Carwyn Jones: ...to hold the Government to account in terms of its progress. We will, then, oppose that amendment. In terms of amendment 4, the programme for government is intended to deliver. Of course, the elephant in the room is what’s happening with Brexit, but the reality is that nobody, at this stage, can predict with any great accuracy what will happen, but we will know more as soon as the UK...
Siân Gwenllian: .... We support the idea of rights-based approaches to public services that the commissioner advocates, and we are happy to see these rights strengthened in whatever way possible. But there is one elephant in the room here, and that is austerity and the cuts in particular to local government. While local government in Wales is being hit less severely in Wales this year, thanks to the Plaid...
Bethan Sayed: ...used by Adam Price as an example, but I know that businesses there are increasingly frustrated about the fact that they are seeing not enough people coming and shopping in their town centre. The elephant in the room, is it not, is that in some town centres there are not the quality shops or the variance of shops that people want to have? You know, people will not go into our town centres...
Mr Simon Thomas: ...Parliament what to do and Parliament now must pass an Act in order to take us out of the European Union. That’s the best way and most constitutional way forward. But there is a constitutional elephant in the room, which I think we should mention, which is the ridiculous and absurd idea, in the twenty-first century, that we’re reliant on challenging a royal prerogative, that we’re...
Neil McEvoy: I suppose, really, the elephant in the room is that stock exchanges are typically private companies. There are some examples of publicly owned stock exchanges—the Shenzhen and Shanghai stock exchanges are really quasi-state institutions, as far as they were created by Government bodies in China and have leading personnel directly appointed by the China Securities Regulatory Commission....
Angela Burns: ...and collaborative skills, who will have the authority to drive the transformation across all of our health boards, and will they also eventually be able to look at the critical question—the elephant in the room that no-one can talk about or has talked about—which is how we are going to fund all of this, because the money is incredibly important? I do understand it wasn't part of the...
Mr Neil Hamilton: And I suppose the elephant in the room for most people is the extent of river pollution. I know that this is a much bigger issue than just in relation to fish stocks. We've had many a debate here about proposals for nitrate vulnerable zones and so on, but although nobody denies that there is a problem with pollution, it is being addressed by voluntary action, to a great extent. We've drawn...
Mick Antoniw: ...know needs to happen, and that is that there has to be a consideration of the whole of the UK constitution, a UK constitutional convention of some format. And also to look at and deal with the 'elephant in the room', as it was described by John Morris so many years ago, and that is the English question as a fundamental part of resolving the relationships on a permanent and...
David Lloyd: ...personal care, should also be registered. And, obviously, those processes are part of an obvious requirement in improving the outcomes in social care that we all want to see. But obviously the elephant in the room here is that you can't achieve all this whilst care support workers are low paid, still subject to casualisation, occasional zero-hours contracts, and that they don't have...
Gareth Bennett: ...in its own workforce. That lack of investment in its own staff is a key reason why productivity today is worse in the UK than in, for example, Germany. Of course, from our viewpoint in UKIP, the elephant in the room is immigration. If you have a system that allows for hundreds of thousands of immigrants to enter your country every year, then you are allowing employers the opportunity to...
Mr Neil Hamilton: ...a vital need until we have got the building blocks in place for what is going to replace them. So, this, I think, has been handled in a most insensitive way. And then, of course, we come to the elephant in the room in the form of the health Secretary, because ultimately, Hywel Dda is now under his supervision, just as Betsi Cadwaladr is in north Wales, and the Welsh Government can't...
Mr Neil Hamilton: ...of course, very welcome—although, as he rightly said, what's given on one hand is partly taken away on the other and about half the budget is already earmarked by the UK Government. But the real elephant in the room here is not so much the funding available, but the continuing inability of many health boards to be able to manage their own budgets properly, and we've seen, this year, that...
Russell George: ...growth deal, I am concerned that the draft budget has a real-terms cut of 1.6 per cent for funding for city and growth deals. And I hope the Cabinet Secretary will be able to comment on that. The elephant in the room in regards to the transport budget is, of course, the M4 relief road. That decision will have profound implications for future budgets across a range of portfolios, and this...
Siân Gwenllian: ...in their day-to-day activities. The profession is under huge pressure at the moment, and we need to thank them for continuing to try and inspire our children and young people in the classroom, which is, after all, their main task, but the context is a challenging one. The serious funding crisis facing schools across Wales is having a detrimental impact on the education of our young people,...
Lynne Neagle: ...like to be able to welcome today's debate from the Welsh Conservatives because I do think that local government is facing its toughest period since devolution in 1999, but it would be to ignore the elephant in the room to thank the Tories for the opportunity to talk about this because it is their austerity agenda, that political choice to starve services of funding, that has led to the...
Mark Isherwood: ...if you'd comment on, therefore, the need to focus on that constitutional issue in perpetuity, rather than our views of current or future Government policies or parties in Government. Perhaps the elephant in the room, again, for me is the cross-border nature of crime and justice in Wales. It's always been thus. It's nothing new—it's no threat to nationhood, good or bad, it's a reality...
Janet Finch-Saunders: ..., the Welsh Local Government Association have captured the situation beautifully—'It's a bit like trying to run a marathon with a lead weight tied around your neck. The funding is always the elephant in the room'. Their words, not mine. There are options you can consider, such as the reform to school funding. According to the Department for Education, the new arrangements will provide up...
Angela Burns: ...boards, where they have had to cancel operations so that they can accelerate a catch-up programme so that our waiting times have an opportunity to improve rather than lengthen? Finally, I think the elephant in the room is that social services need to be on call seven days a week all year around, like our health services. On call in terms of being able to do delayed transfers of care,...
Rhun ap Iorwerth: ...is strengthened in order to ensure that this does happen? If I could move on to my next question, whatever age group you're talking about and whatever generation you're talking about, there is an elephant in the room here too in terms of there being one major problem, and that is the major cuts in local government funding over the past decade. We have seen cuts to day centres, we have seen...
Delyth Jewell: ...liked to have seen it included in the statement, namely the shortage of social and affordable housing. Yes, the core numbers are increasing, but they are falling far short of what is required. The elephant in the room, if I can say that, is that we have a planning system that has profit assurance built into it, namely developers can use the Planning Inspectorate to prevent local...
