5. 5. Plaid Cymru Debate: Economic Development

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:00 pm on 14 September 2016.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 4:00, 14 September 2016

The Member is wrong to put it in those terms. The position of the Welsh Government is that we have to evolve the position that Wales takes in response to the developing debate. I’ve been the Minister of health in this Assembly. I don’t need anybody to convince me that our ability to go on providing core services for people in Wales depends on our ability to attract people from around the globe who are willing to come and make their futures here in Wales. There’s nothing in the Welsh Government’s position that is antipathetic to that, but we cannot, at the same time, pretend that the world that we occupied on 22 June is the world that we find ourselves in today. We have to accommodate our ambitions and our wishes for the future of Wales to the realities in which we find ourselves. That’s why, as a Government, we took immediate action following the vote on 23 June, calling the British-Irish Council, meeting the new Prime Minister, fresh and funded measures to provide confidence to business, actions to accelerate the draw-down of European funding and, alongside those immediate measures, we understand that there are a set of actions that will be needed to secure the future of our economy and all that goes with it.

Those were very important points, I thought, that Simon Thomas made about energy, renewable energy, and how we will fashion our patterns of support for people who work and live in rural communities in the future. I look forward to chairing the new advisory committee, established by the First Minister, which will have its first meeting later this week. I’m sure that much of what has been discussed today, the ideas that have been contributed, will feature in those discussions, together with all the other ideas that we will be able to draw from the wider interested community beyond this Chamber.

That’s why Jeremy Miles’s point was so important, and it’s important in relation to some of the questions that I’ve been asked. In relation to the economy, Ken Skates, as the Cabinet Secretary responsible, has begun by asking, not simply businesses and organisations, but people who live in Wales, people who cast their votes, people whom we failed to persuade to cast their votes in the way that we would like them to have cast them, to ask them for their ideas and for their priorities on how we will fashion the economy in the future, because we need to include their voices in this conversation, if we’re to have the success that we wish to have. The Secretary for the economy has already announced plans to develop the Welsh development bank and a Welsh infrastructure commission. He is getting on with the job of making Wales more prosperous and secure—ambitious, as Dai Lloyd said, and willing to break new ground in response to new circumstances, but determined to go on being an outward-looking nation, trading and communicating with others and committed to delivering a fair, prosperous and secure future for Wales.