Mike Hedges: I cannot say that because, as you pointed out, or Darren Millar pointed out earlier, I have not been involved in any of this; the whole discussion takes place between the Welsh Government and Plaid Cymru, from which many of us on our benches are left out. If, however, the Government believe that additional roads create more traffic and pollution, why couldn't they close the Cardiff eastern...
Mike Hedges: Please.
Mike Hedges: As the Minister I'm sure will say in her response, not all road construction is being ended. But again, we look at the issue in isolation. A road review needs to be part of a transport review. A bus plan is especially important because a lack of a bus plan and adequate bus services means there is often no alternative to driving except moving from the area in which you currently live. Also...
Mike Hedges: Can I thank the Minister for that response? I'm a vociferous supporter of Flying Start. It's not possible to overestimate the importance of a good start in life for a child. There are children starting nursery classes at three with a development age approaching four, whilst others have a mental age of just over two. How demoralising for them. Because of the way sensitive information is...
Mike Hedges: 2. Will the Minister provide an update on Welsh Government proposals for Flying Start? OQ59206
Mike Hedges: Will you publish the calculations of the 55 different areas of the standard spending assessment? It would prove that those who say it's wrong are correct or wrong. Until you publish that, everybody's going to say that they're being badly treated.
Mike Hedges: You know how important I believe local government is, and you've heard me talk for the best part of 12 years now about the importance of local government, the importance of supporting local government. I'm not going to say anything different to that today. I welcome the Minister's intention of setting local government core revenue funding for 2023-24 at £5.5 billion. This means, after...
Mike Hedges: I intend to make several comments on the budget, but, first, I want to address the process. We are setting the budget for all devolved services in Wales. We continue to repeat we are a Parliament. Yet we timetable only one hour for the final debate on the budget, after half an hour to decide income tax rates. Put into context that Swansea council spent over four and a half hours setting their...
Mike Hedges: Will you take an intervention, Peter?
Mike Hedges: I'll start off by saying I'm ideologically supportive of increasing the tax rate on the two higher income bands. Higher paid people should pay more for the provision of public services. It's part of what we pay for living in a civilised society. The problem we have is, one, the partial devolution of income tax—it's only one part of the tax on income we have devolved. We don't have dividend...
Mike Hedges: Apologies—I'll speak in English.
Mike Hedges: I had no intention of speaking in this debate until I heard the beginning of it, and my Welsh is nowhere near good enough to write a speech in Welsh from the start in 10 minutes or a quarter of an hour, so I hope people will accept that. Where are we with the Welsh language? Can I talk about some positives? When Members have visited English-medium primary schools, you must have been...
Mike Hedges: Can I just thank the Minister for her statement? Like the Minister, seeing communities come together at a time of need fills me with hope for the future. As we mark one year since the illegal invasion of Ukraine by the Russians, which caused displacement of many Ukrainian people who could no longer live in their country, I am also proud to see how communities across Wales have welcomed...
Mike Hedges: I very much welcome this statement. If you study successful nations and regions, you find three common themes—the three legs of a successful economy. Innovation, research and development is leg 1, entrepreneurship is leg 2, and high-quality education and highly educated graduates is leg 3. I've got two questions. How are the Welsh Government working with universities to support research and...
Mike Hedges: Can I thank the First Minister for that response? All chemical pesticides are potentially harmful to people and the environment. Of course, some are worse than others, but none are completely safe. Whilst all pesticides are designated to kill targeted pests and problems, unfortunately it's much, much more than those specific targets that are affected; many are washed into rivers, creating...
Mike Hedges: 3. What action is the Welsh Government taking to reduce the use of harmful pesticides? OQ59154
Mike Hedges: Are mergers always right? From the above, it can be seen that the direction of travel is to larger and fewer organisations. Those who look at it simply are calculating the savings. Mergers, however, are expensive; you've got redundancy costs, re-badging costs, and, more expensive of all, creating a single ICT system from the systems of the predecessor organisations. Anybody who went through...
Mike Hedges: Thank you, Presiding Officer. It's always interesting when you've got the short debate on the Wednesday before half term or the end of term. Alun Davies has been given a minute in this debate. The structure of public services in Wales: have we got it right? The answer is 'yes' in some cases and 'no' in others. Where we have got it wrong, is it bad enough to need a restructuring? The Welsh...
Mike Hedges: I was very pleased to take the opportunity to co-sign this when Luke asked me to. In fact, he had it back by return of e-mail because I believe this is incredibly important. I want to make two points—firstly the importance of EMA and secondly the importance of increasing it in line with inflation. Of course, the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats opposed it when it was introduced by the...
Mike Hedges: Thank you, Presiding Officer. As you know, I wasn’t going to speak in this debate, but I think there are three issues that have come up now that I feel I've got to make. To many of my constituents—in fact, most of my constituents—public transport is buses. Eighty per cent of transport is by bus. Morriston Hospital, as you know, Presiding Officer, or Deputy Presiding Officer, is...
