Adam Price: Thank you very much, Llywydd. On behalf of the Plaid Cymru group in the Welsh Parliament, I extend my sincere sympathy to Queen Elizabeth and her family in their bereavement. It's important to bear in mind, as has already been noted, in the midst of all the official mourning, that we are talking here about a wife who has lost her husband, with an incomprehensible void opening up after so many...
Adam Price: May I take this opportunity to extend my sincerest sympathies to those who have lost loved ones as a result of the terrible cruelty that we have suffered during the last 12 months, and those still suffering today? Our thoughts are with them all. As you said in your statement, First Minister, it will be some time before the impact of the pandemic can be fully understood, and I do fear that the...
Adam Price: I note you said there, First Minister, that you were making a 'conservative assessment' of Plaid Cymru's policies and I think you used your words very advisedly, because I expect you next to be quoting Theresa May and the magic money tree. That's not an election campaign that went very well for her in the end. Our policies will be costed, independently verified by Professor Brian Morgan and...
Adam Price: I must admit, First Minister, that Labour's campaign launch recently caused a bit of a double take. When I asked you four weeks ago today to commit to giving the real living wage to our care workers, your response then was to pour scorn on what you deemed to be unaffordable pledges. Fast forward a month, and the real living wage for carers now is a headline policy for you going into the...
Adam Price: Diolch, Llywydd. First Minister, every administration should look back on its time in office and ask the question, 'What should we have done better?' When you ask yourself that question, what answer do you give?
Adam Price: First Minister, you previously said that you share my party's ambition of paying care workers fairly, with a guaranteed minimum wage of £10 an hour, but that can only happen, you said, if your party at Westminster succeeds in persuading the UK Government to adopt such a policy. Surely we can't afford to outsource such a fundamental decision to a UK Tory Government—they're never going to...
Adam Price: Many people, First Minister, are pointing to the way in which COVID-19 has highlighted and further exacerbated existing health inequalities that the Welsh health and social care policy forum, which draw together the leading organisations in the sector in Wales, have written to you, asking you to commit to a cross-Government strategy to reduce these inequalities, addressing the deeper social...
Adam Price: Diolch, Llywydd. First Minister, today we mark the very sombre anniversary of the first recorded death as a result of COVID-19 in Wales. You've talked about the need for a future public inquiry that will seek to identify lessons from the last 12 months. Do you share the view, as I do, recently expressed by Sir Mansel Aylward, that one of the clear lessons is that there was a failure to...
Adam Price: I just ask him finally: could you admit that the words used by Councillor Jones to describe Bethan Sayed are absolutely appalling? You have all the information, surely, that anyone needs to make that statement now. In last week's budget, the UK Government faced fierce criticism for the way in which its so-called levelling-up fund favoured Conservative constituencies. In the first tranche of...
Adam Price: But surely, First Minister, even now you can issue an outright condemnation of his remarks. The recording also reveals a sinister way of going about politics, doesn't it? He, astonishingly, alludes to favouring projects supported by Labour councillors for public funding. Citing the example of Alltygrug cemetery in Ystalyfera, he talks about telling officers to go and search down behind the...
Adam Price: First Minister, upon winning your party's leadership election in December 2018, you said that, in a fractured world, Members of the Senedd should strive for 'a kinder sort of politics'. Last week, your Labour colleague and leader of Neath Port Talbot council, Rob Jones, was forced to step aside after a recording emerged of him making despicable comments about our fellow Senedd Member Bethan...
Adam Price: Yesterday, your colleague Chris Bryant MP, dismissed independence supporters as 'childish'. You yourself have suggested supporters of Welsh independence are inward-looking and 'inherently right-wing'. With recent polls showing that more than half of Labour voters are now in favour of independence, and that support is highest among our young people, on the national question, isn't it the...
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...
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: 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: '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: 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: 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, how many care workers in Wales currently receive less than the real living wage?
