4. 3. Statement: Priorities for Government

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 3:13 pm on 12 July 2016.

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Photo of Carwyn Jones Carwyn Jones Labour 3:13, 12 July 2016

Isn’t there a sense of irony that the leader of the Conservatives stands up and talks about flowery language while talking about sunflowers without actually realising that? He didn’t listen to what I said in response to the leader of the opposition about Metro North, as I’ve called it; he obviously missed that response. Of course, in time, we’re working on our manifesto commitment over business rates and there will be announcements on that.

On the steel crisis, the situation is this: we’ve been in constant contact with Tata. I had an official on—[Interruption.] Well, there’s been an urgent question on this; I gave a response, indeed, in FMQs explaining the situation. We have a package on the table—a financial package—and we will expect to see conditionality attached to that package in terms of commitments to numbers of jobs and a period of time over which further investment will take place, but we also need to see action on pensions. It is not a matter that we can actually deal with as a devolved matter and we need to see the UK Government resolve the issue of pensions and the issue of energy prices, which every single energy-intensive industry in Wales tells us is a problem. I met with Celsa last week and again they said that energy prices in the UK are a problem. We can ignore it as much as he wants, but that’s what businesses are saying to me and it would do him well to listen.

I have to say, I’ve stood in this Chamber for weeks listening to him expound the benefits of Brexit. Not on any single occasion has he realised the problem of losing £600 million a year as part of our budget—not once has he recognised that that is a problem. Only today, when he was asked about it, he said there was a limit to how much money the Welsh Government could spend on computer rooms and community centres. That’s what he thought the money went on—not ProAct, not ReAct, not Jobs Growth Wales, not the metro, not the metro in the north and all these things, not farming subsidies—not farming subsidies—because, without that commitment, we can’t pay farming subsidies to our farmers. Yet, despite what other parties have done—Plaid Cymru, and UKIP for that matter, who have called for every single penny to be made up by the UK Government—he has failed to do so week after week after week in this Chamber. So, I cannot take lessons from him in terms of how we should govern when he fails to stand up for Wales. Can I advise him that, if he wants to be taken seriously as the leader of the Welsh Conservatives, he should join other parties in this Chamber and make sure that Wales doesn’t lose out? Then he would look to gain more respect from the people of Wales.