Plaid pledges indyref and ‘most radical programme since 1945’

PLAID CYMRU Leader Adam Price MS will today set out what he will describe as “the most radically ambitious and transformational programme offered by any party in any Welsh election since 1945” as the party unveils its manifesto for the upcoming Senedd election.

Adam Price will say that the “practical, deliverable and fully costed policies” will deliver a fairer, greener, and more prosperous future for Wales by focussing on five key areas.

Mr Price is expected to set out the following policies:

• A plan to prosper, including a Welsh Green Deal creating up to 60,000 new jobs, a youth jobs guarantee for 16-24-year-olds, zero-interest loans to support small businesses to bounce back from the Covid pandemic and the creation of Prosperity Wales (an economic delivery agency)
• Giving every child in Wales the best start in life through extending free school meals to all primary pupils, investing in 4,500 extra teachers and support staff, and providing free childcare from 24 months.
• A fair deal for families by cutting the average council tax bill, introducing a weekly child payment rising to £35 a week, and delivering 50,000 social and affordable homes.
• A seamless national health and care service providing social care – free at the point of need, training and recruiting an extra 1,000 doctors and 5,000 nurses and allied health professionals and guaranteeing a £10 an hour minimum wage for care workers.
• Facing up to the climate and biodiversity crisis by setting a Wales 2035 Mission to decarbonise, establish Ynni Cymru (an energy development company) with the aim of generating 100% of electricity in Wales from renewables by 2035, and introduce a Nature Act with statutory targets to restore biodiversity by 2050.

Plaid Cymru’s fully costed manifesto has been independently verified by two of Wales’ leading economists, Professor Brian Morgan and Professor Gerry Holtham.

Renewing the party’s pledge to hold an independence referendum by the end of the first term of a Plaid Cymru government, Adam Price MS will say that “Wales and Westminster are increasingly two different universes.”

The Plaid Cymru Leader will add: “In this Manifesto, we pledge ourselves to build a nation that delivers the opportunity of a decent life and brighter future for all.

“For the first time in a Senedd election, the people of Wales will be able to vote to take their own future into their own hands. We believe independence to be the only sure and sustainable means to achieving social and economic progress. So, a Plaid Cymru government will empower the people of Wales to decide the future of our nation in an independence referendum.

“We are not the country that we should be. We are not the country that we can be. And we are not the country we want to be.

“Wales has incredible potential as a nation. The problems that we have had for generations are not inevitable. We can solve these problems, together. But the first step is electing a new Government that has the ambition to build a new Wales that’s better than the old.”

“Westminster will never work for Wales. We inhabit different universes. In ours, we want to reward our healthcare workers.

“In theirs:

• There is a 1 per cent pay rise for nurses and a 44 per cent increase for nuclear weapons.
• There is historic underfunding in our country’s railways, whilst more than £100 billion is spent on HS2 which will connect the country next door with no consequential for a high-speed railway between the north and south of our country.
• £12 billion is spent on renovating the Palace of Westminster, whilst Wales’ directly elected parliament is bypassed and stripped of its powers, undermining the devolution that the people of Wales have voted for on no less than 14 occasions, through two referendums and delivering pro-devolution majorities in every election since 1997.

“The time to defer that great Welsh dream of social justice and economic progress for all is over. It’s time to turn it brick by brick into the new home of a new nation that we ourselves will build.”