Lee Waters: Thank you, Cabinet Secretary. That audit office report follows a number of criticisms by the Assembly’s Public Accounts Committee into the performance of NWIS. This is an organisation with a budget of over £53 million and 500 staff, but there’s no transparent way to be able to monitor their performance or hold them to account. They have no independent board and publish no annual reports,...
Lee Waters: 4. Will the Cabinet Secretary commit to a review of the governance structures of the NHS Wales Informatics Service? (OAQ51096)
Lee Waters: Thank you. In its evidence to the M4 public inquiry, the Government acknowledged that a new motorway will inflict long-term harm, but this would be outweighed by the short-term economic benefits. The Government’s own independent adviser, the Future Generations Commissioner for Wales has now said that this is incompatible with the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015. The...
Lee Waters: 8. What assessment has the First Minister made of the Future Generations Commissioner’s submission to the M4 public inquiry? (OAQ51122)
Lee Waters: It is a ‘no’, I’m afraid. I do apologise. [Interruption.] Until we have the debate about the sort of justice system we want to see in Wales, then it’s premature to pass this motion and I will therefore not be supporting it at this time.
Lee Waters: I’d be happy to give way.
Lee Waters: As I said, I think the evidence is mixed. There’s conflicting evidence on the point and, as I said, my personal prejudice is against superprisons. I chaired a public meeting in Wrexham at the time of the debate there, and did some work to oppose the prison in Wrexham. So, that’s my strong inclination. However, to be fair, we’re looking at the evidence, it’s not a clear picture, and I...
Lee Waters: I am very uncomfortable with the proposal to build a large prison in Port Talbot and with the political games that are accompanying it. I don’t buy the argument that this is a non-devolved issue. This is about the type of country we want Wales to be, and Monday’s announcement of a commission on justice in Wales, led by Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, the current Lord Chief Justice, offers us an...
Lee Waters: First Minister, can I genuinely welcome the attempt to try and join up the different areas of Government activity? Governments are often criticised for silo thinking, and I think the Government deserves some credit in this document at the way that it’s tried to bring together the different strands of its programme and strategy. And I look forward, when the action plans are published, to...
Lee Waters: Thank you, First Minister. Since Theresa May’s Government reneged on their promise to electrify the railway line to Swansea and the west, this has thrown into sharp relief the connectivity of the whole Swansea bay city region. I welcome the support for the concept for a modern, joined-up public transport network. I think what we need to see now is a detailed feasibility study so we can...
Lee Waters: 6. Will the First Minister commission a full early-stage feasibility study of a Swansea Bay metro network? (OAQ51049)
Lee Waters: Would the Minister give way?
Lee Waters: I note your comments that NRW said they required further guidance on what was meant by ‘novel’ and ‘repercussive’. I found this argument entirely unconvincing in the committee. It seemed clear to the committee that what they were proposing was so obviously falling outside of the accepted understanding that it was hard to understand that that was a serious argument. It spoke to a...
Lee Waters: I’d like to welcome the statement. There were two elements I wanted to touch on. One: in terms of the basket of options you’re putting to consultation about reform, I’m disappointed that compulsory voting is not one of the options that the Welsh Government are asking for opinions on. I think requiring people to take part as part of their wider civic duties—the ability to vote is an...
Lee Waters: Thank you, First Minister. I too met with Damian Hinds last Wednesday, along with the MP for Llanelli, Nia Griffith, and once again found him to be urbane but indifferent to the plight of the workers in Llanelli, where the 150 jobs will be relocated. An estimated 50 of them will not be able to take up that offer of relocation because it simply isn’t practical on part-time work to be able to...
Lee Waters: 8. What action will the First Minister take to counter-balance the UK Government’s job centralisation programme in relation to the Department for Work and Pensions? OAQ(5)0742(FM)
Lee Waters: Minister, can I commend you for today’s statement and the ambition behind the policy? We should be in no doubt that this is a radical cultural policy that goes against the grain of language use for a century or more, and this is not going to be an easy task, but I think it’s absolutely right that we’re aspiring to do this. I want to focus, if I might, on the education system. You set a...
Lee Waters: Cabinet Secretary, I’d just like to follow up the point on public engagement. We haven’t lacked expert analysis over the last decade or so on the challenges facing the NHS in Wales, but one of the things the system has found extremely challenging to do is engaging with communities. Llanelli is a famous case study in how not to do it, in the reshaping of services at Prince Philip Hospital,...
Lee Waters: We’ve spent much time considering how our law-making powers can reshape our society and now we can consider how our fiscal powers can contribute too. This is exactly the kind of ambitious and open debate that this place was created for—an opportunity for us to challenge the status quo and truly set Wales apart. But, as well as considering what we could do with new taxes, we should also be...
Lee Waters: I’m very pleased to join Simon Thomas in supporting the motion put forward in the name of Jeremy Miles and Huw Irranca-Davies. I should commend Huw Irranca-Davies for an excellent speech, in which I agreed with every word. We need to cut to the chase here. The Welsh Government have done much, but we need to do much, much, much more, and we must do it quickly. As the motion notes,...
