Alun Davies: I don’t know where to start sometimes. Janet, you’re absolutely right that we’ve had 25 years of devolution, but we’ve had nearly 30 or 40 years of deregulated bus services that have failed. They’ve failed the country. This Government is going to change the law in the next couple of years, and I expect you to vote for it, quite honestly, and I hope that all your colleagues will vote...
Alun Davies: That’s exactly what we need, and that is actually my third and final point. I hope the Minister will respond to my point on Fflecsi in reply to the debate. But it’s quite an extraordinary thing that Janet Finch-Saunders was able to speak for nearly six minutes about the future of bus services without mentioning the disaster of deregulation. It’s been catastrophic.
Alun Davies: I think it is important that we have an opportunity to debate these points in this forum, as we do this afternoon. And it's important, I think, that we debate these points, that we listen to what each other has to say, and then that we take interventions from each other so we have a debate, rather than just reading out a preprepared contribution. Because if this debate is to mean anything, it...
Alun Davies: Will you take an intervention?
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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 9. Will the Minister make a statement on the opportunities available for entering Welsh-medium post-16 education? OQ59265
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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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 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...
