Adam Price: Thank you very much, Llywydd. As you know, First Minister, the winter fair is happening in Llanelwedd at the moment. I was there very early this morning, and it was a wonderful opportunity to speak face to face with farmers and representatives of that community. The clear message that I heard there from a sector facing so many different pressures from so many different directions was that...
Adam Price: One of the specific challenges facing the agricultural community at the moment is that multinational financial companies are coming into rural communities and purchasing agricultural land for the planting of trees in order to buy carbon credits. I was given to understand this morning from one of the agricultural unions that those selling land are now cold calling farmers in an attempt to...
Adam Price: We've even recently heard some Conservatives in this Senedd raising their voices against multinational corporations buying up Welsh agricultural land. It's great to see the Tories as late converts against the unbridled operation of the free market, and I think Welsh agriculture, beset by all these pressures at the moment, needs a bit of a united front. But the wider attempt to present the...
Adam Price: 8. Will the Minister make a statement on the impact of the all-Wales prior approval policy on communities located near the borders of health boards? OQ57268
Adam Price: I am grateful to the Minister. The national policy notes that patients shouldn't access medical treatment in another health board unless all local options are unable to provide that treatment. It has a real impact on communities on the borders of health boards. I'm thinking of Upper Brynamman, for example, in my constituency, where the village is split in two—Lower Brynamman is in the...
Adam Price: Diolch yn fawr, Llywydd. I wish to make a quick statement today on SUDEP, which is sudden unexpected death in epilepsy. In Wales, there are an estimated 32,000 people living with epilepsy. Twenty-one people a week or three people every day in the United Kingdom die from SUDEP, with a large percentage of them being young men between the age of 20 and 40. As a group, people living with epilepsy...
Adam Price: Diolch, Llywydd. Can I start by saying how glad I am to see the leader of the Welsh Conservatives back in his place here? We've disagreed many times in this Siambr, Andrew, and I'm sure we'll disagree many times again, and sometimes passionately, but can I say that we've always had the best of personal relationships? Can I also pay tribute to the way in which you spoke openly about issues of...
Adam Price: Well, Mr Thorley did seek board approval and also wrote to the then-Minister for the economy before taking up his paid role as the chair of Zip World. Perhaps the First Minister could confirm whether Mr Thorley's personal investment in Zip World was also subject to prior board approval, as has been reported in the press. Now, if it was, and the reason that I raise this—. Well, the question...
Adam Price: As you know, First Minister, your predecessor Rhodri Morgan was highly critical of senior leadership figures within the Welsh Development Agency having outside business interests that gave rise to negative perceptions. He said, and I quote: 'Business does not just have to be done, it has to be seen to be done. That is well-nigh impossible when you have inter-locking relationships.' It's not...
Adam Price: Thank you, Presiding Officer. I knew that that phrase, 'a down payment on independence', would upset the Tories; they're very easily upset these days. But what I meant by that, what was on my mind, was another phrase that Raymond Williams coined where he talked about real independence. Not independence as a theory, but real independence for him were the policies that would transform people's...
Adam Price: It's interesting, I think, this debate about the role of Government and opposition. It reminds me of a famous phrase by the American political scientist Robert Dahl, who once said: 'To say where the government leaves off and the opposition begins is an exercise in metaphysics.' He was a great theorist of pluralism in democracy; that, actually, in a true democracy, power is distributed and we...
Adam Price: Diolch, Llywydd. There is some optimistic news in the emerging evidence that Andrew R.T. Davies referred to, but it also finds that two doses of the AstraZeneca vaccine provide zero protection against the omicron variant, although the same caveats apply to that evidence—a small sample, preliminary findings, et cetera. It does find that, even in the case of AstraZeneca, a booster jab would...
Adam Price: First Minister, it's been reported that the Scottish Government may today be announcing some changes in social distancing around household mixing, but in the form of advice rather than regulations. I was wondering whether that is a policy option that is under consideration by the Welsh Government. And previously you said, in considering going up the alert status levels, you would focus on...
Adam Price: COVID is an airborne disease, of course, and we know good ventilation and air purification are very effective in combating infection. Is there more, First Minister, we could be doing on this front? Belgium has installed carbon dioxide monitors in schools and, indeed, workplaces to see if ventilation needs to be improved. Ireland this week has announced a further €60 million investment in...
Adam Price: Thank you, First Minister, for the statement and also for the ability for myself and our health spokesperson, Rhun ap Iorwerth, to be briefed by members of the technical advisory cell. Could I just say in general terms, my party believes that introducing precautionary protections in a proportionate way is absolutely the right thing to do given the considerable uncertainty that we're still...
Adam Price: First Minister, surging debt and the rapid and cumulative rise in the cost of living may soon overtake COVID as the biggest crisis we face over the coming year, plunging us ever more into poverty and mental ill health. Many of the key levers, of course, remain at Westminster, but we've learnt even today, haven't we, to place little faith in a Prime Minister who organises garden parties in the...
Adam Price: Given the scale of the crisis, I don't think it's an exaggeration at all to call it a cost-of-living catastrophe, then I think it's an important question that we must all ask, even within the limits of the devolution settlement: what more could we do to help people at this terribly difficult time? And if I can give one example, First Minister, at the moment, social housing providers can...
Adam Price: And I think it’s perfectly reasonable, First Minister, for you to raise the issue of the implications, in terms of revenue, for both Transport for Wales and for the housing sector. I suppose the point is whether, in these particular circumstances, given the nature of the cost-of-living emergency, there should be, in the short term, a greater emphasis put on that than other considerations. I...
Adam Price: Diolch, Llywydd. First Minister, is the proposal to defund the BBC anything other than a politically motivated skewering designed to throw red meat to the Prime Minister's dwindling band of supporters, and punish a public service broadcaster for doing too good a job of exposing Boris Johnson to be the liar that he is?
Adam Price: Wouldn't turning the BBC into some British version of NPR or PBS in the United States, where expenditure per capita on public service broadcasting is only 4 per cent of what we spend here, wouldn't that have particularly grim impacts for us here in Wales, in terms of our democracy, our culture, our nation and our language? And not only in terms of S4C, but also Radio Cymru. Nadine Dorries...
