2. Business Statement and Announcement

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 2:50 pm on 15 May 2018.

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Photo of Julie James Julie James Labour 2:50, 15 May 2018

Yes. I think, on that second one, I've actually been there. It's a very beautiful building, absolutely. The Welsh Government has a number of schemes, including the potential for vouchers, community asset transfers and creative use of finance and so on, that can be brought to bear to save some of our industrial heritage. The Member will forgive me—I know it's in her region as well—but one of the examples that I'm particularly fond of at the moment is the Copperopolis development in Mike Hedges's constituency in Swansea, which brings alive much of the industrial heritage of the Swansea valley, which is a matter of great historical monument to the whole of Wales, but particularly to my own family as well.

So, it's great to see those, and it's lovely to see old buildings that were put together by the efforts of local working people very often brought back to life in the way, as I was just saying. So, I do think it's a very important matter. I will have some discussion amongst Cabinet Secretary colleagues and Ministers just to see how we can best highlight some of that. The Member makes a good point about how we highlight the various routes to save some of the industrial heritage and buildings, and there have been a number of issues raised—not least the land transaction tax, actually—that we can have a look at to see what we can do with unused buildings and so on, to encourage owners to bring them back into use. We all have a number of those in our regions and constituencies as well. So, I'll certainly take that forward and see what we can do to highlight it.

And, as I said on Gaza, words are just not enough to describe the horror that we saw unfolding there. As I said, it's such an immensely complex problem in the middle east, and we do seem to be in a particularly accelerating violent cycle at the moment, which is of some serious concern to all of us. As I said to Simon Thomas, I will discuss with the First Minister what we can best do to indicate this place's views on the subject.