MIKE
HEDGES AM Welcomes Statement by the Cabinet Secretary for
Finance: The Wales Infrastructure Investment Plan Mid-point Review 2018.
Speaking after Plenary – Mike Hedges AM said…… ‘ this
report is good news for Wales and good news for my constituents in Swansea
East. The area has benefited substantially from this fund through investment in
new secondary & Primary schools, substantial investment in remodeling
others. We have had investment through this plan for other items such as
improved road and transport infrastructure. Were it not for this investment
plan, Swansea would be in a much poorer state.
This plan shows the Welsh Labour Government commitment to
improving the infrastructure of Wales’
Mike Hedges AM - I very
much welcome the statement by the Cabinet Secretary, who I'm sure agrees with
me that the choice is often between austerity or growth and what austerity is
doing is strangling growth in the British economy and the Welsh economy. Could
I also say that it wasn't serendipity that Wales has got low PFI? It was
good decisions taken by the Welsh Government at the time. They could've
followed Scotland and England and built up that debt.183
I'd like to put on record
my personal congratulations to Jane Hutt, the person who started off this
10-year programme. I just look at the benefits it has given to my constituency:
the new secondary schools, the new primary schools, the improved transport infrastructure,
the new homes. That's what we try to get elected for—to improve the lives of
the constituents we represent. Capital expenditure is incredibly important, not
just to provide the buildings, but very much to reflate the Welsh economy. You
put money in—capital expenditure—and you buy goods and you employ people and
the money gets circulated inside the economy. This is something
that doesn't seem to have crossed Philip Hammond's mind, because it
probably doesn't appear on his spreadsheet.184
It's a very important
point that Adam Price raised about bonds, but the important thing about bonds
is not to use them, but to have the capacity to use them to keep the Public
Works Loan Board honest. Very few people—. You'll see them used—bonds—by local
government bodies. Transport for London took out a very substantial bond, but
very few other people have. When the Public Works Loan Board started looking at
increasing interest rates, people started looking to bonds in order to
push their rates down. I think it's important that we have the ability to use
bonds, not necessarily because we want to use them, but because they give us
power over the Public Works Loan Board, which, if we didn't have that,
would be the only lender we could go to.185
Can I just say I very much
welcome the £60 million over three years to accelerate the creation of active
travel routes to connect residential areas with key employment and educational
sites and services? I'm sure that my colleague Lee Waters is going to say
more about that later on. When will the split by region or local authority be
available, or will local authorities have to bid, and how will those bids be
decided?186
Inside this money, will
there be extra money available for the Swansea bay city region for transport
within that region? I know we use the word 'metro' because that's the word
we've got used to, but improved bus and rail links, opening additional railway
stations, making it easier for people to cycle and walk within that area is
really what I'm talking about in that. For relatively small sums, huge
improvements can be made in terms of ensuring that cycle routes are completed,
that buses and trains actually meet each other so you can get off a bus and
catch a train or get off a train and catch a bus, rather than being
unco-ordinated, and that buses get close to the railway stations, rather than
making people walk 200 yards, or 200m in modern parlance, when it's raining.187
My final question is:
waste recycling collaboration, will there be money available for that, and how
will that be distributed?188
15:15
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Well, let me begin by
agreeing, as Mike Hedges predicted I would, with a point he made at the outset:
the problem with austerity is that it is self-defeating. It creates the problem
it claims to address, and that's why we find ourselves in the position that we
do. He's absolutely right to say, of course, not using PFI was a deliberate
decision by Welsh Governments in the first decade of devolution, and I well
remember the criticisms that were levelled at the Welsh Government at the time
for making just that decision. I think we now see the wisdom of it. Every one
of us, Dirprwy Lywydd, I think, can point to the impact of capital investment
during the first period of the WIIP in our own constituencies, whether that is
in health or in education or in transport or in housing and the other key
purposes that were identified for it.189
Can I thank Mike Hedges
for reminding us of the multiplier effect of capital investment? It isn't just
the building that you see, or the transport link that is created, it's the
supply chains that it supports, it's the jobs that are created there, it's the
spending in local economies, it's that benign economic cycle that capital
expenditure brings.190
Dirprwy Lywydd, Mike
Hedges was also right to remind us that the issuing of bonds does not extend
the capital limit of the Welsh Government. It doesn't give us more money to
invest, but what it does is it gives us more choices in the way that we can get
to that capital limit, and were the day to come where the interest rate in the
Public Works Loan Board were to rise—and the UK Government were tempted to do
that, as Mike said, not that long ago—we would have somewhere else to go.
That's an important lever in our hands.191
I'd like to be able to
answer the more detailed questions that Mike raised in relation to active
travel, to the Swansea area, to waste recycling and so on, but those are things
that fall to my Cabinet colleagues. They will provide the detail to Members in
a series of announcements that I'm sure they will be making over the coming
days.
