Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:45 pm on 23 January 2018.
That is awful, First Minister. This is your biggest infrastructure project. The negotiations around VAT are still ongoing. Without VAT—and these are the words of your own civil servant in that committee—the costs of this project are in the region of £1.3 billion to £1.4 billion. Only two years ago, you were trying to convince people that this project was going to come in at £800 million. I asked you to let us see that information so we could have confidence that you were building a project on sound finances. All this has been undone. Can you commit now today that there is an upper limit where this project is viable, and if there isn't that upper limit, will you be whipping your backbenchers and having Cabinet responsibility to vote this project through, whatever the cost?