Lee Waters: This report has not been hurried. The first evidence session was held in January 2017 and for the time that I was on the committee, those of us who served—and it's significant, when you look at the report, the number of different people who've gone through this particular process; it's involved coming up to a fifth of all Assembly Members. But I think we took our time deliberately,...
Lee Waters: Thank you, Counsel General. The Law Society president has recently said that the law profession is not preparing new entrants for the realities of current practice, let alone the changes that we can foresee. I'm very pleased that you and the Minister for digital, the leader of the house, and the Minister for Welsh Language and Lifelong Learning are able to attend the round-table I'm convening...
Lee Waters: 5. What discussions has the Counsel General had in relation to the growing use of digital technologies in the legal sector? OAQ52810
Lee Waters: Thank you very much. I warmly welcome the vision behind the statement of putting Welsh and English on an equal footing so they can work simultaneously on the same platforms, and the ambitions you have of making sure that devices like Siri and Alexa can chat to us in both languages seamlessly. It's clearly the right one. An emphasis on better machine translation and Welsh language bots is...
Lee Waters: Now, 1.5 degrees doesn't sound like much, but it translates to more frequent and more extreme weather events, such as storms, heatwaves and flooding—the kind of events that have a severe impact on human life. The difference between 1.5 degrees and 2 degrees of global warming is the difference between an Arctic that is free of ice once per decade, or once per century. It's the difference...
Lee Waters: Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. I'm pleased to give a minute of my time to Jenny Rathbone. The science is unequivocal: the link between human activity and rising global temperatures is as strong and as certain as the link between smoking and cancer, according to the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The Paris climate change agreement set a target of no more than 2...
Lee Waters: I agree with the Cabinet Secretary that this debate and the foundational economy debate are flip sides of the same coin. It looks likely that the fourth industrial revolution is going to generate huge wealth, but it's wealth that's not going to be shared evenly. It will be distributed unequally, which is why the stress of the foundational economy looking after left-behind communities is so...
Lee Waters: The purpose of today's motion, tabled by myself, Vikki Howells, Jenny Rathbone, Hefin David, Adam Price and David Melding is to look again at the central importance of this overlooked sector of the our economy. From the cross-party buy-in to this motion, it is clear that there is an appetite for a new approach. With my colleague Jenny Rathbone, I recently visited Preston to learn more about...
Lee Waters: Diolch. Preparations are accelerating for a 'no deal' Brexit. Stockpiling medicine and food is getting the attention of the media, but the reality for the Welsh economy could be far more austere. Our economic policy has focused on providing support to so-called anchor companies—large multinationals with bases in Wales that we have favoured with grants and other financial inducements. But...
Lee Waters: Well, there's nothing wrong with people informally saying that the Senedd is our Welsh Parliament, but I think the official name should be Senedd. In terms of the general public's understanding, we're still not quite 20 years into the being of this place; I think understanding will develop as time goes on. As I say, there are other reasons for choosing the term 'Senedd', not least the final...
Lee Waters: I just want to speak briefly to welcome the Bill's being introduced. It's been now seven years since we overwhelmingly agreed in a referendum that this place should have the powers of a parliament, and it's only right that we change the name to reflect that reality. I'm pleased also that the McAllister report is being decoupled, so we can focus on the elements that we can all agree on while...
Lee Waters: [Inaudible.]—Nonsense.
Lee Waters: What analysis has the Welsh Government undertaken of the opportunities outlined in the Institute of Welsh Affairs’s recent report, 'The Economic Impact of Energy Transition in Wales’?
Lee Waters: The advances in technology have got huge potential to improve the passenger experience and improve the viability of buses. The Welsh Government have been funding the Bwcabus project in Ceredigion and Carmarthenshire, which has used a demand-responsive model to make public transport viable in smaller routes. That sort of approach, merged with app-based technology, has got huge potential....
Lee Waters: Can I just point out the irony? You've just delivered a speech on the mitigation of climate change, and you're now arguing for the dualling of a major road.
Lee Waters: This is clearly a difficult issue, confronting the mechanics of change. The case made by the Hywel Dda health board is for the sustainability of services, not now, but in 10 years' time, and we already see that our hospital services are struggling under the extra demand and the implications of an ageing population today. There are already shortages, on many weekends, of out-of-hours care in...
Lee Waters: Thank you, Cabinet Secretary, and thank you for your statement and your commitment to putting things into action to improve the lived conditions of families with autism, while the whole debate about legislation continues around it. I visited the Serendipity nursery in Pembrey recently and saw for myself the Learning with Autism early years programme. The Serendipity nursery is the first in...
Lee Waters: I'm delighted that among the first projects to come through under the bid is the £200 million wellness village in Llanelli, which, through its innovation promises to be an exemplar for the whole of Wales. I've been discussing with the council how we can make sure it joins in with the rest of Llanelli and doesn't become some out-of-town development; the traffic in the area is already...
Lee Waters: Will the First Minister meet with Preston City Council to understand what lessons the Welsh Government can learn from its approach to community wealth building?
Lee Waters: It was 11 years ago that I stood on the steps of the Senedd and handed a petition to Dafydd Elis-Thomas, the then Presiding Officer, for a law to promote walking and cycling. And, a decade on, we have a law and I must say, to the great credit of the Cabinet Secretary, we have the first real substantial chunk of money behind it. And I think the Welsh Government deserves real credit for that....
