Adam Price: I’d like to return, if I may, to the issue of inward investment and the role that it should play in our wider economic strategy. Assembly Members will be interested to know that in the last few minutes the First Minister has told the BBC that a trip to Detroit would be pointless, and given the gravity of the situation many observers would be forced to conclude that he’s a pretty pointless...
Adam Price: I’m sure the Cabinet Secretary would agree that the loss of these jobs—over two thirds of the jobs—at our third largest manufacturing plant, would be terrible news for the workers, the families, the communities affected, but also for the whole of Wales, on this, our national day. He referred to the assurances that he has had previously, and had reiterated, until 2021. Can he say when...
Adam Price: Thank you, Llywydd.
Adam Price: Will the Cabinet Secretary give a statement on reports that Ford plans to cut over 1,000 jobs from its engine plant in Bridgend? EAQ(5)0140(EI)
Adam Price: I welcome the Cabinet Secretary’s statement, for the reasons he himself has referred to, namely, of course, the severe reduction in the amounts of capital funding available for investment because of the decline in the funds that we receive from London, and also, of course, the opportunity that capital expenditure on infrastructure represents for building the Wales we want, but also in...
Adam Price: A group of London-based investors, Accelerate Me, are looking to create a new fund with £4 million of their own money, hopefully backed by £6 million of Welsh Government money, to back Welsh start-ups and create a home-grown version of the highly successful Start-up Chile accelerator programme. Does the leader of the house agree that this kind of approach, supporting indigenous businesses...
Adam Price: Of course.
Adam Price: Yes, certainly, and a number of those organisations are members of the new group that is considering a public bank for Wales. I’m also aware of the work of Robert Owen Community Banking and so on. So, yes, what we want, of course, is more variety in the financial sector and to build on what already exists, including credit unions, where they have a very important role, and we want to see...
Adam Price: Well, I was starting to be concerned that motions in this place didn’t have any effect at all, but I’m very pleased to hear at least that we are going to have an inquiry into this idea of alternative models and creating new institutions, including the possibility of a form of public bank or people’s bank—whatever you want to call it, the same principle applies. I’m sure that Members...
Adam Price: Will the Cabinet Secretary give way?
Adam Price: I was very pleased to hear this announcement about the PPIW report. When does he expect that report to be concluded, and will it be published, and can we have a statement for the Assembly?
Adam Price: Oh, absolutely, and Mike Hedges raises a very important point, of course. We had aspects, didn’t we, of a mixed economy in banking in decades gone by? We had, before the disastrous policy of demutualisation, which laid waste to our successful building societies in large part—some of those remain, of course, and are very successful indeed, and some of them are also opening branches, but...
Adam Price: Diolch, Lywydd. Banking in Wales since we lost the last of our locally owned banks at the beginning of the twentieth century has been the financial equivalent of the branch plant economy, characterised by local branches of large shareholder-owned companies headquartered in the City of London. Wales has been a victim, in that sense, of the most centralised and highly concentrated banking...
Adam Price: It’s a real pleasure to follow Hannah Blythyn and to speak in this first opportunity that this Assembly has to celebrate LGBT history in Wales. I, once, at a Pride event in Cardiff, claimed that the Welsh had actually invented homosexuality. I prayed in aid, Emlyn Williams’s 1937 play, ‘He was Born Gay’, and indeed Ivor Novello’s musical—his last musical—’Gay’s the Word’...
Adam Price: What plans does the Cabinet Secretary have to commission a study of unregistered land as part of the Welsh Government's assessment of the scope for land value taxation?
Adam Price: Isn’t part of the problem that the investment panel that provides advice to Ministers wholly consists of civil servants, who are accountable to the same Minister? And that doesn’t really therefore constitute independent advice, particularly in cases where the Minister may be thought to have a particular view about a project. Now, of course, we have the Welsh Industrial Development...
Adam Price: Will the First Minister make a statement on the future of the Wales Ambulance Service Trust's clinical contact centres?
Adam Price: Would you agree that, actually, the importation of a city-region-based economic strategy is particularly curious in the case of Wales, which has among the lowest levels of population—or proportion of the population—living in cities amongst virtually any nation in western Europe?
Adam Price: You said that one of the problems with the proposed regional economic map of Wales, by including the more prosperous areas, for instance Cardiff, with the Heads of the Valleys in a single region, is that it artificially masks the level of deprivation in those areas, which means that we could, potentially, under a future regional policy framework, not have the highest level of development aid....
Adam Price: The only way we’re going to prise ourselves out of the rut is if actually we produce some positive ideas, and I noticed that there are none coming from the Member opposite. Finally, if we allow our economic strategy to be written in London then we see an economic policy that is actually not fit to actually address the unique problems in Wales. The obsession with the city regions, with the...
