Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 3:41 pm on 4 June 2019.
Llywydd, I think the Member's got a number of things wrong there. It shows, I think, an unbecoming degree of flippancy to suggest that the report had been flicked through. Just let me tell him for certain that I have read this report from cover to cover—[Interruption.] I think I heard you the first time, I don't need a second piece of advice. And let me be clear to you that I am the decision maker here. That's what the law requires. That's why I have seen the report and you see it now, because I am the decision maker, and however strong your views may be, Members of the Assembly generally are not. That's what the law requires and that's the responsibility that I have discharged.
Of course you don't see the legal advice. Members of the Chamber surely understand. You asked me why aren't I publishing the legal advice. I heard you ask me. And I'm not publishing the legal advice, because the conventions of Government, as he well knows, mean that that legal advice is a privileged advice available to Ministers, and that has been the case, just as Ministers in his Government in the United Kingdom would never agree to publish legal advice in those circumstances. So, I'm paying him the tribute of answering the questions that he asked. He may wish he'd asked me other questions, but he didn't, and I've answered the ones he has asked.
We've been round the manifesto question a number of times. I have here a copy of the Conservative party manifesto at the same election. On page 9, it commits his party to electrification of the railway all the way to Swansea—[Interruption.] On page 35, it commits his party to fund a tidal lagoon in Swansea—[Interruption.] The manifesto that we drew up was drawn up in the circumstances that I described. The context has changed, and that's why the decision has changed in that changing context.
As to a vote, you heard the leader of the house earlier this afternoon say there will be a debate in this Assembly. And had the decision been to go ahead with the relief road, there would have been a binding vote, because it would have come on the budget that is put in front of this Assembly every year, because the decision to go ahead would have committed money, and money is only expendable by Government when this National Assembly votes for that money to be available to the Government. So, there would have been a binding vote in those circumstances. Now, there will be a debate, and there will be an opportunity for Members here to make all the points that they want to make.
And quite certainly, Llywydd, this is a decision not about going back to square one. It is about a rapid piece of work by an expert commission that will bring forward practical proposals to resolve some of the issues that are faced by the residents of Newport in 2019 and 2020, not many years from now when the road might eventually have been constructed and opened for traffic.