Adam Price: Nine years ago, in your manifesto you also said that child poverty continues to be a plague on too many of our communities. Do you regret, therefore, that child poverty under your tenure has increased, now affecting more than one in three children in Wales? And if so, how do you justify the fact that during your tenure as First Minister you dropped your own target for reducing child poverty...
Adam Price: Thank you, Llywydd. First Minister, in the manifesto published during your leadership election campaign in 2009, ‘Time to lead’, you said quite accurately, and I quote, that we need a culture of investment not a culture of grants in terms of our economic policy. However, some days ago, you said that the economic achievement that you’re proudest of was helping to save Tata Steel in Port...
Adam Price: Will the Member give way?
Adam Price: I respect the seriousness with which the Member is approaching this issue, but would he not accept that the reason we're having this debate is that we want to send the message to that other Parliament, which, in a matter of days, will be voting on a series of subject-specific amendments? The amendment that will be laid down will not say 'either/or'—either a general election or a people's...
Adam Price: Well, look, you know, I’ve always been of the view that this should have been a two-stage process. I called, within, I think, 36 hours, for a second referendum. So, I have been consistent about this, because it always should have been a two-stage process, because it was always going to be the case that the actual realities—not the unicorns of an impossible, undeliverable Brexit of...
Adam Price: I'm asking for the opposite of that. I’m asking for the people to cast their judgment on a policy that was never put before them, because there wasn’t even a scintilla of information put in front of them in terms of what you’re actually proposing. And what about those 16 and 17-year-olds then that didn’t have the vote, upon whom this decision will cast a greater future, because it’s...
Adam Price: You know, I'm quite amazed by the way in which the leader of the Conservative Party is now dressing the clothes of his party up in the banners of the people, you know. This party that at almost every stage since the reform Act of the nineteenth century voted against the extension of the vote is now apparently—. They voted against the extension of suffrage to women, and indeed to adult men...
Adam Price: I'm very grateful to him. Is it his view that Wales will be better off, compared to the current position, remaining in the European Union if the Government's deal carries the day?
Adam Price: Will the Member give way?
Adam Price: Will the Cabinet Secretary—?
Adam Price: I'm grateful to the Cabinet Secretary. I understand that the Cabinet Secretary's favoured means out of the current impasse would be a vote of no confidence passing and a general election following. If that general election happens, will the Labour Party be committing to offering a people's vote?
Adam Price: The decision you're referring to is a planning decision. I was asking you simply whether you think it's right that we are saddling future generations in Wales not just with a huge massive negative legacy in terms of the environment, but whether we should actually be using our own money to give a competitive advantage to the nation next door. Now, leader of the house, can I suggest a rather...
Adam Price: Leader of the house, are you able to say now, if you feel comfortable, that the by-now £1.7 billion investment proposed for the relief road will largely benefit England? Let me quote you some statistics—they're contained in your own Government's wider economic impact assessment of the M4 corridor around Newport, published in 2016. It predicted that, by 2037, the relief road would have the...
Adam Price: Diolch, Llywydd. Leader of the house, a month ago, you told us that a meaningful and binding vote on the 14-mile M4 relief road would be taken here this week. Yet, hiding behind the inspectors' report, which your Government received in September, you remain paralysed by division among your backbenchers, by the opposition of the Future Generations Commissioner for Wales and by the First...
Adam Price: Would the Member give way?
Adam Price: She may not be aware. There's some work already ongoing through the Morgan Academy at Swansea University trying to look at alternative funding mechanisms that need not be entirely reliant on the public purse. So, if that were possible, and we were able to at least state the ambition, would she be supportive of finding alternative means of achieving the same goal?
Adam Price: We are in many ways a late nation, and part of that process is that we lack certain institutions that most nations have. The building next door is an example of that, of course. It was an opera house that then developed into a hybrid national performance centre—the Wales Millennium Centre. The visual arts is an area where the lack of those national cultural institutions is most clear. We...
Adam Price: I welcome the report commissioned by the Welsh Government as part of the agreement between the Government and Plaid Cymru. This report is thorough, honest, and it gives us the best overview we've had for decades on the visual arts in Wales. It provides a creative and innovative model to create a new focus for the visual arts with a national institution at its core. It's inspiring, it's...
Adam Price: Well, look, leader of the house, there may be an argument, obviously, for using private sector capacity in an emergency, but it's not how you build a sustainable NHS. Long-term planning requires you to train the workforce, buy the equipment needed, so you have the capacity to meet the demands in the future. Now, in fact, spending on the use of private sector providers has gone up...
Adam Price: It's well established that your Government's record on NHS waiting times is far from satisfactory. For example, the auditor general has recently reported a 55 per cent growth since 2015 in the number of patients whose follow-up appointments are delayed twice as long as they should be. Now, one area where targets are currently being met is in radiology, but this is because health boards are...
