WALES is “open for business”, according to the new minister for enterprise, connectivity, and energy.
Former Plaid Cymru leader, Adam Price, who was appointed to the role last month, told Senedd colleagues on Tuesday, June 2 that the new Welsh Government will be “placing productivity at the heart of its approach”.
In his new role, Mr Price has responsibility over areas such as tourism, Business Wales, and international trade policy and promotion, including overseeing matters relating to the UK/EU Trade. He is also responsible for economic strategy and policy.
He said: “Productivity is the foundation of long-term prosperity. It underpins wages, living standards and competitiveness.
“Today, Wales continues to lag behind, with productivity around 15% lower than the UK average. But productivity is not an abstract measure; it’s about raising incomes, creating better jobs, and ensuring prosperity is shared all across Wales.”
Mr Price said the Welsh Government would be adopting a new approach, which he described as a “mission to tackle productivity and a target to reduce Wales’s productivity gap by half with the UK within ten years”.
Concluding his speech to the Senedd, he said: “This is a moment of opportunity. Wales has the assets, the talent, and potential to succeed. What is now needed is leadership and delivery.
“It requires focus and a relentless emphasis on delivery. It requires a government prepared to make choices and act with pace.
“And it requires a clear mission, one that puts productivity, people and firms at its core. That is our mission.”
Jason O’Connell, Reform’s shadow minister for economy and transport, challenged Mr Price on his plans to establish a new national development agency.
He questioned plans to bring back a “failed” Welsh development agency and said: “History tells us that it was another unnecessary bureaucratic quango that was linked to illegally inflated redundancy payments, where directors flew first class around the world while communities across Wales were left behind.
“And this is Plaid’s answer to the economic decay that infects our towns and valleys. The same model, the same results, not even new branding.”
The shadow minister acknowledged the previous Welsh Development Agency created jobs but claimed it also created a “hollowed-out Welsh economy”.
Mr O’Connell said his party would instead allow “no additional bloated quangos, no new layers of bureaucracy and no abdication of ministerial responsibility to unnamed and unaccountable civil servants”.
In response Mr Price expanded upon his reasoning for creating the new agency and said: “We want to be evidence-led, and the evidence from right across the world shows pretty conclusively, if you ask pretty much any leading economist in this area, that development agencies are the tried-and-tested tool for any nation, region or anywhere else that has driven up the kind of trajectory in terms of productivity growth that I’ve described.
“Is it the only thing that you should do? Absolutely not. We’re not going to achieve it just through the development agency, but it’s a pretty necessary tool in the toolbox, based on the experience elsewhere.”
Labour’s spokesperson for employment, equalities, and economic transformation, Shav Taj, also pressed Mr Price on his plans.
She said: “We’ve heard a lot about the government’s plans, of course, about the new Welsh development agency, but people aren’t asking for promises – they want action, and they want it now.”
Ms Taj, part of the new cohort of Senedd Members following last month’s election, continued: “Creating a new sort of agency takes time, it takes effort, it takes money and it takes focus, of course, and people in Wales don’t want or need quangos or structures just for the sake of it.
“What we need is more well-paid, skilled and secure work in every single part of our country, because right now families are genuinely feeling the pressure. Making ends meet, paying the bills – that is the stark reality.”
Ms Taj pointed to the previous Labour government’s work and said: “In the 12 months leading up to the Wales investment summit, Wales attracted £4.6 billion of inward investment”.
“We know that Plaid talk about their ambition for Wales, and, of course, we all share that.
“The reality is: will those actions then match it? Can the cabinet secretary tell us whether his new development agency will beat this figure?”
Mr Price responded: “I think that it’s important to bring us back, isn’t it, to the focus of today, which is the announcement of a goal, a target, which we lacked for 20 years.
“Nobody can absolutely predict the future with 100% certainty. It’s not possible. But one thing we can predict: if you don’t have a goal at all, if you don’t have a target at all, you’ll never achieve it; you can’t even measure progress.
“And that’s why the first step in any plan to revitalise the Welsh economy is to be clear about the direction of travel. In the absence of that clarity in the previous administration, we had decades of drift. So, we are setting that right.”
Janet Finch-Saunders, the Conservative spokesperson for enterprise, connectivity, and energy, highlighted the importance of co-operation within the Senedd and believing in Wales.
She said: “I’d like to stop, right from the start of this new government, where we talk Wales down.
“I have more confidence and some faith in the new government. I’ve worked with them for over 15 years, many of their members.”
She continued: “We’ve got to be positive now, because, as has been said here today, Wales is in a mess business wise, and there’s a lot to be done.”
Noting her planned meeting for next week to discuss the Menai Bridge, Ms Finch-Saunders continued to stress the importance of all the parties of the Senedd working together to achieve the best outcomes for Wales.
The Bangor Conwy Mon MS went on to quiz Mr Price on issues such as mobile phone connectivity, broadband connectivity, and transport infrastructure.
She said: “You talk of Wales being open for business, but, in your first statement as cabinet Sec, there is a complete absence of a plan to fix our roads.
“So, I feel that’s a glaring omission. Our transport system is not fit for purpose. We have to get more inward investment into Wales, but, unless you put those priorities in place, then we’re not going to see any improvements.”
Mr Price, in response, welcomed Ms Finch-Saunders’ commitment to cross-party working, and said: “New ideas from any direction, I think, are absolutely incredibly valuable, and we will approach this important responsibility that we have in a collaborative manner, in the way that she described.”
He agreed with her on the “absolute centrality of infrastructure” and continued: “If we think about the productivity goal that we’ve set out as the mission today, then, you know, most economists would say that there are three key elements in terms of the long-term success of achieving that kind of productivity growth.
“One is skills, the other one is innovation, the third one is infrastructure, and so getting the infrastructure right so that our businesses then have the platform that they need in order to deliver their own business potential.”
