Part of 1. 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:43 pm on 28 March 2017.
I thank you for that answer, First Minister. I’ve got no confidence in the UK Government’s ability to reflect our specific Welsh national interests, and there isn’t any information that you’ve given us this afternoon to give us any more confidence. Wales can’t afford to pay a high price for a hard Brexit, and we know that we’re going to have to defend our interests during the article 50 negotiations. But we also need to think about how we move the debate forward to deal with the powers that we need in order to mitigate those economic risks. We want to keep the value of our current EU funding in any replacement scheme, but Plaid Cymru believes that we need more power in Wales to decide exactly how that money is spent. We should be able to use replacement funding to make Wales more attractive to business, and Plaid Cymru wants to see Wales empowered so that we can adapt to the challenge of Brexit. We need tax powers, for example, much wider than those that are already on offer. I’ve set out my demands to the UK Government on this today—what Plaid Cymru sees as being in Wales’s best interests—but can you tell us what you intend to do, as a Welsh Government, to get our country into the position where it can survive an extreme Tory Brexit?