A WALES THAT WORKS

Plaid Leader unveils plan for “rapid recovery” post-Covid

 

Plaid Cymru Leader Adam Price MS has today unveiled his party’s plan for a “rapid recovery” in the wake of the Covid pandemic, outlining plans to create more than 60,000 jobs through a low-carbon infrastructure stimulus.

 

Mr Price promised an “unrelenting focus on protecting livelihoods” in a 8-point plan focused on fresh ideas and new priorities.

 

With a promise to deliver a post pandemic recovery that sees Wales “working faster and smarter than the pandemic response” – a Plaid Cymru government would guarantee employment for 16- to 24-year-olds, build thousands of green new homes and prioritise small and medium sized Welsh businesses.

 

Adam Price added that the “ambitious but deliverable” raft of measures “should have been brought in years ago had the Labour Welsh Government shown a greater urgency to build a resilient economy.”

 

Unveiling the Re-Build Wales Rapid Recovery Plan – Plaid Cymru Leader Adam Price MS said:

 

“The Welsh economy is facing its biggest challenge for a generation. With unemployment due to reach 120,000 by the summer, we need an urgent alternative economic strategy which will not only create jobs but also support the thousands of businesses facing bankruptcy as a result of the pandemic.

 

“We will learn lessons and ensure that the post pandemic recovery sees Wales working faster and smarter than the pandemic response – with an unrelenting focus on protecting livelihoods.

 

“This is an ambitious but deliverable raft of measures which should have been brought in years ago had the Labour Welsh Government shown a greater urgency to build a resilient economy.

 

“Within its first few hours, a Plaid Cymru government would announce a £6 billion green economic stimulus, creating almost 60,000 jobs through tasking the National Infrastructure Commission with delivering shovel-ready investable projects.

 

“These could include building thousands of new social homes, retrofitting existing homes, expanding and electrifying the rail network, and delivering the fastest broadband to all parts of Wales.

 

“We would introduce a Welsh Youth Guarantee giving secure employment to every 16–24-year-olds on at least a Living Wage, zero-interest loans to get businesses back on their feet, and a reskilling programme giving those who were recently made redundant a £5,000 retraining allowance.  

 

“A Plaid government would also implement a new ‘local first’ procurement policy to give preference to small and medium-sized local businesses - setting a target of increasing Welsh firms’ share of public procurement from 52% to 75% - creating up to 46,000 jobs.”

 

ENDS

 

LEARNING LESSONS?

“A year of education disruption – surely government has learnt some lessons by now?”

 

Siân Gwenllian MS calls for additional measures to keep our schools safe – and open

 

More can be done to help protect school staff and pupils, according to Plaid Cymru’s Shadow Minister for Education, Siân Gwenllian MS.

 

Ms Gwenllian says that the Welsh Government’s current approach – with community lockdown as the lever they seem able to pull – is limited in its approach, and more could be done to stop educational premises having to close. These measures include:

 

·       Vaccination: Within each vaccination priority group, move school staff and other key workers, including those that drive school transport, to the top of the list. Children are not currently on the list of those due to receive a vaccine, so school workers could face higher exposure to the virus.

·       Testing: Early identification through school-wide testing is key, particularly when children can often be asymptomatic and yet still transmit the virus.

·       Ventilation: Aerosols containing coronavirus can aggregate in the air in closed indoor spaces such as classrooms. Plaid Cymru is calling for dedicated funding to help educational settings monitor and ventilate their premises adequately. Learners and school staff shouldn’t be prevented from wearing appropriate warm clothing in addition to any uniform. If children are fully prepared for cooler temperatures, then outdoor learning also becomes a possibility.

·       Social distancing in classrooms: When community transmission is high, schools should be given all options to enable socially distanced face to face learning. Including a rota system where a proportion of the class is on-site and the rest off-site. For this to be truly effective, all learners need adequate access to remote learning. While Wales remains in lockdown, and there are unused public buildings, schools should be given the option of using these, if they provide bigger indoor spaces.

 

Ms Gwenllian has renewed calls for a clear catch up education plan, including better monitoring and measurement of digital poverty in Welsh learners.

 

Plaid Cymru’s Shadow Minister for Education, Siân Gwenllian MS said,

 

“It’s been a year of disrupted education but surely the Labour Welsh Government has learnt some lessons about how to open schools safely in the meantime?

 

“The only lever government seems to be able to pull is lockdown. When community transmission is high, they lock us down, and schools inevitably close again. Only when infection rates have dropped in the community, do schools re-open. This approach, while simple, is far too limited.

 

“Parents, learners and staff need reassurance that the school environment is safe, and there are certainly things that can be done to give them confidence, such as more extensive use of ventilation, school workers moved to the top of their vaccine priority group, and schools must be given all options to enable adequate social distancing in classrooms.

