Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:49 pm on 28 September 2016.
Thank you, madam Deputy Presiding Officer. I agree with the leader of the Conservatives: this is a very flimsy programme, given that all the power and ability of the civil service is behind the Government. We have produced our own ideas in the programme for opposition and there is reference to that in our amendment. There are more ideas contained there than in the Welsh Government’s programme for government, which is disgraceful. I know that size isn’t everything, of course, but 16 pages to cover five years of a governmental programme at a crucial time in the history of Wales. Now, if you compare that with what the Government did five years ago—and it was this Government—there were 51 pages. We can look to Scotland—89 pages; Northern Ireland—113, and that’s just the draft programme. And, of course, it goes deeper than that. As the leader of the Welsh Conservatives said, we’ve gone down from the previous programme for government, where there were 12 specific policies areas. We are now down to just four headings, and no targets at all. The previous Government had 122 result indicators—a little jargon-ridden, but at least they were there. There were 224 tracking indicators. Now, what the difference is between the two, I don’t know, but at least there were clear targets, so that we, in this place, and most importantly the citizens of Wales could actually track the attainment of Government year on year. Of course, there were annual reports on that programme for government setting out attainment against those targets, but no targets—[Interruption.] Yes.