Rhun ap Iorwerth: Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. I thank the Business Committee for giving me the opportunity to make this legislative proposal today. I drove my first electric car back in 2009 in China. I was filming in the BYD company factory—a company that was established in 1995 that develops batteries, and that claims to be the biggest manufacturer of electric cars in the world. They sold 100,000...
Rhun ap Iorwerth: Take your pick of estimates about the pace of change, but we know we are heading for an electric vehicle, or EV, future. As an aside, yes, we need to persuade more people out of cars altogether. Cleaner, greener public transport, alongside active travel, has to be the subject of heavy investment. But the car will be with us for some time yet. What won't be with us is the internal combustion...
Rhun ap Iorwerth: Yes, it's not that long ago since we had outside toilets built outside homes, but now it's a kind of expectation that you have a bathroom in the house. We need to move with the times. So, you need local-use charge points, but we have to have a proper national network as well. I'm looking forward to picking up a Renault ZOE from Renault UK in a few weeks' time, driving from my Ynys Môn...
Rhun ap Iorwerth: Thank you very much. Could I thank everyone who's taken part in this discussion this afternoon? I'm encouraged by the spirit of the debate. I'll come to the Minister last, possibly. In terms of the comments that have been raised already,
Rhun ap Iorwerth: there are a number of points raised by Members that I'd perhaps like to comment on quickly. Lee Waters and David Melding raised the issue that you still have to generate electricity somehow, and that's no good if you're generating it by burning fossil fuels, for example. Actually, absolutely, we need to move to non-carbon electricity generation, but the electric vehicle itself is far more...
Rhun ap Iorwerth: I don't disagree with that at any level; I think that that will be shown on the record as being a pretty good idea. But I come back to that point about the efficiency of electric vehicles in this particular issue, anyway. So, whilst we have the delays in what we'd like in terms of moving towards non-carbon electricity generation, at least EVs is a way to be more efficient. I don't have much...
Rhun ap Iorwerth: Thank you very much, Deputy Presiding Officer, and I thank everyone who has contributed to this debate this afternoon. I am very pleased that we have had the opportunity to put this on the Assembly’s agenda this afternoon. A series of contributors from across the political parties have described very clearly the need to ensure an early diagnosis and the importance of raising awareness, the...
Rhun ap Iorwerth: The motion, and all speakers, have reflected the importance of early diagnosis, whether that comes from screening or getting people referred for testing a lot more quickly as a result of symptoms that they approach a GP with, and both of those routes to diagnosis and getting more people on that road to diagnosis are going to be vitally important parts of how we improve survival rates. I think...
Rhun ap Iorwerth: Steffan, we're thinking about you and we wish you every strength. We will be there on 14 July walking in Cwmcarn, raising funds for Velindre hospital.
Rhun ap Iorwerth: We will show our support on 14 July in that walk to raise money for Velindre in your name, Steffan. But, you know, we cannot tackle the issues that we are addressing today at a walking pace; we have to tackle bowel cancer head-on. Our message to Government—I think we've made it clear: bring down the screening age, give more people the opportunity for early diagnosis, really address with new...
Rhun ap Iorwerth: Will the Cabinet Secretary provide an update on the allocation of funding in the budget to develop medical education in Bangor?
Rhun ap Iorwerth: Will the First Minister make a statement on the use of single-handed care?
Rhun ap Iorwerth: Diolch, Llywydd. At the end of last month, Cabinet Secretary, you wrote to all Assembly Members explaining that the party opposite's claim of falling nurse numbers at Betsi Cadwaladr, a claim based on freedom of information data, was wrong. You instead claimed that Betsi, like the rest of Wales, had seen an increase in qualified nurse numbers. Now, we've looked into the Stats Wales figures,...
Rhun ap Iorwerth: Let me turn to figures from the Nursing and Midwifery Council. Incidentally, they show EU nurses leaving the UK in droves because of concerns over Brexit—hugely worrying, but that's for another day. The general Welsh data shows over 300 fewer nurses in Wales since 2012-13. Now, cynics might say that what I did there was to pick a starting point to suit my narrative. Its data actually does...
Rhun ap Iorwerth: It's a damning indictment of your Government, as I say, that, if you are continuing to spend more, we're getting less results in terms of full-time equivalent nursing numbers, as I have factually stated, based on your Stats Wales figures. I am merely aligning myself with those facts as your statisticians put them forward. Now, we also know that the Welsh NHS continues to demonstrate a heavy...
Rhun ap Iorwerth: I will speak briefly about the work that we did as a committee. I'm grateful to the clerks and the team for their work in putting a report together, and doing that in a short time. It's important that we do remember what that timetable was. The licence was approved back in 2014 following an application two years before that, if I remember rightly, but this didn’t come to the public’s...
Rhun ap Iorwerth: 'If that is a requirement to allay public perception, we would be very happy to do that.... We could make it more transparent in terms of how that assessment is done'.
Rhun ap Iorwerth: If they proposed that there was a more transparent way to do the assessments, then we should have capitalised on that opportunity, I think, to move ahead in the most transparent way possible. NRW said on 30 January that they had asked the licence holders to consider doing more sampling at depth on a voluntary basis. On 27 March, despite that, NRW let us know as a committee that the licence...
Rhun ap Iorwerth: Will the Cabinet Secretary make a statement on training young people in Ynys Môn for future local job opportunities?
Rhun ap Iorwerth: I'll start, if I can, by referring to what the First Minister said earlier today in suggesting that Plaid Cymru somehow is doing Wales's rail down. I think we're all excited about the prospect of hopefully getting some more decent trains at some point. I have no doubt that KeolisAmey have put together a very impressive bid, and I congratulate them on landing this lucrative deal. So, is...
