Adam Price

Adam Price
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Adam Price MP

Member of Parliament for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr
Incumbent
Assumed office 8 June 2001
Preceded by	Alan Wynne Williams
Majority	6,718 (17.5%)

Born	9 May 1968 (1968-05-09) (age 40) Carmarthen
Nationality	British
Political party	Plaid Cymru
Alma mater	Cardiff University

Adam Price (born 23 September 1968, Carmarthen) is a politician in Wales, and Plaid Cymru Member of Parliament for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr. He was elected to Parliament in the 2001 general election.

1 Biography
2 Parliamentary career
3 Awards
4 References
5 External links
6 Offices held

Biography

The son of a coal miner, Price went to (Dyffryn) Amman Valley Comprehensive School on Margaret Street in Ammanford in Carmarthenshire. He studied at Cardiff University gaining a BA in European Community Studies in 1991. From 1991-3, he was a research associate at the Cardiff University's department of City and Regional Planning. From 1993-8, he worked for Menter a Busnes, being an executive director from 1996-8. He also studied at Saarland University in Saarbrücken in western Germany. From 1998, he was the Managing Director of the Newidiem-Economic Development Consultancy (part of Menter a Business). Price is openly gay.¹

He stood in 1992 general election for the seat of Gower.

Parliamentary career

The Mittal Affair: "Cash for Influence"

Controversy erupted in 2002 as Price exposed the link between U.K. prime minister Tony Blair and steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal in the Mittal Affair, also known as 'Garbagegate' or Cash for Infuence.²³⁴ Mittal's LNM steel company, registered in the Dutch Antilles and maintaining less than 1% of its 100,000 plus workforce in the U.K., sought Blair's aid in its bid to purchase Romania's state steel industry.⁴ The letter from Blair to the Romanian government, a copy of which Price was able to obtain, hinted that the privatisation of the firm and sale to Mittal might help smooth the way for Romania's entry into the European Union.²

The letter had a passage in it removed just prior to Blair's signing of it, describing Mittal as "a friend."⁴

Mittal, already a Labour contributor, donated £125,000 more to Labour party funds a week after the 2001 U.K. General Elections, while as many as six-thousand of Welsh steelworkers were laid off that same year, Price and others pointed out.² Mittal's company, then the fourth largest in the world, was a "major global competitor of Britain's own struggling steel industry, Corus, formerly known as British Steel."⁴ Corus and Valkia Limited were two of the primary employers in South Wales, particularly in Ebbw Vale, Llanwern, and Port Talbot.⁵

Opposition to Iraqi conflict

On 25 August 2004, Price announced his intention to begin a process of impeachment against Tony Blair, with the backing of all Plaid Cymru and SNP MPs. Impeachment had not been used in the UK for one-hundred and fifty years. If successful, it could have seen Blair tried before the House of Lords; however, as expected, the measure failed.⁶

On 17 March 2005 Price was ejected from the Commons chamber after accusing the Prime Minister of having "misled" Parliament and then refusing to withdraw his comment, in violation of the rules of the House.⁷

On 5 May 2005 he was re-elected MP for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr with an increased majority (17.5%).

On 31 October 2006, Adam Price opened a three hour debate on an inquiry into the Iraq War, the first such debate in over two years. The SNP and Plaid Cymru motion proposing a committee of seven senior MPs to review "the way in which the responsibilities of government were discharged in relation to Iraq", was defeated by 298 votes to 273, a Government majority of 25, but was supported by a significant number of opposition MPs, and twelve "rebel" Labour MPs, including Glenda Jackson.

Stance on drugs

Writing in the Welsh language current affairs magazine Barn in April 2007, Price criticised UK government policy on drugs, indicating his support for their legalisation under medical supervision⁸

Broadcast news controversy

In August 2007 MP Adam Price highlighted what he perceived as a lack of a Welsh focus on BBC news broadcasts.⁹ Price threatened to withhold future television license fees in response to a lack of thorough news coverage of Wales, echoing a BBC Audience Council for Wales July report citing public frustration over how the Welsh Assembly is characterized in national media.¹⁰ Plaid AM Bethan Jenkins agreed with Price and called for responsibility for broadcasting to be devolved to the Welsh Assembly, voicing similar calls from Scotland's First Minister Alex Salmond.⁹ Criticism of the BBC's news coverage for Wales and Scotland since devolution prompted debate of possibly providing evening news broadcasts with specific focus for both countries.⁹

2007 Assembly elections spending

Following the 2007 Welsh Assembly elections, a UK parliamentary standards and privileges committee found Plaid MPs Price, Elfyn Llwyd, and Hywel Williams guilty of improperly advertising during the elections.¹¹ Though the committee admitted the three did not break any clear rules of the UK House of Commons, the committee believed the timing of the adverts were planned to coincide with the Assembly elections.¹¹

Parliamentary funds are available for MPs to communicate with constituents regularly. However, the committee found that the three used this communication allowance improperly as part of Plaid's campaigning during the elections as the adverts were placed in publications with a circulation outside of their respective constituentcies.¹¹

Of the committee findings, Plaid MP group leader Elfyn Llwyd said that they would comply with the findings of the committee, but that they had "...acted in good faith throughout, and fully in line with the advice that was offered to us by the DFA (Department of Finance and Administration) at the time of the publication of the reports".¹¹ The three had to repay the money, about five thousand pounds each, and report the costs as part of Plaid's election spending.¹¹

Golwg

In August 2007 Adam Price began a regular column in the weekly Welsh language current affairs magazine Golwg. Examples of the subject matter of these columns include Welsh independence;¹²¹³ the Barnett Formula;¹⁴ nuclear energy;¹⁵ scrapping the Welsh Office;¹⁶ education;¹⁷ Welsh media¹⁸ and US politics¹⁹

Awards

Year	Award
2007	BBC AM.PM Communicator of the Year Winner
2007	British Computer Society Best MP’s Website Winner
2006	ITV Wales MP of the Year
2006	Voted Western Mail's 'Greatest Living Welsh Politician'
2006	BBC AM.PM. Politician of the Year Nominee
2005	HTV Campaigning Politician of the Year
2004	BBC AM.PM Communicator of the Year
2004	BBC AM.PM Politician of the Year
2004	Channel 4 Campaigning Politician of the Year Nominee
2002	Spectator Magazine Parliamentary Inquisitor of the Year