Questions Without Notice from the Party Leaders

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:38 pm on 2 July 2019.

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Photo of Adam Price Adam Price Plaid Cymru 1:38, 2 July 2019

Which bit? Are you denying—? The BBC is reporting that the economy Minister apologises for his comments about the Welsh economy. I must say, reading the report—reading Ken Skates re-interpreting for us what Lee Waters really meant—was a bit like reading that famous tweet by Andrew Adonis extolling the virtues of Jeremy Corbyn's Brexit policy. Now, I can understand your difficulty with the first part of Lee Water's statement,

'For 20 years we've pretended we know what we're doing on the economy—and the truth is we don't', though I think he is absolutely right that conventional thinking has failed, and it's failed here in Wales more clearly than anywhere else. But the second part of his statement in simply a statement of fact that you've achieved static gross domestic product, in relative terms, over 20 years. The Government in which you were a senior adviser set a target of achieving 90 per cent of UK income per head. In fact, we're now in the low 70s—exactly where we were, as Lee Waters says, 20 years ago. Surely it should be the Welsh Government as a whole that should be apologising for that, not your deputy economy Minister for simply pointing it out?