 

“With a year of hindsight, it pains me to think how much more face to face education our children and young-people could have had, if Welsh Government had used all the tools in their gift earlier.”

 

ENDS

REFORM OUR COUNCIL TAX

Plaid Cymru Leader Adam Price MS has today set out his party’s commitment to reform council tax should it win May’s election, urging the current Welsh Government to use its unspent funds to immediately freeze the tax in the meantime.

 

Referring to the £800 million of unspent funding in this year’s Welsh Government budget, Adam Price MS used today’s First Minister’s Questions in the Senedd to point out that it would cost £100 million to allow Welsh councils to freeze council tax and offset last year’s average 4.8% rise.

 

Citing the Institute for Fiscal Studies’ description of Wales’s council tax system as “out of date, regressive and distortionary”, Mr Price set out Plaid Cymru’s commitment to making council tax fairer and more progressive, adding that under such proposals 20% of households on the lowest incomes would see savings of at least £200.

 

Plaid Cymru Leader Adam Price MS said,

 

“Any talk of the pandemic as the great leveller has been completely debunked by the harsh reality facing thousands of families in Wales.

 

“Citizens Advice Cymru have found that Welsh families have been hit by a total of £73 million of arrears due to struggling with rent, energy bills or council tax over the last year. £13 million relates specifically to Council Tax arrears.

 

“That is why I have urged the Labour Welsh Government to use £100 million of its £800 million unspent funds to freeze council tax right away, making up for last year’s average rise of 4.8%.

 

“A Plaid Cymru government would go further and reform council tax to make it fairer and more progressive. We will undertake a revaluation, increase the number of bands at the higher end of household evaluations, and ensure that council tax is more proportional to the value of properties.

 

“We expect that under our proposals 20% of households in the bottom fifth of income distribution will see their council tax fall by more than £200.

 

As stated by the Institute of Fiscal Studies which describes Wales’s current council tax model as “out of date, regressive and distortionary”, making council tax proportional to up-to-date values would lead to average bills falling by more than £160 in Merthyr Tydfil, Neath Port Talbot and Blaenau Gwent.

 

“This would be a fairer system by far than what Labour has left in place for too long.”

HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL DAY

Tomorrow Wednesday (27th January 2021) is Holocaust Memorial Day, which is commemorated each year on the 27^th January because this is the day when the Red Army liberated Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest Nazi death camp.  

Now, perhaps more than ever, we should take time to remember the millions of people who have been murdered or whose lives have been changed beyond recognition during the Holocaust, Nazi Persecution and in other subsequent horrors which have followed in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia, Darfur and more recently are in Syria.

We should also forever remember the earlier genocides that inflicted on the Armenians and the Ukrainians. It is only right and proper that we honour the survivors and continue to challenge ourselves to use the lessons of their experience to inform our lives today.

By the end of the Holocaust, six million Jewish men, women and children had perished in ghettos, mass-shootings, in concentration camps and extermination camps. As Allied troops made progress across Nazi-occupied Europe, they began to uncover concentration and extermination camps. 

The camp of Majdanek in Poland was the first to be liberated, in summer 1944.

Faced with defeat and advancing Allied armies Nazi forces burnt the crematoria and the mass graves in attempts to hide the crimes that they had committed. 

The  Operation Reinhardt camps of Sobibor, Belzec, and Treblinka were dismantled by the Nazis from 1943, and Auschwitz itself was evacuated in late 1944. 

The surviving prisoners, weak from starvation and ill-treatment, and poorly clothed against elements were forced to walk into the interior of Germany, away from the Allied armies, many thousands died on the enforced ‘death marches’. 

When Soviet soldiers liberated Auschwitz-Birkenau on 27^th January 1945,  they found several thousand emaciated survivors, and the smouldering remains of the gas chambers and crematoria. In the following months, the Soviets liberated Stutthof, Sachsenhausen and Ravensbruck.

In the west, US troops liberated Buchenwald in April 1945, followed by Flossenburg, Dachau and Mauthausen. British Troops liberated Bergen-Belsen on 15^th April 1945. It is estimated there were over 60,000 prisoners in Belsen by April 1945. Approximately 35,000 prisoners died of typhus, malnutrition and starvation in the first few months of 1945.

Back in 1999, Jewish leaders, were once asked  Tony Blair (the then UK prime minister) whether we needed Holocaust Memorial Day in Britain? Jonathan Sacks (former Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregations of the Commonwealth for 22 years, until 2013) noted that that, when it was proposed that the UK have a Holocaust Memorial Day, Blair wanted the opinion of British Jewish leaders. 

They explained that they did not need a specific day to remember as Jews.

When it comes to remembrance Jewish people already had Yom ha-Shoa, their own memorial day, which falls soon after Passover in the Jewish calendar. Every Jew literally (or figuratively) lost family in the Holocaust. 

