Cynulliad Cenedlaethol Cymru

Good afternoon. Welcome to this Plenary session. Before we begin, I need to set out a few points. A Plenary meeting held by video-conference, in accordance with the Standing Orders of the Welsh Parliament, constitutes Senedd proceedings for the purposes of the Government of Wales Act 2006. Some of the provisions of Standing Order 34 will apply for today's Plenary meeting, and these are set out on your agenda. I would remind Members that Standing Orders relating to order in Plenary meetings apply to this meeting.

The first item on our agenda this afternoon is questions to the Minister for Environment, Energy and Rural Affairs, and the first question is from David Melding.

Thank you. Welsh Government has set a positive policy framework to encourage small-scale renewable energy generation. The energy plans we are developing identify our future power, heat and transport needs. The Welsh Government energy service provides support to communities and the public sector to deliver new renewable generation to meet those needs.

Thank you for that answer, Minister. This is an area, I think, that has cross-party support and is also very popular with community groups. Small-scale hydro and solar, in particular, are popular, and evermore viable with better storage through improved batteries. I just wonder if, therefore, for our targets of 2030, we should be even more ambitious in setting that proportion of energy we wish to see generated by small-scale schemes.

Thank you. I absolutely agree about the enthusiasm of communities when they have a small-scale renewable energy scheme in their area. Certainly, one of my happiest days in this portfolio was when I opened a very small hydro scheme up in Corwen, in north Wales, where a lady told me very proudly that every time she switched her kettle on, she knew she was contributing, from the scheme that had been set up with her assistance. Again, around hydro schemes particularly, I think we've seen certainly farmers looking to have one on their land. And, again, up in north-west Wales, there was a very good one—unfortunately, because the UK Government then took away the feed-in tariff, when he wanted to have another one, he didn't feel it was worth while. So, I think we need to continue to press the UK Government to bring in feed-in tariffs too. When I set the targets around renewable energy—the different targets by 2030—I thought they were very ambitious. But we have made some really significant progress this term, and it might be worth revisiting to see if we could more ambitious.

Thank you. It is of great concern that 10 properties in Ruthin and five others in surrounding villages were flooded from storm Christoph. Denbighshire has three flood alleviation projects in development in the area, totalling £1.2 million, including a River Clwyd catchment scheme upstream of Ruthin. A £5.1 million project was completed in 2012.

Thank you for that answer, Minister. Minister, I've been contacted by many constituents whose homes were affected by the flooding just a few weeks ago, in terms of storm Christoph, and they've raised concerns with me that the authorities seem to be aware that there were some deficiencies in the flood defences, and in fact the flood defences in Cae Ddol park had been topped up with sandbags up until a few months prior to this particular flooding event. Many of those residents say that if those sandbags had still been in place and not taken away by Natural Resources Wales, or whichever authority placed them there, then their homes and businesses may not have been actually flooded. Can you assure us that the investigations that will now be under way into that flooding event will take these matters into account, and that, should the defences in the Ruthin area be found to be deficient in any way, the Welsh Government will make the funding available in order to improve flood resilience in Ruthin for my constituents and for the businesses situated there?

Well, Welsh Government has made significant funding available this term. We've already met the commitment we did make at the beginning of this term of Government to invest in our flood defences, with over £390 million going into our flood and coastal erosion risk management over our two programmes. And I think it's fair to say that if it wasn't for that investment by the Welsh Government, the situation would be much worse. We've faced some significant flood events over the last year, which Members will be aware of. It's horrific when your home is flooded, and I send my sincere sympathy to your constituents who have been affected in this way. You'll be aware that following any flood event, there has to be an investigation by the risk management authority. In this case it would be Denbighshire County Council, and they will have to bring forward section 19 reports at the opportune moment. I'm not aware of the situation you refer to. So, I don't know whether it was NRW as the risk management authority or if, indeed, it was the local authority, but I would expect that to come out in the report.

There is investment in the Ruthin area, and I'm aware of the Graigfechan business justification case, which we've given funding for, the Llanbedr Dyffryn Clwyd design work, and the River Clwyd catchment natural flood management, which we've given £1 million for. If anything did come out in that investigation, and I've already asked all risk management authorities to look at what further needs to be done to defences, then they can, of course, come forward and apply for funding. Just last year, I provided 100 per cent grant funding for emergency repairs to damaged flood assets across Wales, and I think that totalled about £4.6 million. 

Questions now from the party spokespeople. First of all this week, the Conservative spokesperson, Janet Finch-Saunders. 

Diolch, Llywydd. Minister, the front page of the Farmers Guardian says it all: 'NVZ Nightmare'. Now, on 8 April last year, you informed the Senedd that you were minded to introduce these regulations once the crisis had ended. You reiterated that promise another six times, most recently on 14 October. A recent report by the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board found that 2020 has deepened consumer trust in the food supply chain, that farmers continue to command the deepest trust and that Welsh and UK farming is seen as environmentally beneficial. Now, despite this growing public support for our farmers and 680 coronavirus cases being reported in Wales on 27 January, where that tells me that we are not through this crisis, you laid these regulations. Why have you not kept to your word and shown some integrity by waiting until the end of this crisis before launching the Welsh Labour and Lib-Dem major assault on Welsh agriculture? 

I do find it strange that Janet Finch-Saunders talks up her environmental credentials on one hand and then just puts them to one side when it comes to the agricultural sector. Why would you condone three agricultural pollution incidents every week, week after week, month after month, year after year? I am aware that I laid the draft regulations last April, and I pledged to continue to work with the agricultural sector, as I've done for the last five years, to come forward with improvements to those incidents. You will remember that I worked particularly with NFU Cymru to bring forward a voluntary scheme. It's always much better if you can do things on a voluntary basis. But, I'm afraid, that's failed. So, I laid the draft regulations last April. I said I wouldn't bring them into force straight away and, whilst, of course, we are still in the COVID-19 pandemic, we are in a different place. We are looking to a green recovery, and the agricultural sector are very much part of that green recovery. They want to be part of that green recovery—they tell me that and I will work with them to do that. 

I also thought it was important to wait until the EU transition had happened and to see what it would be like coming out of Europe. The market is buoyant. That is another reason why I think the sector are able to cope with these regulations at the moment. 

Thank you, Minister. But, I have to say, it's quite insulting to all our farmers to say that the voluntary scheme hasn't worked. Now, the First Minister is also out of touch, because he responded yesterday, stating,

'we've seen no diminution in the rate of agricultural pollution'. 

Clearly, then, he's not even read your statement, in which you fully acknowledge that there has been progress. In fact, NRW has spoken of a steady decline in pollution incidents. The risk is reducing. Yet, regulation 4 shows you don't believe that farmers are capable of knowing how much nitrogen to apply to their holding, and regulation 15 shows you don't believe farmers are capable of using appropriate equipment. Numerous regulations, including 34 to 37, 40 to 43, show that you want to see our farmers now bogged down in paperwork. Regulation 29 sees you demanding that farmers provide storage for all slurry produced in the five to six-month storage period. You claim that those measures are proportionate, yet NRW have published a map showing that huge swathes of Wales have had zero agricultural incidents to water since 2010. So, therefore, Minister, please explain to me, and all our farmers, how can it be even considered proportionate to so severely limit the farmers' freedom to farm, and, also, have you yourself checked whether the regulations are in breach of the code of practice for regulators and, indeed, the principle of proportionality?

I'm astounded Janet Finch-Saunders thinks the voluntary approach has worked. Over the last 20 years, apart from 2009, we have had well over 100 agricultural pollutions every year—for 20 years. Now, I always believe people don't like being told what to do, and I always think any sector or any industry buys into regulations or legislation, or any other procedures, if they are part of that solution, and that's why I wanted to work with them to come forward with the voluntary approach. As I say, four years ago, I remember sitting at the National Farmers Union conference in Birmingham where I was told, 'Give us six months; we will make this work.' It didn't work. We are still having all these incidents of agricultural pollution year on year, and whilst I absolutely agree with you there is support for the agricultural sector, there is no support, apart from, I can see, Conservative and Plaid Cymru Members who want to annul these regulations, for agricultural pollution. So, over 100 every year for 20 years, and the president of NFU Cymru himself has said one agricultural pollution is one too many. So, how can you possibly justify over 100 per year? This is proportionate. What is really important is that you have a clear regulatory baseline, so that enables the good practice. At the moment, without that clear baseline, unfortunately poor practice is going unchecked. And, of course, it's not every farmer, so what we want to do—. Why should the farmers who do adhere to this be punished? It's about ambition. I've got great ambition for the sector, and I think they will be able to do this. 

Thank you, Minister. What your answer there tells me is that it's not the farmers who've failed; it's 20 years of the Welsh Labour Government who've been unable to work more beneficially for farmers, to work with them to support them, rather than these horrendous restrictions. So severe are they that in addition to being like a criminal electronic tag for farmers, they do come despite the fact that the total income from farming in the UK is expected to be down by around 21 per cent. In fact, your own regulatory impact assessment has calculated that the upfront capital cost could run to £360 million. How on earth do you expect our hardworking farmers to find that, and when the latest total income from farming in Wales was just £261 million? So, will you confirm that the £13 million being made available this year to assist with water quality and farm nutrient management infrastructure is merely a drop of slurry in a very large pit? Can you explain how you believe the industry can afford investment on this grand scale that you expect, and what assessment you've even made of the number of farm businesses, including those tenant farmers, that will now be forced to maybe shut down their operations as a result of these severe and uncompromising regulations? Diolch, Llywydd.

I would turn that question around and say, 'How can they not afford to do this?' I have always maintained we would provide support, both financial and practical. There will be a phased approach for these regulations, and, as I said, many of the farmers are already abiding by these regulations. For many, it won't be any different at all. You may be aware of the dairy project that Natural Resources Wales undertook around visits to dairy farms to have a look at what slurry storage was like, et cetera, and I always made it very clear that we would not give funding to farmers who weren't compliant with the current regulations, and, unfortunately, there have been 780 visits carried out as part of this dairy project and the report up until the end of last year was that at least 50 per cent are not compliant. That's with the current regulations. So, it's really important that you understand the significance of this and I hope that you do not condone the level of agricultural pollution incidents that we are seeing.

Plaid Cymru spokesperson, Llyr Gruffydd.

I've heard it said that you promised seven times not to introduce these NVZ regulations during the pandemic. I've actually found over 10 times where you have explicitly, on the Record to this Plenary or to Senedd committees, made it clear that you would not introduce these regulations during the COVID pandemic. Now, on the very day that the Chief Medical Officer for Wales declared, in a Government briefing, that there was a long way to go until the worst of the COVID pandemic was over, you tabled these regulations. So, you broke your word, Minister. You've misled us all and you've broken your promise to the farmers of Wales, and of course, you're not the only one who has misled us. I've written this morning to the First Minister because he, yesterday, did say on the Record, and I quote:

'We have seen no diminution in the rate of agricultural pollution.'

And the statistics I've seen show that, in reality, the number of substantiated agricultural pollution incidents to water has actually decreased over the past three years—a year-on-year decrease, according to Natural Resources Wales figures, between 2018 and 2020. And conversely, might I say, pollution from the water industry has gone up ever year in that very same period, but of course, it's the farmers that are pummelled again by your Government. Now, doesn't all of this and all of these broken promises and made-up statistics highlight the confused, shambolic and discombobulated way in which you've handled this matter?

I don't agree with you at all, and whilst we did see less agricultural pollution—substantiated ones—last year, you will appreciate that the site visits were not able to be undertaken in the way that they had been in previous years. But I go back to what I was saying: we are seeing, on average, three agricultural pollution incidents a week. I do not believe one second—. I mean, you're the one who is always telling us that we're not going fast enough on the climate emergency. How do you expect us to do that if we are condoning agricultural pollution incidents at this level? 

Now, I have continued to work with the sector. As I said before in my answer to Janet Finch-Saunders, nobody likes being told what to do—I absolutely understand that—and I think I have been incredibly patient, looking for a voluntary approach. I am not the most patient of people, as you yourself know, but I have tried my very best to come forward with the sector, with the farming unions, to find that voluntary approach. And you know, there is a review clause in these regulations, so if people have bright ideas that they can come forward with, bring them forward and let's see if we can continue to look for a different approach. But I'm afraid we cannot justify delaying this any longer. I will not continue to accept three agricultural pollution incidents every week, and I'm sure the Member would agree.

I feel that you haven't been listening to a single word I've been saying for the last two years, Minister. Nobody is denying that there is a problem that needs to be addressed; the issue here is the answer that you're proposing. It just isn't practical and it isn't proportionate and it, frankly, isn't going to work. Evidence from elsewhere around Europe, where the NVZ approach has been adopted, shows that it delivers at best patchy results. Twelve months ago, you admitted yourself that you had doubts about introducing closed periods and the whole farming-by-calendar approach. And in answer to me in the Senedd, you admitted—and we all know, don't we—that weather conditions don't follow the calendar, and that's why at the time, you were rowing back from that position. And we all know that, the weeks before and after what will now be the closed periods that you're introducing, they'll become national slurry-spreading weeks in Wales, and it happens in other countries. Rivers will run black during those weeks, as farmers are forced to clear their slurry stores before a closed period and empty them then when they're overflowing afterwards. Even Tony Juniper, one of the UK's most outstanding environmental champions and chair of Natural England—he said that closed periods do not achieve the best environmental outcomes. Why do you disagree with him?

Well, I'm not aware of the article that you're referring to, but, believe me, I have asked for many, many briefings around this. We have looked at very many different aspects of it, and I think we should also be very clear that the purpose of these regulations is not just to tackle nitrate pollution. Agricultural pollution includes other things, like phosphorus and ammonia and greenhouse gas emissions, for instance. I do think it will be targeted at farm practices. We are seeing agricultural pollution incidents right across Wales, not just in certain areas of Wales. And if you look at what other UK countries are doing, they have different designated areas, if you like—I've had that thrown at me as well—but if you look at what they're doing in relation to all the agricultural pollution, you will see that things are very similar.

Well, NRW threw that one at you and you chose to ignore them, because they suggested an 8 per cent coverage for NVZs. It suits you sometimes to listen to their advice, but other times not, evidently.

Look, this latest episode, I would say, represents the final breakdown in the relationship between your Government and the agricultural community, because time and time again you've been more interested in pointing the finger of blame than genuinely working constructively with the sector to truly co-design a more sustainable approach. You seem to blaming the agricultural community for all of society's ills, and that really has to stop. You might find farmers a problem; I see farmers as a big part of the answer. So, would you agree with me that if we are to successfully tackle this problem, then we need everyone working together and pulling in the same direction? And would you also agree with me that this whole debacle represents an irreparable breakdown in relationship between your Government and the sector, and the only way now that that can be rectified is through a change of Government in May?

Not at all. I've already met with representatives from both the farming unions since last week, so I can assure you that that absolutely hasn't happened. What I think is that every Member of this Senedd should be standing together to address this significant problem, no matter which sector or industry is involved. I've done all I can to support the agricultural sector, and I will continue to do that. I'm very proud of what our farmers have done in relation to feeding the nation, for instance, during the pandemic, but I do not know why you and other Members of your party and other Members of this Senedd would condone such a high number of agricultural pollution incidents. I really do not understand why, on the one hand, you bang on about your green credentials, and on the other, you condone these levels of agricultural pollution.

Thank you. The nature recovery action plan sets out our key actions to support the delivery of targets under the convention on biological diversity. These include investment in the restoration of protected sites and peatlands, creating a national forest and agricultural pollution regulations to tackle a key driver of biodiversity decline.

Thank you, Minister. As the species champion for the fen raft spider, I'm acutely aware that Wales has experienced a startling decline in ecosystem resilience. I'm grateful that the Welsh Government have made commitments to tackle the decline in our biodiversity, but this is a growing issue worldwide, and needs legally binding targets to be set. The conference on the convention on biological diversity will take place at Kunming in China later this year. It is hoped that this conference will be to biodiversity what the Paris summit was to climate change. So, Minister, what role will Wales play at that summit, and will you be pressing the UK Government to push for and legally adopt binding targets to drive nature's recovery?

Yes, that work has already started. My officials are working very closely with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs—because, obviously, the UK Government is the member state; they're the UK party to the convention—to influence the negotiation of any post-2020 global biodiversity framework. So, on a similar basis to how we work—and COP26 will be working in a similar way. As you mentioned, it will be held in China in May. That's actually been postponed from—I think it was—the autumn of last year. So, this work has already started, and we'll certainly be playing a part, just like we do in the COP26 process as well.

Afternoon, Minister. As the Senedd champion of the freshwater pearl mussel—I know other Members are champions of their own different species as well—I'm particularly interested in this question from Caroline Jones, and in the convention strategic plan for diversity, which ran from 2011 until last year. Species like the freshwater pearl mussel are particularly susceptible to water pollution, and their continued presence in the River Wye in my constituency is dependent upon the pollution being kept to a minimum. Has the Welsh Government examined the impact of the convention's work, particularly in relation to water standards, and how do you think we can learn from what is being discussed beyond Wales and the UK, and have you considered any future legislation to improve water quality?

I think it's really important we do learn from each other, and, certainly, as part of the COP15 process, that will be done. We do play a really important role as a sub-national Government in that process and in the implementation and the mainstreaming of biodiversity. You'll be aware I also signed the Edinburgh declaration, which called on the convention on biological diversity to really start to take some bold action to halt biodiversity loss. We know, of course, we have a climate emergency, but I think we have a biodiversity emergency too. I've also supported the leaders' pledge, and we work through the Four Countries' Biodiversity Group to influence that post-2020 framework that I referred to in my earlier answer to Caroline Jones so that we can really shape future monitoring and reporting requirements, as well as sharing that best practice that we all have on implementation, but, of course, we can all learn from each other.

