Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:46 pm on 3 November 2020.
Switzerland, Norway, Denmark, Latvia, Estonia, Ireland and even Luxembourg, with a population the same size as Cardiff, are all funding wage subsidy schemes equivalent to the furlough as small, independent countries, so why would an independent Wales be any different? Indeed, as an independent country we could even decide to go further than that, and introduce a universal basic income so that we could help the one third of self-employed people who aren't currently getting any help at all. If Wales was an independent country, we would have our own fully functioning Treasury and a central bank, meaning we could do what every other country in the world is doing at the moment to meet the cost of the pandemic, which is borrowing on the capital markets and using quantitative easing. The UK Treasury is paying for the furlough scheme by borrowing and through monetary financing. What makes you convinced, First Minister, that an independent Wales wouldn't or couldn't do the same, like the other small countries that I've mentioned? Why do you believe that we are uniquely unable to make economic decisions for ourselves?