Diolch, Llywydd. As this motion states, we need to strengthen the performance of the north Wales economy and regret the historic underfunding of north Wales by the Labour Welsh Government. We also, though, regret Plaid Cymru’s role in this when in coalition with the Labour Welsh Government and in its historic budget deals with them.

The Welsh Government has now launched four economic strategies since 1999, yet Wales’s economic performance has continued to stagnate. In 1999, the value of goods and services produced per head of population, or GVA, in Wales was 72.4 per cent of the UK average; in 2015, it had shrunk to 71 per cent. The west Wales and Valleys sub-region, including four north Wales counties, was still bottom across the UK, at just 64 per cent of the UK average. Even Flintshire and Wrexham saw their GVA fall from almost 100 per cent of the UK level to just 84 per cent, whilst GVA in Anglesey had fallen to just 54 per cent—the lowest level in the UK. Yet, this Welsh Labour Government only gives Anglesey—the poorest part of the UK—the eleventh highest level of local government revenue funding per head of population out of 22 Welsh local authorities, with Conwy, fifteenth; Wrexham, eighteenth; and Flintshire, nineteenth.

The north Wales local health board is in special measures and overspent, because Labour Welsh Government dismissed our warnings on behalf of patients and staff over very many years. The Labour Welsh Government’s amendment claiming that it has played the cross-border leadership role in developing proposals with partners for a north Wales growth deal is laughable. In its March 2016 budget, the UK Government announced that it was opening the door to a growth deal for north Wales, and it would be looking for the next Welsh Government to devolve powers down and invest in the region as part of any future deal. At least the UK Government has the courtesy to say that officials from both itself and Welsh Government have been working with local partners to develop the vision and understand where a growth deal would sit within it.

The UK Government encouraged local partners to prioritise their proposals, which is precisely what the growth vision for the economy of north Wales did when it called for the devolution of powers by the Welsh Government over employment, taxes, skills and transport, saying that this would boost the economy, jobs and productivity, create at least 120,000 jobs and boost the value of the local economy from £12.8 billion to £20 billion by 2035. By ‘taxes’ here, this means project delivery via tax increment finance borrowing, funded by future growth in business rates receipts resulting from growth deal projects.

People in north Wales look south and conclude that different sets of rules are being applied to different parts of Wales. As the chair of the north Wales chamber of commerce stated, the Welsh Government is too Cardiff-centric, and north Wales could be better served if it could secure its own form of devolution deal with the Welsh Government, so that it can respond much more quickly and in a more informed manner to ongoing developments within the region and across the border.

Well, yes, Plaid Cymru has done a deal. It’s done a deal with the political devil in return for a few crumbs from the top table. And, to those isolationists who would undermine the growth deal, I say, ‘Do not betray the people of the borderlands, middle lands, or west lands of north Wales who stand to lose the most.’

I therefore move amendments 2 and 3, proposing that this Assembly notes that the North Wales Economic Ambition Board’s ‘A Growth Vision for the Economy of North Wales’ document concludes that north Wales is well placed to receive a range of new responsibilities and that we endorse its call for the devolution of powers by the Welsh Government.

April’s update on the development of the north Wales growth bid stated that ambitions for flexibilities and devolved powers to be granted to the region include transport functions, strategic land-use planning, business innovation and advisory functions, careers advice and taxation powers, and evidence submitted by the North Wales Economic Ambition Board to the Economy, Infrastructure and Skills Committee’s city deals and regional economies of Wales inquiry stated,

‘Wales as a polity needs to ensure that North Wales can both compete with the North West of England and participate effectively in the planning for growth in the North of England via the Northern Powerhouse.’

They also said,

‘Devolution of functions to North Wales that matches that of neighbouring English regions is a defensive necessity and a desirable enabler of growth.’

That is the economic and social reality within which those in the north-east live. It’s also the means to spread prosperity into those middle and western regions, which still languish at the bottom not just of the Welsh, but of the UK table after 18 years of devolution.