Questions now from party leaders. Leader of the Welsh Conservatives, Andrew R.T. Davies

Thank you, Presiding Officer. First Minister, last week, regrettably, Wizz Air chose to leave Cardiff Airport. To date, the Welsh Government have invested or made available to the airport £225 million—nearly £0.25 billion. You are the owners of the airport, albeit you have set up an arm's-length company to operate the airport. Do you believe that £225 million is money well spent?

Llywydd, I have always believed that a regional airport is an essential part of the economic infrastructure of any part of the United Kingdom that seeks to support the modern conditions under which the economy must operate. The private sector was unable to do that. It was right that the public purse stepped in. It's an investment in the future of the Welsh economy, and one that this Government was pleased to make.

First Minister, after £0.25 billion, the airport sadly has fewer passengers now than it has had for a very long time. Yes, COVID intervened to obviously affect all airports, but if you take Bristol Airport, it has seen a 22 per cent decline in its passenger numbers but still handles close to 7 million passengers. If you take Birmingham Airport, another competitor, they have seen a 33 per cent decline, and still handle 8.5 million passengers. It is a fact that no airport that I can find has had such a generosity of Government money made available to it—£0.25 billion—and had such poor outcomes achieved. What are the new plans available to make sure that that £225 million is protected, and that, ultimately, you can resurrect the airport, because I think the taxpayer, in fairness, deserves to know is this a bad investment that is going to continue to go wrong, or do you have a long-term plan that can resurrect Cardiff Airport, which, obviously, you acquired back in 2013?

Well, Llywydd, the Welsh Conservative Party has never supported the airport. It has always done its best to talk down its chances of success. They never like to face up to their own responsibilities, Llywydd. Time after time after time on the floor of the Senedd, I have heard Conservative spokespeople here complain about the airport, suggest that it shouldn't have been taken into public ownership, and generally undermine the airport's prospects of success. The Member will know that figures from the Civil Aviation Authority showed that passenger growth at Cardiff Airport had increased by more than 50 per cent in March 2020, the month in which COVID hit us all, and that growth had happened since the Welsh Government purchased Cardiff Airport—strong growth, and a path that the airport was on, clearly, towards future profitability. Indeed, it had made a profit in that year. 

Now, since the pandemic, of course the airport faces a much more difficult future. Demand for air travel has fallen across the world. It has not recovered, and the downturn in the UK economy means that industry experts are now predicting that this coming year will be a year in which air travel recovers more slowly in the United Kingdom than it will elsewhere. But, the rescue and recovery package that we have put in place with the airport, with those who are responsible for its future, is absolutely designed to make Cardiff Airport self-sustainable and profitable for the future. And when I hear Members shout, 'Never' to that, that's exactly the sort of remark I meant when I said that, whenever we talk about a successful future for the airport here, Conservative Members intervene to cast doubt on its ability to be a successful part of the Welsh economy. 

First Minister, it is our job, when £0.25 billion has been spent on a project by the Welsh Government, to ask the questions that deserve the answers. We have brought two blueprints forward for a successful airport: once when it was purchased back in 2013 and in 2019. Most people would say that £225 million deserves some sort of dividend back and some sort of profitable enterprise. To date, the airport, under your ownership, has not turned in a profit. I can hear the Deputy Minister chuntering away there, but instead of chuntering away in this Chamber, he might be better off putting his efforts into trying to turn Cardiff Airport around so that we do have a successful airport. I gave you the figures about Bristol and Birmingham, which are the two closest airports that are rival airports. Cardiff's passenger numbers have dropped by in excess of 50 per cent because of COVID.

What people generally want to know is: do you have a plan to make it profitable and successful, which is what we on this side of the Chamber want to see, or will it require more money, which will be diverted from health, education and the other priorities that the Welsh electorate reasonably expect the Government to spend the money on? So, do you have a plan and can you outline it today to this Chamber—how you're going to turn Cardiff Airport around to get passengers going through the terminal and flights taking off? Because if I look at the accounts on Companies House, I cannot even find the up-to-date accounts because they haven't been filed yet. You're the owners; when are we going to be able to see the accounts, First Minister?

