Carwyn Jones: Well, Llywydd, it’s right that we should have had this debate this afternoon, so that Members could put their views. Can I say, before I deal with the leader of the Welsh Conservatives, that the speeches given by David Melding and by Angela Burns were far closer to the kind of leader’s speech I would have expected from somebody who is leading one of Wales’s biggest political parties?...
Carwyn Jones: The Cabinet Secretary for Communities and Children has had discussions with the UK’s prisons Minister regarding the proposed site for development of a new prison at Baglan, and Welsh Government officials are also having ongoing discussions with Ministry of Justice officials regarding the proposal.
Carwyn Jones: Well, the prison itself will create 500 local jobs and generate £11 million in revenue for the local economy. Could I reassure my colleague that, as somebody who has a prison in his constituency, and who was the ward councillor when the prison was being built in my ward at the time, there were concerns at the time, no question about it, but that those concerns were never realised? We...
Carwyn Jones: No, we haven’t had conversations along those lines. If she’s got that e-mail and she feels able to share it, I’d very much like to see it. I’m not sure whether she’s against the prison, or whether she has other questions, but, from our perspective, we know the prison can generate, as I said, 500 jobs, and I speak as somebody with a prison in my constituency. It had no detrimental...
Carwyn Jones: Well, ultimately, the final decision on the exact location of any prison is a matter for the Ministry of Justice and not for Welsh Government. It’s now, of course, a matter for the UK Government to seek planning permission. It’s in the UK Government’s interest to make sure that there is full consultation locally—you can’t give people too much information. I remember what happened in...
Carwyn Jones: The core funding provided to Welsh local authorities each year is distributed according to relative need. The formula is agreed with local government through the partnership council for Wales, and it takes account of a wide range of factors.
Carwyn Jones: Well, if you look at the—if I can use the word—‘rankings’, for local authorities, Denbighshire’s allocation is the fourth highest, Gwynedd is ninth, Carmarthenshire is tenth, Ceredigion fourteenth, Powys fifteenth, Pembrokeshire seventeenth. In comparison, Swansea is sixteenth, Flintshire nineteenth, and Cardiff is twentieth. It would seem to me that rurality is taken into account....
Carwyn Jones: Absolutely, I do. The time has come to ditch the public sector pay cap. We need to make sure that public sector workers are paid properly for the job that they do. I do not accept that there is some kind of financial restraint at play here, given the fact that £1 billion was found as part of a bung for Northern Ireland. If it can be found for Northern Ireland, the money can be found for our...
Carwyn Jones: Well, of course, this is a matter for Ceredigion. I did allude to Bodlondeb last week in the Chamber here. But, of course, the Government is perfectly happy to collaborate with local authorities, to see what other methods of delivering a service may be available in their areas. And, of course, that is true of Ceredigion, and true of every other authority.
Carwyn Jones: Could I thank my friend, Eluned Morgan, for the work that she has done, and the deep interest she takes in rural communities across Wales? We know that rural Wales will have specific challenges particularly with regard to Brexit. We welcome, as a Government, the publication of the report, and it will form part of the strategy that we have to deliver further for rural Wales in the next few...
Carwyn Jones: The answer to the question is ‘yes’. That’s what we want to do. We’re looking at the detail of how that can be done, but we want to make sure that the same service is on offer in Wales as it is in England and Scotland. There are issues such as, for example, travel costs, and issues such as how you provide ongoing care for a procedure, rather than people just going home. These things...
Carwyn Jones: We want to lift the pay cap. There are financial implications that we believe should be met by the Westminster Government. I don’t know what their view is, if I’m honest with the leader of Plaid Cymru, on the pay cap. I’ve heard different views from different Ministers at different times. It shows the lack of leadership that exists in Westminster. She and I are in exactly the same...
Carwyn Jones: The leader of Plaid Cymru asked what the point of Labour is. I can remind her that we have 28 MPs and her party has four. That is the point of Labour. People have faith in Welsh Labour. We saw that in the general election campaign. They keep on saying, ‘Do this, do that’. Well, people aren’t listening to them. She and I are in the same position in terms of the public sector pay cap....
Carwyn Jones: The Llywydd rightly stopped people heckling the leader of Plaid Cymru, so she can do the same for me. As I said, this is something that we want to take forward, but the first port of call is to say to the UK Government, ‘You found the money for Northern Ireland; now you find the money for Wales’.
Carwyn Jones: Can I, before I answer the question, offer my sympathies as well to the leader of the Welsh Conservatives, and, indeed, his group, and the family, fiancée, friends and colleagues of Ben Davies? It was a tragic event that we saw in Greece. So, first of all, could I express my sympathies with regard to what happened to Ben? We all rely on our staff and it was a deeply tragic incident for such...
Carwyn Jones: We have had discussion with businesses, particularly those in the automotive sector, and they have said to us that a circuit is not required to move forward with the technology park. It’s something that would be nice to have but not essential to have. I think if I represent it in that way, it’s a fair representation. But, certainly, the development of the technology park in their view is...
Carwyn Jones: We will make available all that can be made available, subject to commercial confidentiality discussions, of course, with other businesses. But I think it’s right with this decision and this project that as much information is in the public domain as possible. We’re not afraid of that and, certainly, it is something that we are considering: how can we get as much information into the...
Carwyn Jones: The issue is this, isn’t it: the problem has always been that if this project had strong support from private investors, it wouldn’t need a guarantee from the Government, and it would be able to stand on its own two feet without that guarantee. As we said in the Chamber last week, the difficulty that we have faced is that no final decision will be given by the ONS or Eurostat as to...
Carwyn Jones: We can’t ignore the reality of the fact that there is a high risk, in our judgement, that we would see £373 million lost to the Welsh capital budget. That is something that no responsible Government could ignore. I come back to the point that if the project was able to stand on its own—. This isn’t a Government project; this is a project that’s come forward from a private consortium....
Carwyn Jones: It is the responsibility of the circuit to bring forward any new proposal, not the Welsh Government. This isn’t a Welsh Government scheme. The circuit were given conditions that they had to meet and they did not meet those conditions when we looked at the due diligence. He says it’s £100 million out of the back pocket; it’s £100 million over 10 years. So, not suddenly £100 million in...
