Adam Price: Two reports have been in Ministers’ hands for almost a year now, from Professor Kevin Morgan and others suggesting the creation of a national innovation body for Wales, similar to what the Scandinavian nations have. I understand that the suggestion being made now is that innovation should be given as a responsibility to the new tertiary education body. The risk with that is that the higher...
Adam Price: That’s absolute rubbish.
Adam Price: EU state aid rules are currently a reserved matter. But domestic, or UK, state aid—which is defined as any other grant or form of subsidy that doesn’t involve a distortion to trade across EU borders—is devolved. So, in removing the EU state aid framework, what’s the position of the Welsh Government? Should domestic UK state aid remain a devolved matter?
Adam Price: In Finland, they have no school inspection, no league tables, no tests or exams up until the age of 16, homework per child is limited to half an hour as a maximum, and they have the most successful education system in the world. That was the model that we were meant to be adopting and yet we start testing at seven and we’ve imported wholesale the overregulated, overworked, overstressed...
Adam Price: This is my ‘Mastermind’ specialist question, Dirprwy Lywydd, but I’ll be as brief as I can. I welcome the framework and the general principles. I recognised from my GCSE—or O-level economics, actually, let’s be honest—Adam Smith’s canons of equity and certainty there. So, two out of the four canons—not bad at all. I will just focus very briefly if I may on the tax policy work...
Adam Price: Thank you, Llywydd. If the leader of the house could update us on when we can expect that announcement. And, in that context, is it possible for the Government to correct the record in relation to a number of written answers that I’ve received from the Government that, it has subsequently emerged, are inaccurate? In one instance, I asked about when the Government was informed by the auditor...
Adam Price: Leader of the house, I was wondering if you could say whether Government colleagues have indicated to you yet when we can expect the statement on the Circuit of Wales that we’ve been promised by the First Minister before the end of the month—[Interruption.] Would the honourable Member for Blaenau Gwent—? If he has anything to say, he can get up and say it—
Adam Price: Diolch, Llywydd, and I thank Members for their response to the ideas that we’ve set out, albeit in outline terms, for the reasons of brevity that have been referred to. I admire Mark Isherwood’s spirit of optimism, and indeed his global ambition, not least for Wales; though we may differ on some of the detail, I think that certainly we need to grasp new export opportunities. We are by our...
Adam Price: We’re in Boris Johnson having-our-cake-and-eating-it territory there, I’m afraid, aren’t we? The White Paper, actually, is clear and honest about this. If you want the benefits, then there are certain things that flow from that, and unfortunately, that isn’t reflected in the rather muddy thinking from the UK Labour Party. But I want to talk about Plaid Cymru’s ideas and our...
Adam Price: Diolch, Llywydd. It’s a pleasure to rise to move the motion in the name of my colleague Rhun ap Iorwerth. It certainly is the case that we have a cloud of confusion—a kind of inchoate mess—when it comes to the policy positions of the two main parties in terms of the shape of the Brexit deal that—[Interruption.] Well, if you don’t want to listen, you can leave the Chamber. You are;...
Adam Price: Surely the leader of the house will understand that it’s absolutely the wrong thing to do to talk about a special relationship with this state. She referenced LGBT rights; she knows what would happen to me in that country. We should never be in a position of saying that we want to build—and not my words, but the First Minister’s—a special relationship with a country with this kind of...
Adam Price: On the wider question of the Barnett formula, could I ask the Cabinet Secretary about something that I find very curious in the Labour manifesto? It sets out the creation of a national investment bank—I absolutely support that principle—a national investment bank with £250 billion of investment, of which £10 billion is to be apportioned to Wales and the development bank that’s being...
Adam Price: Let’s look at the short to medium term, then. The Welsh Government signed recently, in January this year, a fiscal framework with the Westminster Government. Would it be the intention of the Welsh Government, if there was a change of Government at Westminster, to revisit that agreement and to renegotiate some aspects of it—for example, the population related revenue risk that is an...
Adam Price: I was wondering if we could return to the demise of the Barnett formula, rumours of which may have been exaggerated. We heard earlier in the week from the First Minister for Wales that it was going to be scrapped. Kezia Dugdale, the leader of the Scottish Labour Party, as we know, is on the record as saying, ‘I’ll keep the Barnett formula today, tomorrow and forever’, which sounds...
Adam Price: I think people will draw their own conclusion, First Minister, on why this decision has been pushed beyond the general election. But, on the wider theme of openness, I’ve been told in written answers by the Cabinet Secretary for Economy and Infrastructure that the idea of an 80 per cent Government guarantee, which was at the heart of the proposal that you rejected last year, was first...
Adam Price: 2. Does the Welsh Government now have all the information it needs to make a decision on whether to provide the financial support requested by the promoters of the Circuit of Wales? OAQ(5)0636(FM)
Adam Price: I have very limited time, so I’ll say just this. I think the Valleys—the economic history, the political history, of the Valleys, has been characterised by two forms of persistence, I think, over the last 80 years: the persistence of the problems that have been there right back to the crisis in the 1920s and 1930s and the creation of UK regional policy in the Special Areas Act 1934, which...
Adam Price: [Inaudible.]
Adam Price: Here we have a Cabinet Secretary who has delayed a decision not once but twice, beyond an election, for obvious reasons, and he accuses me of acting in self-interest. There’s a simple answer to the charge of prevarication that we make, and that’s to get on and make a decision. The Cabinet Secretary has said that he has now got all the information from the company that he requires and that...
Adam Price: The auditor general used the term ‘misleading’.
