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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: Thank you, Dirprwy Lywydd. In your written statement in response to the previous summit, I think you mentioned that the UK Prime Minister had not attended, and he didn't attend again. In fact, I don't think he's ever attended, and I don't think Theresa May attended and neither did David Cameron. You have to go back to Gordon Brown in 2007, I think. I know this because I was reading—. He...
Adam Price: Whatever the views of one on the content of the agreement, there are no two ways that this is a radical agreement that will deliver on some of the things that campaigners have been fighting for over decades, such as managing the housing market. But surely nobody could disagree that our citizens should be able to access correct information to hold us all to account, and it's clear to everyone...
Adam Price: As we say in the foreword to our agreement, the people of Wales in voting to create our democracy also wanted a new kind of politics. Now maybe we can forgive, and indeed pity, the Conservatives for being trapped in their Westminster mindset; many of them after all would rather be there than here. They see the world in binary opposites; we try and draw upon the great Welsh tradition of...
Adam Price: Diolch, Llywydd. I thought Darren Millar was remarkably reticent today about the co-operation agreement. Maybe, I don't know, he's regretting some of his attack lines overnight. But they said—and you said—that the agreement does nothing to help the people of Wales: tell that to the 200,000 children that will now receive free school meals as a result of that; tell that to the extra...
Adam Price: In a BBC interview just over a week ago, your counterpart in Westminster, Sir Keir Starmer, said he wants to make Brexit work. First Minister, can I ask you what you understand by that phrase or how you interpret it? Will you be advising him that, in the best interests of Wales, as well as the UK, it should mean, at the very least, rejoining the EU's customs union and single market?
Adam Price: Prif Weinidog, you mentioned Holyhead there and, of course, the Northern Ireland dimension of the UK Government's intransigence in pursuing the hardest of hard Brexits is calculated to make things much, much worse. The Westminster Government is now threatening, as we know, to suspend parts of the Northern Ireland deal that protect the EU's single market, article 16 of the trade and...
Adam Price: Prif Weinidog, I should like to raise with you the appalling consequences that the Westminster Government's pursuit of a hard Brexit is beginning to wreak on our living standards here in Wales and across these islands, and ask what your Government, in collaboration with the other devolved administrations, could do to persuade this lamentable London Government to change course. In its economic...
Adam Price: It says something—Geoffrey Cox is the former Attorney-General, isn't he? How low have they gone? As Westminster sinks deeper into the mire of its own corruption, what can we do here in this Senedd to uphold the highest levels of public integrity in our own democracy? This month, the Nolan committee, following on from the Boardman review, published new recommendations to strengthen public...
