Leanne Wood: First Minister, I used the word 'influence' on purpose. The Welsh national interest can only be protected if our MPs vote the right way on crucial Brexit divisions. Plaid Cymru's solution to the border problem, as you'll be aware, is for the UK to stay in the customs union. The UK Labour Party is supposed to be the official opposition in Westminster. You've just said, earlier on, that you...
Leanne Wood: First Minister, as you said earlier, the Democratic Unionist Party torpedoed the UK's attempt to move on to the next stage in the Brexit talks, and the border in Ireland is the sticking point. None of us want a return to a hard border, but neither do we want to see barriers between Wales and our nearest neighbours. Barriers will be bad news for the port of Holyhead, as we heard earlier, for...
Leanne Wood: You'll be aware of the debate about supply teachers, and some of our most experienced teachers are earning poor wages because of the situation whereby agencies take a large chunk of the pay available to them from schools. In Denmark, it's against the law to make a profit out of education, First Minister. Legislation like that here would solve the problem with regard to supply teachers. As a...
Leanne Wood: —either the pay cap is lifted or an explanation can be made as to why the manifesto was misleading. Only one of those answers would enable Wales to join Scotland as a devolved nation that has lifted the public sector pay cap. The other will leave our nurses and front-line NHS staff facing real-terms cuts to their wages. I'm out of time. With your permission, Presiding Officer, I'll take...
Leanne Wood: I'm for us here being able to adequately pay our public sector workers and I am for this Government delivering on its manifesto pledges. So, yes, we are for pay being decided here for Welsh public sector workers.
Leanne Wood: There's agreement amongst most of us in this Chamber that the public sector pay cap is beyond its sell-by date. Now, in recent years we've seen a deliberate strategy rolled out of pitting public sector workers against private sector workers, and while I'm speaking to the Plaid Cymru amendment on lifting the public sector pay cap, I want to recognise from the outset that there is a real need...
Leanne Wood: Will you take an intervention? I used to work as a probation officer, okay, and can you imagine a situation where a client of the probation service was able to determine the process by which they were investigated, tried and the situation heard? Can you imagine a situation where that would be allowed to happen and that would be called natural justice? It would never happen, would it?
Leanne Wood: Yes.
Leanne Wood: It would be good to have answers to that and all the other questions as part of this debate. But, failing that, they do need to be answered somehow. Now, the Plaid Cymru position on this has been to advocate greater scrutiny. We want as many of the facts to be established as possible. We note that the First Minister has said that he’s ready to face scrutiny, yet today’s Welsh Government...
Leanne Wood: Diolch, Llywydd, and I'm grateful for the opportunity to set out Plaid Cymru's position on today's motion and on the Welsh Government amendment. These are difficult circumstances, which make it all the more vital that light is shed on the events that have been raised as a concern. We're all aware of the allegations made about bullying within the Welsh Government dating to 2014, and the...
Leanne Wood: Cabinet Secretary, I'm sure that the Brexit impact assessments passed on to you were redacted or incomplete, just as they were for the Brexit select committee at Westminster. The UK Government are in contempt of Parliament, and are showing nothing but contempt for Wales. This is crucial information that needs to be revealed. We need those 58 sectors analysed fully, so that we can prepare...
Leanne Wood: And the Rhondda.
Leanne Wood: I thank you for your letter, Cabinet Secretary, which I received this morning, outlining how the recently published Valleys taskforce delivery plan will benefit people in the Rhondda constituency. In your letter, you talk about a number of things that you've just outlined there: improving childcare through a pilot scheme in Ferndale, supporting local builders, and 'improving public service...
Leanne Wood: 1. Will the Cabinet Secretary provide an update on the work of the taskforce for the valleys in Rhondda? OAQ51381
Leanne Wood: 4. Will the First Minister make a statement on the implications for Wales of the UK Government's Brexit impact assessments following their release on Tuesday? 78
Leanne Wood: Seventy-four per cent. When confronted by a long-standing problem, First Minister, it looks like the response of your Government is to move the goalposts and to manipulate the data or to claim that not everyone really needed the service. Now, there are several other examples where, rather than improve services, you've moved the goalposts. It happened with the ambulance service, the number of...
Leanne Wood: Earlier this year, First Minister, StatsWales changed the way that waiting time numbers were being reported, removing the cases that were regarded as non-CAMHS pathways. This removed 1,700 children—some 74 per cent of the total—from the waiting list in one fell stroke. That makes historic comparisons impossible, but we do now have seven month's worth of new data, which means that we can...
Leanne Wood: Diolch, Llywydd. First Minister, mental health and children's mental health is one of the biggest issues facing Wales at the moment and, on 27 September last year, you claimed that investment would drive down waiting times for child and adolescent mental health services. You said, 'The resources have been put in and I fully expect the waiting times and the numbers to go down as those...
Leanne Wood: This is nurses being paid, nurses' money.
Leanne Wood: Thank you, Cabinet Secretary. In today's UK budget announcement, the Chancellor stated that UK Government departments could begin lifting the public sector pay cap, depending on the decision of the pay review bodies. The note on public sector pay issued by the Treasury today states in this instance that pay is the responsibility of the devolved Government in Wales. They are expecting you to...