Minister, it is good to see so many Members of the Senedd serving as species champions and working with wildlife groups. I'm the species champion for the water vole, which I'm pleased to say is thriving on the Gwent levels, and the Gwent levels themselves help us achieve biodiversity. As you know, Minister, I'm chairing a Gwent levels working group to look at how we enhance and better protect that area, and the living levels partnership have done some really good work with communities to make sure that all the local issues are addressed. Would you agree with me that if we're going to see the sort of biodiversity we want in Wales, we do need to make sure that areas like the Gwent levels are better protected into the future?

Yes, I absolutely agree with you, and I think we all acknowledge that we're at a bit of a turning point, so I think we need to be different, don't we, coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic. We talk about a green recovery or a blue recovery, I think it is really important that—what you just referred to about better protection is something that we need to do. I think we need to engage society more as a whole around this as well, recognising that there is a biodiversity emergency, and I think we just need to mobilise a broader range of resources, if you like, going forward, so that we can achieve our climate goals and aims, and also our biodiversity goals and aims. 

Welsh Government has taken a range of steps to support the entire economy, as well as making specific funding available for the rural economy. I have recently protected the budget for farmers in 2021, and I've also announced a range of schemes through the rural development programme totalling £106 million.

Thank you for that answer, Minister. One of the rural industries that is protected at the moment by being allowed to continue is commercial puppy farming, despite the fact that the public want a third-party puppy sales ban. You have said numerous times that legislation would be brought forward to ban third-party puppy sales before the end of this Senedd term, but you haven't given a clear answer as to when. Time is now running out, Minister. As you are aware, unless your proposed ban gets Royal Assent before the next Welsh Parliament election, any Bill you made to ban puppy sales and kitten sales would not be worth the paper it was written on. In this place, the average time between a Bill being laid and it actually becoming law is nine months, so even if the Bill were laid today, we don't have nine months before this Parliament is dissolved. So, Minister, I have a clear question that it should be easy to give a clear answer to: are you sure, as you have promised a number of times, that by the end of this Senedd term third-party puppy sales will be outlawed and will be punishable? 

So, as the Member says, I have assured her and other Members that this will be brought in before the end of term. My understanding is there will be a debate next month in the Senedd, and the regulations enforcement date is September of this year. 

Thank you. Unfortunately, homes have been flooded as a result of storm Christoph throughout Flintshire, with early investigations recognising four properties in Sandycroft were affected. Representatives from the local authority, Natural Resources Wales and Dŵr Cymru Welsh Water will meet again this week to understand causes and discuss if improvements can be made collaboratively.

Minister, thank you for that answer. Now, I was recently contacted by distraught residents, asking me to come and see the impact of the recent flooding and what that has done to their daily lives in Sandycroft, Mancot and the surrounding areas. Now, I visited in clear and good conscience as their elected representative, and it was clear to me that that was the very least thing I could do. This is the second time flooding has hit the area in the last 18 months. It is clear that significant investment and attention is needed from the Welsh Government, Flintshire County Council, NRW and Welsh Water. Now, will your officials—you've said they're going to meet again, but will your officials assist in putting a meeting together with me and the residents and those stakeholders to find out what flood prevention techniques can be introduced? And finally, Minister, as we I think agree a long-term solution is needed, whilst residents are waiting for that long-term solution, will you be able to fund a pump that would provide short-term peace of mind for the residents as a matter of urgency?

So, you will have heard me say in my earlier answer to Darren Millar that there is funding available. We've put significant funding already—over £350 million—into our flooding schemes over this term of the Government, and there is further funding available. What is important is that you have the right measures in place. So, clearly, whatever comes out of the investigation into why the homes were flooded, and I'm sure your constituents welcomed and appreciated your visit, we can then take forward whether a scheme is required—a different scheme is required.

We've also made funding available for individual homes to have flood resilience measures, so, things like floodgates. Again, the funding has gone from Welsh Government direct to local authorities, because I think that's important, that the right measures are put there. So, if you gave the funding direct to residents, they may buy something that's not actually going to protect their home any further than it is. 

I certainly would be very happy to meet with you. I recently met with colleagues Mick Antoniw and Jane Hutt, who've both, unfortunately, had flooding in their constituencies, and brought all the partners together—not necessarily with the residents, but with the partners, to have those initial discussions. And it might be worth while doing that with me and my officials and the local authority and NRW and Dŵr Cymru to have a look at some initial findings from the investigations and then maybe later on have a further conversation with residents. 

People in Sandycroft, Mancot and Pentre launched a petition after storm Christoph caused serious flooding, ruining their homes for the second time in 18 months, causing heartache and devastation. The petition states that the

'drainage systems & ditches are poorly maintained and not fit for purpose, because of this people are suffering disastrous consequences & flooding in to their homes. Flintshire County Council need to act now'

to address this.

I was also contacted after properties in Broughton were badly affected, with people asking whether flooding would have been reduced if the ditch opposite their properties was widened or deepened by the council. Flooding also closed the roads between Ffynnongroyw and Talacre, Ffordd Llanfynydd between Treuddyn and Llanfynydd, and the A541 Wrexham to Mold road at Pontblyddyn. What wider engagement is the Welsh Government therefore having with Flintshire council to agree the avoidable causes of this county-wide flooding and ensure that preventative, and therefore cost-effective, measures are put in place for the future?

I absolutely agree that, if your home is flooded, it is heartbreaking and very, very traumatic, and we want to do all we can to protect as many homes as possible. You will have heard me say in my earlier answer to Jack Sargeant that this Welsh Government has put in over £360 million into our flood management schemes over the term of this Government. So, the money is there, the funding is there; every local authority knows that they can come forward. We actually want a pipeline of flood defence schemes. I don't want the money to sit there and not be spent, so we've encouraged all local authorities to come forward. So, there is wider engagement with every local authority in Wales around that. 

In response to your specific concerns around—. The residents don't need a petition; the funding is there. It's up to the local authority to come forward with what they think is required. My officials are very keen to work with all local authorities and Natural Resources Wales to make sure we have that pipeline of schemes to spend that significant funding on. To date, the engagement we've had with Flintshire County Council is that there are 37 properties that had internal flooding following storm Christoph. So, I do appreciate it wasn't just localised in the Sandycroft area, and, as we get more information coming in from the investigations, it could be that, unfortunately, we would find there has been an increase in the numbers. I do understand that, obviously, Sandycroft and Pentre had a similar event last year and of course that always increases tensions, and I absolutely understand that they are demanding action, and they are right to do that. But I do want to assure Jack Sargeant's constituents that we are here to help, and it is really important that Flintshire council work closely with Welsh Government and other partners to come forward with solutions. 

Thank you. The seafood sector is experiencing an immediate and detrimental impact since leaving the European Union, with export issues affecting the whole supply chain. I continue to press the UK Government to resolve these issues and appropriately compensate the whole industry. In addition, it is essential that Welsh fishers receive their fair share of the modest additional quota delivered by the trade and co-operation agreement.

Thank you for that answer, Minister. The seafood sector is an important part of the Welsh economy, employing many people and contributing significantly to our exports. The industry made very clear, prior to the end of the transition period, that there was a lack of preparation and that the industry would suffer if those preparations were not put in hand, and also called, I think, and supported the extension of the transition period to ensure that that sector was not impacted in that way. There's really been gross negligence from the UK Government in this, which is now hitting our sector greatly in two areas, it seems, Minister: (1) is exporting generally, but secondly is the export in respect of produce that is available for consumption, and that issue around that. Can I ask specifically what contacts you have with the Welsh seafood industry? What efforts are being made jointly to try and get the UK Government not only to resolve this particular problem, but also, as you say, to ensure the Welsh seafood industry is properly compensated for the UK Government's failure?

Thank you, and I think it's fair to say that the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs have definitely dropped a ball in relation to the live bivalve molluscs sector. I've been pressing George Eustice, the Secretary of State for DEFRA, to come forward with compensation for the whole of the sector. I regularly meet with the fishers and the seafood sector. I last met—. I think I've met with them three times this year; I last met with them on Monday as part of the round-table, and they've been very helpful also in pressurising the Government, the UK Government, and I have to say we were working very well with the UK Government and with my Scottish and Northern Ireland counterparts as part of the DEFRA inter-ministerial group to bring forward a support scheme.

You'll be aware that, at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, we had a specific scheme to support the fishers, and what we wanted—well, what we all wanted—to do was to come forward with a UK-wide scheme, a sort of winter support scheme, in relation to both COVID and the EU transition period, and officials had been working very closely on that just before Christmas. We were preparing a business case to go to Treasury and then, all of a sudden, DEFRA announced a £23 million scheme, which basically compensates the exporters. Well, I think the fishers, the aquaculture sector and the processors need compensation as well, but, unfortunately, that seems to have been pushed to one side. I've written again this morning, actually, to the Secretary of State around the live bivalve molluscs, because, as I say, I think they really have dropped a ball here.

I've not really seen any detail of the scheme that has been brought forward. As I said, this has been done unilaterally. So, I and, I think, my Scottish and Northern Ireland counterparts are still pushing to see if we can come forward with that UK sector support scheme, rather than just this one that will compensate the exporters. As you say, it's a very important sector for Wales and you will be aware that our seafood is very much wanted, particularly in Europe, in Spanish restaurants et cetera, and it needs to arrive fresh. Again, we've had—I'm sure you will have picked up—stories about it sitting on port sides and being delayed in being received in Spain, for instance. So, it is a matter of great concern.

In the waters around Anglesey and the Menai straits, we produce mussels and oysters of the very, very highest quality. Almost all our mussels—the vast majority—are exported to the European Union. I was speaking to a representative of the mussel industry today. There is desperate concern about the impact that we are now seeing of the failure to prepare properly for EU exit, and everything possible needs to be done to ensure that conditions are made as advantageous as possible for our fishermen to be able to see a brighter way forward. So, could the Minister, as one response, confirm if she will ask the Food Standards Agency in Wales to commit to review the approach it takes towards the classification of shellfish waters, to bring this more in line with that taken by Food Standards Scotland, which would at least be a start?

Well, you heard me outline in my answer to Mick Antoniw the steps that I have taken. I certainly will look at anything I can do to help. I met with the seafood sector, as I said, on Monday this week, and, clearly, there are serious implications for the mussel industry and the cockles industry. I do want to work towards a resolution as quickly as possible, so I will continue to do all I can. I'm very happy to look at what can be done with the Food Standards Agency and if the measures he outlines would indeed help.

I think a lot of these problems—. We've been warning the UK Government for four years—five years, nearly—that this lack of preparation would have this significant impact, and it's no pleasure to say, 'We told you so'. We knew it would be the seafood sector that would be impacted the quickest, if you like, because of the disruption that we've seen. Also, whilst we had a thin deal, which I think we all welcomed on Christmas Eve, rather than no deal, I did think it would be something to build upon, but that doesn't seem to be happening in relation to the seafood sector. So, as I say, I have written to the Secretary of State again this morning. I met with him twice, I think, last week around this issue. I've asked for a further meeting, because, clearly, the live bivalve molluscs issue is very serious, and becoming more serious by the day.

Thank you. Tackling the drivers for insect decline is central to our policies for increasing biodiversity. This includes introducing the agricultural pollution regulations and the clean air Bill White Paper. Both are vital measures that will deliver benefits for insects. The action plan for pollinators sets out further priorities for enhancing pollinator numbers. 

Thank you, Minister, but I was alarmed to see the UK Government's recent u-turn on allowing some farmers to use neonicotinoid pesticides—or neonics, which is easier to say—an incredibly harmful pesticide, on sugar beet crops. In 2018, the UK Government declined a similar application to use neonics and supported restrictions on these pesticides across the European Union, and, at the time, the UK Government said that those restrictions would remain in place unless the evidence changed. Well, it hasn't changed. The only thing that's changed is Brexit. In fact, the evidence showing how harmful these pesticides are has grown in three years. They cause damage not only to bees and the other insects, but to the soil, to wild flowers and to the river ecosystems that we've spent some time talking about already today. So, Minister, what assessment have you made regarding this u-turn, and what assurances can you give that the Welsh Government will not make a similar u-turn on harmful pesticides, particularly given the catastrophic reduction in insects in recent years?

Thank you. So, the decision taken by the UK Government has no impact here in Wales, so no assessment has been undertaken in relation to them doing this, and no application's been made for use in Wales, so no decision's been required by me. But no, I certainly would not want to do that, but, as I say, the impact of the English decision has no impact here in Wales. As you say, they did support new EU rules back in 2017, which did prohibit the outdoor use of three neonics, and we did fully support the UK position due to the effect on bees and pollinators. So, I have no plans to change that at all. 

The decision taken by the UK Government has no impact in Wales, therefore no assessment has been made.

Thank you, Minister. I listened to the previous answer, plainly, but also national boundaries, I would contend, mean little or nothing when it comes to our beloved pollinators, my little bees. So, can you commit to ruling out the use of neonicotinoid pesticides in Wales for as long as possible—forever, I would contend? And how concerned are you with regard to this change in environmental regulations by the UK Government coming so soon after leaving the EU? Is it just the first of many potential changes in environmental regulations, and how can we defend Wales from any further changes in this matter? Diolch.

Thank you. You could say it's a bit of a coincidence, but I don't think there are any coincidences in politics. So, I think it is something that we will need to watch very closely and my priority, as always, is to continue to reduce to the lowest possible level the effect of pesticide use on people, on wildlife, on plants and, of course, on the environment. 

Thank you, Minister. 

The next item is questions to the Minister for Housing and Local Government, and the first question is from Gareth Bennett. 

Yes, I continue to work closely with local government, including in the South Wales Central region, and other public service providers on the key lessons learned during our response to COVID-19 that will aid our strategic longer term recovery, and help define the new normal of the future.

Thank you. I wanted to raise the issue of cladding today. It's now more than three years since the Grenfell Tower tragedy, and leaseholders who live in apartment blocks in Wales—some of them in Cardiff, some of them elsewhere—these leaseholders who suffer problems with cladding are still waiting to hear what support they're going to get from the Welsh Government. We know that £32 million has been set aside in the budget, but there is still no announcement of a building safety fund that would at least help to alleviate the anxieties of the leaseholders. I have been in contact with some of them, and I've also been in contact with you, Minister, about this matter. I know that you've said there will be an announcement of what the Welsh Government intends to do in due course, to use your own phrase, but that is very vague and it does little to lift the concerns of the leaseholders affected. Can you give us something a bit more specific today, Minister, and can your Government give some kind of definite financial commitment towards this massive problem?

Yes, I'm happy to answer a question on building cladding, although it's very hard to see what that's got to do with local public services in South Wales Central, it has to be said. The building cladding problem is largely centred on private sector tenanted or leasehold blocks all over Wales. We are working on a building safety fund to enable us to remediate the buildings and allow access to that finance without losing the equity of the leaseholders involved. It is a very complex problem, which is partly devolved and partly not devolved, which is why the complexity exists. We have been working very closely with colleagues at the UK level, both at official level and otherwise, in order to try and understand exactly how we can take this problem forward.

Unfortunately, a large number of the levers are in the hands of the UK Government, including, for example, extending the contractual obligations of the people who built the buildings in the first place, and assisting in finding out where the complex legal issues can be centred. There are also issues around access to legal funding and access to a complex range of other legal issues that we need to work through in order to make sure that the funding gets to the right people. 

In the meantime, we have worked closely with fire and rescue services across Wales to ensure that people are as safe as it's possible to make them, and to ensure that the various authorities are alerted. There is a very large and complex piece of work going on. I have met with a range of the developers and a range of the residents of the various blocks in order to progress this work, and it's very much ongoing.

Minister, public services across South Wales Central rely on annual budgets to be set, and at the moment—. And I do declare an interest, as a member of a local authority, the Vale of Glamorgan local authority. At the moment, councils and police authorities are setting their budget rates. The police and crime commissioner set an indicative rate of a 5.5 per cent increase, and the Vale of Glamorgan Council set an indicative rate of a 3.9 per cent increase. Given inflation is negligible at the moment, do you agree with the comments that your leader in London has made, Keir Starmer, that such increases are absurd, or are they a sensible part of the budget setting process that public services require?

Yes. The position of this Welsh Labour Government is that local decisions are best made local to people, so we do not impose a cap. We could impose a cap on council tax increases, but we do not impose that cap. We believe that locally elected councillors, such as yourself, ought to be in a position to make the best judgment about what needs to be done in terms of local services. However, I am pleased to have provided for a provisional local government settlement, which gives an overall increase of 3.8 per cent. So, every authority in Wales is receiving an increase, and the average is 3.8 per cent. We've protected council budgets by providing funding for both additional cost and lost income this financial year, including lost general income, and working with them to understand what the position on both council tax and NDR funding is, alongside my colleague, Rebecca Evans. This is the second excellent settlement I've been able to make for local government, and I'm very pleased to have done so, but of course these settlements clearly don't make up in their entirety for 10 years of Tory-imposed austerity, which is still reverberating through our current services currently.

Minister, last week, Rhondda Cynon Taf council began the second phase of its public consultation on the 2021-22 budget, with residents, businesses and other stakeholders invited to have their say on the specific proposals outlined. This includes: a proposed 2.65 per cent council tax rise, likely to be the lowest rise in Wales next year, and below the 2.85 per cent originally proposed and consulted on; an additional £2.2 million for the schools budget; £4.6 million in efficiency savings; no service cuts; and additional targeted resources across several service priority areas. Minister, would you agree with me that these proposals represent excellent planning and proposed service delivery in what are undoubtedly very challenging times, and show how local government, working together with the Welsh Labour Government, is able to deliver for the residents of RCT?

