Rhun ap Iorwerth: Can I say that I also, not least as a parent, feel for everybody affected and those concerned? Perhaps I could start, actually, by asking, Cabinet Secretary, if you could tell us what services are going to be put in place locally to provide support for those affected or who may be anxious about giving birth in the Cwm Taf area. We need to be sure about what happened. That's the purpose of...
Rhun ap Iorwerth: Prosperity is an important word. We all want a prosperous Wales—prospering economically and socially. We can talk about prosperity in public services, in health and education. I want a Wales that is prospering as a real nation to take its place among the nations of the world. Certainly, we can't take that word 'prosperity' for granted and underplay its importance. But I’m afraid I don’t...
Rhun ap Iorwerth: 'if we don't change things, by 2050 we could have more plastic than fish (by weight) in the sea'.
Rhun ap Iorwerth: In terms of improving educational outcomes and giving children from all backgrounds the best start in life, the Government's free childcare offer will actually increase the gap in school readiness between children from the most disadvantaged backgrounds and the most prosperous. Families earning up to £200,000 per year will benefit from free childcare for every child between three and four...
Rhun ap Iorwerth: What assistance is the Welsh Government offering to Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board to prepare for the needs of orthopaedic patients in north Wales during the winter?
Rhun ap Iorwerth: At St Cybi Church today, the residents of Holyhead and Dun Laoghaire have gathered together to remember the sinking of the RMS Leinster exactly 100 years ago.
Rhun ap Iorwerth: The RMS Leinster left Kingstown, now Dun Laoghaire, shortly before nine in the morning on 10 October 1918. She was bound for Holyhead with 771 passengers and crew on board. An hour later, she was targeted by a patrolling U-boat. It fired two torpedoes and the Leinster was sunk. More than 500 of those on board lost their lives. It was an atrocity, and it’s thought that reaction to it...
Rhun ap Iorwerth: Diolch, Dirprwy Lywydd. This is a pretty straightforward motion today, I think, with a pretty clear purpose. It's about saying to Welsh Government and Natural Resources Wales, 'Stop. Stop the current dredging going on in relation to the construction of the new Hinkley power station, stop the depositing of that dredged material on the Cardiff Grounds, and stop ignoring the concerns raised...
Rhun ap Iorwerth: I don't think anybody's suggesting that results have been made up. What the campaigners have said all along is that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, and what I suggested in the Petitions Committee, as I said, was, in consultation with campaigners, let's decide on a set of parameters that can be followed, including testing—different testing, perhaps—at depth, in order to...
Rhun ap Iorwerth: Thank you for taking the intervention. Just to add weight to what you're saying, I remind the Chamber that this debate happened in the Petitions Committee on 9 January this year. Just imagine what that time could have been used in doing, in eight or nine months, in doing the re-testing that the experts, the scientists, said they thought was 'a very good suggestion'—I quote. [Applause.]
Rhun ap Iorwerth: Diolch, Llywydd. I'm sure you'll be aware, Cabinet Secretary, of the decision of the highly respected Professor Siobhan McClelland—health economist, health manager; held senior positions on health boards—to leave Wales to seek better care for her husband, who has cancer. She's reported as saying: 'There is neither capacity nor capability in Welsh Government to be making really good health...
Rhun ap Iorwerth: Professor McClelland has looked at the NHS in Wales and how it's run probably more forensically than anybody else and one of her concerns is that your Government struggles to get health boards to do what you want them to do. Now, in the most recent budget, your Government has chosen to add over £500 million extra to health and social care—on the face of it, good news; we all want to see...
Rhun ap Iorwerth: A rather glib response, I must say, in terms of me inviting a cut in health and social care budgets. My question is: are you in control of what happens to that increase, which I welcome, if it is an actual increase, if it is investment? Now, the danger, of course, is that it's a fire-fighting fund. We've seen it time and time again—£100 million here, £200 million there, in order to plug...
Rhun ap Iorwerth: Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. I move the amendments tabled in my name. It is encouraging, I think, that we appear to be moving towards having a more sophisticated understanding, now, that the NHS is facing year-round pressures, not just winter pressures, when extreme weather can generate pressures in the emergency care system. Now, the implications of this realisation are very...
Rhun ap Iorwerth: More often than not, it’s not the number of people who turn up at A&E who cause the winter pressures; more people attend A&E during the summer months. Of course, it’s not much use or help when many people who don’t necessarily need to be in A&E do turn up with a heavy cold, or because they’ve drunk too much. But, even if we prevented that kind of access to our A&E departments, then...
Rhun ap Iorwerth: 7. Will the First Minister make a statement on the future of the railway bridge across the A5114 in Llangefni? OAQ52832
Rhun ap Iorwerth: Thank you very much for that response. On the fourteenth of this month, this railway bridge was demolished after a lorry struck it, and made the structure unsafe. Now, there are gaps where there once was a bridge, and the fact that there is no bridge there is now a threat to any future plans to reopen the rail line. I am convinced that reopening that rail line would be hugely beneficial to...
Rhun ap Iorwerth: I nominate Llyr Gruffydd.
Rhun ap Iorwerth: Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. Cabinet Secretary, as you know, the HS2 railway has been designated as a project for England and Wales, even though there isn't a mile of it here in Wales, and even though studies show clearly that it would cost money for the Welsh economy. The designation means that Wales will not have a full Barnett allocation from the original cost of about £55...
Rhun ap Iorwerth: Thank you for the kind words, and in reference to north Wales and what's in it for north Wales from HS2, you say it's provided the right connections are made at Crewe. We haven't got the assurances that we need on the connections at Crewe. To give some perspective about the costs we're talking about here, the first 6.6 miles north out of London is projected to cost £8.25 billion. That's...
