11. 10. Welsh Conservatives Debate: The Welsh Government’s National Strategy

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:56 pm on 27 September 2017.

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Photo of Carwyn Jones Carwyn Jones Labour 4:56, 27 September 2017

Better, because we’re attracting investors now that we would never have attracted 20 years ago. The policy of the UK Government in the 1990s was to replace well-paid jobs in coal and steel with badly paid, unskilled jobs. So, GDP and GVA—same thing, more or less—went down. Yes, the unemployment rate may have gone down with it, but the money that people had in their pockets also declined as a result. That is turning around; it’s been difficult to turn it around, I grant you, but it’s turning around now and we’re seeing investors coming into Wales and bringing better-paid jobs with them—jobs we would never have had 20 years ago because nobody would have been there to advocate Wales’s position 20 years ago.

In terms of the economy, turning to what Adam Price said, I don’t accept that there’s a choice to be made between supporting indigenous business and foreign direct investment. I accept there’s a balance to be struck. We’re seeing now more businesses in Wales, we’re seeing businesses becoming more successful. I see the entrepreneurial streak that was there in our young people being encouraged now in a way that wasn’t there before. I see our universities working to help start-up businesses in a way they didn’t do 10 years ago; they didn’t see it as their mission to do that. Now, they’re beginning to do that. So, I see that entrepreneurship being able to flourish as a result of it. [Interruption.] Of course.