Well, you'll see the accounts in March, when they are always published. They will be published in March 2023. They are published every—. The fact that the Member isn't able to find them is not my problem. [Laughter.] He needs to employ people to do his research for him in that case. I just tell the Chamber this, Llywydd: the airport publishes accounts every year. They will be published in March of this year, and the Member, if he's able to, will be able to locate them as a result. I said in my second answer, Llywydd, that there is a rescue and recovery plan in place. It's published, it's available for Members to see. 

I'll just end with this point to the Member, that, when this Senedd sought the devolution of air passenger duty, something that is available—[Interruption.] You supported it, but your Government didn't support it, did it? Your Government refused that request because of its wish to protect Bristol Airport. If there was a level playing field at the UK Government, then we would see different results.

The leader of Plaid Cymru next to ask questions. Adam Price.

Diolch, Llywydd. With the news of the teachers' strike on 1 February and the failure of the talks with the health unions last week, public sector strikes in Wales are widening and deepening. What's the strategy of the Government, First Minister, to prevent this winter of discontent continuing on into spring and into summer? Is it your policy that you're going to offer the one-off payment that you referred to in the case of the NHS workforce to the teaching workforce, for example? But, even if you are, then would you not accept that that doesn't get to grips with the central point about this public pay dispute, that as far as the public service unions are concerned, it comes after a decade of erosion of real-terms pay? And are you prepared to acknowledge, in the case of both the health and the teaching unions, that the recommendations of the pay review body relate to evidence taken in late 2021, early 2022, before the Russian-Ukraine war when inflation was about 4 per cent? By the time you accepted the recommendations, the cost of living was already nearing 10 per cent, so is there not a case, First Minister, for asking the pay bodies to revisit their work, and for you as a Government to agree to abide by any higher award if they were to do so on that basis?

Llywydd, first of all, on this, we absolutely recognise the impact that a decade of austerity has had on the pay packets of public sector workers. They are paid less in real terms today than they were 10 years ago, and the impact of inflation has amplified that impact in the lives of families in many parts of Wales. So, of course we understand why people who have never been on strike before feel compelled to take that action.

In the discussions that we had with our trade union colleagues in the health field—and by the way, I don’t accept the leader of Plaid Cymru’s characterisation of those talks as having failed—but in those talks, we put three different aspects on the table for discussion. One of those was how we could act together to re-inject confidence in the pay review process. Now, amongst the ideas that we would be prepared to put on the table would be to see how, in future, trigger points could be built in to the pay review process, so that, if events happened beyond the determination that need to reopen the determination, there would be an agreed path that everybody would understand to make that happen. Whether it is possible to do that retrospectively to the pay review body’s operation for the last financial year, I’m not so sure, but putting new life and new confidence into the process I think is a very important point, and I think the leader of Plaid Cymru’s right to make it.

I would urge him to look at that possibility for this financial year as well. One of the other issues that you did bring to the table, which was welcome, was the role of agency staff. Now, we saw the figures from the Royal College of Physicians that show that the total bill in the last financial year was £260 million. Do you accept the logic of the unions that, offering a significantly higher pay rise would reduce that agency bill? It’s an investment that would pay dividends, whereas at the moment, it’s a perniciously false economy. At the very least, should we not be creating a publicly owned staff agency for the NHS so that we can strip out profit and the exorbitant costs of private sector agencies? The last Labour Government in Westminster did this through the creation of NHS Professionals, a publicly owned national staff bank owned by the Department of Health, which reinvests surpluses back in the NHS. Couldn’t we combine that with the judicious use of milestones for capping and reducing the use of private agencies over time as part of a national workforce plan, which gets to grip with the longer term crisis of retention and recruitment that I referred to?

