Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 2:52 pm on 25 June 2019.
Organiser, can I seek three statements, please, if possible? One, I'd like to see and hear what the Government's reaction is to the Deputy Minister for the economy in a speech at the Clink restaurant, where he commented on the economic performance of the Labour Party in Government, where he said,
'For 20 years we’ve pretended we know what we’re doing on the economy—and the truth is we don’t...Everybody is making it up as we go along'.
I applaud him for his candid speech, remarks and notes that he gave at that meeting, but I do think it's important, given that the Government, I assume, is underpinned by policy—'Prosperity for All', for example, is a document that's constantly referred to—and here you have a Deputy Minister saying that, when it comes to the economy, this Government and its predecessors have been making it up as they go along. That is deeply concerning to say the least.
Secondly, could I press you, as finance Minister, to bring forward a statement in relation to the financials around the climate change emergency and the initiatives that will flow from that and the policy positions that the Government will take. I applaud the Minister for what she's done on this, but I do think we need to understand what the financials will be and what the job numbers will be as well. The Treasury in London have provided certain figures for Government, totalling £1 trillion to meet the net zero contribution by 2050. I do think that it is incumbent on this Government, if it's putting forward policy positions that seek to move from old carbon to new, green jobs, to ensure that we understand what that will mean in monetary terms and what obligations that will place on each department on the financials. You as finance Minister, surely, have an element of that information to hand, and if that could be captured in a statement, that, I would suggest, would greatly inform the future debate around this subject.
The third point I'd like to press on is, if possible, could we have a statement from, I believe it would be, the Minister for transport or perhaps even the Minister for the economy—I know they're one and the same but I think it's delegated to the deputy, I think, but I might be wrong there—in relation to the roadworks at Sycamore Cross junction in the Vale of Glamorgan? Only five years ago, the Government spent £2 million upgrading that particular junction to trunk road status. Anyone who's travelled that piece of road over the last couple of weeks has seen it being systematically dug up again, new temporary lights put in, causing traffic chaos. And what many people cannot work out is, if Welsh Government spent £2 million five years ago to put that junction in good order, why is it now all being ripped up—and it literally is being ripped up—and all those improvements that were put down only five years ago being taken part, and some form of reconstruction will appear, I'm assuming, in the next couple of weeks, but it's a little difficult to try and envisage what that will be, given all you've got is holes in the ground at the moment. So, if we could seek a statement from the Minister so that that could be amplified to all those motorists, cycle users and walkers who are inhibited by those roadworks at that particular junction, I think that would be a very beneficial exercise.