AM (Leader of the Brexit Party
Group): The leading contender to be the UK's next Prime
Minister said on Saturday that the decision to cancel the M4 relief
road needed to be reversed. He also said, as you said earlier,
First Minister, that there should be a strong Conservative
influence on how the shared prosperity fund is spent. First
Minister, you said that lack of money stopped you proceeding with
the M4 relief road. Would you therefore welcome an offer from the
UK Government to fund it through the shared prosperity fund?
[Laughter.]
(First Minister of
Wales): Well, first of all, Llywydd, let me just set the
record straight. When the detailed statement that I made on the
floor of this Assembly said that there were two reasons why I had
decided not to proceed with the M4 relief road, one was because
of the impact it would have on our ability to fund other
essential projects here in Wales and, secondly and separately,
because I was not convinced that the damage done to the ecology
and the environment in that part of Wales was sufficiently
outweighed by economic gain to allow it to go ahead. So, extra
money by itself would certainly not solve the second of those
reasons.
My message to the leading contender, as you put it, for the
Conservative Party is that he needs to win an election in Wales
and then he will be entitled to instruct us on what we should do
here. His party has never won an election in Wales in the whole
of the era of universal suffrage, and for him to come here and
instruct us as to the responsibilities that we have and how we
should discharge them, and then to announce that he intends to
repatriate responsibilities that have been established here, not
to the UK Government you'll recall, if you read what he said, but
to the Conservative Party, well I think there are real issues of
democratic legitimacy in the way that those points were
expressed.