Yes, Vikki. I'm very happy indeed, of course, to confirm that councils in Wales have been making excellent planning assumptions all the way through. We have worked extremely closely together across party lines this year in Wales in reacting to the pandemic. We have worked extremely closely together as a family of local authority and wider public services. We've been very pleased to be able to have provided, as I said in response to Andrew R.T. Davies, to have protected council budgets this year by providing the overall increase of 3.8 per cent. Actually, RCT, which you particularly mentioned, is actually on the average at 3.8 per cent. We've been able to provide additional costs and lost income funding to make up for that, and we would not expect councils anywhere in Wales to have to make cuts to services or to rely heavily on reserves in order to make up their exposure to the pandemic, because that has been covered off by the Welsh Government and I am extremely happy to have been able to do that. As I said in answer to a previous questioner, we're very keen that local democratic accountability pertains here, and that local councillors representing their local areas should make the best decisions about local services, including on council tax increases. But as you've rightly pointed out, a well-run authority, well-planned and well-catered for, should not be having to make excessive council tax increases in the light of the very generous settlement that we have proposed in the provisional local government settlement.

Local authority staff have responded magnificently to the impact of the pandemic, and we're extremely grateful to them for their hard work and endeavours. While staffing is, of course, a matter for individual authorities, I meet leaders very regularly to understand the impacts across Wales, and the reporting measures in place through Emergency Co-ordination Centre Wales enable reporting of specific issues and the provision of mutual aid.

Thank you for that, Minister, and I echo your comment about the tremendous achievements of local authority staff during this pandemic. But, obviously, we also have non-COVID issues as well, of a chronic nature, and speaking now as the chair of the cross-party group on vision, obviously we recognise that local authorities have a key role to play in continuing to provide support services, and one of those roles is the rehabilitation officers for the vision impaired—or ROVIs, as they're called. Now, it's particularly disappointing to note that the number of local authorities meeting the minimum standards for the number of rehabilitation officers per population has fallen from 12 to eight out of the 22. In our area of Swansea, Minister, the local authority only has 0.5 full-time equivalent ROVIs, where it should have a minimum of 3.5 full-time equivalents, making it the worst-performing local authority area in Wales. So, following all that, what assurance can you give to people living with visual impairment that you are working with the health Minister to address this chronic lack of support?

Thank you for that, Dai Lloyd. We are working very closely with health and, as I say, a number of other public authorities across Wales to ensure a number of things. We know that local authorities have had to redeploy staff away from business-as-usual front-line roles in order to address pandemic issues, and we're working very carefully with them to ensure that those front-line roles resume their normal functioning at an early opportunity. We've been doing that by allowing access to agency staff and to additional hours for staff and indeed to extra staff, through the COVID response, and that should enable local authorities to put their normal services back in order. Many of the things you point to are, of course, decisions for local authorities themselves; we provide the unhypothecated funding for them in order to provide those services. But if you want to write to me with the very specific particulars that you've just outlined, I'd be more than happy to take it up with the leaders myself in my next meeting with them.

Minister, as you know, there are a number of services and projects that are delivered by local authorities that are directly funded by Welsh Government. So, the council employs the staff, but Welsh Government funds the activity, and an example of that could be something like a community sports development service. There are local authorities that are saying that, during the pandemic when some of these services are not as accessible due to restrictions, some of the staff could be repurposed and used in mass testing or in the vaccination centres or on track and trace services, but the funding model that I've just described doesn't allow them to do that. So, Minister, can I ask you if you could look to see if there's some flexibility that you could provide to local authorities to utilise some of these staff differently, as the need arises during the period of this pandemic?

Thank you, Dawn. I am very familiar with the complexities of some of the grant streams that directly employ staff in local authority areas. Right at the beginning of the pandemic, so a whole year ago now—though it seems both shorter and longer to many of us—grant teams were all advised that they needed to offer flexibility where that was at all possible, for example, by extending deadlines for outcomes to be delivered, or indeed in allowing 'morphing'—I believe the expression is—of various grant streams to allow the most flexibility. There isn't a blanket agreement, however, to hand out that funding with complete flexibility, because sometimes the funding comes from elsewhere to the Welsh Government with funding envelopes attached to it. So, we've provided as much flexibility as is possible from grant streams that we have complete control over and then we've flexed the boundaries of the others where that's been possible.

But if you want me to look into a very specific case, I'm very happy to take it up. It's very difficult to give an overall answer, since each grant stream comes with a different set of parameters and controls that need to be looked at. But in general, where at all possible, we have flexed the grants so that authorities can do exactly as you've just said, and it's good practice, of course, which is that as business-as-usual services have had to close down or become much more restricted, those staff can be put to good use in front-line reaction to the pandemic. And I know that that's been happening across local authorities as well. So, I'm more than happy to look into the very specifics for you, but, as I say, in general, we've put as much flexibility into the system as we could manage.

Minister, at the start of the pandemic, many people put themselves forward as volunteers, either in the community or as NHS staff for clinical duties. I hear from many constituents that their enquiries were never even answered, and the bureaucracy around getting back into the NHS workforce is a matter of public record. What lessons have been learned by local authorities this last year to better harness the goodwill of residents and get their interest in helping their communities effectively registered in case any other emergency situations arise?

We work very closely indeed, and I've worked very closely with my colleague Jane Hutt on this, in harnessing the council for voluntary service arrangements right through Wales. We've directed people in large numbers through the council for voluntary service as each locality has it set up in order to enhance that. All local authorities in Wales have used volunteers to do things such as organise services out of their community hubs—so, shopping, prescription fetching, various other things. When we had the food box scheme running, at the beginning of the pandemic, for example, a large number of volunteers were used in assisting with the food box distribution, and a number of people have helped with their community hubs.

I'm disappointed to hear that you've had some people who've had a poor experience of being harnessed in that way, and if you've got specifics you want to have a look at, I'm very happy to look at lessons learned. But I'm also very happy to say that, combined with my colleague Jane Hutt, we've been able to mobilise thousands and thousands of people across Wales, to assist with the effort. Also, very many community councils have played a good role here. Community councils have organised very local volunteer teams to do things like make sure that people are not isolated at home, and that they have some companionship, even if that's just over a garden fence, or from the road. We're very proud of the way that Wales has pulled together to assist people who may have otherwise been isolated. But if you have specific instances you're concerned about, then it would be really good to know the detail of those.

Questions now from the party spokespeople. The Conservative spokesperson, Laura Jones.

Good afternoon, Minister. Monmouthshire County Council hold regular business forums, which obviously is a fantastic way of helping provide the most up-to-date information, a place to share concerns and ideas. I attended the last one, and the biggest concern that came from that, from businesses, was that there are still many businesses falling through the gaps in terms of being able to access grants and funding. Do you agree with me it's about time that local authorities were given a pot of money to distribute entirely at their own discretion to these sorts of businesses, which trusts their local knowledge of those businesses and knowing what's best? Thank you very much.

I'd like to welcome Laura Anne to her role—it's nice to see you taking the role, Laura. I think this is the first time that we've had a question time together, so very glad to see you there.

We've worked very hard with local authorities to ensure that we have very speedy distribution of grants, especially the grants that go out through the non-domestic rates process. I'm very pleased to say that, as each wave of grants has gone forward, we've been able to speed up the process more and more, and to automate it. We've done that because we've worked with a good piece of teamwork, across local authorities in Wales. Peter Fox in Monmouthshire has been very much a part of that and has been very pleased to be of assistance there.

I'm also pleased to say that there is already, of course, a discretionary fund for local authorities that can assist people in their area. It's up to them whether they decide that particular businesses meet the criteria or not. That's for exactly the reason that you've just outlined—that we do really believe that local authorities are best placed to understand the needs of their local businesses and to understand the nuances. It's very difficult to put a blanket one-size-scheme-fits-all and not have people falling through the cracks of that. So, we very definitely set it up in that way, with a lot of consultation with local authority leaders, and indeed a lot of consultation with local authority treasurers. Again, I reiterate my thanks to the hundreds and hundreds of officers across Wales in local authorities, who have worked their socks off to get these grants out in good time to people—right through Christmas, and through public holidays, and everything else; they've really done a good job. So, I'm delighted to say that that discretionary scheme is up and running, and is being used to good effect by local authorities right across Wales.

Thank you, Minister. Perhaps there needs to be more flexibility in the discretionary fund, because those gaps are still there.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies have undertaken a review into domestic and business rates and stamp duty. They're suggesting that the current system for collecting business rates is no longer fit for purpose and should be scrapped and replaced with a fairer system, which would then result in attracting more businesses to our town centres and encouraging those already there to stay. Has the Welsh Government looked into alternative ways of collecting?

The council tax and NDR system is actually in the portfolio of my colleague Rebecca Evans, although obviously I have a lot to do with that, because local government is one of the main beneficiaries. She very recently in the Senedd introduced a piece of research that we have had done, and I've been working alongside her in doing it, into exactly that—how to reform the council tax and NDR system in Wales on a completely different basis. There's a very interesting research report that's been put out for us as a result of that piece of work that's been going forward, and, of course, we know that—. In fact, I've been very pleased that she and I have been able to support local authorities in looking at the shortfall in NDR collection as a result of both the rate holidays that we've been able to put in because of the pandemic, and because, of course, of the changing nature of the way that retail, in particular, is structured in our city centres. So, she's done a very good piece of research that I've been pleased to be part of in doing that. I'm sure that there'll be an opportunity for whoever the new Welsh Government is to take forward some of the very many excellent suggestions that that research paper has proposed. 

That's great. Thanks for that, Minister. Scotland have gone ahead and announced a much-welcomed extension of business rate relief now for all businesses, not just those with a rateable value of £500,000 and below. This is before they know the moneys that are coming from the UK Government, thus providing much-needed certainty for businesses at the moment. They're including support for non-food retailers with a rateable value above £500,000. Given that announcement, can we expect something similar from the Welsh Government? 

Again, as I say, this is not my portfolio. This is actually split between the portfolio of my colleague Ken Skates and my colleague Rebecca Evans, but obviously I have a large part in the conversation on that, given that local authorities are the distribution mechanism for a very large part of the rates. We have, of course, been looking again at what can be done. My colleague Ken Skates only very recently announced another set of business support arrangements to take us through the next phase of the pandemic, and I'm sure there will be further announcements from my colleagues Ken Skates and Rebecca Evans in due course. 

Plaid Cymru spokesperson, Delyth Jewell.  

Thank you, Llywydd. Minister, in your statement last week, you acknowledged that second homes were an increasing problem in parts of Wales. But the steps taken to date by the Government are very small in tackling this problem. BBC Cymru Fyw recently interviewed a local campaigner for fair housing rights, Rhys Tudur, and Rhys said that young people like him couldn't buy homes locally and remain within their communities. He said that there was a council house for sale in Abersoch for £380,000, which is way beyond the reach of local people, where the average wage is around £21,000 per annum. Plaid Cymru, as you know, has proposed five steps that could be taken, which include the management of the use of second homes by legislative changes, as they've done in Scotland, and closing the loophole in the law that means that people can opt out of domestic rates and council tax premiums. So, why won't you take action now for the benefit of residents and communities where second homes are a serious problem?

Thank you for that, Delyth. Sorry, the sound was very bad there, but I think I got the gist of the question. Forgive me if I missed a nuance.

As you know, we've got a cross-party working group of people looking at the complexity of the second homes issue. I'm certainly aware that Plaid Cymru have put a plan up. A number of us have been working on a number of solutions that might present themselves. I'm pleased to say that, of course, we already have made a lot of steps towards this in Wales, including, as you know, the ability for councils locally to ratchet up the council tax on second homes or unoccupied homes as they see fit. At this point in time, no council in Wales has actually put it up to the 200 per cent, although I understand that Swansea council is currently considering doing so. 

The loophole, as you call it—I'm not sure I agree it's a loophole, but I understand the issue that you're raising. This is for people who rent out a second property in their ownership for a particular number of days a year, having advertised it for another number. We are looking very carefully to see whether that number of days—70 and 140 at the moment—should be extended to be a much longer period; in other words, you have to use the house as a holiday house for a lot longer in order to be able to flip to commercial rates. And we're also looking to see what can be done about the access to small business rate relief by people who do that, because that's another issue.

I just think it is worth emphasising, though, because it's a common misapprehension—I'm not saying you have it, Delyth; I know you haven't—that councils do not lose out themselves in their funding when people go to business rates and claim small business rate relief, because the Welsh Government makes up the shortfall in that funding to the local authority, although I do understand that there's an equity issue for local people about who is paying the council tax. So, I understand that, but I did want to make it clear that the local authority itself is not losing out on that. So, we are looking at a range of pieces of evidence to see where that would best be placed, and what arrangements people who do flip to business rates have to do in order to be a business in order to do that. You'll know yourself that there's real complexity about what we call 'second homes' and who occupies them. So, for example, we know that very large numbers of medical personnel who work in the west and south-west of Wales come from other parts of Wales and occupy houses in the west and south-west of Wales during the week in order to be able to work in NHS services, for example. We certainly wouldn't want to discourage those kinds of uses.

You will know that I have a lot of sympathy with people who can't buy housing for youngsters in the villages in which they grew up in. One of the big ways of solving that is, of course, to build the right kind of social or shared equity or co-operative or—there are lots of different ways of doing it—community land trust-type housing, which allows there to be a public share of some sort in that housing so that it can't be built and then sold on the private market for astronomical sums. We do, unfortunately, have examples around Wales where houses have been built for that purpose with every good intention and then plans have changed and those houses have been sold on the open market for really quite eye-watering amounts of money. So, we do need to find a way of protecting that housing for local people going forward, and not just for the first-time buyer. You'll know that we're looking at a range of measures that allow us to do that. The Scottish example is a really good one to keep an eye on. When some of those experiments were tried, unfortunately, down in St Ives in Cornwall, some of them had really unintended consequences on the local housing market in terms of driving up the prices of pre-loved houses, or whatever the word you want to use is—older houses in the area—and actually having a worse effect than the original market did. 

We're very keen to work across party on a range of solutions to this. We know it's a big issue, especially in the west of Wales, and some of the reasons that we all love Wales, how very beautiful Wales is, are some of the reasons that are driving this. But we do know that one of the highest second house issues for any council in Wales is in Cardiff, and of course, that's because people come into the city to work in the week and go away again. We will want to see what the effects of more remote working and homeworking are on some of those issues as well. But I do understand the issue that you raise, and you'll know that we're doing a large amount of work on looking to see what the most effective way of solving some of the problems is. 

Thank you for that response. In terms of the gap in the law, the loophole, it doesn't matter about the semantics here, but as you said, it's a matter of an ethical injustice in way, so even if local authorities aren't losing out, it is an issue that needs to be resolved, and we need to close that loophole. Clearly, this is something that the next Government will have to tackle.

I would like to turn now—I hope the sound has improved—to a different issue, which I raised in a recent letter to you, namely the fact that two councils had received a financial settlement that was much lower than the rest. The councils of Ceredigion and Wrexham were only offered 2 per cent and 2.3 per cent, which is well below the average of 3.8 per cent. The leader of Ceredigion council, Ellen ap Gwynn, has warned that this could lead to job losses and cuts in services. This would be entirely unfair, I'm sure you'd agree, on the workers and the council, who have been doing such crucial work in keeping local residents safe during the pandemic. 

Now, I understand that your Government uses a formula to allocate funding, so this decision isn't a deliberate decision to underfund them, but in the past, when there have been significant differences within the settlement, the Government has put a funding floor in place, something that the WLGA have called for this year. I know, in the past, Minister, that you've said that you only brought that floor in when some councils identified very negative impacts and that they would get less rather than any increase at all, but the pandemic does bring us into a situation that is unprecedented and the demand on services has been so much the greater. Implementing this now—increasing the contribution to both councils—would only cost some £2.4 million. You've said to me that you would consider everything carefully before announcing the final settlement. So, can you tell us today whether you will implement a funding floor in this case? I hope the sound was better this time.

Indeed. Thank you very much, Delyth. Yes, so, absolutely, we know that the bottom three councils are a little below the average. So, we've got Ceredigion, Wrexham and Caerphilly below the average, but all of them have got positive settlements. So, Ceredigion has 2 per cent—that's the lowest settlement—but 2 per cent is the planning assumption that we had been working on with the treasurers throughout the year, because it's always very difficult for us to know what the settlement to us will be from the UK Government. And, indeed, I have to say that, at this point in time we still don't know what that settlement will be, which obviously puts us in a very difficult position. We're in the process of my colleague Rebecca Evans trying to work out what the best way of dealing with that is. 

And the formula, of course, is based on the finance sub-group and the distribution sub-group of the local authority and Welsh Government partnership council, which has representatives of treasurers and external people, and so on, on it. We've rehearsed it many times—and the Llywydd is almost certainly going to lose patience with me if I start going through the various aspects of the distribution sub-group formula—but the basic premise of it is that the things that are set out there are the things that are most important. So, they are based on population, deprivation, scarcity and rurality, and various other things of that sort that are beyond the control of the council to control. So, they're not based on local decisions that could make a big swing in the way that the council deploys its resources. So, I'd be surprised to find that on a 2 per cent rise, albeit it's less than the average across Wales, any council should be making swingeing cuts of any sort, because that was the planning assumption on which we were basing our projections until very recently.

In terms of the floor, the floor was always there to stop a negative impact on a council—so, where you had a settlement that was below zero and so they were actually dropping from the previous year. The floor was never there to make everybody come to the average. So, there are three things to be considered and, obviously, as we're in the middle of the provisional settlement at the moment, I'm not in a position to say today what the final settlement will be—it's some weeks off yet and there are number of things to work through. But the current situation is that we don't know what our funding envelope will look like and, if we did put a funding floor in, that funding floor would have to come from the envelope that the settlement is in. So, effectively, what you'd be doing is taking money off some councils and giving it to others. So, on that basis, obviously the people who are having the money removed from them are not going to be very happy. The WLGA have written to me and asked for a funding floor on the basis that it's externally funded by the Welsh Government, and that's not something that I'm in any position to say we would be able to do at this point in time. But, again, we're not yet at the final budget and so I am not, I'm afraid, Delyth, in a position to say today where that would be. But I would say that we're happy to work with Ceredigion about why it would say that a 2 per cent rise would result in those kinds of issues because that was the planning assumption that all councils were asked to work to.

