Adam Price: Diolch, Llywydd. First Minister, in September 2019 I asked you to set out the anticipated responsibilities of the new child poverty review lead. Can you update the Senedd on the key findings resulting from their work?
Adam Price: Organisations working in this field in Wales have called for you to publish the findings of the child poverty review, and it's regrettable they're only now being made public as a result of a freedom of information request. They are, however, very revealing. Not only are they contrary to your own Government's policy, they're in line with what we in Plaid Cymru and others have been advocating....
Adam Price: Of course, the actions that have been taken now during the pandemic are welcome, but the children's commissioner has made the point that we do need to see the review, which is looking at what can be done beyond the immediate, turned into a concrete plan of action. Many people working in this field are pointing out that Wales has the least generous provision for free school meals across the...
Adam Price: Thank you, Llywydd. May I, first of all, echo the comments made earlier and say that our thoughts and prayers are with the families of Alan Minard, Ross Ballantine and Carl McGrath at this very difficult time?
Adam Price: First Minister, the Scottish Government is providing £90 million in extra funding to councils to enable them to freeze council tax next year, offsetting what would have been, on average, a 3 per cent increase. It would cost around £100 million to allow Welsh councils to freeze council tax next year and offset the average 4.8 per cent rise that we saw last year. At this time of great...
Adam Price: Obviously, the additional £5.5 million increase to the council tax reduction scheme that you referred to, First Minister, is welcome, but it's lower than the increase in council tax arrears, and the people who are most likely to have gone into arrears are those affected by coronavirus, households with children, people with disabilities. Freezing council tax is a short-term measure, though...
Adam Price: You and I have talked about this very issue before, but the question is, of course, what are we going to do now. What we would do in Government is to undertake to revalue more regularly and ensure that the council tax system is more proportional to the value of properties. We know in Blaenau Gwent, for example, we've seen the value of properties increase more than twice as much compared to...
Adam Price: Diolch, Dirprwy Lywydd. Seeing those big, bold 'delivered' stamps on your annual report's opening page, First Minister, I was reminded of a paper I recently read about your Government, which said this: 'There tends to a box ticking drive to ensure Manifesto and Programme promises can be said to have been met. What I have never seen is an overall attempt to assess whether the desired outcomes...
Adam Price: First Minister, the remarks I just read out are not my views—they're the views of someone who was a non-executive director of your Government for almost a decade. It's difficult to find a more damning indictment than this statement from them about that experience: 'I have never been part of a Board with such a lack of measures of progress or outcome success.' You campaign in poetry and...
Adam Price: Well, the Labour activists I've quoted are critical of your party's final policy document, which I have seen, because it does not commit to extending free school meals—the very policy you've been attacking me on for these last few weeks. It seems I'm now closer to Labour values than you are. The document contains few new ideas, but at least some new admissions. In it, Labour Party members,...
Adam Price: I'm pleased to have the opportunity for the second time today to scrutinise the programme for government annual report. I won't rehearse the points I made earlier on the systemic lack of delivery of this Government in key areas such as child poverty and fuel poverty. But I will say that we have become far too familiar with this repetitious pattern over the term of this Government and previous...
Adam Price: —believes that. And believes that because there is a role for everyone in creating the new Wales. It is work that we all have to do to create structures to deliver it.
Adam Price: First Minister, how many care workers in Wales currently receive less than the real living wage?
Adam Price: According to the Resolution Foundation, First Minister, more than half of all care workers in Wales currently receive less than the real living wage—poverty wages, in other words. That was unacceptable before the pandemic and it's certainly unacceptable now. That's not just my view; it's also the view expressed recently by your party's deputy leader, Angela Rayner, who has called for the...
Adam Price: First Minister, the Scottish Government has already committed last year to ensuring that all care workers in Scotland receive the real living wage. Why aren't you prepared to make that commitment here in Wales? The unions are calling for it, the care sector is calling for it, the Bevan Foundation is calling for it. Yes, you're absolutely right, it would be a priority to deliver for a Plaid...
Adam Price: 'The youth parliament will give Wales' young people a democratic voice at a national level and empower them to bring about change.' That's how you, Llywydd, described the vision underpinning the Welsh Young Parliament at its launch. And without doubt, the Youth Parliament has delivered on that and much more, and I'm very pleased to provide my party's support to the work that's been done to...
Adam Price: 1. Will the Minister make a statement on the support that is available to people following the recent floods that have affected communities across Wales? TQ541
Adam Price: I'm grateful for that response. Can the Minister also tell us whether businesses affected by the most recent floods will be able to access the flood support grant fund that was announced earlier this year, specifically targeted at businesses? In looking at those communities that have been affected recently by floods, in my constituency and in nearby constituencies, will they now be given...
Adam Price: Diolch, Llywydd. Labour is like a gambler that bets everything on winning power in Westminster every five years—the view of Manchester's Labour mayor, Andy Burnham. First Minister, isn't that the story of Welsh politics for the last 100 years?
Adam Price: You described independence today in The National, First Minister, as a nineteenth-century response to a twenty-first century problem, going on to propose home rule instead, an idea from the 1880s. The problem is that home rule will never solve the fundamental problem in the Welsh democratic deficit. As the head of Labour for IndyWales, Bob Lloyd, said yesterday in the Daily Express: 'For the...
