Adam Price: First Minister, is there a much deeper and darker context here, with the legislation to curb the right to peaceful protest last night defeated in the House of Lords, the proposals to weaken the Human Rights Act, the attacks on an independent judiciary, the changes to voter ID, pork-barrelling in the awarding of grants and cronyism in the awarding of contracts, the illegal prorogation of...
Adam Price: Llywydd, may I also congratulate Urdd Gobaith Cymru on behalf of Plaid Cymru as they reach their centenary, and also on their success with the two world records? And I'd like to thank them for their incredible contribution to Welsh life over the past century, and also thank them for giving you an excuse to show your musical talents here this afternoon. But, on to scrutiny.
Adam Price: First Minister, there has been much discussion recently about living with COVID. It's important to remember, when we hear that phrase, of course, that according to the Office for National Statistics, almost 60,000 in Wales are living with long COVID. Long COVID or post-COVID-19 syndrome involves a wide range of symptoms, but the most consistent feature, as we know, is a form of severe...
Adam Price: Specialist clinics for long COVID-19 have so far been established in Canada, the United States, England, Germany, Belgium, France, Spain, Norway, and, in Italy, the national institute of health there has recently recommended the creation of post-COVID out-patient clinics in their country too. The consistent view among patients is that it's unfair to expect GPs to provide the necessary support...
Adam Price: I think the consensus view, certainly amongst the international experts that I've been reading, is shifting towards a complementary strategy, which obviously has a role for primary care, but complements that with these specialist clinics in a condition where knowledge is fast developing. Now, estimates around the world suggest that between 10 per cent and 20 per cent of children who contract...
Adam Price: Thank you, Llywydd. First Minister, on Thursday evening last week I attended a public meeting in my constituency called in light of the purchase of the local Frongoch farm by the Foresight investment fund in order to plant trees and gain carbon credits. There was a young family there who had made a proposal to purchase the farm and to farm the land, until Foresight offered a substantially...
Adam Price: Two years ago, Professor John Healey and his team at the school of forest sciences in Bangor University published a report commissioned by you as a Government, which set out two scenarios of possible ownership for the future of forestry in Wales. The first scenario, and I will quote in English:
Adam Price: 'transfer of larger land units...from agriculture to forestry...through the sale of whole agricultural land holdings...to forestry investors. This may cause concerns of loss agricultural cultural values and sub-optimal use of land resources'.
Adam Price: And the second scenario:
Adam Price: 'smaller forest blocks within continuing agricultural land holdings as part of a strategy towards diversification of income streams for farm holdings. Such smaller and more isolated woodland patches may also have advantages for reducing risk of tree pathogen infection' and 'capitalise on and enhance existing social capital in the farming sector, through co-operative management'.
Adam Price: Is the Welsh Government willing to commit to support the second model and to oppose the first?
Adam Price: Carbon asset stripping is a global phenomenon. Just before Christmas, the Australian Government proposed a ministerial veto on woodland carbon-credit developments over 15 hectares or where they make up more than a third of a farm. Are you prepared to consider amending the planning system or introducing a social and linguistic dimension to the impact assessment process to prevent conifer and...
Adam Price: Many people will have seen Andy Davies of Channel 4's sobering film of his visit to Penrhys last week—a community already struggling now perched on the precipice of poverty the likes of which we certainly haven't seen since the 1980s. Last week, the House of Commons voted in favour of a windfall tax on energy companies. The UK Government has said that it will ignore that Parliament in the...
Adam Price: As welcome as the new money that you as the Welsh Government have announced today certainly is, can you understand the criticisms that anti-poverty campaigners have made of the council tax rebate approach, that it spreads the money too thinly and fails to target the hardest hit? If the organisations at the cost-of-living crisis summit you've convened on Thursday come up with better...
Adam Price: The scenes last week in Swansea of a queue for a food-share scheme, the soup kitchens of our day, in a city where the demand for emergency food parcels has reportedly doubled in just a week, are images of mass poverty we have not witnessed since the hungry 1930s. One of the leading organisations that will be at Thursday's summit will be the Bevan Foundation. They and others have championed...
Adam Price: Diolch, Lywydd. First Minister, currently, a ship carrying Russian oil is docked at Milford Haven; it arrived there on Saturday and the oil is destined for the Valero oil refinery. A second vessel, also carrying Russian oil from the oil-loading port of Primorsk in Russia, is due to arrive in Milford Haven on Friday. The UK Government has put in place sanctions to prevent Russian flagged,...
Adam Price: During Mick Antoniw and my visit to Ukraine, we met a very, very wide range of people—yes, Government Ministers, but, more importantly than that, ordinary citizens of Ukraine, trade unionists, human rights organisers, people in the women's movement and people in the LGBT community. The one thing that they were all united on was that the policy of sanctions that had been introduced so far...
Adam Price: There were two further requests for acts of international solidarity that we heard from our Ukrainian friends. One of immediate practical help, and one of huge symbolic significance. The practical help that they called for was the immediate cancellation of Ukraine's foreign debt. Even as we speak, in the midst of war, the Ukrainian Government is having to provide servicing of its foreign debt...
Adam Price: Diolch, Llywydd. On this International Women's Day, it's impossible not to think about those many Ukrainian women, many with children, tired, traumatised, desperate, having travelled out of a war zone and across the European continent only to be turned away at Calais by UK Government officials and told they have to go to Paris or Brussels to make an application for a visa. Where is the...
Adam Price: First Minister, in May 1937 hundreds of Basque children fleeing fascism were welcomed in Wales as part of a concerted effort organised voluntarily—again, in the teeth of inaction from the British Government at the time. Is this something that we can seek to emulate now, not in the hundreds, but in the thousands? The UK Government talks about a humanitarian pathway involving sponsorship by...