Well, thank you, Minister. I'm sure that all councils, including Caerphilly, as you added, will be looking forward expectantly to the final settlement. 

Finally, I'd like to turn now to council tax. Plaid Cymru is calling on the Welsh Government, as I'm sure you know, to provide local authorities with more funding in order to stave off increases in council tax for this year, when many families and individuals are already struggling to make ends meet, and given the fact—and this is something that I know that you will have sympathy with—that council tax is a regressive tax and hits low income groups the hardest. Now, whilst council tax benefit does provide some needed relief to those who qualify for it, there is still a substantial number of people who do not qualify for it and are yet still facing this huge burden. It's not a secret that local authorities continue to face massive financial challenges. So, unless you are minded to provide the funds for a general council tax freeze, can you tell me what you plan to do to ensure that financial challenges faced by our councils are not simply passed on to some of the poorest people in society in the form of council tax increases?  

So, again, Delyth, thank you. Obviously, I know where we are with council tax, but council tax is in the portfolio of my colleague Rebecca Evans. She's been recently able to announce another £33 million, I think it was—although you would have to ask her to confirm the actual figure; I'm trying to see if she's nodding at me—in assistance to councils for council tax relief funding and a number of other assistances to them, to make sure that the scheme is funded at the level it will be.

You are absolutely right: the number of people applying for council tax relief has risen during the pandemic. I'm really delighted to say that we've kept council tax relief here in Wales when it was abolished across the border in England some considerable time ago. We did that because—you are absolutely right—we know that it is a regressive tax, and we absolutely accept that people need some assistance with it where their incomes are so challenged.

As you heard my colleague Vikki saying just now, some councils have been able to do very good things inside a very reasonable council tax envelope, and we would expect councils to work very hard to make sure that they do that and to understand what their cost bases are. So, if they are struggling to cope with the level of increase that they have had—and bear in mind that this is the second good settlement in as many years that they have had—then we would be very pleased to work with them to understand why their cost base was so volatile. But, we would not expect, given the very generous settlement that the provisional settlement, at least, sets out, that very many councils would require enormous hikes in council tax in order to keep their services resilient. That is because, during the pandemic, we have been very pleased, through the local government hardship fund, to be able to fund all of the costs that have been additional to councils through the pandemic. I'm very pleased to have been able to do that. So, we've worked very amicably in local government to understand those charges and costs right across. We've been able to make up for lost income, both in general income from car park charges and so on, from car parks being closed, city centres not being in use, right through to council tax and NDR. So, I would be really surprised to find any council with enormous hikes.

Having said that, you heard me say, in response to a number of colleagues earlier, that we do not believe in capping our councils because we believe in local democracy. The whole of the Local Government and Elections (Wales) Act 2021, which the Senedd has recently passed, is about empowering local democracy to make their decisions locally. So, I don't believe that it's the right role for the Welsh Government to put a cap on that where local, democratically elected councillors think differently.

My focus is ensuring that people in Wales who are unable to pay their rent due to the pandemic can access the support and advice they need. We have worked with the social housing sector to make this happen, and we have ensured that additional support is available to private sector tenants across Wales. 

I'm very grateful for the feedback that I've had from the social housing sector about the work they are doing with tenants who have got into difficulties during the pandemic, enabling them to access discretionary housing payments through Cardiff Council, if required, and supporting them to come up with sustainable plans for tackling any arrears. So, I think that there is a bigger problem bubbling in the private rented sector. The National Residential Landlords Association data for Wales and England reveal a noticeable spike in rent arrears, particularly among young people and the self-employed. Many people are having to claim universal credit for the first time in their lives and are having to come to grips with the fact that the housing allowance rarely covers the rent they are actually being charged. That's a particularly acute problem if they are under 35, where they'll only be able to claim for a room in a shared house. So, the NRLA is calling for a 12-month moratorium on that pernicious requirement and is also flagging up the UK Government's decision to freeze the local housing allowance, in cash terms, in the recent spending review. So, we are obviously facing some pretty bumpy times ahead for private tenants, and I wondered what intervention might be needed to prevent large numbers of young people in particular, who are normally not eligible for council housing, from being evicted and to give time for rent levels to adjust to the new normal in the difficult times ahead.

Thank you, Jenny. Unfortunately, you're absolutely right—it is likely that many people will experience real difficulties in paying rent as the pandemic period continues. Our officials are continuing to work closely with private sector and social sector landlords to monitor the position and to understand where and how further mitigations or interventions might be required and possible. We've put a whole series of things in place to try and mitigate some of the affects of this. We've put £8 million into the tenancy saver loan scheme. In particular, we've put £1.4 million funding, with my colleague Jane Hutt, into the early alert scheme for rent arrears and other debt in the private rented sector. That's delivered by Citizens Advice Cymru, who, with my colleague Hannah Blythyn, work alongside the credit unions to try and make sure that people have access to those kinds of both debt advice and finance. We've worked very hard with the social housing sector to get an early alert system in place where anyone's facing real financial difficulties during the pandemic.

At the moment, we're not having reports from the social rented sector of people experiencing very high levels of rent arrears—you know, worse than usual. You're right to say that we are very alarmed by the UK Conservative Government's freezing of the local housing allowance at last year's rate, at 30 per cent. I'm pleased to see that they have at least kept it at 30 per cent of last year, although, obviously, you'll know that we think it should be at 50 per cent. Clearly, not having a year-on-year increase in that 30 per cent only drives people into the poorest of social housing. It's actually a mechanism for making sure that the people who are on benefits are in the worst housing that commands the least price. So, it's a very regressive thing to do anyway. And what bothers me is whether that's a taste of things to come, in that they'll freeze it at 30 per cent of 2019-20 prices for the next five years, which would be catastrophic for the sector.

And then you rightly said that a lot of these things—the macro-economic levers for these—are not in our hands. So, the biggest issue here is the abysmal way that universal credit treats housing costs and the knock-on effect of that. So, obviously, we've been working hard to try to get the UK Conservative Government to understand the real impact on people of what happens if their housing costs are not covered. Obviously, we want to build a large amount of social housing, and we'll be pledging to do that in our manifesto, and I know other parties in the Senedd will be doing something similar, because the real answer here is to get the most in-need people into the social housing sector. But there is a real issue with a welfare system that does not support people to live in housing that's fit for purpose.

The last thing I want to say on this is that, as the pandemic comes up to the anniversary of the first lockdown, we know that people who owe more than a year's rent never recover. So, once you owe more than a year's rent, it is absolutely impossible to recover from that debt situation. So, across the UK, we will have to look at a pandemic that results in enormous numbers of people having a debt that they simply cannot repay in their lifetime. We will need to look at that, going forward. But, Jenny, I don't have any easy answers to those very difficult questions today, only to assure you that we are looking into every single avenue that we can think of. And, as I always say, we aren't the repository of all good ideas, so anybody who has any good ideas for how we might deal with that, I'd be very grateful to hear from them.

Thank you, Huw. We have been working closely with local authorities throughout the pandemic, with over 5,000 people supported into emergency accommodation since March 2020. We have provided significant additional funding for our inclusive, needs-led approach. Currently, an average of £1.6 million per month is being claimed for this.

Minister, thank you very much for that response, and also for the engagement you've had with me on queries from my local authorities, some of whom have traditionally used what we know as emergency night shelter accommodation, which, of its day, was an appropriate way forward. But, actually, when you're dealing with a pandemic situation, let alone an approach that really requires us not simply to lift people out of homelessness but also to wrap services and support around them, it's probably not the best way forward. But can I ask you, then, Minister, what success the approach that you're now taking has had, particularly during this time of the pandemic, when some local authorities, I think, have been really challenged with the resources and really challenged with having to respond to people who they've found in a crisis situation on the streets without many resources to actually throw at the issue?

Thank you, Huw. We've made our position extremely clear, as you know, from the correspondence we've had, to local authorities, that people who are sleeping rough should be provided with appropriate accommodation as a matter of urgency and, absolutely crucially, that they must be accommodated with the wraparound support that they so badly need in order to be able to sustain that accommodation.

We're really, really proud of what Wales has achieved during the pandemic in getting people in off the streets, and although there has been a slow drift of some people back onto the streets—that's 100 or so people; every single one of them is too many—but nevertheless, given that we've housed over 5,000 people, that's a pretty good record. And, of course, unlike over the border, we continue to offer accommodation to everyone who needs it through the pandemic.

There's a big culture shift here away from a system that was designed to ration accommodation and turn some people away into a system that's designed to assist everyone and to find out what their needs are, through a trauma-centred approach and to satisfy those needs. We've been really pleased to have worked really hard with, for example, mental health support services, substance abuse support services, and my colleague Eluned Morgan has recently been working very hard across the piece on bringing those things together, as we have done all the way through.

But to get local authorities to understand that they can spend their housing support grant on supporting people coming in to emergency accommodation has been a big culture shift. So, my officials have been consistent in saying, 'We do not support the use of night shelters', the evidence clearly shows that communal spaces present a high risk of transmission of COVID-19, apart from anything else. But also, night shelters are a way of sustaining people on the streets, and the whole purpose of this is to get people off the streets and into accommodation on our housing first model. And that's a conversation we've had with many authorities across Wales, and we will continue to do so.

We have made a record investment in affordable housing this Senedd term, making a significant impact on the delivery of affordable homes. During 2019-20, we invested just over £33 million in the South Wales East region, through our social housing and housing finance grants, and that equated to 361 new social homes in 2019-20, and we expect that to increase this year.

Thank you. Llywydd, can I just declare an interest as a Monmouthshire county councillor? I've just been told.

Minister, the coronavirus pandemic has slowed the process of the local authorities to renew the local development plan. This will affect the building of affordable homes until a replacement plan is agreed. And even then, it could approximately take two years until houses become available. They need to be able to build houses despite a plan not being in place. Your Government has set a target of 50-50 affordable to commercial housing, which councils accept but recognise it will not be easy to achieve. What consideration have you given to allow local authorities emergency powers to deliver the much-needed affordable housing across South Wales East?

So, we're very happy to work with local authorities. Now that we've managed to remove the Conservative Government's cap on the housing revenue accounts across all of the stockholding councils in Wales, councils have been working at pace to build council houses again in Wales. We've also worked, of course, very closely with all of our registered social landlords to build housing at pace. You'll be aware, I'm sure, that we've been assisting, through our innovative housing programme, a number of what's called modern methods of construction contractors around Wales to build factory-built very lovely carbon neutral or carbon-passive housing across Wales. And we're very happy to work with any council that has a plan in place to accelerate that, whether using its own housing revenue account or by utilising Welsh Government funding, or, indeed, a leverage of the different arrangements. So, we're very happy to work with Monmouthshire or any other council that wants to bring forward a range of social housing.

That's not to say, of course, that that doesn't have to be inside the local development plan, and indeed the regional strategic plan. I'm pleased to say that my colleague Ken Skates and I have a meeting with the 10 authorities that are coming together to make the south-east corporate joint committee to look again at the strategic development plan, which would allow us to properly place housing across the region in a sustainable way that enhances both the housing arrangements of people, but also their health and general well-being within the meaning of the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015 as well. So, we've been very pleased with the co-operation of both councils and RSLs in that plan, and I look forward to working with them going forward.

Thank you, David. We've undertaken a range of actions to protect and support the housing industry across all tenures during the COVID-19 lockdowns. Our action includes the provision of financial support, sustained investment and working collaboratively to develop guidance for safe working across the industry as a whole.

Thank you for that answer, Minister. I'm deeply concerned about the SME sector, which is reliant on the sort of housing improvement that can often be easily postponed, especially in a time of great instability. So, I wonder what you're doing in terms of providing assistance. And also how are specific schemes, like the Self Build Wales scheme, which is looking to encourage people to build their own homes, often with SMEs—in fact, nearly exclusively so—to ensure that schemes like that, which was, unfortunately, just announced at the beginning of the lockdown, to ensure that that is up and running and will work well in the future?

We have maintained regular contact with the industry through our house builder engagement programme and the construction forum and its sub-groups, which my colleague Lee Waters chairs, but I attend. Through the construction forum, we have developed a recovery plan—COVID's the standing item on the agenda—to address the issues the industry faces, which I know David Melding will be very familiar with—so, supply chain issues, outbreaks in the workforce track and trace or onsite testing regimes where projects are being held up by people being asked to self-isolate and so on. We've also continued collaborative working in matters relating to early payment, procurement. And I'm very pleased indeed to say that we've managed to put together a pipeline to ensure cash flow and awareness of work opportunities particularly for SMEs across the piste. So, they've been very pleased to work with us to make sure that that pipeline is in place. And we've also got a number of funds, which are available for SMEs—specifically targeted at them, in fact—across Wales, managed by the Development Bank of Wales, including, for example, the stalled sites fund and so on.

The other thing we've been doing with the industry, which I know will be of particular interest to David Melding, is that we've been working with them to understand what the social house space standards are to encourage builders who are building small numbers of houses across Wales—plots of five houses and so on—to build to those standards, to allow, if there are cash flow or market difficulties, RSLs and councils to buy off-plan from those builders, to assist with cash flow and to keep them alive and in the market and in the procurement cycle. So, we've been doing a range of work with SME providers, as I say, across Government, to make sure that the industry as a whole stays afloat, and that we can assist if there's market volatility as the pandemic unfolds.

Thank you, Alun. We've continued to provide support for affordable housing with all communities through the delivery of our 20,000 affordable homes target. Our record levels of investment are seeing benefits for housing in all areas, including in the Heads of the Valleys.

I'm grateful to you for that, Minister; I think that part of the overall position taken by the Government has been very successful over the last five years. But you will have seen the reports, which I asked the First Minister about yesterday, which have demonstrated very clearly that areas such as Blaenau Gwent and the Heads of the Valleys region will suffer disproportionately as a consequence of the COVID pandemic. So, I'd be interested to understand how your department is able to provide additional support for house building, house ownership, house development in areas such as Blaenau Gwent, to ensure that our whole community can join in the recovery from this pandemic?

Thank you, Alun. We've very keen on ensuring, for example, in our—. We've got our optimised retrofit programme where, as you'll know, we'll be working with a range of registered social landlords and councils across Wales to understand what a retrofit programme looks like for all housing stock in Wales, and we're very keen to have done that in combination with the Minister for Education and the Minister for Economy, Transport and North Wales. The reason for that is to ensure that the skills mix that comes out of those programmes is able to be translated into jobs on the ground in communities such as Blaenau Gwent, the top of the Heads of the Valleys and, indeed, through the Valleys taskforce that you were instrumental in setting up and is still very active in this area.

We’re also investing additional moneys into the housing support grant, another £40 million into the housing support grant, bringing the overall total to £166 million, seven hundred and six—£166,763,000. That’s a hard figure to say, it turns out. That brings a transformational change in housing in particular, but, of course, it provides a large number of jobs in the support services necessary, and the reason that those jobs are particularly interesting is because, of course, they're spread throughout Wales, they're in every community in Wales, and they're accessible. We're making sure that, in partnership with a number of our stakeholder organisations we ensure that those jobs are available to local people to support people in their local housing.

And the last scheme, there are a large number of schemes, but the last scheme I want to particularly mention is the £10 million to roll out the empty homes grant scheme across the Valleys taskforce area. We've had over 600 applications in total across phase 1 and phase 2, and that's to bring a large number of the older empty homes back into beneficial use for those communities. That has two beneficial things, it brings much needed work for renovation SMEs in those areas, and, of course, it reinvigorates communities by having people come back to live and work in the area. So, I'm delighted to say there are a number of initiatives going on.

Thank you, Lynne. As you know, public protection services have been a vital part of Wales’s response to the impacts of the pandemic and we're really, really grateful to public protection services in local authorities, in particular, for having stepped forward to help us out during this pandemic. Without them, we would certainly not have had the level of test, trace and protect, for example, that we've had in Wales, in stark contrast to across the boundary. Additional funding has been provided to local authorities through the local government hardship fund to strengthen that capacity.

Thank you, Minister, and I'd like to take this opportunity to place on record my heartfelt thanks to the public protection team at Torfaen County Borough Council, who've worked tirelessly in fast-changing circumstances to help keep people in Torfaen safe during the pandemic. The pandemic has definitely brought into sharper relief than ever before the vital role of health protection services in Wales, and I really welcome the recommendation of the chief medical officer that there should be a review of health protection services and enhanced funding for these services. What steps will the Minister therefore take, moving forward, in partnership with local government, to implement the chief medical officer's recommendation and to make sure that we have in place the robust and integrated system of health protection necessary to respond to future health threats? 

Thank you, Lynne. I also, as I said, echo your support and thanks to the public protection team in Torfaen and, indeed, across Wales, who have worked so hard to make sure that public health is protected in these very difficult times. Environmental health officers, trading standards, licensing teams are also leading on the response to the pandemic in local authorities. We're delighted to have provided £2.5 million through the hardship fund specifically to support local authorities in building up the capacity of those teams. These are teams that were thought previously as being back-office staff that might have been surplus to requirements, and it shows the folly of not understanding the integrated nature of local government. When you face a crisis such as this, these back-office staff suddenly seem to be the ones actually keeping us all alive, so it's a welcome lesson to have learnt.

As we said in setting out the draft budget, we recognise the ongoing impact of the pandemic, and given the uncertainty, we are considering COVID-specific funding as part of the final budget to make sure that those staff can be protected in their employment and the additional staff can also be provided going forward. We're very, of course, happy to work with the CMO and Public Health Wales in making sure that we understand the resilience aspects of that, the integration between public health in local authorities and with the health service and social care and so on. This is an integrated system, and that's never been more clear than in the last year. So, we're absolutely happy to work alongside the CMO in making sure that we have the most resilient service—attractive service as well, actually—for people to come into, going forward. 

Thank you for those responses, Minister.

