21. Welsh Conservatives Debate: The Future of Wales

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 6:22 pm on 24 March 2021.

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Photo of Huw Irranca-Davies Huw Irranca-Davies Labour 6:22, 24 March 2021

Can I also pay tribute to the work that you've done long before I came here to this Senedd? You'll be missed very much indeed, and your presence and your legacy is very, very strong indeed, so thank you very much, Deputy Presiding Officer.

I'm delighted to speak in this debate, the last substantive debate before we close this session, and in doing so, it's worth looking back, because for some people, it's a glass half empty; for some people, there's no glass to hold anything at all. So, I think it's worth looking at some track record issues here, and the track record of Labour in Government here over the last five years in the face of coming off a decade and more of austerity, and it can't be dismissed, because Wales was consistently undersold by the UK Government over that decade and left with a begging bowl out. In the face as well of the European transition, where so much effort, so much resource was put into that, rather than focusing on the future of Wales, and also facing up to those ever-present challenges of climate change and biodiversity loss, and also, of course, the unprecedented challenge for any Government whatsoever of the tragedy of COVID-19.

But even despite that, during this period, we've delivered on all—all—of our Welsh Government, Welsh Labour pledges. We delivered that unprecedented ambitious pledge on the childcare offer for free early education and childcare, and speech and language therapy and so on for children aged three and four, to all families, working families, for 48 weeks of the year, and we delivered it to 14,500 children and their families in January 2020. We delivered the tax cuts for all small businesses in Wales, with the small business rates relief scheme in April, 2018; over half of all businesses in Wales now pay no rates at all, and many of them I speak to in my own constituency. We delivered those 100,000 quality apprenticeships for all ages, and within those apprenticeships—we met the target, by the way, in 2020—nearly 60 per cent of those apprenticeships were undertaken by people aged 25 and over as well, giving them a second chance there in their careers and in their jobs and in life, and we delivered the new treatment fund for life-threatening illnesses. Before the new treatment fund, it used to take 90 days to get newly approved medicines and treatments available on the NHS. It now takes just 13 days—13 days.

And of course, we doubled the capital limit on those going into residential care: we doubled it, in fact, two years earlier than planned. It's the most generous scheme in the UK, so people can now keep, when they go into residential care, up to £50,000 of their hard-earned earnings, and I know that matters greatly to those people who live in my constituency. And of course, it's not just the bricks and mortar that we've invested in in school standards, we delivered on our pledge to put £100 million into improving school standards, not just bricks and mortar, but reducing infant class sizes, and putting in place the National Academy for Educational Leadership, which some of my former headteachers here locally are actually now at the head of, and improving Welsh language teaching and learning. But it's not just that, Deputy Presiding Officer. Despite the challenges of coming in after austerity, despite the challenges of Brexit, despite all those other challenges we've had, we've supported more than 36,000 children in disadvantaged areas every year through our Flying Start programme. Yes, that's the Flying Start programme that they cut and hacked at within England. We kept it going and we've kept investment going. We've provided childcare for—