Alun Davies: I will be voting for the police settlement this afternoon, but it gives me no pleasure to vote for a settlement that provides even further cuts to our policing services up and down Wales. Mark Isherwood pays tribute to his colleagues in London for the work that they've been doing in funding police over the last few years, but what we know, and what we know in Gwent, is that police forces are...
Alun Davies: 6. What assessment has the Welsh Government made of the impact of its draft budget for 2023-24 on local authorities? OQ59141
Alun Davies: I'm grateful to the Minister for that answer. I was very engaged and taken by the answer the Minister also gave to Peter Fox in an earlier question. The answer could have been given by a different Minister a decade ago, in reality. Local authorities are suffering from a squeeze in funding, and the people who suffer most are the poorest and the most vulnerable people. And the local authorities...
Alun Davies: I'm grateful to the Minister for his response, and I share his analysis of the problem. But Governments exist, of course, to solve problems, not simply to rehearse them. And for my constituents, in Blaenau Gwent, when they hear a Minister talking about a skeleton service, they think, 'Well, that's a service that's going to serve Cardiff, Newport, Swansea and a few other places, but we know it...
Alun Davies: I thank the Conservative party for tabling this debate; it's very timely, of course, because next week we will be marking the first anniversary of this invasion. I think, at a time when people seek to create divisions in politics, it's good to have the opportunity to come together as well. I was listening to Mark Isherwood opening the debate, and I noticed there were two words he used that...
Alun Davies: I'm always grateful to Mike for his contributions to this. The worst mistake—I made many mistakes, but the worst mistake—I made as a Minister was to challenge Mike on local government financing and the intricacies of the council tax. The pain I suffered then, nearly a decade ago, stays with me every day of my life, and if I can't sleep at 3 o'clock in the morning, Mike comes back into my...
Alun Davies: 4. Will the First Minister provide an update on the Welsh Government's progress on an economic strategy for the Heads of the Valleys? OQ59233
Alun Davies: Thank you. First Minister, your own personal commitment to the communities in the Heads of the Valleys has always shone through, both as First Minister and prior to that as well. You will remember the visit that you paid to Blaenau Gwent during the last election campaign, where we both stood on the bridge over the A465 dualling project, and where you spoke about your hopes for the future of...
Alun Davies: I'm grateful to you, Deputy Presiding Officer. Like others this afternoon, I'd like to start by congratulating the Minister on bringing this budget in front of us. I think she opened her remarks this afternoon by saying that it was a difficult budget for difficult times; it sounded like Gordon Brown [Laughter.] But, it's important to be able to set a budget, and, of course, given the...
Alun Davies: Deputy Presiding Officer, the Member opposite both intervenes and answers her own intervention. There hardly seems any point in me allowing that to happen. But, I will say to her that I don't think that this Parliament needs lectures from the Conservatives on economic management. I really don't think we need that today. [Interruption.] Well, if you wish to stand—I hear the Member from...
Alun Davies: Will you give way?
Alun Davies: I think there'd be widespread support for your position across the Chamber, whatever the voting advice happens to say. I think most people want to see a globally responsible Wales and a Wales that reaches out and doesn't look inwards. I think that's something that we all want to see, and, certainly, from my time working in Oxfam, I remember proposing exactly those things. It may well be that...
Alun Davies: 9. Will the Minister make a statement on the opportunities available for entering Welsh-medium post-16 education? OQ59265
Alun Davies: I appreciate the Minister's response. We have, for some time, talked about the Welsh-medium education continuum at school, but I'm concerned about the transition from education in school and then the post-16 period in FE college, universities and so on. I welcomed your statement a few years ago to offer an additional role for the coleg Cymraeg to secure additional investment, if you will, in...
Alun Davies: Do you agree with me, First Minister, that it's quite instructive that the Welsh Conservatives would prefer to support the UK Government than they would to stand up for Wales? I must have got my geography lessons terribly wrong at school, because I just discovered on the weekend that the Huddersfield to Leeds railway serves Wales, and that Crewe to Manchester serves Wales, but only if you're...
Alun Davies: Will the Minister give way?
Alun Davies: I'm listening to your arguments on this matter of reform, and it will be no surprise to you that I agree with you very much. I'm interested therefore that the Government are asking us to vote against the Conservative amendment on this matter in the vote this afternoon, and it appears to me that what the Conservative amendment is doing is very much along the lines that you've just described,...
Alun Davies: Like others in the debate this afternoon, I'd like to pay my own tribute to Sir Wyn Williams upon his retirement. It was good to be able to have the conversation with him last week at the committee. I think sometimes it demonstrates the power of actually being present with somebody in the same room, because we've had conversations on different occasions with Sir Wyn that have always been on...
Alun Davies: I'm grateful, Deputy Presiding Officer. The crashing irony of the Conservative position on this, of course, is that the reason the Rhondda line is being closed is because it's nineteenth century infrastructure there that needs to be replaced in the twenty-first century. For a century, that line has not had the investment it needs. If anything, it's a condemnation of UK Government policy as...
Alun Davies: Will you take an intervention?
