands of people have died in the Yemeni conflict, many of them civilians, and among them children. The leader of the Labour Party has called upon the UK Government to end arms exports...
Adam Price: Well, I can tell the First Minister that the Welsh Government has given over £1 million to the US defence firm Raytheon. According to CNN, Raytheon's weapons have been used in the targeted bombing of civilians in Yemen. Information from the US Department of Defense confirms that Raytheon's Welsh operations are directly and substantially involved in delivering hundreds more air-to-ground...
Adam Price: I'm very grateful to the First Minister for the statement today. I think it was a useful and fair summary of where we currently are. What I was struggling to discern in it was a strategy as to how we go forward, how we avoid the political cataclysm that is opening up in front of us. It is, of course, I think, the key salient fact of the draft withdrawal agreement—all 585 pages—that it...
Adam Price: Would the Cabinet Secretary give way?
Adam Price: Thank you. Would the Cabinet Secretary possibly have discussions with the Scottish Government colleagues? They have recently produced quite an extensive report on the idea of a national energy company for Scotland, which could indeed be a model for us in Wales.
Adam Price: Diolch, Llywydd. Back in January, the First Minister stated in this Chamber that your Government was completely against privatisation in the NHS and contrasted that with the situation in England. Indeed, the policy of the Government when Carwyn Jones first became First Minister was to phase out the use of the private sector completely by 2011. What actions are you taking today to ensure that...
Adam Price: It's well established that your Government's record on NHS waiting times is far from satisfactory. For example, the auditor general has recently reported a 55 per cent growth since 2015 in the number of patients whose follow-up appointments are delayed twice as long as they should be. Now, one area where targets are currently being met is in radiology, but this is because health boards are...
Adam Price: Well, look, leader of the house, there may be an argument, obviously, for using private sector capacity in an emergency, but it's not how you build a sustainable NHS. Long-term planning requires you to train the workforce, buy the equipment needed, so you have the capacity to meet the demands in the future. Now, in fact, spending on the use of private sector providers has gone up...
Adam Price: I welcome the report commissioned by the Welsh Government as part of the agreement between the Government and Plaid Cymru. This report is thorough, honest, and it gives us the best overview we've had for decades on the visual arts in Wales. It provides a creative and innovative model to create a new focus for the visual arts with a national institution at its core. It's inspiring, it's...
Adam Price: We are in many ways a late nation, and part of that process is that we lack certain institutions that most nations have. The building next door is an example of that, of course. It was an opera house that then developed into a hybrid national performance centre—the Wales Millennium Centre. The visual arts is an area where the lack of those national cultural institutions is most clear. We...
Adam Price: Would the Member give way?
Adam Price: She may not be aware. There's some work already ongoing through the Morgan Academy at Swansea University trying to look at alternative funding mechanisms that need not be entirely reliant on the public purse. So, if that were possible, and we were able to at least state the ambition, would she be supportive of finding alternative means of achieving the same goal?
Adam Price: Diolch, Llywydd. Leader of the house, a month ago, you told us that a meaningful and binding vote on the 14-mile M4 relief road would be taken here this week. Yet, hiding behind the inspectors' report, which your Government received in September, you remain paralysed by division among your backbenchers, by the opposition of the Future Generations Commissioner for Wales and by the First...
Adam Price: Leader of the house, are you able to say now, if you feel comfortable, that the by-now £1.7 billion investment proposed for the relief road will largely benefit England? Let me quote you some statistics—they're contained in your own Government's wider economic impact assessment of the M4 corridor around Newport, published in 2016. It predicted that, by 2037, the relief road would have the...
