Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 3:59 pm on 9 July 2019.
Could I thank the First Minister for his statement and also for the advance copy, and also say how refreshing it is to see how many of his ministerial statements he stays for? It's not something I ever recall having seen at Westminster. I've got three areas I wanted to ask him about here. The references—. He started by praising our model of social partnership and made quite a lot of references to trade unions and the TUC, I thought rather fewer references to business and their representative organisations—I just wonder if that's something he'll look to rectify in the future. Also, more broadly, does he see Welsh Government's role as a facilitator for both the trade unions and business or primarily as a Labour Government as a supporter of the trade unions within that context? When he talks about delivering new social good through enhancing the ask of those who receive public funding via the economic contract, through public procurement—the economic contract, is that something that applies to public procurement generally, or only to a particular proportion of it? And I wonder what steps the Welsh Government will take to see if there's any impact on value for money in pursuing things in this way. Clearly, sometimes, if someone doesn't do the various things he would want, and I'm sure that many of these are social goods that we would support, would they be excluded from the contracts? And if you were to have fewer people bidding for contracts within the scope of this, is that something that could increase costs, at least over the medium term?
Finally, around enacting Part 1 of the Equality Act 2010, the First Minister says,
'We will draw together the relationship between the socioeconomic duty and the social partnership Bill.'
I'm just wondering, are they distinct things? Will the social partnership Bill commence the duty or, when he refers to the steps required to commence this duty, are they different? Does the Westminster legislation give powers to Welsh Ministers to commence where UK Ministers are not commencing this in England? It refers to Part 1 of the Equality Act, but I also just recall during its passage a reference to this being arguably socialism in one clause. Is that what this refers to and is that why the First Minister is leading in this area in the way he has announced today?