Questions Without Notice from the Party Leaders

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:08 pm on 16 January 2018.

Alert me about debates like this

Photo of Andrew RT Davies Andrew RT Davies Conservative 2:08, 16 January 2018

First Minister, you raise the issue about wages. If you take Scotland as an example, back in 1999, a Welsh worker and a Scottish worker took home the same take-home pay. Today, a Scottish worker takes home £49 more in their pay packet each week than a Welsh worker does. That's a fact. In this document, wages are only mentioned twice. Taxes, business taxes, are only mentioned once out of 17,000 words. Automation, which is the huge challenge we face, where potentially 35 per cent of the workforce could lose their jobs or have their jobs remodelled over the next 29 years, has a bare mention in this document. There doesn't seem to be any answers around the real challenges that we do face in the next decade or two.

This document, I presume, is the driver for economic policy coming out of the Government for at least the next four to five years, depending on the mandate, and yet again I go back to this point—it is the fourth document that has come out of the Welsh Labour Party in Government here in Wales, and I highlighted the poverty in wages here in Wales as opposed to other parts of the United Kingdom, and this document doesn't have that solution. Give us some inspiration as to what we can look at in 2021 on wages, on wealth here in Wales, and above all on companies re-establishing themselves here in Wales.