Adam Price: You accuse the company of misleading you, and you say you give honest answers. Well, isn’t it the case that if anyone has been guilty of misleading people, it’s your Government? In the auditor general’s report, he refers to a press release that your Government issued on the FTR acquisition, which he says, in terms, was both incorrect and misleading. That’s the auditor general’s...
Adam Price: Diolch, Llywydd. Cabinet Secretary, this week in a written reply to me, you accused the company behind the Circuit of Wales of, many material gaps and inaccuracies in the information’ they have provided to you. Now, that’s a fairly extraordinary claim for anyone to make, let alone a Government, about a counterparty with which you are just weeks away from making a decision about a £425...
Adam Price: Well, we certainly need new ideas when it comes to our economic strategy, because the old ideas haven’t worked, have they? I mean, we’re poorer now, relative to the rest of the UK, than when Labour first took office in 1997 at Westminster and here in the Assembly in 1999. So, can the First Minister explain what new ideas Labour has to transform our economy? And, given the fact that...
Adam Price: Has the Welsh Government decided to delay announcing any decision regarding further financial support for the Circuit of Wales until the end of the UK pre-election period on 8 June?
Adam Price: Well, the response is quite simple, isn’t it? They’ve been in power in Wales for 100 years. For most of that time in Westminster, you’ve been in power. You are both responsible for the terrible state that our economy and society is in as a nation. Shame on both of you.
Adam Price: Does he accept his own Government’s figures that I quoted that, actually, output per worker in Wales and many parts of the UK is actually still now, in the latest figures, lower than in 2007 when he was elected as a Plaid Cymru AM?
Adam Price: European regional funds were always a tiny lever compared to the scale of the problem. We in this party and other progressives across the UK were continually making the case that we couldn’t just rely on a tiny proportion. The Conservative Party were arguing, of course, for cutting the budget for European regional development funds throughout this period. Let’s look at the facts. This is...
Adam Price: Thank you, Dirprwy Lywydd. You know, to listen to the tone of the Conservative Party in this election, you could come to the conclusion that, in some way, we are on the cusp of Britain’s finest hour. When you look at actually what’s happening to this country, what you see, actually, is a deeply divided United Kingdom. It’s not our finest hour, it could be the final hour, because of the...
Adam Price: Would the First Minister agree that the third party that owes the biggest debt of all to Welsh local authorities is the Westminster Government, which has cut over a third in spending on adult care since 2011, which has had severe financial consequences in Wales and, obviously, terrible consequences in terms of the human cost to the elderly, the sick and the disabled? If this callous...
Adam Price: We say it quite clearly. We’ve set out amendments to a whole series of Bills. I know that the honourable Member and I myself were elected last year, but Plaid Cymru put in a whole series of amendments on six separate occasions to two different Bills. They were set out in amendments to those Bills, and you voted against. It’s not as if we’ve just done this to play politics, right? We...
Adam Price: I had intended to speak more broadly in this debate about the role of innovation in local government, of which there are some examples from Plaid Cymru-led authorities, as set out in our motion. But I’ve been prompted to talk about a different kind of innovation—innovation in politics, which is doing what we say. You know, actually putting into action the principles that we say are at the...
Adam Price: There are some specific risks to Wales as a result of our withdrawal from the European Union, but there are also some opportunities, not least the ability, for instance, to set regional or sub-national rates for VAT, for example on hotel accommodation, to boost our tourism sector, or for house renovation to boost our construction sector. Will the Cabinet Secretary be making an application to...
Adam Price: I have mixed feelings about the report that’s been published. I don’t want to disillusion the Cabinet Secretary that he’s following in the footsteps of Cincinnatus, going back to some farm because of political problems. I do think that it’s a good thing that the Government is producing a report of this kind and that we are having a discourse at a governmental level on the future and...
Adam Price: If we follow the logic of the First Minister that now is the time to take advantage of historically low interest rates, why is it that his own Government’s finance Secretary is limiting the financing through the mutual investment model to £1 billion, not increasing it to the £7.5 billion suggested by Gerry Holtham, who was a senior adviser to his Government? Isn’t this yet another...
Adam Price: Seven weeks ago, at that dispatch box, on 8 February, the Cabinet Secretary told the Senedd that the due diligence process would take between four to six weeks. Now, if there’s been a problem with a lack of complete information, why hasn’t the Government done what the private sector would do in these kind of situations, in projects which are far larger than this, which is to get everyone...
Adam Price: It’s gratifying to hear that the Cabinet Secretary is engaging with Irish politicians. Could I urge him, in further discussions that he’ll have, to learn from some of the tools and tactics that the Irish themselves have adopted? The Irish Government has recently, for example, published a designated trade strategy. Wales doesn’t have, at the moment, a specific trade strategy. It sets out...
Adam Price: As the Cabinet Secretary has just said, Ireland is a strategically vital export market for the Welsh economy, worth more than £800 million a year. Now, on the negative side, during our visit, we were told that moves were already afoot to start channelling freight to mainland Europe away from Welsh ports and through Roscoff. Is the Cabinet Secretary aware of this, and what is the Welsh...
Adam Price: Diolch, Llywydd. Last week, I had the opportunity to visit the Republic of Ireland with my colleague, Steffan Lewis, to meet Irish Government officials, policy makers and politicians to discuss the consequences of the UK leaving the EU for Ireland and for Wales. It’s fair to say that they shared our sense of trepidation. But,as with the economic crisis of 2008, they have at their disposal a...
Adam Price: I’m more than happy to wait patiently. I’m not sure that my notes had arrived by that point, so I’m grateful to you. Now, every time we discuss taxation, there is some reference to a royal figure—I think it was Llywelyn ein Llyw Olaf the last time, on the land transaction tax. We were reminded that this was the first time that we were to levy a tax as a nation since those days. And...
Adam Price: I have the pleasure to follow the Minister and to commend her on this statement, and indeed the approach that the Welsh Government has adopted in putting innovation right at the heart not only of public procurement but of public policy. We’ve heard, I think, so many times, the public sector, probably rightly, berated for adopting an approach that is often low cost over wider considerations...
