Mark Reckless: I congratulated you, education Minister, earlier in remarks, along with everyone involved, on the improvements that we have seen in the PISA results on this cycle. Reading your statement earlier, I was just a little concerned that you might be becoming a bit too self-congratulatory on these ones. The remarks that are positive, yes, but not perfect, for instance, I thought was a bit too much,...
Mark Reckless: Will the Member give way?
Mark Reckless: When she says that US drug companies want to gain full market access to the NHS for drugs, what does she mean by 'full market access', and to what extent do they not have such access currently?
Mark Reckless: I congratulate Plaid on tabling this debate and a relatively lengthy motion. It would be a challenge to respond to every point in it, but generally, I don't know whether Plaid have put this motion because it's a cynical effort to exploit the NHS and scares of a US trade deal in advance of the election, or whether it's because of genuine, albeit misconceived, concern about how the health...
Mark Reckless: I respect that point, and I think Plaid had been clear that they're not suggesting a broader sell-off in the way that some people perhaps on the Corbyn side have done. To address the point they make, I think the single largest expansion of the private sector into the NHS was the diagnostic and treatment centres brought in by the Blair Government. They were legislated for, in England at...
Mark Reckless: Well, they're informal discussions with relevant groups rather than negotiations, because of our peculiar interpretation of EU law. The bits that Labour have highlighted and tried to make a big thing of, none of them appear to me to be a smoking gun. I think the issue about patents is the one they've probably twisted the most. But, broadly, the UK and the US patent system are relatively...
Mark Reckless: First Minister, you and the Welsh Government have been influential as your party's policy on the EU referendum has evolved from saying you would respect it to doing the reverse. You claim the second referendum you want, because you don't like the result of the first, would be between a credible 'leave' option and 'remain'. Can you confirm that what you call a credible 'leave' option would be...
Mark Reckless: First Minister, I've always backed Brexit, as you try to block Brexit as well as looking to rig the question for a second referendum. Has Welsh Government led the way for your party to rig the franchise? You lost your majority at the last Assembly election and you continue to lose traditional support. Rather than listening, learning and changing your policies, you've instead decided to follow...
Mark Reckless: Will the Member give way?
Mark Reckless: She mentioned there hasn't been a statistically significant improvement since 2006. She then said that the scores were below the OECD average for 2019. Would she accept that they're not statistically significantly below the average in each of the three measures for the last year?
Mark Reckless: Can I apologise to the mover of the motion for missing the first few minutes of her speech? I sympathise with Helen Mary Jones describing her group as being between a rock and a hard place in dealing with this motion and amendments today. We looked at the Conservative motion and, in particular, point 3 b) requiring the Government to 'apologise to pupils, parents and schools for letting...
Mark Reckless: No, no. Well, perhaps the Labour side of her Government have taken advantage and wanted to put their best foot forward in front of the election. But I felt that gave a distorted image to the results across the country. And I think some of what the Conservatives say today is a fair corrective to that. I do know that the 'positive but not perfect' phrase has been picked up, to some degree, by...
Mark Reckless: First Minister, as well as wishing you a happy new year, may I thank you, your Government and your party for what you have done to bring about Brexit? You put forward a plan for Brexit in name only, but when Theresa May offered it to you, including a customs union, you voted against it. Instead, you chose to gamble that you could engineer a second referendum by persuading the British people...
Mark Reckless: I'm not sure whether the First Minister has an alternative history there, but I think the closest it came in the Commons was a vote where it was defeated despite the whole Cabinet abstaining on it. I recall your Counsel General here saying he was broadly content with the withdrawal agreement, and might just perhaps like a couple of changes and a non-binding political declaration, but...
Mark Reckless: I wonder if he could clarify something from his own party's manifesto, where it said if there was a Welsh Conservative Government it would deliver the M4 relief road. But, on the A55, the manifesto just said, without any qualification, 'We will upgrade the A55' in north Wales.
Mark Reckless: I congratulate the finance Minister on her budget and the process she's used. I'm noting, just from Rhun just then, that his remarks were quite gentle in admonishing the UK Government for the shifts in timings of its budgets and how those have been communicated, which contrasts what we heard earlier in the Scottish Parliament, where there seems to have been a serious ding-dong about the...
Mark Reckless: Diolch, Llywydd. Finance Minister, I spoke with you the day that the budget was announced and made some of the points that we have heard from Rhun today, and partly yesterday. And I'm pleased to hear that you met with Lesley Griffiths this morning to consider some of these matters. However, in your statement yesterday, you said that you're investing in the areas where we can have the greatest...
Mark Reckless: I can see that the Minister wants to draw on best practice. And to the extent there's a UK Committee on Climate Change and it has a list of various projects that it considers may be effective, I can see why she uses that as a starting point. But, as a finance Minister taking a decision about how much of our precious resources to invest into particular areas, surely, to the extent this is...
Mark Reckless: One of the advantages of the international convention centre and Jayne's excellent proposal is its location on the east side of Newport at Celtic Manor, so that people coming to events there from England by road don't need to travel through the Brynglas tunnels. Wouldn't a wider strategy of events coming to Wales, for instance to Cardiff, and making it possible for more people to get to them...
Mark Reckless: I oppose the motion for different reasons for each of the four points. The first point, I think it's fair enough to regret the failure of the Welsh Government's Communities First programme, but there are an awful lot of Welsh Government programmes that have failed in one way or another, but generally, they drag on without the Government admitting the failure. In this case—and I think they...
