<p>Questions Without Notice from the Party Leaders</p>

Part of 2. 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:50 pm on 4 July 2017.

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Photo of Mr Neil Hamilton Mr Neil Hamilton UKIP 1:50, 4 July 2017

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?