I now call on the party leaders to question the First Minister. The Leader of Plaid Cymru, Leanne Wood.

Diolch, Llywydd. You launched your election campaign yesterday, talking a lot about unity. But you couldn’t bring yourself to utter the name of your leader. Is Jeremy Corbyn still your candidate for Prime Minister?

Yes.

First Minister, yesterday, you had a chance to put Wales on the political landscape, but, instead—I’m sure that Theresa May will be breathing a huge sigh of relief—three of your major pledges are devolved, and they were promises made ahead of last year’s election. And a fourth pledge, on policing, could have been devolved if only Labour MPs hadn’t had their own way. Now, the next few years will define the future of Wales and the UK. You should have made clear Welsh demands, to give Wales a voice, to defend Wales, but you failed to do that. We’ll now have to rely on Plaid Cymru MPs—[Interruption.]

Okay. Calm down. Let the question continue.

We will now have to rely upon Plaid Cymru MPs to best set out how we can defend Wales. Why did you choose to let Theresa May off the hook?

They don’t like the slogan ‘Standing up for Wales’, do they? It’s one of the things I’ve noticed. And I thank the leader of Plaid Cymru for reiterating our pledges—pledges that we in Welsh Labour are proud of—and she will find more to come in the manifesto that will be published in due course.

They were promises you pledged before the last election. You should have already delivered on some of those pledges. First Minister, the reality is you have airbrushed your leader out of this campaign. You talk a lot about unity, but I believe that you’ve airbrushed him out of this campaign because you know that Labour can’t win. Now, you want to make the election about your record, about the record of the Welsh Government, and we all know why you’re doing that, and that’s why most of your recycled election pledges are within devolved competence. Therefore, then, if you lose this election in Wales, as many polls are suggesting that you might, does that mean this will be a verdict on you? Will it be your fault? And if you become the first Labour leader to lose Wales, the first time in 100 years, will you be prepared to take responsibility or can we expect you, yet again, to blame somebody else?

Well, we had all of this last year. We saw the result. People trust us to stand up for Wales. We saw Plaid Cymru’s results in the local elections: very little by way of advances, backwards in Caerphilly. Only last week in this Chamber—only last week in this Chamber—the Member for South Wales Central was claiming he would be the leader of Cardiff council, and they won three seats. Three seats. He’s now claiming that—he’s not here, I know, and I recognise that—Cardiff West was a great victory for Plaid Cymru. Well, with three seats and Labour on 12, I’m more than happy to concede that victory to them if that is their definition of it. We have an election to fight. We will all, as parties, put our policies forward to the people of Wales, but, above all else, we will be standing up for Wales.

The leader of the opposition, Andrew R.T. Davies.

Thank you, Presiding Officer. Last week in the news, First Minister, there were some serious concerns raised about the Tawel Fan report and the progress being made on the reporting system around the Tawel Fan ‘disaster’—I’d call it—where people were actually, as the previous report talked about, being treated like animals, and other shocking revelations. Families were showing real concern over the progress of the information that’s coming back to them in order to satisfy themselves over the way their loved ones were looked after. There has been a call for the mortality report to be brought forward because Betsi Cadwaladr University Local Health Board has identified that some premature deaths could be associated with the levels of care that were around the Tawel Fan unit at Ysbyty Glan Clwyd. In fact, the head of the community health council in north Wales has called for this report to be made available because it has been finished. Will you, as a Government, commit to making that report available given that Betsi Cadwaladr are in special measures and you are responsible for that health board?

We will give full consideration to that on the basis that we want to be as open and transparent as possible. It is what people would expect, and consideration will be given to releasing that report if that’s appropriate.

Well, the head of the community health council believes that it is appropriate, and, to use his words, so that

‘It may stop this practice elsewhere’.

We know that report is available; it has been concluded. You are spending £5 million a year additionally running Betsi Cadwaldr because it’s in special measures, so you are responsible. When families and concerned clinicians want to see this data so they can fully understand what went on within that unit, why on earth are you not allowing that report to come forward, because it would add a huge amount of comfort to the families and to the individuals who’ve heard such horrific stories over the care within that unit? In particular, I draw your attention to the fact that, as has already been said, patients were treated like animals.

