Part of 2. 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:51 pm on 6 June 2017.
Diolch, Llywydd. I’m sure I’ll carry the First Minister with me in saying that the last 10 minutes have proved, if nothing else, that the time for sterile political point-scoring is long past in this general election campaign to have any positive effect either way, and therefore we should concentrate more on building a successful economic future for Wales collectively, supporting other parties where that’s necessary. And, to that extent, I’d like to refer back to the question that Adam Price asked immediately before party leaders’ questions, and I take what the First Minister said in response to his supplementary about how the Government must conduct proper due diligence of the current proposal, but the auditor general’s report on the initial funding of this project contains a catalogue of opportunities for due diligence to be conducted over the last five years, starting with the calling in of the planning application in 2012, which was approved by Carl Sargeant on account of its socioeconomic benefits. In 2014, we had the initial funding of £16 million for the development of the project, then we had a public inquiry on the deregistration of the common land. Then, in April 2016, Edwina Hart rejected the first guarantee application. In July 2016, Ken Skates rejected the second guarantee proposal, which then led to intensive discussions with officials on a variety of important issues, and then, this year, in January, we had the fully funded term sheets provided by the company and we were told due diligence was to last three to four weeks. That was then extended to six weeks and then it’s been extended further, and the First Minister today has given us, I hope, an end date for the consideration of this proposal. So, we’ve had endless due diligence, and I know that the auditor general has made a number of important criticisms of the process. I don’t want to go into that now, because I want to see this project succeed and I hope, at the end of the day, that the Welsh Government is going to give it the go-ahead. But does he not think that this tortuous process is far too long, even though this is a massive project for the future? Its transformative potential is so great that we should have got on with this much more diligently than we have.