Questions Without Notice from the Party Leaders

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:58 pm on 25 June 2019.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 1:58, 25 June 2019

Diolch, Llywydd. Well, I look forward to the Member's lecture sequence, where we can enjoy his views at even greater length. Of course, he makes two basic misunderstandings in his question. The first is that he has no idea about how collective Cabinet Government works. Every member of this Cabinet is an equal member of the Cabinet, and equally committed to it. His own semi-detached membership of many parties around this Assembly stands him in very bad stead in understanding that basic principle.

And he betrayed himself, in any case, in his first sentences. He betrayed himself with that first sentence, because what he believes in, Llywydd, is the marketisation of education. He believes in that league table approach to education in which we treat education as a commodity, in which we understand nothing of the value of it, in which we simply don't understand the way that parents have a much finer understanding of what goes on in their schools than he will ever have on their behalf.

When you look at the results that were published last week, not only in relation to the health service and public appreciation of health services in Wales, you will see there what parents in Wales make of the education that their children receive. It's a completely different picture to the one that he would seek to portray, and that's because, Llywydd, in the end, the Member has no idea of the way in which people in Wales value public services, have voted in favour of the approach that we have to public services. He comes with a completely different mindset. It is only weeks since, sitting in a different party there, he invited me to join with him in celebrating the life and work of Margaret Thatcher—[Interruption.] Well, I remember it.