Adam Price: Diolch, Dirprwy Lywydd. Cabinet Secretary, this month's edition of Modern Railways magazine, which I know is required reading material for all Assembly Members, reported that future Valleys lines trains will no longer offer toilets on board for passengers. I'd like you to confirm whether or not this is the case. But, before you do that, I'd like to point out that there are two aspects to...
Adam Price: I'd like to turn, if I may, to another transport-related issue. Last week, the Welsh Government afforded opposition parties the opportunity to be given a technical briefing on the proposals for the M4 relief road. I'm grateful to the Cabinet Secretary and officials for that. Last week, you issued a written statement providing us with an update, and in that statement you said that in...
Adam Price: Could I—? Certainly, I think it would be widely shared, not just on these benches, that that has to be a debate on a meaningful vote and an amendable motion, and that the Welsh Government decision must reflect the view of this Chamber. Could I finally turn to other road projects? There's been talk of a Bontnewydd and Caernarfon bypass for over a decade. The work was originally intended to...
Adam Price: Will you give way? In response to this point earlier, the Counsel General said, in any case, this amendment and all the amendments are subject to the Sewel convention. But, as you pointed out, of course, on seven separate occasions, the Westminster Government has ignored the Sewel convention. So, it gives us no protection at all.
Adam Price: I'd be grateful if the First Minister could just clarify: has the Welsh Government requested in its specification from the bidders that all trains in the metro will have toilet facilities that are compliant with the new rules on board?
Adam Price: 3. Will the First Minister make a statement on the availability of out-of-hours doctors in the Hywel Dda University Health Board area? OAQ52153
Adam Price: Well, perhaps the Welsh Government expect them to do that, but, on a number of occasions this year, patients within Hywel Dda have been left without out-of-hours cover on weekends, because of what the health board itself describes as a dire shortage of GPs. It affects the three counties within their area, but it is specifically having an impact on Carmarthenshire, because of particular...
Adam Price: What Wales needs, of course, is a national railway. My fear is—and it's really underlined by the fact that we are going to get one business case for north Wales and a separate one for south Wales and then something fuzzy in the middle—that the Welsh Government really is a prisoner of the old map and the old thinking, whereby our infrastructure wasn't actually about moving our people...
Adam Price: I was following that closely, but maybe he can help me here, because everyone else, it would appear—as we heard from the leader of Plaid Cymru earlier—in your own party, the Scottish Labour Party, and the leader of the UK Labour Party, believes that the provisions that you've just set out are an affront to democracy and an affront to the principles of democratic devolution. Why are you...
Adam Price: Historians often say that British rule, while it often was unfair, was almost always polite, and here we are in this Welsh Parliament presented with a consent motion that, effectively, is asking for our consent to be removed. We are joining a very select club of national Parliaments, if we pass this motion today, that have voluntarily decided to cede their own authority. You have to cast...
Adam Price: Yes, but it goes on to say—. There's another 10 paragraphs, by the way. It goes on to say, the key point remains 'the Assembly’s competence can be restricted without its consent.' And that is the essential point in any democracy. I heard the Member say, 'Well, this is Sewel. This is Sewel.' Well, this is Sewel on steroids. This creates a legal pathway, a streamlined mechanism whereby...
Adam Price: It’s a pleasure for me to respond to this statement about the international day that’s happening on Thursday. A week Thursday, next week, it’s 30 years since the passing of section 28 in the Local Government Act 1988 at the time. A protest against section 28 was the first gay march ever in Cardiff, if not in Wales, and I was on that march and it was a part of my extended process, the...
Adam Price: If I can ask on procurement, then, on the economic contract, will we make LGBT-inclusive employment policy one of the criteria in terms of our procurement policy in Wales and in terms of the economic contract? Secondly, we mentioned the problems in terms of housing that particularly affect the LGBT community, and the landlord training that has been set up as part of the Housing (Wales) Act...
Adam Price: I was quite struck by what you just said, leader of the house, in terms of your tour round Wales. I'm very grateful we've had a conversation as well about you and your officials coming down to some of our communities in Carmarthenshire that are facing the frustrations that will be shared by many people and many Members across this Parliament. I'm grateful for that, but I'm very struck by you...
Adam Price: Thank you, Llywydd. A fortnight ago, Cabinet Secretary, you published the mid-term review in terms of the Wales infrastructure investment plan, which originally included a pipeline of projects worth £42 billion in total. Now, of course, in next year’s budget there’s only around £1.5 million—£1.6 million—which is capital investment, and I think we recognise, having done the maths,...
Adam Price: Well, I welcome that news very warmly, and perhaps this is an opportunity to test the dispute resolution agreement within the fiscal framework. We will see in due course. Securing Barnettised funding, not only in terms of this overspend, but across the rail network, would mean that there would be £2 billion per annum rather than £1.3 billion, and £700 million would be a means for us to do...
Adam Price: I understand the Cabinet Secretary's argument. I wonder, though, if a purpose-specific bond was put together on the lines that I've suggested that, actually, you would be able to convince the UK Treasury, for that specific purpose, to raise the borrowing limit. Indeed, this is something that has been suggested by Professor Holtham, that you mentioned in another context earlier. So, I was...
Adam Price: First Minister, there’s been a great deal of concern in the Neath area on the possible proposal to exclude Neath station from the main line as a new line is built. Now the Petitions Committee has confirmed to me in an e-mail that the reason a petition on this proposal has been judged to be valid is because it’s the Welsh Government that has commissioned the initial scoping work on this...
Adam Price: We always welcome any new thinking in economic strategy and the Cabinet Secretary will be aware that I'm myself trying to engage positively with him. It's in all of our interests that, actually, the high-level goals at the heart of any economic strategy are achieved. But, I have to say, if what we get is an ever lengthening series of vague statements, that initial enthusiasm, that there is a...
Adam Price: Cabinet Secretary, I can understand why Tory Ministers are congratulating you for slavishly following their privatising agenda, but the fact that we are now poised to hand over responsibility for our national railways to a French-Spanish consortium of transnational corporations is surely not a source of celebration. It's a source of regret and political soul-searching by the Labour Party....
