Wel, diolch yn fawr i Adam Price am yr hyn a ddywedodd pan ddechreuodd ei ateb. Roedd yn bleser imi fynd gydag ef i Velindre gydag is-lywydd yr EIB, Jonathan Taylor, ac i glywed diweddariad am yr hyn maent yn ei gynllunio yn Velindre.

The quality of our ideas for investment is very important in attracting the attention of and the interest of investors such as the EIB, and it was very good to be there in Velindre to hear the latest from them.

We have some different answers in Wales to the answers that they have developed in Scotland, but we’ve been able to learn from one another. The fact that the ONS ended up classifying £1 billion-worth of capital investment from Scotland back on to the public books was a pretty difficult lesson for Scotland but Scottish Futures Trust has been working on ideas there. Our ideas, in terms of an equity stake and a public interest director, giving us a profit share but safeguards for the public interest, is the way that we think the system will work best in Wales. And Scotland have some other ideas that they are now pursuing in order to try and get classification back on to the private sector of future schemes.

At the moment, I am working notionally on the idea that we would take between a 15 and 20 per cent equity stake in any project company. You have to have a minimum of 15 per cent in order to allow your public interest director to be able to exercise the 19 protections that that director is able to exercise on behalf of the public. I think an equity stake of up to 20 per cent, which in the case of Velindre, for example, on current figures would mean £5 million capital investment direct by the Welsh Government, and would be sufficient to secure the protections we want and to give us a flow of share of profits into the future.

I look forward to discussing with Adam Price some of these wider ideas about how we can put Welsh pension fund money to work in investing in the future of families that those people who’ve put money into pension funds will want to secure here in Wales. When I discussed with the Chancellor of the Exchequer the future of the European Investment Bank, to be fair, he said that he recognised the case for trying to find a way of continuing to be a participator in the bank, but he said that if that wasn’t possible, then we would have to invent such a vehicle of our own here in the United Kingdom. The fact that we have such good relations with the EIB in Wales, I think, does put us in a strong position to be able to argue from that experience and, indeed, to see whether there will be any possibility of such a UK-wide body, if one is needed, coming here to Wales.