Questions Without Notice from the Party Leaders

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 3:13 pm on 9 February 2021.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 3:13, 9 February 2021

Well, Llywydd, I have previously offered the Member an opportunity of a membership form for the Labour Party, in which he takes such an interest, because, if he did, he would be more familiar with the policy-making processes of my party. So, my party has not completed its policy-making process. There is no final document, to which he mistakenly refers. Indeed, I am looking forward to spending Saturday with members of my party looking at some 700 different proposals that party units right across Wales have contributed to the final stages of our policy-making process. The Member, I'm afraid, has simply been misled in believing that he understands the way that the Labour Party operates. We will continue to develop our policies. We will put them in a manifesto. Our manifesto will a deliverable manifesto. It will not be an uncosted wish list of the sort that he has spent many months now developing—social care today; more hundreds of millions of pounds he hasn't got to spend—never an attempt to tell us where that money will come from, of course, following the last couple of weeks' wish lists in relation to other things that he thinks that, simply by dangling them in front of people, he will persuade them to support. The Welsh public, unfortunately for him, is more discerning than he gives them credit for. They will know that, when promises are made, the wherewithal to keep them has to be found as well. That is why, later this afternoon, we will demonstrate that the promises made by my party at the last election have been delivered during this Senedd term. That is what people expect, not the sort of fantasy policy making that the Member continues to offer us here.