The next item is topical questions—no topical questions were received this week.

So, we'll move to 90-second statements, and the first statement is from David Rees.

Diolch, Llywydd. Tomorrow, 4 February, is World Cancer Day. It's a day when we remind ourselves of both the impact upon people of cancer and the energy that exists within communities all over the world to make progress in the fight against cancer. This year, we can also reflect upon how the fight exists alongside the challenges of a global pandemic, but we must remember that the fight is never-ending as, like coronavirus, cancer doesn't go away. It continues to affect people, and we need to ensure that the battle against it is not just continuing, but strengthens. 

This year's theme focuses on the message, 'I am and I will', and encourages us to personally commit to reducing the impact of cancer. Now, I'm sure that, like all Members, I, as the Member for Aberavon and chair of the cross-party group on cancer, will continue to take personal positive action and will always call for the prioritisation of cancer diagnostic services during this pandemic. The urgency for early diagnosis has not changed. We know that the rapid rise of COVID-19 infections and hospitalisations has put tremendous pressure upon services, and I thank our staff who are working hard to ensure that cancer diagnoses and treatments can continue safely. 

The organisers of World Cancer Day ask Governments to take action by having national cancer control plans. I am proud that, here in Wales, we benefit from the single cancer pathway set out by the Welsh Government, but, due to the pandemic, it is likely that 3,500 people could now have missed a cancer diagnosis in Wales. There is much to do to catch those missed diagnoses. We cannot let this virus take away the need to attend our GP practices, whether it's for a cough, a lump or any other worrying symptom. So, today, let us all recommit to continuing the fight against cancer and encouraging people to seek help if they believe something is not right.  

Helen Mary Jones.

Diolch, Llywydd. I'd like to congratulate Pontyberem's Jonny Clayton on winning his first individual televised darts title. The 46-year-old Welshman fought back from 5-3 down to beat Mervyn King 11-8 in the Masters final in Milton Keynes last week. He's considering quitting work as a Carmarthenshire County Council plasterer to concentrate on his darts. Jonny Clayton has previously recently described darts as his 'hobby'.

'I don't know if I'm going to finish work',

he said after his famous win,

'I'll see. I don't know.' 

He'll discuss the prospect of continuing full-time concentrating on darts with his wife Elen and his children after he arrives home, having won that valuable prize at the Masters.

In November, he and his fellow Welshman Gerwyn Price won the World Cup of Darts. Jonny hopes Welsh success will continue for the next five or 10 years. He added:

'It's a great feeling to be Welsh at the moment in the darts world.'

The community of Pontyberem is rightly proud of this citizen of the Gwendraeth valley. His stunning achievement has inspired council leader Emlyn Dole and poet Aneirin Karadog to write limericks and poetry to celebrate his win. I'll spare the Senedd Emlyn's limerick, but Emlyn has said what an honour it is to have a world champion on the council's payroll. Last November he said:

'We are immensely proud of Jonny and all that he has achieved. What a fantastic achievement for him to lift the trophy for his country in the sport that he loves. Jonny is a valued member of the Carmarthenshire council team, and he's as talented at his plastering as he is at his darts.'

Emlyn added:

'As with any member of staff representing their country in elite sports, we have given Jonny our full support to ensure he can work his day-job as well as having the time to train and compete.'

I suspect that Emlyn will now be considering, after this latest win, whether the council could offer Jonny a sabbatical to pursue his darts career full time. 

As the poet Aneirin Karadog wrote:   

As one, Wales gazed on that one dart, / so true its flight / to the double in sight, / when thrown for those who hold your heart.

With apologies to Aneirin for the awful pronunciation. Jonny, Pontyberem is very, very proud of you, and so is Wales. Da iawn. 

Andrew R.T. Davies.

Thank you, Presiding Officer. I'd like to pay tribute to Captain Sir Tom Moore, who was born on 30 April 1920 in West Yorkshire. His mother and father ran a successful construction company. His father was deaf and the sense of loneliness that this condition made his father feel stayed with Sir Tom and become one of the causes he championed through the course of his life. He married his second wife Pamela in 1968 and they had two daughters, Lucy and Hannah. Sadly, the last 10 years of Pamela's life were spent battling the effects of dementia. This battle again reinforced Sir Tom's belief in the need to campaign to help people overcome the effects of loneliness. Captain Sir Tom saw active service in the far east, holding the rank of captain in the Duke of York regiment during the second world war, and, as we've all witnessed, he wore his service medals with such pride and passion. He was, however, not romantic about the terrible effects of war on people's lives and said of his experience, 'I wasn't a hero; I was just lucky. I hope there are no more wars; they are fruitless things.'

The last 12 months of his life have been truly remarkable—recovering from a fall that broke a rib, punctured a lung and shattered his hip to raising nearly £40 million for various charities and becoming a national hero and treasure at a time of national emergency. While I'm sure there are many that have shed a tear at Sir Tom's passing, he did not fear death, and I will close on his thoughts:

'Some people can't bear the thought of death, but I draw strength from it...if tomorrow is my last day, if all those I loved are waiting for me, then that tomorrow will be a good day too.'

Thank you, sir. You were truly a remarkable son, brother, soldier, husband, father and grandfather and an all-round thoroughly decent human being.

The next item is a debate on the Culture, Welsh Language and Communications Committee report, 'Turn up the volume: an inquiry into the live music industry', and I call on the committee Chair to move the motion—Bethan Sayed.

Diolch for the introduction, and thank you to Helen Mary Jones who was the Chair in my absence, who did a lot of work during the pandemic to discuss the impact on the music industry. And sadly, the pandemic affected the launch of this report, which was supposed to happen during the first week of the initial lockdown, I believe. I'd like to thank all the bands and all the artists as well that contributed to this inquiry. We didn't have the usual suspects; we had bands like Valhalla Awaits, we had the Joy Formidable—my favourite band—in, we had DJs like Bethan Elfyn giving evidence, all inspiring us to understand how important live music is to our lives. But we can't ignore the fact that the pandemic has decimated the music industry here in Wales and, unlike other nations, like Scotland and England, where some things were able to open and some music venues were able to practice their craft, Wales did not do that. I have a quote here from the band Buffalo Summer, and, despite the fact that I'm an independent Chair, I will say that the quote is amazing: 'We were on tour when the first lockdown happened and now we're unable to make a living from music. With the shambles of Brexit, I don't know if we will ever tour Europe again. Westminster has let our country down. The only way out is independence.' So, this is how it's affected bands the length and breadth of Wales and I'm sure I will speak for a lot of other people in the industry—not only those in bands, but the behind-the-scene workers, sound engineers, theatre producers, all being affected by this.

In terms of the need for support beyond March 2021, the Welsh Government's culture recovery fund will take us up to March 2021 and many people have utilised that particular scheme, but the Deputy Minister has said in his budget paper that:

'Our intention is to provide additional funding for recovery for 2021-22, but the scale and the approach has not yet been determined at this early stage.'

Well, I would dispute that we are at an early stage, when the current funding comes to an end in March, and I would urge the Deputy Minister to come up with an idea as to whether any funding will continue for those in the sector, and is it reliant on Westminster money. We would like to hear that from you today.

In relation to support for the self-employed, well, our inquiries into the pandemic have shown time and time again that there have been gaps in employment support for those who work in the arts and the creative industries, with many getting left out of the situation altogether. UK Music has estimated that 72 per cent of the sector are self-employed and the Musicians' Union told us that a third of their members cannot access the self-employment income support scheme for a variety of reasons. Now we know that the Welsh Government, along with local councils, have launched the freelancer scheme, and I think that has been something that has been different to other UK nations, so I would say that has been something positive to welcome. But we also know that there have been problems with people being able to utilise that scheme, so I would hope that, if there are any such schemes in the future, we could iron out some of those initial problems.

In relation to what the sector needs for restarting activity in this area, much like we have been discussing within the sports sector, those in the creative industries are asking now for some version of a road map towards being able to reopen. Now, I know the Deputy Minister said in our recent scrutiny that he finds that difficult, because, of course, we are in a pandemic, and it's very difficult to make those decisions. I do sympathise with him in that regard, but I think it's important for him and his team to discuss with the sector what can be possible in terms of reopening. For example, some small-scale venues have said that they could open in a socially distanced way and have some music provided. Pubs have been open—perhaps we could have a band in the corner when we do reopen, so that people can enjoy music as well as enjoy their pint or their glass of water.

In moving now to Brexit, well, certainly the impact of Brexit has been great on the sector, and I'd like to thank the arts council and Cardiff Council for responding to our inquiry. Certainly, the arts council is right in commenting that the Brexit trade deal does not allow for frictionless artists' mobility, and this will make touring in Europe more complex and more expensive. The deal was announced after the publication of the report, and it will affect the number and range of artists from Europe who can perform here, and the number of Welsh artists able to tour in Europe.

In terms of the report itself, it's important that we don't forget that there are some recommendations that go beyond the pandemic, because we looked at this prior to it. So, we proposed support for grass-roots venues, including rethinking licensing; support for people, including developing talent; promoting Welsh music specifically; and a strategy for success. We are all aware that the music sector promotes the viability of our economy and promotes local businesses, but we also recognise the fact that we do need an overarching strategy that can take into account the fact that music is more than the economy. It develops creativity and it allows us to come together in order to work together. We need art more than ever during these lockdown periods. It gives us an opportunity to have solace in difficult times. We can listen to different podcasts or radio programmes that perhaps we wouldn't have had an opportunity to listen to if we hadn't been in a lockdown scenario. So, we do have to think about the importance of that, from the sea shanties on TikTok to the health service choir coming together—how music has united the nation during this most difficult time.

And to conclude, I would like to say how hard the committee has worked on this particular inquiry. We are pleased that the Government has listened, even during the committee processes. For example, we recommended that the Forté project should be rolled out to all parts of Wales, and you have listened and you will be considering that, rather than it being limited to south Wales. We also recommended in this report that you should have a fund for safeguarding venues and, of course, you have put that in place, and we're very pleased that you've taken that forward.

It's important to recognise how effective committees can be. Many artists have thanked us for the work in the sector. We've had an expert group helping us to ensure that the recommendations are as strong as possible. But I look forward to other Members' contributions and to having a debate on something that's so very important for us all.

I think you'll be relieved to hear I'm not going to speak to all 31 of the recommendations. Can I just highlight a few that I particularly want to pick out? The first one I want to start with is that we should celebrate our bilingual nationhood more, in terms of what we do in the artistic world, and that there is too sharp a binary divide between English and Welsh language events, and Creative Wales should encourage much more collaboration between the sectors. So, even in predominantly English-speaking programmes, you could have some Welsh bands as well. And I think that's a really important insight, and I'm pleased that that was made to us in evidence.

I think the need for a music strategy, so that we promote internationally brand Wales, both home and abroad, is a really key recommendation because I think we have a huge amount to offer. And if you look at, certainly, some areas of the world that have become very popular for high-end tourism, it's often their artistic offer that is particularly enticing. And I think we have a rich heritage, and there's a lot out there, and we can build on that. And then looking more locally, as well as a national strategy we need local music boards—and I'm pleased to commend Cardiff, which is ahead of the game here and is already developing one—that include the whole sector, and not just about the promotion of the creative side of music, but also looking at some of the more difficult issues, like licensing, which has already been mentioned, and also even what's in the school curriculum, because music is increasingly frozen out. I heard recently about jazz being axed from A-level music in some places, which is a slightly bizarre thing to do, one would have thought. But these are the sorts of issues that the local music boards could look at.

I am concerned about the agent of change principle not always being paramount. Because I do feel that, as we quite properly develop our inner-city areas and town centres, there'll be more need to do that probably, as a result of COVID, as we need to repurpose some of these formerly retail areas, in particular, but with the danger that the development of more housing in these areas leads to traditional venues for music being squeezed out, or being subject to increasingly onerous requirements. So, I think this needs to be carefully looked at.

And finally, can I just say on some post-COVID things, this is work in progress, but it does seem that we're going to be living with COVID—in a much more manageable way, one hopes, because of the vaccines—but we will be living with it for some time? And I did feel that not all our witnesses, when I put questions to them, like, 'Could you see the use of vaccination certificates, for instance, being part of opening up music venues again?', I'm not sure people have really started to think about this yet, and I think they need to, and indeed the Government and local government need to as well. Thank you very much, Deputy Presiding Officer.

I'll just declare my membership of the Musicians Union interest. The challenge for us, of course, is what the new normal is actually going to be. And I think we're going to have to be very fleet of foot and flexible in the way in which we adapt and encourage live music during the changing environment that David Melding was referring to. It was a very wide-ranging report and the evidence sessions, I think, in many ways were an eye-opener for many of us in certain aspects. I have real concerns about the challenge of getting live music up and running again in venues, and I think there's clearly going to be a need for support.

I also have concerns about the challenge now, after almost 12 months of COVID, for some of the established music events we have as part of our culture. And I think of things like the choirs and brass bands, where having got out of the routine of performing and engagement, whether there is suddenly going to be a gap in the flow of new members and the ability to perform. And this is such a historic and valuable part of our culture that we really do have to look at how we may encourage and support in a different way.

My approach to aspects of the report is really to focus on the grass-roots music, and the issues of equality that emerged, and that is that we've got to start looking at live music and culture in a different way that is far more accessible. So, I was really quite interested in some of the evidence that we had, which actually began to link the issue of music venues and events and travel and transport—the ability to actually access. And the reason why many people from many of the poorer or even working-class communities are unable to access is because of the lack of an interlink between that accessibility. And maybe that is something that we can now look at, particularly now that we own a greater part of the railways and we're looking at greater co-ordination of travel.

The big issue for me though, if I had to really go on one, is the seed corn of our future, and that is music in schools. That is the learning, the consistent financing and the fact that I am convinced we have a major equality gap developing within our schools in terms of who can afford instruments, who has access to music, the promotion of music as a norm of education. It teaches maths, it teaches social engagement, it teaches so many things that are important to other parts of the curriculum. And I really think, if there was one area that we could really make a massive difference for the future, it is the promotion, the support of music in our schools, producing whole new generations who either just get the self-benefit of music that comes with playing an instrument or engaging in musical and cultural activity, as opposed to the various career options that are inevitably there as part of that economy.

And, finally, just to reiterate the point that Bethan made: the role of freelancers. The very nature of this industry, the very nature of the diversity of it, we have to recognise the number of people engaged within that who are vital to it and who will need support for many years to come. Thank you, Dirprwy Lywydd.

Than you. I think perhaps I will point out at this stage that it's a 30-minute debate, and I'm not sure whether the Chair is aware that she's left herself 10 seconds at the end to wind up. Depending on how all your other speakers go, I may allow you a little bit more than 10 seconds to wind up, seeing as it's your first time doing a committee report, but it is a three-minute contribution and it's eight minutes for the Chair to actually introduce and wind up. Siân Gwenllian.

Thank you very much, Deputy Presiding Officer. As a nation, we celebrate literature and music in our national anthem by talking about 'gwlad beirdd a chantorion'. We have a lengthy tradition in terms of music and live music specifically. And the Government, therefore, must ensure that it does everything within its ability to support and promote the live music industry in Wales. And, as with so many other sectors, the pandemic has had a grave impact on the sector. 

The committee's report is very comprehensive, placing a spotlight on the state of the live music industry in Wales. It reflects the problems faced by the sector, which they are still facing today, and it also highlights the threat that coronavirus poses to the sector. 

One thing that strikes me immediately, in reading the evidence gathered as part of the consultation for this inquiry, is the need for a Welsh Government music strategy. SAIN records have stated that:

'I am strongly of the opinion that one of the main deficiencies of the music industry in Wales is the fact that the Government does not have a comprehensive strategy that takes into consideration the industry in its entirety.'

And, to that end, therefore, it's good to see recommendation 6, which states the Welsh Government should, in collaboration with the industry, develop a music strategy. In Plaid Cymru's view, this has to be a holistic, comprehensive strategy and should be an integral part of the new culture strategy, which Wales needs. 

There have been positive developments, and the report highlights Welsh Language Music Day, and this year that will be celebrated this Friday. Clearly, it will be celebrated in a very different way this year. But we need to build on this. Not just a day; we need local projects that provide opportunities 12 months a year for people to learn, to perform, to promote and organise events. 

We must use music to attract young people to the Welsh language, particularly in the post-education age groups where there is a substantial fall in the number of Welsh speakers. And, as others have mentioned, we need action on recommendation 9, which calls for the establishment of a capital fund that could help to support venues like Gwdihŵ in Cardiff, and there could be changes to the planning system too in order to ensure that venues for the arts and culture do remain viable. 

I welcome the report, and I'm very grateful to the committee and all witnesses for taking time to contribute to the inquiry. The recommendations are broad ranging and varied, and give the Government, and us as Senedd Members interested in culture policy, a great deal to consider. 

Diolch yn fawr, Deputy Presiding Officer. I too would like to thank the staff of the committee and all the witnesses who gave us evidence. It was quite a substantial piece of work, and it's produced, I think, an important and substantial report.

I'd like to refer to recommendation 6 as well, and the need for a music strategy, which as the recommendation states, would be very beneficial outside Wales, as well as within. I think we're all familiar, aren't we, with Cool Cymru when it came about, and we had a lot of top-quality, high-profile rock bands coming to prominence around the same time. And I think that gave Wales a great international image, and we shouldn't underestimate the importance of that. It's about soft power, isn't it, which the British Council and UK Government work hard to establish and develop. It's very, very important for any nation, and I think it was a great image for us.

I know, locally in Newport, we had a thriving live music scene, and many people speak of the legendary TJ's with great and fond memories. And then we had Le Pub, which is a great venue as well, and indeed the proprietor gave evidence to the committee. And that's been very important for Newport in changing the image of the city, and also in allowing good quality of life for all people locally who want to enjoy live music. So, we really shouldn't underestimate the importance of music locally, nationally or internationally, and I think a music strategy could reflect on what might be done and take it forward effectively. 

