<p>Questions Without Notice from Party Spokespeople</p>

Part of 1. 1. Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Economy and Infrastructure – in the Senedd at 1:50 pm on 5 October 2016.

Alert me about debates like this

Photo of Ken Skates Ken Skates Labour 1:50, 5 October 2016

We were waiting for the question. It was short in the end, but with a long introduction. The Member, this week, introduced his party’s strategy for investment and infrastructure with the national infrastructure commission. I welcome the paper, but the one glaring, obvious error in it is that he’s not been able to identify where, within the Government’s revenue budget, £700 million will be able to be found. Where will that come from? Health? Education? That’s one glaringly obvious mistake. You say, ‘Be ambitious’—there’s a difference between being realistic and delusional. Being able to just magic out of the air £700 million is very difficult.

The panic that we’ve seen since Brexit on the Member’s benches has been quite stark. They’ve been wanting to sign up to every project that passes over their desk—every project—billions of pounds of pledges. [Interruption.] Ambition? There we are; we call it delusion, because you cannot account for a single penny of what you’d like to borrow. Not a single penny. When asked where you’d find £700 million, you could not answer the question. You could not answer the question of where you would pay the debt from. Panic buying with no answer for how you would afford these—you call them ambitious—projects is not a responsible course for any Government to take.

When you attack us on things like inward investment or business support, your solution is always to just rehash a programme from the past, whether it be the WDA or—what was it that you said in regard to Brexit? It was a Marshall plan for the twenty-first century, designed not with any substance, but purely to identify an opportunity to create a headline.

When you actually look at the record of this Welsh Government, you will see that we have a record number of people employed in Wales. We have the largest percentage increase in private-sector employment compared to the other 12 countries and regions. Since devolution, the number of people in employment has increased more quickly in Wales than the UK. Since devolution, Wales has had the highest increase in GVA per head compared to the 12 UK regions. Yes, there is more to do, but it would not be achieved, and ambitions would not be served, by borrowing what you cannot afford to repay.