Lee Waters MS

First meeting of the Digital Transformation Panel So, it started off a bit awkwardly as I was the only one at the meeting who had printed out my papers. Not great when you've been asked to Chair a Panel on Digital Transformation for the Welsh Government. Everyone else was very good, they had laptops and tablets. I'm not a techie. If it makes things easier I'll use it, but I'm not an early adopter. For me the digital agenda is about improving the way public services can be used and accessed, and to free up resources from process to be put to use to help people. Crucially its about culture and changing the way we work. But as the authors of a book on how the UK Government went about creating the GDS - the Government Digital Service that streamlined all central Government websites and created the .Gov project - said "The practical steps to creating a digital organisation are not complicated. They are just hard". One leaf out of that book I definit...

Speech in the National Assembly on October 17th 2018 The Science is unequivocal. The link between human activity and rising global temperatures is as strong, and as certain, as the link between smoking and cancer, according to American Association for the Advancement of Science. The Paris climate agreement set a target of no more than 2°C global warming above pre-industrial temperatures by the end of the century, but also an aspirational target of no more than 1.5°C.  We’re currently on track for more than 3°C global warming by the end of the century. We’ll likely burn through the rest of the aspirational carbon budget within the next 3 to 10 years and reach 1.5°C of warming by 2040.  1.5°C doesn’t sound like much, but it translates to more frequent and more extreme weather events, such as storms, heat waves and flooding. The kind of events that have a severe impact on human life.  The difference between 1.5°C and 2°C of global warming is the difference between an ...

Speech in the National Assembly on October 17th 2018 Preparations are accelerating for a No Deal Brexit. Stockpiling medicine and food is getting the attention of the media, but the reality for the Welsh economy could be far more austere. Our economic policy has focused on providing support to so-called anchor companies. Large multinationals with bases in Wales that we have favoured with grants and other financial inducements. Once barriers start popping up that create costly delays,the judgements made in the global head offices of where to put future investment will quickly disfavour Wales. As this week’s comments by Ford in Europe signalled, we may soon find that anchors are pulled up. It seems to me that as part of that we must confront the fact that we cannot continue to give large grants to huge corporations to entice them to stay in our communities when the going gets tough. The going is already tough, and we are pouring much needed resources into a sieve - watching ou...