I'd very much like to agree with what Mick Antoniw said, and reflect on recommendation 13 with regard to schools. I think, my own experience, as Mick said, is that it is very unequal at the moment. Gwent Music provide a great service, but much of the provision relies on parents paying for it, and obviously that excludes an awful lot of families. So, we really need to tackle that. Everybody has talents, and it's awful to think that some children will develop their talents and others will miss out because of the circumstances into which they were born, and we really need to do something about that. It's a great waste of human potential, and music is one aspect of that, and I hope that this report can be a catalyst to doing more than we are currently doing to wrestle with those issues.

And just one other matter. Charities can be really important in terms of providing opportunities to those who wouldn't otherwise have them to learn to play a musical instrument and have experience. In Newport, we had an empty town centre shop taken over by a music charity, and people of any age could walk in off the streets and try out a musical instrument and have tuition, come back time and time again, develop their interest and their talents, and there was a very strong social side to it as well. At a time when we're looking for alternative uses for our town centre and city centre buildings—and that will probably accelerate because of the pandemic and online shopping and so on—what a great use for a building, an empty building, in our town and city centres to provide opportunities to try out musical instruments, and to develop and foster talent. 

Thank you. Can I now call on the Deputy Minister for Culture, Sport and Tourism, Dafydd Elis-Thomas?

Thank you very much, Deputy Presiding Officer. I'd also like to thank the committee for the report and for contributions made this afternoon. I was very pleased that of the 31 recommendations we've been able to accept the vast majority. Those that we haven't been able to accept were those that were outside the Government's responsibility.

So, may I just briefly explain what our approach is in this area, namely by working through the new public body that we have as part of Welsh Government, but operating independently, namely Creative Wales? My expectation is that there will be a music action plan for the whole of Wales and that Creative Wales will develop that plan particularly for the commercial music industry. The action plan that we hope to see put in place through Creative Wales will work on the short-term issues that are required to respond to the public health crisis that has faced us and continues to face us. But it's important too that it looks at longer term plans in terms of the role of live music in Wales in a global market.

We recognise, of course, that live music was one of the most negatively impacted by the public health crisis, but we have provided support to over 70 music businesses. And that means that we've been able to support venues, recording studios and rehearsal spaces that have been seriously impacted. We have provided over £4 million to deal with that situation and that's been done through Creative Wales and directly from other Government support funds.

Our intention is to keep music businesses alive and we have placed specific emphasis, of course, on the situation facing those working on a freelance basis. We do accept that there will be a need for further funding and that will be implemented through Creative Wales, as well as through the music development fund that's already been mentioned. There will be a music development fund. We're currently considering our options in terms of providing additional support, in addition to the £8.9 million already issued to freelancers. There is urgency in this area and we're pleased to have got substantial funds out at an early stage in this crisis. We're also continuing to look at the importance of supporting and assisting talent development projects, such as Beacons and Momentum, and these, hopefully, will also be a fundamental part of the music action plan.

The assistance that we have provided to the AM project, brought about by PYST, has been a huge success and I'm grateful to them for the way in which they've taken advantage of that opportunity. Our collaborative approach to responding to challenges will continue. This genuine partnership approach is embedded in the work of the music team within Creative Wales, local authorities and everyone else involved in promoting and supporting the commercial music industry. Thank you very much.

Thank you very much. No Member has indicated that they want to make an intervention, therefore I will now call on Bethan to reply to the debate. Bethan.

Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer, and I apologise for going over time. It's difficult to time these things. I would like to thank the Deputy Minister for that response and everyone who's contributed this afternoon. Unfortunately, I can't cover all of your comments, but everything you've said has been important in providing us with an overview of what's important for the future in terms of live music, whether that's in school through the curriculum, or on the ground in our communities, whether it relates to transport so that we can ensure that live music is taken closer to people—all of that's important in order to ensure that music can be something for everyone rather than just something for those people who can afford to access it.

I hear what the Deputy Minister says on an action plan for commercial music and it would be good to see that as a committee—if not this committee in this Senedd, then its successor committee—in the hope that culture and live music will be an integral part of the work of any future committee. I'm sure every Member of the Senedd misses going to see live music, misses going to gigs, and we have to think about those people who work in the sector and to help them to bring music alive again once this pandemic not perhaps has gone away altogether, but once the situation is improved, so that we can improve things for everyone in the sector. 

Thank you very much. The proposal is to agree the motion. Does any Member object? I don't see objections. Therefore, in accordance with Standing Order 12.36, the committee's report is accepted. 

Item 6 on the agenda is the Welsh Conservatives debate, and it's support for palliative care during the pandemic. I call on Mark Isherwood to move the motion. 

In focusing on the need to support palliative care in the pandemic, our motion both acknowledges the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on those providing end-of-life care and those who are terminally ill and their loved ones, and recognises the vital importance of high-quality palliative care and bereavement support services. 

Palliative and end-of-life care has never been as important as now. Whether dying of COVID-19 or other terminal and life-shortening conditions, people require expert palliative and end-of-life care. The acute rise in deaths related to the pandemic has increased the need for hospice and palliative care, on top of an already increasing need, with annual deaths under normal circumstances already projected to increase by 25 per cent over the next 20 years. As Marie Curie state, even before the pandemic one in four people didn't get the care or support they needed at the end of their lives. People are living longer with multiple conditions, and now our world contains a virus that could force any one of us to face our own mortality sooner than we expected. 

As Hospice UK state, during the pandemic Wales has seen a 10 per cent increase in deaths, and every person dying from COVID-19 could benefit from palliative and end-of-life care. Hospices and NHS palliative care services have provided continuity of care to people with terminal and life-limiting conditions throughout the pandemic. In some cases, front-line hospice staff have been amongst the only health and care professionals in contact with people as they approach the end of their lives. While many people want to die in their own homes, for some the hospice is their preferred place of care and, for many, it may not be possible or practical to be supported to die in their own home, highlighting the importance of hospice in-patient units also. Throughout the pandemic, hospices have been proactive in ensuring their communities have access to their in-patient services, providing specialist end-of-life care or crisis care should they need them. Nightingale House Hospice in Wrexham changed its referral process so that people or their families could self-refer into their care, as well as maintaining traditional routes of professional referral. Instead of closing, the hospice effectively opened up access to its care.

In April 2020, the Welsh Government announced up to £6.3 million to support continued core clinical hospice care, and develop hospice bereavement care, recognising the essential care provided by hospices when no alternative NHS provision is in place, care primarily funded through charitable donations. In 2019, hospices needed to fundraise £33.3 million to supplement the £5.7 million they received from statutory sources. Although the Welsh Government allocated £6.3 million to the hospice emergency fund, this is less generous than equivalent funds in all other UK nations, and falls significantly short of the total allocated to the Welsh Government in consequential funding from the UK Government's support for hospices in England. 

There has been no confirmed additional support for hospices in Wales to maintain their essential services during 2020-21, and they're facing a combined shortfall of £4.2 million by March, next month. However, hospice and community palliative care services are still providing vital face-to-face care to people. More people are being cared for at the end of life in their own homes, and this when extended families and friends aren't able to be with them, putting immediate families under huge pressure. In contrast, NHS England added up to £125 million for the five months from November 2020 to March 2021 to their original funding package, equating to up to £6 million extra in consequential funding to the Welsh Government. Again, the Welsh Government has not indicated that palliative care services in Wales will benefit from this. Further, there was no indication in the Welsh Government's draft budget for 2021-22 of continued support for hospices to maintain their essential services, despite their estimated combined shortfall of £6.1 million during 2021-22.

Before the pandemic, the Welsh Government agreed to review charitable hospice funding, recognising that the current arrangements neither accurately reflect population need for palliative care now, nor the projected increase into the future. As yet, this review has not been forthcoming. All hospice in-patient services providing specialist end-of-life care or crisis care have continued throughout the pandemic, as have hospice and bereavement counselling teams, many of which are also offering specialist mental health and bereavement care to local health and care staff through the pandemic. As the current Welsh Government end-of-life care delivery plan comes to an end, hospices in Wales are calling for a new national plan that both takes a whole-system approach and responds to the shift in home deaths through the pandemic. As the pandemic has demonstrated, every person should have access to expert and dignified end-of-life care no matter where they die. Diolch.

Thank you. I have selected the amendment to the motion, and I call on Rhun ap Iorwerth to move amendment 1, tabled in the name of Siân Gwenllian. Rhun.

Thank you very much. I'm pleased to participate in this debate. At a personal level, I've truly enjoyed learning more about end-of-life care in the past few years, working very closely with Marie Curie and Hospice UK, but we rarely have time to discuss this in the Senedd, so I'm pleased that we have the opportunity to do it today. It's such an important area, and that's reflected in how many briefings and so on have been sent to me and others by various organisations over the past few days. I'm very grateful for those.

We will be supporting the motion today. Our amendment, very simply, seeks to ensure that we recognise the inequalities that still exist in access to good end-of-life care. The pandemic, of course, has changed how many services are delivered, and that's no different in end-of-life care. We know that some 2,000 more people have died at home during the pandemic than was the case in recent years, and whilst it has always been an aspiration to enable people to die at home if that's their wish, we don't know, of course, if the quality of care that those people have received over the past months has been what it should have been, and I suspect that it perhaps hasn't been, because of the pandemic. The pandemic has also, I think, highlighted the inequalities that we were aware of prior to the pandemic, because the pandemic itself has clearly demonstrated how unequal our society is, in terms of the disproportionate impact on poorer communities and minority communities, for example.

So, how do we respond to that? First of all, we need a new plan that takes a holistic approach, and one that understands the workforce required to deliver services in all parts of Wales. Secondly, we must realise that care homes are providers of palliative care, and we need to ensure the commissioning policies and regulations reflect that. Thirdly, we need to look specifically at issues related to palliative care for children and young people, not only in terms of workforce, with us being short some 240 children's community nurses in this sector, but also by providing better support for families and for brothers and sisters. And in a debate like this, we'll have an opportunity to hear more ideas being put forward

I will finish by just asking a few questions of the Minister. First of all, what steps are the Welsh Government taking in order to fund community nursing services for children in a sustainable manner, either provided through the NHS or hospice at home services for children? What steps are the Government taking to fill that gap in terms of the community nursing workforce who have the skills and experiences necessary to provide palliative care to children? And how is the Welsh Government holding local health boards to account for the way in which they plan and fund nursing services for children who have palliative care needs? Thank you.

Many colleagues in this debate have rightly focused on the impact of COVID-19 on individuals needing end-of-life care and their families who, in normal circumstances, would've been able to comfort and support them during this time. Over the last year, there have been some harrowing stories of patients nearing the end of life in hospital or in a care home, where that natural family love and support has not been possible—an issue touched on by Mark Isherwood earlier in opening.

In Baroness Tessa Jowell's final powerful speech to the House of Lords, she described so eloquently what it means to live with a life-limiting illness, and she made a profound statement about life and death, which resonates in this debate today. She said,

'In the end, what gives a life meaning is not only how it is lived, but how it draws to a close.'

End-of-life care is not just important to how a person dies, but how a person's life is given meaning; how, in part, it is remembered. It not only relates to medical care, but to personal care too. The involvement of family and close friends is at the heart of that. What's been so difficult for those people and their relatives over recent months has been the absence of what would normally be expected when someone is nearing the end of their life and the associated distress for families. And of course, as we've heard, it's not just families who have suffered, it's staff too. That's why our motion includes the impact on our health and care staff who have shown such professionalism and humanity during the course of the pandemic.

High-quality palliative care and bereavement support services are needed for families and staff, recognising some of the trauma of the past 10 months. We need to better understand the impact on our staff and how the experiences of this pandemic have shaped their view of their role and the services they provide, and what the battle against COVID means for recruitment of tomorrow's health and care staff.

We all know that, in ordinary times, our health and care staff work in tough environments, but no-one could've foreseen some of the conditions in hospital wards and care home rooms over recent months, where so many people have lost their lives. In many cases, staff have not just been doing their job and providing palliative care, but they've acted as surrogate families, where family members were not allowed to visit. If we're serious about responding to the consequences of this pandemic, we need to rethink how bereavement services and support are provided. That's why I'm supporting our call for a national bereavement framework and that we recognise that sufficient funding is needed to ensure that COVID-19 does not create another pandemic—that of poor mental health.

In concluding, Dirprwy Lywydd, I'd just like to touch on the specific challenges faced by people living with motor neurone disease across Wales—something that's been highlighted by the MND Association. The MND Association has been campaigning to allow MND patients to access benefits quicker during the pandemic period. At UK level, the Department for Work and Pensions have finished their review, and I'd like to hear from the Minister later about how the Welsh Government can help MND sufferers to access support quicker during the final stages of life.

In conclusion, Dirprwy Lywydd, I ask Members to support this motion. Let's strive to help patients with long-term and terminal illnesses access the care that they and their families need. Let's strive to ensure that our doctors and nurses can access a proper support network to help with their emotional well-being, and let's ensure that people from all parts of Wales can access professional bereavement services.

I welcome the Tory motion, because I think we don't talk enough about death, even though it faces us all eventually. I think one of the worst things about the pandemic is people dying in hospital without their loved ones holding on to them. So, I absolutely salute the heroic efforts of nursing and social care staff, who have enabled people to die with dignity, even if they haven't been able to say goodbye to their loved ones, except through some sort of device.

Most people want to die at home. That is an absolute fact. I think that Sir Tom Moore—one of the things that is so wonderful about him is that he lived life absolutely to the full right to the very end. He even went on a bucket holiday to Barbados just before he died, so good luck to him. But, he had the good fortune to live with at least two generations of his family, and we have to acknowledge, as the amendment does, that not everyone has family who have the room to accommodate the older generation as well as the younger generation.

For people who don't have family at all, care homes can provide a really good alternative social network for people who find it difficult to move around. So, I think that staff in care homes have done an extraordinary job in dealing with the challenges thrown at them during the pandemic. But, as we move out of the pandemic, I would really like to see care homes becoming more integrated into the communities where they are, and becoming more democratic in their way of operating.

The worst thing about a care home, from my perspective, is its potential isolation from the rest of society. I know there are excellent initiatives to enable children to go into care homes and sing songs or talk to older people, and those are all to be applauded. But, there really is a great deal more that we could do that they do in places like Scandinavia and Holland to make care homes part of the community—places where food prepared by the staff with residents is then sold to the general public.

Lastly, I just want to say that I think that the neighbourhood nursing pilots—the evaluation that was done of them is a clear indication of the path that I would like to see us go down to ensure that people can remain in their own home, with the care and support that they need, for as long as possible. That is where people prefer to be in most circumstances. So, I think that there is a great deal more that we can do to make the end of life much more dignified and happy.   

I would like to thank the Welsh Conservatives for tabling this important debate, and of course we support the motion. Death is one of the only inevitabilities of life. Enabling each of us to die well is a hallmark of a compassionate society. Unfortunately, we haven't always provided the best end-of-life care, and this has been exacerbated by the arrival of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

Last year, we saw that the number of Welsh citizens who lost their lives increase by over 10 per cent to over 37,000. Over 6,000 of those were because of this dreadful disease, which has cut short the lives of loved ones across the nation. Pre-pandemic, one in four of those in need of palliative care were denied the right level of care.

Multiple studies have also highlighted the fact that adequate and timely palliative care is less accessible for older people and those from the black, Asian, minority ethnic community. These inequalities will have increased as a result of COVID-19, which has disproportionately impacted the elderly and other members of our community.

Far too many people have been forced to face the end of their lives unable to be surrounded by family and friends. Far too many have died alone, and even more would have if not for our amazing nursing staff and general NHS staff. But, this has taken its toll. As the motion before us today notes, the RCN have raised concerns regarding nurses being exhausted, stressed, and near burn-out point, due to the pandemic and the additional pressure of providing end-of-life care. This is unsustainable. We have to ensure that we have properly-resourced palliative care and bereavement services, which have been sorely taxed as a result of this pandemic. And it's unfortunate that there has been no additional funding in the forthcoming budget for hospices, for bereavement services nor for mental health support for nurses impacted by this pandemic. And there are many nurses and NHS staff suffering from stress due to this pandemic.

Just before Christmas, my husband was taken into hospital with COVID-19, and he spent five weeks in there. He saw many people not coming out. He saw families in distress. He heard nurses really being stressed due to this. So, we must do better for our NHS staff, we must do better so our citizens can die well, and so that those that help ease the burden are not left traumatised by the experience. Please support this motion. Diolch yn fawr iawn.

Darren Millar. You need to unmute yourself or have—

Okay. Thank you.

We're not hearing you. There you go.

Can you hear me now? Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. This afternoon's debate, I think, is of crucial importance. As we've already heard, the impact of the pandemic on health professionals, the individuals they care for, and for those who've lost their loved ones—whether from COVID-19 or from other causes—has been absolutely huge. And, understandably, the risk of spreading the virus has resulted in huge changes to the way in which care and support is being provided and, of course, on the ability of those who are poorly and at the end of life to have the personal contact that they crave with their loved ones.

The importance of personal, physical contact with our loved ones can not be overstated. Many people who are fit and healthy across Wales are craving the ability to embrace a loved one or to hold their hand at the moment, and they're just people who are fit and healthy and at home. But just imagine the pain of separation for those who've not been able to do these things and are at the end of their lives. For them, the prospect of knowing that the last sight of their loved one might be on a hand-held device like a mobile phone or an iPad is frankly heartbreaking. And not just heartbreaking for them, but also for their loved ones—those mums, dads, sons, daughters, brothers, sisters and close friends who face the trauma of not being able to be physically present to say their final goodbyes and to bring the comfort that they want to as life slips away. On top of this, we've had the restrictions on funerals—they've also taken their toll, with fewer people able to be present to offer a kind word or a personal reflection when somebody has passed on. And for many, these restrictions, I think, have magnified greatly the sense of loss and grief that people have experienced.

