Questions now from the party leaders. The Plaid Cymru leader, Leanne Wood.

Diolch, Llywydd. First Minister, the Governments in England and Scotland have announced that they will act to provide free access to abortion services for women from the north of Ireland. Will Wales follow suit?

The answer to the question is ‘yes’. That’s what we want to do. We’re looking at the detail of how that can be done, but we want to make sure that the same service is on offer in Wales as it is in England and Scotland. There are issues such as, for example, travel costs, and issues such as how you provide ongoing care for a procedure, rather than people just going home. These things are being considered at the moment, but I can assure the leader of Plaid Cymru that what we’re looking to do is to make sure that Wales, England and Scotland offer the same service.

I welcome your answer, First Minister, so thank you very much for that. Faced with this Westminster Government that is committed to austerity, Wales needs a Government now that is proactive on health. Almost 30,000 Welsh nurses have seen a 14 per cent cut in their wages since 2010 due to the NHS pay cap. On page 56 of your manifesto, you say that you will scrap the NHS pay cap. The Scottish Government has announced that it’ll get rid of the pay cap in its next budget. All I’ve seen from the Welsh Government is a letter to Jeremy Hunt. The UK Government has effectively rejected that letter and is now committed to that pay cap. It’s time now, First Minister, for you to take action. Why haven’t you yet announced any plans to lift the pay cap and will you make it a priority in your next budget?

We want to lift the pay cap. There are financial implications that we believe should be met by the Westminster Government. I don’t know what their view is, if I’m honest with the leader of Plaid Cymru, on the pay cap. I’ve heard different views from different Ministers at different times. It shows the lack of leadership that exists in Westminster. She and I are in exactly the same position in wanting to see an end to the pay cap. We will continue to press the UK Government for more resources and we will consider what we can do financially in order to move forward with that.

If it’s that much of a priority, First Minister, you should be able to commit to this today. We’ve got a Labour Government in Wales, we’ve got 28 Welsh Labour MPs, and the NHS pay cap still remains. You might be happy to blame others in terms of the Westminster budgetary constraints, but you could be taking action today to protect workers, NHS nurses and NHS staff in Wales. The whole point of devolution is to pursue a different way, a better way, and you could have made a clear commitment today to look at where that funding could come from in the next budget. So, your lack of action begs the question: what is the point of Labour if you’re not able to protect Welsh workers? First Minister—[Interruption.]

Can I please hear the leader of Plaid Cymru and can I hear less of Ministers in the Government? Allow the First Minister to hear the questions.

Thank you, Presiding Officer. I’ll give you one more chance to come clean on this now: do you have any regrets about implementing Tory austerity, and when will you commit to lifting the NHS pay cap?

The leader of Plaid Cymru asked what the point of Labour is. I can remind her that we have 28 MPs and her party has four. That is the point of Labour. People have faith in Welsh Labour. We saw that in the general election campaign. They keep on saying, ‘Do this, do that’. Well, people aren’t listening to them. She and I are in the same position in terms of the public sector pay cap. Surely, there are two things she must agree with. Firstly, that the first port of call must be to secure the money from Westminster. Surely, we don’t give up on that. That is something that we need to pursue. Secondly, surely she doesn’t expect us to make a decision on the hoof, without examining all the potential costs, and that is something—

It’s in the manifesto.

The Llywydd rightly stopped people heckling the leader of Plaid Cymru, so she can do the same for me. As I said, this is something that we want to take forward, but the first port of call is to say to the UK Government, ‘You found the money for Northern Ireland; now you find the money for Wales’.

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

Thank you, Presiding Officer. First Minister, last week, obviously, the Government took the decision not to back the Circuit of Wales development at the Heads of the Valleys in Blaenau Gwent. One of the proposals that was put forward was, obviously, the development of an automotive technology park that potentially could create 1,500 jobs over its lifespan. The enterprise zone has been in existence in Blaenau Gwent for over five years now. In its first four years, it created 172 jobs, and in the last year the figures are available for it managed to create a mere eight jobs. What confidence can you give that this technology park that you’re proposing will actually generate the jobs that you say it will generate—1,500—when your enterprise zone, which has been going for five years, hasn’t even generated 200 jobs?

