Angela Burns: Will the First Minister provide an update on how the Welsh Government intends to resource identified transformational change within the public sector?
Angela Burns: Thank you very much, Cabinet Secretary. I absolutely accept the premise that you've just outlined but this is why we have to look at some way of getting some pump-priming. Because if we can actually get those local community services to work and work well—places like Argyle Street; I'm sure it's replicated across Wales—then the public will have much more confidence that they do not need...
Angela Burns: Cabinet Secretary, I welcome the involvement of the standing committees in the way that the scrutiny of the Welsh Government budget is conducted, although it has to be said that following the money has proven, as ever, a challenge, as moneys have been moving around budget allocations, and have, in some instances, made direct year-on-year comparisons extremely difficult. I do want to make it...
Angela Burns: Thank you, First Minister. As you will be aware, the last few months have seen some pretty torrid times in politics, and I think the esteem in which we are held is suffering. I think the Welsh public will expect us to be far more open and transparent going forward. I have recently received an answer to a written question from the Cabinet Secretary for health and well-being that contradicts an...
Angela Burns: 4. Will the First Minister make a statement on plans to promote openness and transparency within the Welsh Government? OAQ51403
Angela Burns: Will you take an intervention?
Angela Burns: Thank you very much for taking the intervention. I'd like to assure the Member for Ynys Môn that we, the Welsh Conservatives, will be supporting your amendment, because you make a very valid point in it.
Angela Burns: You'll have to be quick.
Angela Burns: The size of the board's estate is massive. It covers three district hospitals, 22 other community and acute hospitals, 19 medical centres and 121 GP practices. And, as I've known when I've driven up there, it's in a geographically pretty diverse area and it can take literally hours to get from one side to the other. However, we should also remind ourselves that, while recognising the...
Angela Burns: Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. I'm delighted to be able to open the Welsh Conservative debate tabled in the name of my colleague Paul Davies. You'll see from our motion on the order paper that it can be taken in four separate points. We pay tribute to the staff, we note the Welsh Government's decision to place the health board into special measures, but we believe that those special...
Angela Burns: Minister, I've listened very carefully to what you have said to Darren Millar, however I do have two other points I would like to make. The first is that Dyfed-Powys Police were aware of these allegations themselves in both 2014 and again in 2016. The reason they did not move to prosecution was they said there was little point because the monk in question had since died—he'd passed away....
Angela Burns: Will the Cabinet Secretary outline what advice his department has provided to Welsh local authorities in relation to refuse collections? Transferred for written answer by the Cabinet Secretary for Energy, Planning and Rural Affairs.
Angela Burns: Absolutely.
Angela Burns: No, I don't accept that at all—
Angela Burns: A suspension—well, as David's just saying, a suspension is not the same as an abolition, and the people who live in those areas now will know that they have no further chance ever of being able to buy their home. All we're asking is that they are treated the same as the people in Pembrokeshire or the people in Ceredigion, and they have that year of grace. If they buy their house, they buy...
Angela Burns: I rise to support my colleague David Melding's amendments, particularly amendment 5. I don't agree with the abolition of the right to buy. I know too many people who've had the ability to buy a home, and they would never have had that chance before, but I am prepared to accept that that is a battle lost already, and I understand the ideological opposition to this. But, if you are going to do...
Angela Burns: First Minister, victims of domestic abuse very often have to go into hiding or stay in shelters for inordinately long periods of time. If you look across the piece in Europe, countries such as Italy and Germany not only have much more direct and emphatic laws about removing the abuser from the marital home, rather than the abused, but they also take the view that if a family has been...
Angela Burns: [Inaudible.]
Angela Burns: I’m delighted to have the opportunity to take part in this debate. In the few weeks that this idea’s been floated by the Welsh Government, I personally have received a huge amount of correspondence from businesses, individuals and trade organisations that are, without exception, against this idea. Let me be clear: I am pleased that the Assembly now has some responsibility for its taxes,...
Angela Burns: Cabinet Secretary, thank you for that answer. On page 23 of the Welsh Government tax policy report, there is a boast that there was a considerable public response to the call for ideas about proposals for new taxes. Figures in the same report show that you had the sum total of 305 responses, which represents 0.009 per cent of the Welsh population. One might say that was a slight exaggeration....