Now, we know that staff in our hospitals, care homes and hospices have worked incredibly hard, and they've shown great compassion to those in their care and to their families, but in spite of these efforts, it simply has not been possible to overcome the huge impact of the very strict rules that are in place. And these experiences, on top of the other pressures that key workers have faced as the soldiers, if you like, of the front line in the battle against the coronavirus, have really taken their toll on their mental health and well-being, as other speakers have referenced. So, it's no wonder then that there have been reports of health professionals suffering from things that are akin to post-traumatic stress disorder.

And it's for all of these reasons that access to high-quality pastoral care, chaplaincy, counselling and bereavement support is absolutely critical. The work of the cross-party group on faith, the cross-party group on funerals and bereavement, and the cross-party group on hospices and palliative care has shone a spotlight on many of these services during the pandemic, and reminded us all just of how valuable they are to those who engage with them. And while I'm pleased that there's been some additional investment in these services during the pandemic, I think it's absolutely clear to everybody that more funding is required and that we need to increase the capacity of these services to cope with the increasing demands that are being placed upon them. We know there is going to be a need for this support in the future. It's going to be prolonged for many people—much more prolonged than would otherwise be the case. So, this support needs to be significant and recurring in the years ahead. So, I very much hope that the Welsh Government will take this into account as a result of today's debate, and I encourage everybody to support the motion that has been tabled by the Welsh Conservatives today.

Thank you. Can I call on the Minister for Health and Social Services Vaughan Gething?

Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. I want to thank the Welsh Conservatives for bringing this important issue to the Chamber today and to all Members who have contributed. I've listened carefully to what speakers had to say. I won't be able to answer all the questions, but I'll come to those at the end. And I should say at the outset that, overall, I'm supportive of the motion and the amendment.

The pandemic has highlighted more than ever that good palliative care can make a huge difference to the quality of life for people who have reached the end of their lives, helping them to live as well as possible, and, when the time comes, to die with dignity. It can also make a significant difference to those left behind and how they cope with the grief of losing a loved one. It has also emphasised the emotional impact that working in the end-of-life care sector and/or caring for someone at the end of their life can have.

We continue to invest over £8.4 million annually to support specialist palliative care services across Wales. Much of this funding goes to support hospices, which are central to our approach for end-of-life care. The support that they provide to patients, families and carers cannot be underestimated. We're committed to working with the end-of-life care board and health boards over the coming months to review the funding allocated to adult and children's hospices, and it is important to recognise the bespoke role of children's hospices within this review. In the meantime, the Welsh Government has already allocated £6.3 million of emergency funding to support hospices throughout the pandemic. I'm pleased to announce that we will be making an additional £3 million available to support hospices to the end of this financial year, bringing the total additional investment to hospices during the pandemic to £9.3 million.

I recognise the impact that the death of a loved one can have on individuals, families and communities, particularly in light of the constraints placed upon us by COVID-19. Grief is a natural part of our response to death. However, without the ability to visit loved ones at the end of life or to undertake our usual rituals and practices, that grief experience can become even more complex. With this in mind, we've issued guidance to ensure that patients at the end of life, whether in hospital, hospice or a care home, are allowed a visit from their loved ones, not just in the last moments, but, indeed, in the last days of their life. Balancing people's rights and supporting their well-being with a desire to protect people from the risk of infection remains very challenging. Collectively, we have to rise to that challenge and do all that we can to support people to see their loved ones as safely as possible.

Work to develop a national bereavement framework is progressing well. The framework will set out core principles, minimal standards and a range of actions to support regional and local planning. Consultation will continue this spring and is supported by £1 million of additional funding from April 2021. We've also provided £900,000 of additional support to hospices and bereavement providers throughout the pandemic to specifically enhance their bereavement care and support.

I also want to recognise the vital role that district nurses undertake in delivering palliative and end-of-life care at home and in care homes, and to applaud them for maintaining home-visiting services throughout the pandemic. However, as with other Members, we must recognise that they and all of our health and social care professionals and third sector partners need our support too. We've provided additional funding to enhance the Health for Health Professionals Wales service, which is confidential and free, a tiered model of mental health support that is available to everyone working, studying and volunteering for NHS Wales. There is also a range of resources available to support all those working in the health and social care field on the Health Education and Improvement Wales website.

In finishing, Deputy Presiding Officer, I want to recommit the Welsh Government to ensuring that everyone has access to high-quality end-of-life care and bereavement support, as and when they need it. I will be issuing a written statement in the coming weeks to respond to the many points made by Members in today's debate, and to provide an update on our wider end-of-life care progress. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer.

Thank you. Can I ask Suzy Davies now to reply to the debate? Suzy.

Diolch, Dirprwy Lywydd, and thank you to everyone who's taken part in this debate. As Mark Isherwood said at the beginning, it's never been so important as now to be discussing what we're discussing today.

A number of Members have referred to the hope that we will all die well, and the role of palliative services in that is absolutely critical. I think what I picked up from the debate today is that perhaps there needs to be better integration between the hospices that we're all familiar with and we understand their role, but with perhaps those district nurses, with the hospitals, as Jenny mentioned, but also the care homes, which Jenny mentioned—all these are part of the story of delivering good palliative care. And particularly with care homes, where we've seen 21 per cent of people dying, as compared to 16 per cent in previous years, there's an indication there of the strength of the role that care homes play in helping people die well. And I think that this matters more than ever before, because, as others have mentioned, we've been in very, very difficult circumstances; there's been no personal contact with those who are nearing the end of their lives. And, on top of the experiences we all have, there's this overlay of guilt that people aren't able to spend time with their loved ones as they reach the end of their lives, and an overlay of guilt that perhaps they weren't able to have them at home for those last few months of their life. And because of that, if we're talking about a new care delivery plan or a new framework, Minister—and I'm grateful to you for your comments today—then we need to be more conscious of these complex responses to grief and make sure that we're involving our nurses, our doctors, our care home workers and, of course, our bereavement services, who haven't really had much of a shout out today. 

And then finally from me—Minister, I thank you very much for the announcement you've made today about the extra money for these services before the end of the financial year. I think, actually, there was a little bit more coming in terms of consequentials from the UK Government for this period, but you mentioned other services that are involved in supporting mental health during this period, and maybe some of the money has gone towards that. I share Caroline Jones's point, really, that there's no mention particularly for grief and bereavement services in the budget, so your comments today have helped me with that. 

I suppose I'd like to finish, Dirprwy Lywydd, just by saying that this is one subject area where, really, we shouldn't have to scrutinise it particularly thoroughly with funding and delivery. This is an area where we should always assume and we should always be assured that we are getting it right. And so if I can just finish by thanking the members of those two CPGs, those two cross-party groups, who've really helped inform the debate today and made us all just think that little bit more closely about what's important to us. Thank you.

Thank you. The proposal is to agree the motion without amendment. Does any Member object? I don't see any objections, therefore the motion is—. Oh, sorry. Rhun, is your hand up, because it's just slightly off the camera? Yes, okay. I do see an objection. Yes, I do see an objection, therefore we will defer voting under this item until voting time.

Item 7 on our agenda is the Plaid Cymru debate on funding for the national library, and I call on Siân Gwenllian to move the motion. Siân.

Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. Given the good news that a new funding package worth £6.2 million will be available for the National Library of Wales and Amgueddfa Cymru for the next two years, I do hope that our motion will be passed unanimously by the Senedd today.

The Government statement says that the funding for the national library includes funding to support the work of implementing some of the key recommendations of the tailored review, and also to meet financial deficits to safeguard jobs and to take the serious steps needed to secure the longer term sustainability of the library. However, we do need assurances on the increase in the baseline required for the future. It's a matter for the next Government, I suppose, and the people of Wales know well which party they should support if they do want to see our important institutions becoming a core and integral part of our national life.

I have been inspired by the support that's been shown to our national library over the past few days—thousands have signed a petition; there's been support from all corners of the world. But it is regrettable that we needed this kind of campaign in the first place. Our national institutions should be a priority for our nation's Government, not the subject of a last-minute u-turn by Labour Ministers. It's interesting that the announcement on the funding was made this morning, just as we were to vote on the issue in the Senedd this afternoon. This is no way to treat one of our notable national treasures. But the national library did become a symbol of our identity as a people and as a nation over the past few days. An understanding and appreciation of the value of the institution was shown and the value of the treasures that it holds.

And let's pause for a moment and celebrate that rich, glorious heritage held within that iconic building that stands majestically above the town of Aberystwyth. This is home to some of the oldest manuscripts in Europe, the laws of Hywel Dda and the Black Book of Carmarthen, 6 million books and newspapers, pictures by Tunnicliffe, Turner and Kyffin Williams, over a million maps, the Welsh Screen and Sound Archive. The list is endless, and the treasures are so important to the rich heritage of Wales.

Maintaining and developing the national library should be a priority for our nation's Government, but, unfortunately, what we saw was a political u-turn by Labour, given increasing political pressure from all directions. We are seeing the Government having to yield and lose face as a result of increasing public anger as one of our national institutions is neglected and ignored. This funding should have been announced back in the autumn, rather than doing so now, at the eleventh hour. However, I'd like to thank everyone who did raise a voice and lobbied for that u-turn.

May I briefly mention two other decisions that Labour needs to change? The Paddle Steamer community centre and cafe in Cardiff will be demolished as a result of decisions taken by Labour on Cardiff council. They intend to do away with a historical institution and community hub in Butetown and to replace it with a housing development. Although campaigners asked for the cafe to be maintained on the site, this was rejected by Cardiff council. If we truly want to create a Wales that celebrates our culture and heritage in all its diversity, we must bear in mind that saving institutions like the Paddle Steamer are as important as saving our national library.

Labour is also happy to build a military museum in Cardiff Bay, actually scrapping the only piece of green land there, although thousands have opposed this. A successful museum provides a clear connection to the everyday experiences of local people, and Cardiff has no military history, so we have to ask the question: whose history is being reflected in this military museum? Rather than a military museum, what we need is a national museum for the history and heritage of the BAME community at the heart of that community in Butetown.

To conclude, I think the Government needs to learn lessons from what's happened over the past few days. At a Senedd committee last Friday, Labour rejected my amendments, which would have ensured that every child would learn about the history of our nation in all its diversity. The amendments were supported by the Conservatives, and I thank Suzy Davies and Laura Jones for that support. There is a wave of support building behind the campaign to teach Welsh history, and Plaid Cymru amendments will be discussed again by us all in this Senedd on 2 March. We need a decision now from Government to support those amendments. There was a strong campaign to secure the future of the national library. The people of Wales feel just as strongly about the teaching of Welsh history. So, that's just a word in your ear, Welsh Government.

Thank you. I have selected two amendments to the motion. In accordance with Standing Order 12.23, I have not selected amendment 2. I call on the Deputy Minister for Culture, Sport and Tourism to move formally amendment 1, tabled in the name of Rebecca Evans.

Formally. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer.

Diolch. I call on David Melding to move amendment 3, tabled in the name of Mark Isherwood. 

Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. I so move.

I speak as a user and a supporter of the National Library of Wales. And can I also remind everyone here that the Conservative group in the Senedd has deposited its archive in the national library? I do hope the other political parties will do this as well, because the preservation of our political memories is as important as the preservation of other aspects of the soul craft, if I can put it that way, of the Welsh nation.

I want to commend the principle of a tailored review. I am pleased the Welsh Government has done this, because it does bring a very precise focus. And I think this review was an excellent exercise, really exacting, and it's allowed us to make a really important decision, and I commend the Welsh Government for the announcement it made yesterday. I do think it's appropriate. I think the issue now is that we have a sustainable model for the future, and that will probably be the work of the next Senedd to scrutinise that that is delivered, but I think it would be churlish not to welcome the progress that has been made, and I've no doubt that the Minister will speak to this and the Welsh Government's approach. It's probably a happy coincidence that the events have come together this afternoon.

I do also want to commend the innovative nature of the National Library of Wales. I think, in the twenty-first century, in the era of digitalisation, for example, it really has led the way in the shift to ensure that as much is made digitally available, and then in its outreach work to ensure that these rich resources are known to people and that they're known to communities perhaps that haven't previously accessed them to the level that we would like. So, I do think that's important, and I know one of the key worries that the library staff had about an insecure funding position was that this sort of work may not be planned or carried out to the extent that it would like in the future.

I think it's also overlooked quite a lot what a magnificent national institution we have right in the middle of Wales, there in Aberystwyth. It's a really important anchor institution for the mid Wales economy, and indeed for cultural and intellectual life in mid Wales, particularly those beyond the university but also including the university. So I think, again, securing the future of the national library is important for that reason also.

And I just want to finish by saying that, really, what a great national library does—and we have a wonderful record here—is preserve the soul of the nation. It reminds us what we are, what we were, and, through that, what we might become. And it's that vision that really excites me, and that's the particular reason I welcome the investment that is now going to be made to—[Inaudible.] And I do hope that it leads to a really effective, sustainable model on an exacting basis, which of course is quite appropriate for the use of public funds, which is why a tailored review was a good approach. Thank you.

I agree with all those sentiments that have been expressed by David Melding. Of course, we had evidence sessions within the culture committee from the National Library of Wales, and explored with them, I think, the challenges they face and also the tremendous opportunities they have. And just to say, of course, I think it's in the National Library of Wales that we've deposited the Wales anti-apartheid archives, and hopefully the history of that will be written in the near future. They also hold the Gareth Jones archives and, of course, people will be aware of the recent film, Mr Jones, which has had quite international acclaim and reflects very well in terms of Wales.

I welcome very much—and I think David Melding was absolutely right that it would be churlish not to recognise it—the additional funding that the Deputy Minister has announced in respect of that and the museum. I welcome this very much, because a big concern of mine was the actual position of the people who work in it, the skills that exist there and the importance to the local economy.

I do regret the tone, turning the issue into what was almost a Plaid Cymru party political broadcast, and I regret—and I had some calls, actually, quite angered by—the comments made by the leader of Plaid Cymru, saying that we currently face nothing less than cultural vandalism by the Labour Government; that this is somehow a deliberate decision that's been taken by a Labour Government to destroy Welsh culture. I think that really is most offensive. For example, when Ceredigion—Plaid Cymru—Ceredigion council was closing libraries, we recognised the pressures on councils in austerity; we don't call that 'cultural vandalism'. Equally so, here, what we do know is that there have been major financial challenges. We have had 10 years of austerity; we know that there are also serious management issues that have arisen over quite a long period of time, et cetera.

But listen, I want to move away from that, because I just think that tone was very unfortunate in what should be something about talking about the future of one of our most valuable cultural and heritage institutions. There are major opportunities available to us: the BBC archives, the issue of digitisation. And can I say one thing? One of the real opportunities for the future, as we look forward to developing a plan of sustainability for these institutions, is within education, is the way of the interlink between these assets that they have, actually ensuring that they are not just contained within the four walls of the libraries, that we make them accessible to people, accessible to schools, accessible to people so people can access those icons of their history for the future. I think that's where the challenge is. And of course, there has to be a plan; the tailored review, I think, has identified many of those. I'm very pleased to see the work that's gone on with Welsh Government to develop a sustainable plan for the future, and I think the funding announcement that was announced this morning will make a very substantial contribution to that. Thank you, Dirprwy Lywydd.

Back in those dark days when we had no national political structure in Wales, it was a cause of pride for us that we could identify with and support our rugby and football teams, and go to our national museum and our national library. They were the focus of our nation's memory when Wales wasn't recognised as a political entity of any kind with its own Parliament. And in the National Library of Wales, we have a treasury of our history. It looks at our language, our art and our history over many centuries. It's a pleasure to be there to take pride in our rich national history and the literature that has emerged from that Welsh identity.

And what's there? As we've heard from others, we have cultural and literary treasures there: the original Welsh Bible from 1588, the Black Book of Carmarthen from 1250, the Book of Taliesin from 1350, the White Book of Rhydderch, also from 1350, the laws of Hywel Dda from 1300, and all sorts of other manuscripts of great importance to our nation. Our history as a nation and collections that are of international importance.

Now, all of this was at stake until the announcement made today, and I am so pleased that instead of listing to injustices against the Welsh nation and adding the threat to the national library to that list, as I was preparing my speech yesterday, here I am today congratulating the Government from the bottom of my heart for this announcement today, for this funding for our national library and our national museum. Luckily, I could change my speech today.

I also congratulate and pay tribute to the strong mass campaign that has brought us to this decision today. Without the awakening of our people, we would be in a very different place, and that petition, of course, was crucially important too. I thank everyone. We look forward to our national library blossoming as one of the great libraries of the world. Support the motion unamended.

It should hardly be necessary to have a debate calling for adequate funding for a national library. It's regrettable that we got to this point, but like others I should like to thank the Minister for his role in ensuring that the funding package announced today has actually been brought forth. The National Library of Wales has played an important part in my life. In fact, I spent several years buried in its vaults when I was a research student at Aberystwyth, on more than one occasion actually being locked in for the night because I'd been forgotten about. So, I have many fond memories of those years.

It is true, as David Melding said, that a library is more than just a collection of books. He said it was a repository of the soul of nation. Well, I think it is, and it's the collective repository of a nation's thoughts. It's inconceivable that it could ever be allowed to wither and die or to be damaged by neglect. We have had years of neglect, despite what Mick Antoniw said. It may not have been a conscious decision to want to vandalise the library, but it is an inconvenient fact that, over many, many years, the library has been deprived of adequate funding, and that's now been partly addressed. I think it's as well for us to recognise both of those points.

The national library is the cornerstone of Wales's cultural and material heritage, as is illustrated by the documents that it contains, which have been recognised by UNESCO as being of international importance, and among the most important documentary treasures in the world. Other speakers have mentioned some of the contents of the collection, which is 6 million books as well as, nowadays—let's be a bit more modern—7 million ft of film, 250,000 hours of video, and 150,000 hours of audio.

