Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:47 pm on 2 July 2024.
I do admire his wonderful stand-up comic timing in talking about Conservative successes in the economy. The No. 1 issue on doorsteps up and down the country has been the cost-of-living crisis. And it's been actually not just a reiteration of what we thought and what we knew—not just the figures of 31 per cent food inflation in three years, or 58 per cent inflation in energy bills in the last three years—but actually it's been really quite distressing listening to those stories directly on the doorstep from people who are genuinely making choices between feeding their children and putting the heating on. And people are still skipping meals. If you went and spoke to those people and tried to tell them that there was an unalloyed record of success from the Conservatives and that the biggest risk is changing course, I think that you'd get a very robust response.
What we are interested in is not the desperation the Member speaks of—it was a desperate speech. We are looking for a chance to turn the page on the last 14 years, a chance to invest in the economy and public services to have real stability, a chance to turn the page on the shocking incompetence of the last four or five years. Think back to the news from last week: £1.4 billion of PPE that has been wasted and had to be incinerated. That's after the test and trace programme in England—£22 billion—that a former Permanent Secretary in the Treasury described as the biggest waste and the most incompetent public spending programme in the UK's history. That's the record of the Government that he has supported. That's what Andrew R.T. Davies asks people to vote for. I ask people to vote for something better. I ask people to vote for change, a different UK Government that believes in devolution, believes in partnership, to have two Labour Governments working together.
And I have enjoyed all of my campaigning alongside Keir Starmer. I've enjoyed not just appearing on the front of the Welsh manifesto but what we could do together as partners for the future. That is what is on the ballot paper on 4 July, and I look forward to the verdict of voters here in Wales.