For Jews, Yom ha-Shoa is a grief observed. 

The Jewish leaders said that the Holocaust was not just a crime against Jews and other victims – Roma, Sinti, homosexuals, the handicapped, Jehovah’s Witnesses and political opponents of the Nazi’s among them; it was an assault on all of humanity.  

As has been said by a survivor previously perhaps we really need additional eleventh commandment along the lines of – Don’t be bystander! 

TIME TO TEACH OUR HISTORY

Plaid Cymru are calling on the Education Minister to support making Welsh history, including the history of black people and people of colour a mandatory part of the new curriculum. 

Every child and young person in Wales should learn about the story of Wales.

Sadly that has not been the case in the past but the new curriculum of Wales is an exciting, once-in-a-generation opportunity to change that, ensuring that the History of Wales in all its diversity is an integral part of each child’s education.

Plaid Cymru are therefore calling on you to support making Welsh history, including the history of black people and people of colour a mandatory part of the new curriculum.

Unless it becomes obligatory, the current inconsistent pattern will persist and an unique opportunity to empower young people with a knowledge of their past, including the mistakes, will be lost. 

Furthermore, teaching about the history of black people and people of colour must happen in all our schools as an essential part of a national effort to eliminate systemic race inequalities, allowing Wales to become a beacon for equality in a divided world.

Plaid Cymru strongly believe that all children have the right to understand their history and heritage and learning about the history of Wales is key for our next generation to make them informed and engaged citizens -  which is one of the primary purposes of this new curriculum.

Plaid Cymru therefore call on you to give the national story of Wales, in all its diversity, including the history of black people and people of colour, the status it deserves by putting it on the face of the Bill. 

This will also ensure that the teaching is fully supported by resources and training as our history becomes fully embedded into Wales’ new way of teaching and learning.

Welsh history belongs to all Welsh children, and they all deserve equal access to it.

Sign the open letter.

By signing this open letter, you agree to Plaid Cymru recording your political opinion and using it for campaigning purposes. You can find our data protection policy here.

YESTERDAY’S NEWS

A classic case of yesterday’s news and yesterday’s ideas from yesterday’s party.

Labour had thirteen years in power in Westminster to deliver radical devolution for Wales and failed.

They again promised a “radical extension of devolution” in 2017, as did Keir Starmer during his leadership campaign only to now deny Scotland’s right to hold a new referendum on independence.

As has been said  broken record won’t save a broken union, and neither will we re-build our economy with the handleless shovel that Labour in Westminster and in Wales have given us relation to economic powers.

Time and again Labour in Westminster have voted in the UK Parliament against more powers for the Senedd.

Labour in Wales are simply part of the problem rather than the solution, or as my father once put it, if you think Labour is the answer then you are asking the wrong question…

The Labour Party is being overtaken by events and the desires of the people of Wales - including half of their membership - to see our nation have full control over deciding its own future. 

More and more people want independence for Wales but if they want it, they have to vote for it in the Senedd elections.

TIME TO BUILD TRUST

Plaid Cymru calls for maximum transparency to build trust, and queries appointment system in open letter to Health Minister

In an open letter to the Health Minister, Rhun ap Iorwerth MS, health spokesperson for Plaid Cymru, has called for greater clarity on the vaccine deployment programme, in order to build public trust.

While the deployment of the vaccine offers real hope, Mr ap Iorwerth raises “real concerns” over the pace, transparency and communications of the programme, and says that the public “simply want to know when they might expect the vaccine.”

Mr ap Iorwerth calls for a dashboard of information that would allow the public to track progress for themselves, including volume of doses delivered and administered by health board and by priority group. He said it would “go far” in helping to restore public trust.

Mr ap Iorwerth also asks for clarity on whether the Welsh Immunisation System is currently able to perform the tasks it was designed to do, including creating appointments, sending letters and automatically scheduling second doses.

Using examples of international good practice, Mr ap Iorwerth asks whether the Health Minister would consider measures such as:

• Vaccination centres open 7 days a week
• Widespread availability of drive-through style vaccination centres
• Reducing wastage by allowing prepared vaccines to be given on a ‘first come first served’ basis at the end of the day.
  

Shadow Minister for Health, Rhun ap Iorwerth MS said,

“There are real concerns about the vaccine deployment programme, not least regarding the pace, transparency and communications during these initial stages. People simply want to know when they might expect the vaccine.

“Setting out targets in Welsh Government’s vaccination plan, and including a dashboard of information which answers questions around how the numbers of doses by health board and priority group, will go far in helping to build public trust, as they will be able to track progress for themselves.

“We have a short period of weeks before the damage of strict conditions, in particular school closures, become even more significant. We also currently have a virus infecting more people every week than are receiving the vaccine. Expanding the pace and scale of vaccination is thus essential, as is restoring public confidence that governments have a plan for winning this battle against the virus.”