3. Statement by the Deputy Minister for Economy and Transport: The Foundational Economy

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 3:25 pm on 26 November 2019.

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Photo of Jenny Rathbone Jenny Rathbone Labour 3:25, 26 November 2019

Thank you. I'm very pleased that you want to tackle this issue of good practice not travelling. When I was chairing the European programme monitoring committee, there were excellent bottom-up programmes that could have been applied to other, very similar, communities, and I know that Huw Irranca-Davies is working on this in the current programme, but we really cannot afford to discard good practice. So I'm hoping that the Carmarthenshire public services board will be leading the way, given that they were very successful in winning a contract for the foundational economy in food procurement. 

I think I'd just like to focus for a moment on your chilling warning, that if we leave the EU at the end of January with a deal or without one next December, which of course is the Farage/Johnson plan, then we have very little time to prepare our economy for the absolute storm that is likely to result, which is far worse than anything that Mrs Thatcher achieved in her de-industrialisation rush.

I agree that public services boards can be key partners to help apply what works in all parts of Wales, and it's great that you have that ambition, but I'd also like to ask you about the role that community councils could also play. Yesterday, the Public Accounts Committee was scrutinising Government officials about the role that community and town councils have been playing, and we've known for some years that far too many of them are sitting on unspent capital, rarely consult their communities and are not seizing on the opportunities that they could be using to strengthen their own small-scale economies. However, yesterday, we did hear about the good practice of, for example, Solva Care in Pembrokeshire, which is delivering a much more person-focused approach to the care of the elderly. And it was delightful to hear that community councils—. I think they're probably fairly rare, but there are community councils who've set up community-owned renewable energy schemes. Hallelujah. How are we going to ensure that all community councils are thinking along these lines and using the opportunities of the natural resources all around them to enrich their local communities?