Well, the report is, as I understand it, with the independent overseer and, at the right time, consideration will be given to releasing the report. It’s important that as much information as possible is made available to those who have seen their relatives suffer and to those who have suffered in order that lessons can be learned.

I’m really disappointed you’re not prepared to give some firm indications of when that report will be available. As I said, this isn’t a politician who’s saying this report should be made available; this is the head of the community health council in north Wales, along with family members and clinicians. So, I’d be grateful, if you’re not in a position to give an indication of the timeline today because I’ve just put that question to you, that you would indicate that you will write to me to allow me to have sight of the timeline that you as a Government are working to. I think that’s the very least that someone can expect given the concerns that were raised last week.

But, also, I would ask you to confirm that you are satisfied with the level of bed capacity in north Wales for mental health patients, because it has come to our attention that there is a ‘sofa system’ working in north Wales, where, if a bed is not available in mental health, people are put on sofas to try and meet the targets. That cannot be right. It is putting vulnerable people in a position where they could be exploited. How can anyone feel that a ‘sofa system’ meets the requirement for providing safe and secure bed capacity in the north Wales health board area?

Well, if the leader of the Welsh Conservatives has evidence of a sofa system, as he describes it, I’d be glad to see that evidence. And I will, of course, write to him along the lines that he has asked for, providing him with more information regarding the timescale in terms of any release of the report.

Leader of the UKIP group, Neil Hamilton.

The First Minister will know that the Cabinet Secretary for Education’s party is standing in this Westminster election on a policy of increasing income tax for people earning as low as £11,000 a year, and the Labour Party nationally is apparently going to stand on a policy of increasing the top rate of income tax from 45p to 50p. Does he agree with the Shadow Chancellor that we have a great deal to learn from Karl Marx and ‘Das Kapital’, and does he think that raising the top rate of tax is likely to raise more money?

Yes, I do. I think that raising the top rate of tax will raise more money. I don’t think that we have much to learn from ‘Das Kapital’; for those who’ve read it and tried to understand what it says, it is not an easy exercise. We will stand on a platform of ensuring that those who can afford to pay a little bit more do pay a little bit more in order to ensure that we have the public services that people would expect.

So, am I to take it from that response that it is now the policy of the Welsh Government, when tax powers are devolved to us in this Assembly, to follow the Labour Party’s manifesto nationally of increase top rates of tax in Wales, because the evidence from the last time that this happened in 2013 was that reducing the tax rate from 50p to the current 45p actually led to an enormous increase in revenue of about £8 billion? So, it seems to be rather counterproductive to stand on a policy that increases tax rates and actually reduces revenue, and makes it less likely that the Welsh Government will be able to put more money into the national health service.

As far as the Welsh rate of income tax is concerned, we’ve already pledged that we will not increase the rate of income tax during the course of this Assembly.

I’m delighted to hear that, but whether that means that the First Minister accepts that raising rates doesn’t necessarily lead to increasing revenue offers Wales a great opportunity to make our country into a kind of tax haven within the United Kingdom, which would help us to reverse the economic trends of many, many decades in Wales and give us a significant advantage, in the same way as southern Ireland has used differential rates of corporation tax to kick-start the Celtic tiger economy, which was very successful in that country—.

He raises an interesting point about corporation tax; there are no proposals to devolve corporation tax. What I do know is that tax havens tend to have very poor public services; in particular, they don’t have health services because they can’t raise the money in order to pay for those public services. So, I don’t believe that the future of Wales lies in being a kind of replica of the British Virgin Islands, or a replica, necessarily, of the Channel Islands. We have a very different model; the Channel Islands don’t have, for example, a health service along the model that we would understand, but getting the balance right between revenue and expenditure on public services to the level that people would expect is, of course, a matter for Governments to balance.