Can I, before I answer the question, offer my sympathies as well to the leader of the Welsh Conservatives, and, indeed, his group, and the family, fiancée, friends and colleagues of Ben Davies? It was a tragic event that we saw in Greece. So, first of all, could I express my sympathies with regard to what happened to Ben? We all rely on our staff and it was a deeply tragic incident for such a young man.

The simple answer to this question is ‘£100 million’. We’re going to put £100 million into the technology park. We’ve talked to businesses to assess the level of demand, bearing in mind, of course, that this formed part of the circuit scheme, the technology park. It was something that was mooted as part of that scheme. We feel that it can be taken forward, and, having taken soundings from businesses on the need to invest, of course, in skills, this is something that we can support. One of the issues that we have faced in the Heads of the Valleys for some years is investors saying that there are no buildings for them to go into. Now, speculative building is not something we want to encourage, but this is based on what businesses themselves have been saying to us. On that basis, we’re confident the jobs can be created.

Thank you, First Minister, for your remarks about the tragic death of our deputy chief of staff, Ben Davies. Politically, we are divided in this Chamber, and that’s what this Chamber is for: debate and discussion. But, actually, the human spirit unites us all, and from a party perspective, a group perspective, and from Ben’s family’s perspective, I’d like to thank all the Members who have expressed their condolences and wishes to be passed on to the family in the support that they will need in the days, weeks and months ahead. They’ve gone from being in a position of planning a wedding to arranging funeral. That really does put everything in perspective when we focus on what we debate and discuss within this Chamber.

But if I could go back to my line of questioning, if I may, First Minister, I do take the point that the alternative offer that the Welsh Government have put on the table of this £100 million over 10 years and the opportunity to open up the door for 1,500 jobs in this alternative offer is most probably sincerely made by the Welsh Government, but the evidence that the Circuit of Wales pointed to was that, actually, in their extensive discussions—and you referred to this in your answer to me—about the development of a technology park based on the automotive industry, you would need a track for testing, and that opportunity for testing facilities to be coterminous with the technology park, to be successful. Time and time again, we have seen the Public Accounts Committee reports and scrutiny reports about the ‘build it and they will come’ mentality of previous governments having failed, and considerable sums of public money being put on the table and actually thinking the money will solve the problem. How can you have this confidence this time round, when the evidence points to the fact that, actually, you have to have the two working together to make the technology park a success in an area that desperately needs that success to create quality employment opportunities?

We have had discussion with businesses, particularly those in the automotive sector, and they have said to us that a circuit is not required to move forward with the technology park. It’s something that would be nice to have but not essential to have. I think if I represent it in that way, it’s a fair representation. But, certainly, the development of the technology park in their view is not dependent on the development of a circuit. What is absolutely crucial is that we secure the jobs in the technology park and protect the public purse. That’s hugely important, and that’s exactly what we’ve done in taking this decision.

Will you, therefore, then, First Minister, make public all the evidence that you’ve based your decision on—the £100 million investment and the due diligence that you as a Government, I hope, have undertaken, and the ability to have confidence that that 1,500 jobs figure will be reached—so that in two, three or four years’ time, we’re not looking back at a big shed that is empty and these job opportunities lost to that particular area of Wales? As I’ve said—and I sincerely mean it—I hope the jobs come, but if you look at the track record of the five years of the enterprise zone, which was an automotive enterprise zone, I might add, you haven’t managed to create 200 jobs in that area, and in the last year where figures are available, only eight jobs have been created, despite all the incentives of the enterprise zone. Will you, therefore, make public the evidence that you’ve based your decision on to sanction £100 million-worth of investment, and the feasibility in the figure that you’ve put forward of 1,500 jobs being created?

We will make available all that can be made available, subject to commercial confidentiality discussions, of course, with other businesses. But I think it’s right with this decision and this project that as much information is in the public domain as possible. We’re not afraid of that and, certainly, it is something that we are considering: how can we get as much information into the public domain. We saw some emerging today in an unfortunate manner, but we want to make sure that the information is there for Members and for members of the public.

Leader of the UKIP group, Neil Hamilton.