Llywydd, the first thing I want to do is to pay tribute to the work of agency staff. I’m worried about the tone of some of this debate that suggests that, somehow, agency staff are the problem in the NHS. The NHS absolutely depends upon agency staff. So, I’m not saying that the leader of Plaid Cymru did it, but I do hear in the wider debate some sort of sense that agency staff are somehow to blame, and actually, we depend on agency staff all the time. We wish to depend on fewer agency staff in the future—that is common ground. We put that on the table in the discussions with our health union colleagues last week.

It is not as simple as saying that there is £260 million to be saved; a great deal of that would be paid for people who would be in work on a non-agency basis. There is some increment that you can squeeze out of that sum, and that is an important thing for us to try to do. The bank system is a publicly provided way in which people can work on shifts where they would not normally be employed, and there may be, in the discussions we’ll have with our trade unions colleagues, more that we can do in that area. There will always be a role for agency workers to cover short-term absences, when we know that, sometimes, people will be away for training and other things, and if we didn't have them—if we didn't have them—the system would be under an even greater pressure than it is today.

But the point is, First Minister, that that agency doesn't have to be within the private sector, does it, it could be within the public sector.

Now, could I turn to another matter that has already been referred to, the UK Government's veto over the gender recognition reform Bill in Scotland? Do you agree with me that this sets a very dangerous precedent, not only in terms of your own Government's aspirations, which we share, to bring forward similar legislation here, but also in terms of devolution more generally and the use of, in our case, section 114, I believe, in the Government of Wales Act 2006? If you do share that view, will you be urging Welsh Labour MPs to vote against the Secretary for State for Scotland's Order when it's debated on the floor of the House of Commons? If that parliamentary procedure is unsuccessful, are you prepared to consider, at least, the Welsh Government intervening in the legal action that the Scottish Government has indicated that they intend bringing at the Supreme Court, because of this wider principle, not just in terms of the rights of the trans community, but also in terms of our democracy here? And, as a matter of principle, given that Sir Keir Starmer has said he disagrees with the application of the new rules to 16 and 17-year-olds—against the views, it has to be said, of the Labour Party in Scotland—can you set out what is the position of the Labour Party here in Wales in relation to that matter?

There are a series of questions there, Llywydd, and I'll try and attend to as many as I can. On the biggest question of all, I do agree with the leader of Plaid Cymru; I think the UK Government's decision to use powers that have never been used in the whole history of devolution is a very dangerous moment, and I agree with the First Minister of Scotland that this could be a very slippery slope indeed. The reason why I say that is because, I'm afraid, we have the precedent of what has happened to the Sewel convention in front of us. The Sewel convention was never breached, not once, by Conservative Governments, as well as Labour Governments, for nearly 20 years. Since the first breach of it, we now see, as the Williams and McAllister commission, in their interim report, said, the breach of Sewel becoming almost normalised. I think, by the end of this year, it will have been breached more than 10 times. Now, that just tells you that, once you've done this once, using it again becomes easier, and the second time leads to the third time very rapidly.

That is why I really regret the UK Government's decision to act in this way, but it's part of a wider pattern, Llywydd, of this UK Government. If you find yourself in a different position to somebody else, instead of sitting down, instead of trying to negotiate, instead of trying to find an agreed way forward, you simply use the force you have to overcome them. If you don't like strikers, then you pass a law to stop people striking. If you don't like protesters, you pass a law that criminalises protesters before they've even done anything at all. And if you don't like an Act passed in another Parliament, you use the force you have in your Parliament to overcome what the other Parliament has done. It's a repeated pattern that you see with this Government, and in this instance it quite certainly throws up enormous constitutional ramifications.

Will we associate ourselves with any Supreme Court case? Well, we've shown a willingness to do that in the past. It's premature for me to say how we might be able to do that, given that there isn't a case yet there, but, as the Member will know, we have previously made sure that Welsh interests were represented in the Supreme Court when there were matters of constitutional significance to Wales at stake, and we would certainly be prepared to do that again.