Questions Without Notice from the Party Leaders

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:44 pm on 8 January 2019.

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Photo of Adam Price Adam Price Plaid Cymru 1:44, 8 January 2019

So, in terms of the rankings, maybe I can help the First Minister. According to the World Bank, we'd be currently twenty-third in the 36 countries that are members of the OECD—that's between South Korea and Spain. So, I guess you could say we're just below the promotion zone in the second division of the world's advanced economies. Ireland, which is a similar-sized country in a similar part of the world is fifth. You talked in your lecture on twenty-first-century socialism a few months ago about using the United Kingdom as a mechanism to redistribute wealth. Well, we're almost 20 years into that century, and as mechanisms go, it's not a very good one, is it? In the two decades since this Assembly was created, we've slipped from 74 per cent of the UK average for income per head to 72.5 per cent. That's one of the worst figures recorded by any UK nation or region. Labour were in power for half that time at Westminster and in power here in Wales for all of the time, and yet the devolution dividend in economic terms has been negative. So, what explanation do you think the OECD will give for Ireland's success and Wales's relative failure, other than the fact that they're an independent nation and we're not?