, Plenary
Questions to the First Minister
Llywydd, the company have confirmed that logistics and R&D at Bridgend will continue. So, we have that directly from the company. I don't share the same pessimism as the Member about the future of young people in Wales. Wales has jobs that cannot be filled…
, Plenary
Questions to the First Minister
Llywydd, I thank the Member for that further question. I’ve seen the letter signed by Lord Johnson, the Minister for Investment at the Department for Business and Trade, jointly with the Secretary of State for Wales to the company, asking them to make…
, Plenary
Questions to the First Minister
Well, Dirprwy Lywydd, the Member for Ogmore raises a whole series of very important points there on behalf of that very loyal and very successful workforce, and, indeed, that sense of a company that has rather lost its way in recent times in the proper…
, Plenary
Questions to the First Minister
Dirprwy Lywydd, a meeting is being arranged between the Minister for Economy and the Secretary of State at the Department for Business and Trade to discuss the proposed closure of the Zimmer Biomet Bridgend plant. The Welsh Government’s priority is to do all…
, Committee for the Scrutiny of the First Minister
North Wales
Well, that was the point, I think, of the letter, signed, as I said, jointly in April of this year, between the UK Government and ourselves: to seek further assurances from the board that it is turning those projects into delivery on the ground at a speed and…
, Committee for the Scrutiny of the First Minister
North Wales
Thank you for the question; of course, there are tensions there, as the WISERD report demonstrated. In terms of what we're doing, we continue to work with the UK Government on the growth deal. A letter was signed by Vaughan Gething and the UK Government…
, Committee for the Scrutiny of the First Minister
North Wales
Yes. The purposes for the site do absolutely need to be aligned with the wider ambitions for the economy of the island, which I think are really exciting. I'm one of those people who really thinks that, if things go as we want them to go, there are such…
, Committee for the Scrutiny of the First Minister
North Wales
Okay, thank you, Mark. On the first question, I will ask Elin to make sure—. The lived experience of people with visual impairments and other impairments ought to be built in from the very beginning because you learn so much directly from hearing from them…
, Committee for the Scrutiny of the First Minister
North Wales
Well, Llywydd, I'm ill-equipped to enter into a debate on football with Jack Sargeant, but I want to echo one point. I should have said in my original answer 'the importance and success of women's football in Wrexham over the last season', as well as the…
, Committee for the Scrutiny of the First Minister
North Wales
Well, there is a one-word answer to the first part of John Griffiths's question, Chair: the reason is Brexit. The hubs were supported directly through funding from the European Union. That funding is no longer in the hands of the Welsh Government. It was…
, Committee for the Scrutiny of the First Minister
North Wales
I think that the Kop stand development is due for completion in time for the 2024-25 season. That's not far off, so there are some reasonably short-term timescales for part of the Gateway project. The Welsh Government does work with the local authority but…
, Committee for the Scrutiny of the First Minister
North Wales
Well, Chair, Wrexham has been in the spotlight internationally in a way that would have been very hard to have imagined only a few years ago. It's an astonishing success story of the football club but of its owners as well, who I think have shown a genuine…
, Committee for the Scrutiny of the First Minister
North Wales
Of course, I agree with that completely. You could not be unaware of the food security issues on Ynys Môn because of all the things that we are now having to do in terms of post-Brexit trade to make sure that flows of goods in and out of Holyhead are tested…
, Committee for the Scrutiny of the First Minister
North Wales
First of all, Chair, just to acknowledge the impact that the closure of the 2 Sisters factory has had on the island. An employer with that number of jobs in a relatively small, local economy was very real. I commend the commitment that the local authority has…
, Committee for the Scrutiny of the First Minister
North Wales
I think displacement is one of the big issues you have to think about in free ports altogether. Free ports, just to be clear, are not a policy of the Welsh Government; they're a policy of the UK Government, where we have been able to work successfully…
, Committee for the Scrutiny of the First Minister
North Wales
Of course, Chair, I would take issue with the whole series of propositions that Mr Rowlands puts forward as though they were matters of fact when they're nothing of the sort. There are more road schemes going ahead in mid and north Wales than in any other…
, Committee for the Scrutiny of the First Minister
North Wales
The bus service in Wales is subsidised by the public purse, one way or another, well north of £100 million every year. What the bus Bill is designed to do is to make sure that that subsidy is used to the maximum possible effect, because we don't believe that…
, Committee for the Scrutiny of the First Minister
North Wales
Well, Chair, I was fortunate enough—. I was in north Wales earlier this year for the north Wales Cabinet committee, where Lord Burns came and talked directly to us about his interim report and its findings, and he focused a lot in his presentation on the way…
, Committee for the Scrutiny of the First Minister
North Wales
Well, to be fair, you have to look at the circumstances as they were then, rather than as they are now. Nobody anticipated a pandemic. Nobody, I would guess, was anticipating that we would be leaving the European Union, with all the pressures that has put on…
, Committee for the Scrutiny of the First Minister
North Wales
It is more than that. There are a series of things that I could share with you, but they're all well-known to members of the committee. There was the immediate difficulty of the failure in parts of the 175 fleet, a fleet that was being retired over time in…
, Committee for the Scrutiny of the First Minister
North Wales
No, it's not. No, I've said. I repeated—pardon me, Chair—I repeated my answer to Jack Sargeant that the experience that rail users have had in parts of the Transport for Wales network isn't good enough, and the improvement plan needs to be implemented and…
, Committee for the Scrutiny of the First Minister
North Wales
I want to make a distinction, if I can, Chair, between the people we work with day in, day out at Network Rail, where I think we have a good relationship, and Transport for Wales works closely with them. In that, 'What can we do within the constraints that…
, Committee for the Scrutiny of the First Minister
North Wales
It is, Chair. Transport for Wales is the operator of last resort in Wales. When contracts, franchises, come up for renewal, we are hamstrung in that the section of the Act that Jack Sargeant refers to means that a not-for-profit provider, a public provider…
, Committee for the Scrutiny of the First Minister
North Wales
Well, Chair, let me agree with what I think is the fundamental point that Jack Sargeant is making, which is that the problems of the railways in Wales are problems of underinvestment—problems of long-term underinvestment; investment that we see going on in…
, Committee for the Scrutiny of the First Minister
North Wales
Well, Chair, first of all, to acknowledge as I did on the floor of the Senedd only a week or so ago that the service on the line has not been satisfactory. It has not been what it needs to be, and the Deputy Minister, as you know, went and met the people who…
