Questions Without Notice from the Party Leaders

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:04 pm on 12 July 2022.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 2:04, 12 July 2022

Well, Llywydd, I'll try to be consensual as well, because, of course, I completely agree with him that selling Wales as a low-wage economy was a failed policy of the Thatcher era, and we don't look to recreate that today. The Cardiff capital region actually produced a list of cities where graduate salaries are different—places where Wales offers more than some cities and places where Cardiff offers less. That is just the fact of the matter. And I don't think that we should read from that that they were looking to attract people here because we're a cheap place to live. The picture of the capital region is that Wales is a great place to come and live, not simply because we offer graduate-level jobs and opportunities for people to make careers, but because we offer so much more than that as well.

Now, we will differ on the fundamental issue as to whether or not it is good for Wales that our young people have experiences elsewhere, and I don't think that he is factually correct, either, to say that we don't do well in attracting people back into Wales at the point in their lives when they wish to return and they wish to make that contribution to our economy. I want Wales to be somewhere outward-looking and confident as a nation—a place where people want to come, want to settle, want to live and want to work for all the reasons that make this place so special. And I think that it is possible to succeed in doing that, and I don't think the talk of brain drains and people leaving and all that actually helps us—[Interruption.] It doesn't help us when it is portrayed as though Wales is somehow somewhere were people fail to have that sort of future, because that is not the sort of Wales we either have or wish to have in the future.