Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 5:20 pm on 28 September 2016.
But I shall know better next time. The document says nothing about the solution to the TB problems, says nothing about the collapse of farm income, and says nothing about the overburdening of famers with regulation.
On the health service, again, they
‘remain committed to the founding principles of the NHS, healthcare free and accessible to all at the point of need.’
But that comes as a big surprise to the residents of Blaenau Ffestiniog, as I pointed out in questioning the First Minister yesterday, as they’ve had their hospital closed and they’ve got almost no GPs left. There’s no solution to the GP recruitment crisis in Wales in this document either.
On transport, all we’ve got is a warmed-up list of projects that have been ongoing for years. The M4 relief road—that’s eight years in the making and we still haven’t even got on the starting blocks for that as yet. But we are told that, by the year 2050, we’re going to reduce carbon emissions by 80 per cent, the consequences of which will be a massive addition to the cost burden of British industry and a massive increase in the electricity bills of ordinary householders throughout Wales, and the poorest members of the community will be the ones who will suffer most. And that’s what this Labour Government is committed to.
The whole document is predicated, to go back to Joyce Watson’s intervention, on the idea that we’re going to have a shrinking economy as a result of leaving the EU, but a Treasury forecast published today has been revised now in the other direction from ‘project doom’. So, what leaving the EU gives us is a massive opportunity to repatriate powers, not just to Westminster, but also to Cardiff, and to use them to improve the productive potential of the British economy and, therefore, to improve the prosperity of all classes and income levels in society. Because those powers are in the hands, at the moment, of people who are not elected and therefore not accountable to the people of this country, it gives us every opportunity to improve democracy in Britain as well.
It’s absurd to think that as a result of leaving the EU—even on what you might regard as the worst-case scenario of not being able to do any kind of deal with the EU at all—that’s going to lead to a shrinking economy, because only 5 per cent of our GDP is accounted for in exports to the EU, and 65 per cent of that 5 per cent would have a maximum tariff of 4 per cent if we did no deal with the EU. So, we’re only talking about, in the worst-case scenario, a possible diminution of part of 1.5 per cent of GDP—if you ignore all the dynamic effects of leaving the EU and our freedom to enter into trade deals with countries all around the world that are currently blocked or stymied as a result of the need for 28 countries to agree these deals before they can be put into place.