Adam Price: There are some specific risks to Wales as a result of our withdrawal from the European Union, but there are also some opportunities, not least the ability, for instance, to set regional or sub-national rates for VAT, for example on hotel accommodation, to boost our tourism sector, or for house renovation to boost our construction sector. Will the Cabinet Secretary be making an application to...
Adam Price: I had intended to speak more broadly in this debate about the role of innovation in local government, of which there are some examples from Plaid Cymru-led authorities, as set out in our motion. But I’ve been prompted to talk about a different kind of innovation—innovation in politics, which is doing what we say. You know, actually putting into action the principles that we say are at the...
Adam Price: We say it quite clearly. We’ve set out amendments to a whole series of Bills. I know that the honourable Member and I myself were elected last year, but Plaid Cymru put in a whole series of amendments on six separate occasions to two different Bills. They were set out in amendments to those Bills, and you voted against. It’s not as if we’ve just done this to play politics, right? We...
Adam Price: Would the First Minister agree that the third party that owes the biggest debt of all to Welsh local authorities is the Westminster Government, which has cut over a third in spending on adult care since 2011, which has had severe financial consequences in Wales and, obviously, terrible consequences in terms of the human cost to the elderly, the sick and the disabled? If this callous...
Adam Price: Thank you, Dirprwy Lywydd. You know, to listen to the tone of the Conservative Party in this election, you could come to the conclusion that, in some way, we are on the cusp of Britain’s finest hour. When you look at actually what’s happening to this country, what you see, actually, is a deeply divided United Kingdom. It’s not our finest hour, it could be the final hour, because of the...
Adam Price: European regional funds were always a tiny lever compared to the scale of the problem. We in this party and other progressives across the UK were continually making the case that we couldn’t just rely on a tiny proportion. The Conservative Party were arguing, of course, for cutting the budget for European regional development funds throughout this period. Let’s look at the facts. This is...
Adam Price: Does he accept his own Government’s figures that I quoted that, actually, output per worker in Wales and many parts of the UK is actually still now, in the latest figures, lower than in 2007 when he was elected as a Plaid Cymru AM?
Adam Price: Well, the response is quite simple, isn’t it? They’ve been in power in Wales for 100 years. For most of that time in Westminster, you’ve been in power. You are both responsible for the terrible state that our economy and society is in as a nation. Shame on both of you.
Adam Price: Well, we certainly need new ideas when it comes to our economic strategy, because the old ideas haven’t worked, have they? I mean, we’re poorer now, relative to the rest of the UK, than when Labour first took office in 1997 at Westminster and here in the Assembly in 1999. So, can the First Minister explain what new ideas Labour has to transform our economy? And, given the fact that...
Adam Price: Has the Welsh Government decided to delay announcing any decision regarding further financial support for the Circuit of Wales until the end of the UK pre-election period on 8 June?
Adam Price: Diolch, Llywydd. Cabinet Secretary, this week in a written reply to me, you accused the company behind the Circuit of Wales of, many material gaps and inaccuracies in the information’ they have provided to you. Now, that’s a fairly extraordinary claim for anyone to make, let alone a Government, about a counterparty with which you are just weeks away from making a decision about a £425...
Adam Price: You accuse the company of misleading you, and you say you give honest answers. Well, isn’t it the case that if anyone has been guilty of misleading people, it’s your Government? In the auditor general’s report, he refers to a press release that your Government issued on the FTR acquisition, which he says, in terms, was both incorrect and misleading. That’s the auditor general’s...
Adam Price: The auditor general used the term ‘misleading’.
Adam Price: Here we have a Cabinet Secretary who has delayed a decision not once but twice, beyond an election, for obvious reasons, and he accuses me of acting in self-interest. There’s a simple answer to the charge of prevarication that we make, and that’s to get on and make a decision. The Cabinet Secretary has said that he has now got all the information from the company that he requires and that...
Adam Price: [Inaudible.]
Adam Price: I have very limited time, so I’ll say just this. I think the Valleys—the economic history, the political history, of the Valleys, has been characterised by two forms of persistence, I think, over the last 80 years: the persistence of the problems that have been there right back to the crisis in the 1920s and 1930s and the creation of UK regional policy in the Special Areas Act 1934, which...
Adam Price: 2. Does the Welsh Government now have all the information it needs to make a decision on whether to provide the financial support requested by the promoters of the Circuit of Wales? OAQ(5)0636(FM)
Adam Price: I think people will draw their own conclusion, First Minister, on why this decision has been pushed beyond the general election. But, on the wider theme of openness, I’ve been told in written answers by the Cabinet Secretary for Economy and Infrastructure that the idea of an 80 per cent Government guarantee, which was at the heart of the proposal that you rejected last year, was first...
Adam Price: I was wondering if we could return to the demise of the Barnett formula, rumours of which may have been exaggerated. We heard earlier in the week from the First Minister for Wales that it was going to be scrapped. Kezia Dugdale, the leader of the Scottish Labour Party, as we know, is on the record as saying, ‘I’ll keep the Barnett formula today, tomorrow and forever’, which sounds...
Adam Price: Let’s look at the short to medium term, then. The Welsh Government signed recently, in January this year, a fiscal framework with the Westminster Government. Would it be the intention of the Welsh Government, if there was a change of Government at Westminster, to revisit that agreement and to renegotiate some aspects of it—for example, the population related revenue risk that is an...
