Part of 1. 1. Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Economy and Infrastructure – in the Senedd at 1:45 pm on 15 June 2016.
In the interests of being charitable, I think it would be wrong to expect the new Cabinet Secretary to have all the answers at his first outing at ministerial questions. Indeed, that’s true of most Governments. That’s why most Governments in the world have an executive agency to help them deliver their economic strategy. Now, I realise it would be difficult for this Government to bring back the Welsh Development Agency, as that would be an admission that they’d made a mistake, which is something they patently are unwilling to do. But can the Cabinet Secretary confirm that the Government, following an earlier feasibility study, has now commissioned a detailed business plan for a national innovation body for Wales—another Plaid Cymru policy being delivered by a Labour Government? Can he also confirm that the scope of this study includes examining the case for widening the remit of this arm’s-length body to include a wider economic development role? Some of us might be tempted to call that a WDA for the twenty-first century.