Diolch, Llywydd. I’d like to continue this line of questioning with the First Minister, if I may. Is it not a tragedy that the Circuit of Wales project appears to have been strangled not because of any credible doubts about the viability of the racetrack project—because there was nothing in the Cabinet Secretary’s statement to that effect—but because of a technical internal accounting device by Her Majesty’s Treasury and the Office for National Statistics? Shouldn’t we look through the form of the accounts to the substance of the project? It’s an entirely private sector-funded project upfront. All that the Welsh Government was asked for was a guarantee, for which they would be paid £3 million a year. It was secured on the assets that are to be constructed, because the guarantee doesn’t even begin until the construction phase is completed, and 100 per cent of the assets were available to secure what was a loan of less than 50 per cent of the funding. So, on the face of it, that appears to be pretty good security. And is there not a way through this, even at this late stage, that we could continue to look at the possibility of untying the Gordian knot with the Treasury and see if there is an imaginative solution to this in accounting terms, which would enable the private sector money to be put in, which, on balance, I think would be better than for the Welsh Government to have to commit its own money upfront, which is now what is proposed?

The issue is this, isn’t it: the problem has always been that if this project had strong support from private investors, it wouldn’t need a guarantee from the Government, and it would be able to stand on its own two feet without that guarantee. As we said in the Chamber last week, the difficulty that we have faced is that no final decision will be given by the ONS or Eurostat as to whether this financial deal will be on or off the balance sheet until the contracts are signed, by which point it’s too late. And, of course, at that point we are in a position where, in two or three years’ time, if the circuit didn’t work out, the guarantee is called on. That is the problem with this. Now, we cannot take that risk. We know that we would not get a final decision from them. The fact is that, as the deal is currently structured, it does not appear to have met our conditions. If a new proposal comes forward then, of course, we’d examine it. But we cannot take the risk with public money and take the risk of this money appearing on our balance sheet. If that were to happen, we would be treated as if we had already paid that money over and the money would be cut from our capital budget, which would mean, for example, potentially having to make cuts in this financial year. That’s not something that we as a responsible Government can take a risk with.

I fully understand that point and that, of course, was included in the original statement. But the idea that, for a project that would be funded privately to the tune of £375 million, a guarantee on the part of the Welsh Government that would cover less than half of that could be put on the Welsh Government’s books as entirely a public sector project is self-evidently ridiculous. And therefore, there must be a way through this. The Welsh Government guarantee would never be called upon upfront in any event under the terms of the deal, because it’s an annual amount that the Government would be obliged to pay. The worst-case scenario is that the assets were built and that the racetrack itself never made a penny of profit so as to pay the interest to the investors—Aviva in this particular instance. Then, the Government would be called upon on annual basis to pay that element of the guarantee to them. You will never be called upon to provide £210 million in a single lump sum, and the £8 million worst-case guarantee is amortised over a period of 35 years. It’s absolutely preposterous that these Government accounting conventions should be used to frustrate a project that would utterly transform the whole of south-east Wales. Surely the Welsh Government ought to exert itself and strain every sinew to try and find a way through.

We can’t ignore the reality of the fact that there is a high risk, in our judgement, that we would see £373 million lost to the Welsh capital budget. That is something that no responsible Government could ignore. I come back to the point that if the project was able to stand on its own—. This isn’t a Government project; this is a project that’s come forward from a private consortium. The question that’s never been answered is why the project can’t stand on its own two feet. If it is deemed to be that successful by the private investors, then people will ask the question why that is. We have worked, of course, with the business, they’ve brought forward several schemes over the past few years and we’ve tried to help them in any way, but they did not meet our conditions that we set down. We’ve examined all the risks, and it’s quite clear that the risks are too high to proceed with this scheme.

But not too high, apparently, to conjure up £100 million out of the back pocket as a reaction to this failure. And, if it’s possible to find £100 million upfront, effectively, now, why is it impossible to find £8 million a year, in three years’ time, for the following 30 years? Surely—I repeat the question—with an ounce of imagination, there must be a way through this. And the Welsh Government would have the united support, I think, of all the parties in this Assembly behind it to make this project succeed. Surely the prize is too great to give up at this stage.

It is the responsibility of the circuit to bring forward any new proposal, not the Welsh Government. This isn’t a Welsh Government scheme. The circuit were given conditions that they had to meet and they did not meet those conditions when we looked at the due diligence. He says it’s £100 million out of the back pocket; it’s £100 million over 10 years. So, not suddenly £100 million in the space of one year. That is the commitment that we make to Ebbw Vale to bring the jobs to the technology park, and we are confident, having spoken to businesses, that that technology park will be a success.