Part of 1. 1. Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Economy and Infrastructure – in the Senedd at 1:33 pm on 7 December 2016.
Mr Neil Hamilton
UKIP
1:33,
7 December 2016
Can I acknowledge the interest the Cabinet Secretary is taking in this project, and the assistance he’s given to bringing it to the stage where it’s at now, and to re-emphasise the point, which Lynne Neagle made, that there is support right across this Chamber—certainly includes my own party—for this project?
Will he also acknowledge that the guarantee that is being sought is a commercial guarantee, for which the Government would be paid, and that it would actually be called upon only in extreme circumstances where, in due course, all the assets that are proposed to be built on the site will have been completed, and it would be, in a £380 million project, only a guarantee on £190 million, so there’ll be 100 per cent security, at a 50 per cent exposure? Given that it’s a commercial guarantee, for which the Government would get £3 million a year, that does counterbalance, to a great extent, the risk that the Government is being asked to take. And, therefore, I ask the Cabinet Secretary to give it the fairest possible wind.
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