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

Part of 1. 1. Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Local Government – in the Senedd at 1:47 pm on 11 January 2017.

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Photo of Adam Price Adam Price Plaid Cymru 1:47, 11 January 2017

Yes, but does that explain the vast gap that we see in the Cabinet Secretary’s own figures—he’s provided them in a written question—between the different regions of Wales? I’ll just give one example, the spend per capita. Welsh Government capital investment over four years, the last four years, in mid and west Wales is half the over £1,000 per head figure for south-east Wales. Next year, it’s projected to fall to 29 per cent. Nothing can justify that level of gap. I have to say, we heard in the Chamber yesterday, I would say, a rather sneering tone of metropolitan provincialism attacking my party for at least trying to get some concession, some investment in the regions and the constituencies that we represent. We make no apology—[Interruption.] We make no apology for equalising the level of investment.

He is a more thoughtful politician than some of his colleagues, and, by the way, those attitudes were present on the Conservative benches as well, also from Members that either represent or live in the most prosperous part of Wales. I would ask him this: will he commit to equalising the level of investment across Wales, so that it’s not left up to my party, year in, year out, to fight for bloody scraps at the bottom of anyone’s pork-barrel?