Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Economy – in the Senedd at 1:34 pm on 19 January 2022.
Well, yet again, another Conservative politician who wants to divest the Conservative Government of any responsibility for the UK-wide cost-of-living crisis. The near 30-year high in inflation figures are not matters that rest with the Welsh Government. You'd have to take an extraordinary view on matters to say that that's our direct responsibility. And, as you recognise in talking about interventions like furlough, which I do think is one of the better things that the UK Government has done during the pandemic, the biggest levers and the biggest firepower rest with the UK Government. They could resolve issues around VAT. They could resolve issues to better support families rather than choose to take money out of the pockets of our hardest hit families, as they did in cutting universal credit. Each and every choice thus far has made life harder for normal working people and, actually, I think it's high time the UK Government looked again at what it could and should do. And I remind you of what I said to Jayne Bryant: pre the pandemic, Wales had halved the employment gap with the UK—still more to do, but halved the employment gap—during the devolution period, and more jobs in the top half of the income spectrum rather than at the bottom half. So real progress has been made and is being made. As you know from me yesterday, we could do so much more if we were able to have money to invest in skills rather than having it taken away from us. It's not just an issue in Wales; you might want to pay attention to the Committee for the Economy scrutiny in the Northern Ireland Assembly, which highlighted the problems they have because of the significant funding gap they too have on skills and innovation because of the broken manifesto promise in 2019.