Mark Reckless: Perhaps, First Minister, he could run on a manifesto, promising to deliver a relief road for the M4 and then do the opposite, as you are. You strongly oppose any UK Government role, yet you never objected to the EU role in how these amounts were spent. Last week, you told us that unionists were imperilling the union, after the Foreign Office denied you the use of a car in Brussels. Isn't the...
Mark Reckless: Could I thank the First Minister for his statement and also for the advance copy, and also say how refreshing it is to see how many of his ministerial statements he stays for? It's not something I ever recall having seen at Westminster. I've got three areas I wanted to ask him about here. The references—. He started by praising our model of social partnership and made quite a lot of...
Mark Reckless: We will also be abstaining on the substance of this motion on the supplementary budget. However, can I compliment the Government on its much improved presentation of the supplementary budget? I recall three years ago, having recently been elected to the Assembly, the first supplementary budget that I encountered. I had hoped that my experience, in terms of looking at UK Government budgets or...
Mark Reckless: Thank you very much for that sedentary intervention. We often seem to find it easier to fund things from capital budgets transferring to revenue than vice versa. I think we'd invest money well. Of that £85 million, though, only £5 million, when we read down, is actually going to the network operations BEL in respect of trunk road and motorway carriageway. So, as rightly observed, there is...
Mark Reckless: I'd like to congratulate Suzy Davies for bringing this motion to annul today, and also for alerting me to this motion in the Chamber when I raised this, I think two weeks ago, at First Minister's questions, when I did bring it to the Chamber in another context. Generally, I support what Suzy has said about making it easier and more accessible for spokespeople and, indeed, other Assembly...
Mark Reckless: So surely, then, what we need is accountability, measurements, targets, ability to compare those, rather than rounded self-evaluation that might otherwise be termed schools marking their own homework?
Mark Reckless: Will the Member give way? No-one is suggesting a market—it's just parents having to pay merely being able to compare how well schools are doing, to inform their judgments of (1), where they want their children to go to school, and (2), then how to help those schools get better by holding them to account.
Mark Reckless: I agree with the remarks the Member just made as regards being a Welsh Parliament and being Members of a Welsh Parliament. I only regret that he apparently said the opposite in the process that led to the Bill coming to us in the form it does today, because in the Llywydd's explanatory memorandum, it states, in summary: 'The purpose of the Bill is to: rename the Assembly to "Senedd".' It then...
Mark Reckless: We're not in favour of abolishing the Assembly. Now, on this language point, we had a consultation, and the Llywydd's explanatory memorandum tells us that 53 per cent thought that the name 'Senedd' described well what this institution does. The explanatory memorandum does not tell us that the consultation showed—or not that I have read within it, and I have looked reasonably...
Mark Reckless: Diolch, Dirprwy Llywydd. I move the amendment in Caroline's name. I thank the Member for his speech. I thought he spoke in a very, very measured way. Others say that he may be playing politics. I think that phrase is often used either when groups are divided amongst themselves as to their position or when a Member’s own position diverges, perhaps, from those that they represent, and I...
Mark Reckless: I absolutely take that correction, thank you very much—fewer councillors. I'm very embarrassed by that. Fewer councillors, 11 fewer MPs, and four fewer MEPs—then perhaps the Member would like to come back with the argument then. But we in our group are not persuaded of the case for increasing the size of the Assembly and do not think other Members will be able to bring the members of the...
Mark Reckless: Will the Llywydd give way?
Mark Reckless: I'm very grateful to the Llywydd. She said that Scotland and Northern Ireland were more fortunate than us by having more Members. Will she also recognise that the range given by the report that Professor McAllister chaired, even at the lower end of that—the 80—that would give us more Members per head than we see in Scotland?
Mark Reckless: First Minister, you spoke last week about your desire to commence the first part of the Equality Act 2010 in Wales, so this week I'll ask you about section 20 and Schedule 2 to that Act. They provide for statutory investigation by the Equality and Human Rights Commission when an organisation is believed to have unlawfully discriminated against people because of their ethnicity and religious...
Mark Reckless: Thank you for that answer. I wonder why that is thought not to be within the scope. One Labour staffer who bravely spoke to BBC Panorama said investigators were undermined, when given cases, by people wanting leniency on anti-Semitism, then taking those cases away. Often, that was people from Jeremy Corbyn's office, but isn't it also what you did, First Minister? I hear the previous First...
Mark Reckless: The First Minister started his statement by saying: 'This legislative statement sets out the Government’s plans for the Bills we will introduce over the remainder of this Assembly term.' I think it was about halfway through the statement before we got on to that. We heard before about what had happened or what others were doing or why you wouldn't be doing various things, and on those,...
Mark Reckless: When I was planning for this week's business, I think it was Friday last week, I was taking a look through some of what we'd be doing and I saw this statement, 'Future Outlook for Public Spending in Wales', and I was quite excited. I thought we were going to be looking at some of the big, long-term issues affecting public spending in Wales: the demography of Wales, our ageing population, the...
Mark Reckless: 5. Will the Minister make a statement on the future of the Help to Buy scheme in Wales? OAQ54281
Mark Reckless: The UK Government made a statement about the future of Help to Buy at least in England last autumn, and I think the lack of certainty is becoming more and more difficult for house builders in terms of their planning, whichever way the decision goes. I wonder, as the Welsh Government funds this scheme, whether it expects to make a profit on the eventual resale of houses, or whether it's...
Mark Reckless: I thank the Chair of the committee for his statement. It's good to see that the Counsel General and Brexit Minister is in this place now as well. Also, I thought the statement was very considered actually, and was less partisan and more balanced than the contributions we've heard so far from the floor. Also, I thought, better than what I saw at his committee on Monday, where the future work...