I think we should remember a point that has perhaps not been emphasised as much as it could have in the course of this debate, although some speakers have mentioned it, and that is the importance of the national library as a champion of the Welsh language, in fact, the centrepiece of the defence, preservation and promotion of the Welsh language. The library was founded just over 100 years ago, and the principal founding collection was that of Sir John Williams, a collection of 23,000-odd books, and that collection contained 12 of the first 22 books published in the Welsh language, including Yny lhyvyr hwnn, which was the first book known to be published in Welsh, and indeed that is the only copy extant. That is inside the collection.

There is also a substantial Celtic language collection from all the six languages of the Celtic languages group—a very substantial collection of Irish literature and also Breton literature. All, or virtually all, known books published in the Cornish and Manx languages are in the national library. So far as I know, that is the best collection in the world of these books. It's inconceivable that we could damage an institution that is so important, I would say, to the cultural history of the world.

We look at the facts: the revenue grant in aid for 2020-21 was just short of £10 million, £9.89 million. Well, 15 years ago, in 2006-07, the figure was £9.57 million. We've had substantial inflation in the meantime, so the consequence is, although there has never been a cut in the funding for the library, in effect there's been a cut, which has been administered by the process of inflation. Its useable income has therefore declined by 40 per cent in those years.

Can the Member wind up, please?

The staff, similarly, have declined in numbers from 290 to 224, so it's vitally important that we support the national library, and I'm pleased that the Government has done so for the next two years, but this needs to be made permanent.

I'd like to finish with the motto of the University College of Wales at Aberystwyth, Nid Byd, Byd Heb Wybodaeth, but also, for me, Nid Byd, Byd Heb Lyfrgell Genedlaethol.

Now, of course, the Petitions Committee will be considering a petition on this topic at its meeting on 9 February. This petition has collected more than 14,000 signatures since news of the financial challenges facing the National Library of Wales became public. The petition notes the current threat to 30 jobs at the library and the associated risk to services, and calls for fair funding for the national library from the Welsh Government. It calls directly on the Government to increase its financial support to address these challenges, ensuring that the library remains a repository of culture, knowledge and information. The petition has been signed by significant numbers of people in every part of Wales, demonstrating the high esteem that the National Library of Wales is held in across the globe. I am pleased that we have the opportunity to discuss this important issue today, and the Petitions Committee will be paying close attention to the points raised when we consider the petition next week. Finally, on behalf of the committee, I wish to welcome the £2.25 million rescue package to protect jobs at the National Library of Wales. Going forward, we'll hopefully be able to consider the petitioners' reaction to this financial package at the meeting next week. Thank you. Diolch.

We can protest to save a library, it would seem. I’m pleased that the context has changed so much overnight. Winning this argument is significant, not only to secure jobs within our national library, although these are very important indeed, but it is also a step towards safeguarding the future of our culture. The future of the national library is an issue of national importance. I’ve received e-mails from all parts of the country. It has taken hold of so many people. Gelligaer Historical Society has written to me, quoting an article from The Cambrian News and Merionethshire Standard from April 1915:

'The authorities will probably experience some little financial difficulty in the immediate future, but when the present unhappy war is over, the people of Wales will undoubtedly repeat the work to which it has so creditably put their hands and hearts to accomplish.' 

After all, when the library was established, it was supported by thousands of working-class people, including the miners of the Valleys. Thank goodness that that battle has been won again in the face of Government philistinism so that the sacrifices made by those people are not in vain. Because it wouldn’t have been the role of Government to condemn the library; it’s the property of the people of Wales and we came so close to losing that.

The library is a storeroom for our history; the laws of Hywel Dda, the Black Book of Carmarthen, the books of Aneirin and Taliesin, our memory, our foundation and our light. Losing such treasures wouldn’t have been our tragedy only. We would be losing touch with our past and cutting our links with future generations. We would be extinguishing the light and destroying our path back. How close we came to seeing that light being extinguished, because libraries are also candles. When the barbarians sacked the library of Alexandria, the light went out for centuries. As Emyr Lewis said:

Gone knowledge, gone worlds—gone stories / gone the wisdom of centuries / without libraries, gone all of value / into a darkness without dawn.

The people of Wales have succeeded in supporting a gift here. We thank them. They persuaded the Government to keep the lights on. This has shown how fragile the situation was. We came so close, as Huw Williams from Undod warned. We came close to being a nation that lost its value. We came close to disenfranchising future generations because of bureaucratic arguments. Thank goodness that enlightenment won through. The Welsh Government should not take our heritage for granted ever again.

I now call the Deputy Minister for Culture, Sport and Tourism, Dafydd Elis-Thomas. 

Thank you very much, Deputy Presiding Officer. You won’t be surprised that I won’t be responding to any rhetoric or personal attacks. I have spent more time in the national library, possibly, than any other public building in Wales, apart from the Senedd itself. I am disappointed that nobody locked me in overnight, although I do understand that that did happen, or almost happened, to Neil Hamilton. But in all seriousness, may I just set out the position clearly?

The Government has been working closely with the national library and the museum for an extended period of time in order to understand the long-term requirements of these institutions. We have also been studying in detail the tailored review. It's important to explain, perhaps, what a tailored review entails, because it's an independent review, an audit on how an institution works, and that report has been of great use to us in reaching our decision. It was published in November. And in case there is any misunderstanding, we accepted the recommendation of that report in November, and we did move to a position where there was an increase in the capital budget following the recommendation made within the report, and that baseline will be safeguarded. But of course, I, as a Minister whose time in office is coming to an end, cannot tie a future Government, but the principle is that we certainly want to ensure that the budgets of these two national institutions, from here on in, will be stable.

The written statement published this morning on funding for our national cultural bodies sets out the Government's commitment to the library and to the museum, and demonstrates our ambition to ensure its long-term prosperity. The additional funding of £6.2 million over two years will safeguard jobs in both institutions and will ensure their viability and ability to get to grips with the strategic challenges they face. This investment follows very significant investment in St Fagans before I took responsibility for this portfolio, and it also anticipates further investment in the future in the museum for north Wales, the slate museum in Llanberis.

I am very keen to note that I do expect to see notable changes in the library as it deals with the other recommendations of the tailored review. It's easy for us to applaud the importance of national institutions created at the beginning of the last century, but it's also crucially important that those institutions are appropriate, efficient and meet the needs of the first quarter and the first half of the twenty-first century, and that's why we have invested in digital provisions as one of our priorities for the library. Discussions between Government officials and library officials and library staff will continue, in order to ensure benefits and stability for the future.

The additional funding provided comes with conditions. These conditions, as has been mentioned, will mean that there is greater commitment to diversity, sustainability, digital transformation, and the work of reaching out to communities the length and breadth of Wales. A national library is not a building on the top of a hill in Aberystwyth; a national library should be a building that serves the nation as a whole, and I do think we can learn from the performance of the museum in that regard. The library has a great opportunity, I believe, now, to bring us out of the situation we're currently facing giving the public health crisis.

I make no apology that we published the statement that we published at 9 o'clock this morning. There are huge pressures on the budgets of all Governments. Decisions on additional funding are part of a much bigger picture. We are facing a public health crisis of great gravity. We are pleased that we are able to come to a position of full agreement within Government, and I very much hope that this will mean that we will be able to continue to rely on cross-party support on the future of this institution.

Just one brief word of warning—not a criticism. I spent most of my political life in opposition. Nobody was asking me to prioritise anything, but I did have a few experiences where I was responsible for public bodies, and I learnt so much during those times. It's easy to make pledges about increasing expenditure without saying where that additional expenditure will come from. I think it's important that we are honest about this on all occasions. 

We will continue to work with the library to develop the action plan in response to the tailored review. And in terms of the current consultation, we will be continuing with the discussion on the next steps. I am grateful to those of you who contributed to the debate today, it's been one of the most intelligent debates that I've heard in this Senedd in terms of its scholarly references. And if what you consider politically as a crisis for the library has encouraged us to have an intelligent debate in the Senedd, then there has been some benefit from this scenario. Thank you very much.

I'll now call those Members who have requested to make a short intervention. Darren Millar.

Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. I just wanted to say how pleased I am that this debate is taking place today, and I just wanted to put on record my thanks to the national library for its incredible support for the St David's Day parliamentary prayer breakfast in recent years, at which the library has brought some of the treasures from its archives, including some of the early Welsh bibles—the Mary Jones bible, the Evan Roberts bible, the first edition of the William Morgan bible, and, of course, more recently, the bible that has been celebrating its four-hundredth anniversary, the Parry bible. I think that they are a wonderful partner for us to have as a Senedd, as another national institution that the public should be able to take pride in. So, I'm pleased with the announcement of additional support. I do think it's a shame that it's taken so long for the Minister to get his wallet out and deliver it, and I think it's also a shame that the announcement was made to the media before it was made to this Senedd.

I now call on Helen Mary Jones to reply to the debate.

Thank you very much, Dirprwy Lywydd. I'd like to thank everybody who has participated in what has, on the whole, been an excellent debate. I will not repeat, in the short time left to me in this debate, the comments of my colleagues, with which I clearly concur. I just want to respond to some of the points that Members from other political parties have made.

I have to begin with Mick Antoniw. I would say to him that these decisions are political issues, that these priorities—. Politics is all about priorities. And you can tell, whenever a governing party accuses an opposition of playing politics, that that governing party is on the back foot. Now, I'm delighted, as I'm sure we all are, with the announcements that have been made today. But I would say to Mick: how does he, as a strong supporter of trade unions, feel about the distress that the staff and the library have been unnecessarily put through by a Government that could've made this decision weeks, certainly, if not months ago? And I will take no lessons from him or any other Member of the Labour Party about how to campaign as an opposition. I can assure him that, when libraries and cultural institutions have to be changed by Plaid Cymru county councils, Labour Members campaign vigorously against it, as we have campaigned in favour of the library—and they are right to do so, because it is the job of the opposition to oppose.

I'd like to associate myself with much of what David Melding has said. I won't repeat it all. I think that he's right that the tailored review process has been excellent and very revealing, and his praise for innovation at the library—and here I do agree with Mick Antoniw about the capacity for the library to innovate even further and to contribute to the education of our young people, especially in the context of the new curriculum. I will repeat what David Melding said about the library being the soul of the nation: what we are, what we were, and what we will become. I think that, as we look forward, we need to remember that. I was touched by what Darren Millar said about the library's role as a partner, and I concur absolutely with his praise for how they preserve our heritage, and how they make that heritage available. Hopefully, this investment will enable them to do even more of that.

I'm grateful to Janet Finch-Saunders for her contribution. The number of signatures to that petition in such a short time, I'm sure she will agree, shows how important the library is to people the length and breadth of Wales. This isn't, and here I do agree with the Minister—this is not a building on a hill in Aberystwyth. This is a central part of our national culture; a treasure for us all, wherever we live. I know that the library will want to use the resources now available to them to make some of their collections more accessible through more digitisation and more partnerships with local libraries and local museums.

I won't dispute the Deputy Minister's account of what has occurred, but I would point out that the Government had the draft report of the tailored review for months and months and months before they published it in November. Despite the pandemic, and nobody is denying the pressures that the pandemic has put on the Government—. Despite the pandemic, they had ample time to make the decision for these additional resources. There was no need to go up to the wire.

I will end, Deputy Presiding Officer, by saying that, of course, these additional resources are really welcome. They have bought breathing space for our national institutions, and that is breathing space that the next Government will need to use to work with the library and with all of our national institutions to ensure appropriate investment and a sustainable future. We in Plaid Cymru believe that we need a national strategy for our national institutions, and we need to be planning for their future, long term. In that, in Government, we would seek to develop the kind of cross-party consensus that I think we have seen the beginning of here today. 

Deputy Presiding Officer—

You will have to wind up, please.

A last sentence or two, and I appreciate your indulgence. As everybody has said, this debate demonstrates the vital importance of the national library to our national life, and of all our national institutions. The investment is welcome, but the staff should not have been put through this. I urge this Senedd to support the Conservative amendment and our original motion, and not the Government motion, which simply states the obvious. Diolch yn fawr.

Thank you. The proposal is to agree the motion without amendment. Does any Member object? [Objection.] Yes, I see objections. Therefore, we will defer voting until voting time. We have reached voting time, so in accordance with Standing Order 12.18, I will suspend the meeting before proceeding to voting time. 

That brings us to voting time, and the first vote this afternoon is on the Welsh Conservative debate, support for palliative care during the pandemic, and I call for a vote on the motion tabled in the name of Mark Isherwood. Open the vote. Close the vote. In favour 41, no abstentions, and 12 against, and therefore the motion is agreed.

The next vote is on the Plaid Cymru debate, funding for the national library, and I call for a vote on the motion tabled in the name of Siân Gwenllian. Open the vote. Close the vote. In favour 25, no abstentions, 28 against, and therefore the motion is not agreed.

The next vote is, therefore, on amendment 1. A vote on amendment 1 tabled in the name of Rebecca Evans. Open the vote. Close the vote. In favour 28, nine abstentions, and 16 against. Therefore, amendment 1 is agreed.

The next vote is on amendment 3, tabled in the name of Mark Isherwood. Open the vote. Close the vote. In favour 25, no abstentions, 28 against, and therefore the motion is not agreed.

The final vote is on the motion as amended. 

Open the vote. Close the vote. In favour 37, two abstentions and 14 against, and therefore the motion as amended is agreed.

Thank you. That concludes voting time for this afternoon.

There is one remaining item of business, and that is the short debate, and I call on Suzy Davies to speak on the topic she's chosen.

Diolch yn fawr, Llywydd. Thank you very much. I'd like to give a minute each to Mike Hedges and Laura Jones.

Two weeks ago, I was eager to join the Minister and others at the Universities Wales civic mission showcase, and I'm pretty sure, Minister, in your response, you'll agree that it was a little oasis of nourishment and positivity when so many of us have been bound up in the challenges of COVID. And the highlight for me was hearing about two mentoring projects: one was the physics mentoring project, which places trained undergraduate and postgraduate students into secondary schools across Wales, to mentor year 10 and 11 students, promote physics qualifications and inspire future physicists; but the other was an established successful award-winning modern foreign languages mentoring scheme, which is also a collaboration between a number of our universities, and it's that I want to draw to Members' attention today.

Now, some of you will know that the Welsh Conservatives have had a long-standing commitment to creating a trilingual Wales, introducing a third language to children in primary school alongside our two national languages. And the scheme that I'll be talking about this afternoon supports the ambition of what we had in mind, but it's really helped me better understand how that might be better achieved. It also supports the new curriculum in its ambition of capturing children's attention and drawing them into the world of wonders that is the world of languages, and I'm very interested to see how this is going to play out. Because there's no doubt in my mind that living in an anglophone country has virtually extinguished curiosity in that world of wonders over the years, and it leaves us all the poorer for it. And, yes, you'll say, 'We're lucky, we're not just anglophone, we live in a part of the UK where more and more of our children are lucky enough to have two languages—two national languages'. Some of our citizens, of course, have more than two.

We are told often enough that being bilingual makes you better at other languages, and I'm going to be controversial and I'm going to dispute that. And I'll dispute it because my own bilingual children never bonded with their French lessons in school. It may well be a more accurate observation if we actively learned our other national language, but there's no great uptake of international languages in Welsh-medium schools, which may include, of course, many learners from non-Welsh-speaking backgrounds also. And I'll dispute it because we no longer explore and learn how our mother tongues work, and it strikes me that we acquire other languages in different ways, depending on our individual preferences for learning, and I guess it's a mixture of approaches for us all.

Welsh is my second language, and it's far from perfect, but I've learnt it by being exposed to it quite frequently, not least, actually, by being in this Senedd. However, I think I've been able to learn it like that, in a sort of low-level immersion way, because I've been versed in an old style of grammar rules and structures, that kind of learning, not just to three other languages at school but my first language as well. And I know that sounds a bit grim, but, actually, we didn't just sit at our desks being grilled in conjugations and declensions. I can still sing you that Latin pop song we composed, if you want me to. Or, I can enthrall you with the magic realism of my story of Mozart the hippopotamus, thrown together because I had all the vocabulary for a zoo but none for the life of the famous composer.

Now, what talking to Lucy Jenkins, the force of nature who leads the MFL student mentoring project, has done is made me better understand what my own experience actually was all those years ago. And those two examples show what that was, and that was being given the facility to play with languages, to see the connections and to be able to guess what something means, to take some risks and make as many mistakes as you like. And unlike maths, where the certainties are what makes it so satisfying, it's the anomalies with language that are the joyful surprises. And I'm sure that my WJEC examiner had an absolute ball reading my short piece on hunting, when I repeatedly confused the German for 'to shoot' with the German for 'to defecate'. And, okay, with me, it's just happy flirting with Italic and Germanic languages, but I can indulge in that because of my school experience. Today's learners have to try and replicate this creativity and exploration through semi-immersion techniques in lessons once a week, or maybe even once a fortnight, in schools that, by and large, have been trying to raise their science base for the last two decades. So, can we actually say hand on heart that we have a national narrative that says that we value international languages? Can we do that? And I suppose I would add here, if I should, that, if anything, much of the underlying mood music of our recent relationship with the EU has actually contributed to us valuing them less. 

And while we do tend to talk about a lack of physics teachers—you know, they're in single figures—how often do we lament the lack of our modern foreign languages teachers? I mean, they're pretty much in single figures too. And what have we done to introduce other globally important languages? Adoro l’italiano ma forse dovrei pensare di piú a imparare l'arabo o il mandarino. And this is another reason for my enthusiasm about this mentoring project: they talk about languages that we aren't learning too.

Now, working across Aberystwyth, Bangor, Cardiff and Swansea universities, this project, funded through Global Futures, focuses on changing attitudes and perceptions of languages by training students to mentor years eight and nine—those learners in secondary school—to appreciate the value and benefits of language learning. And it's not just in Wales—this team has delivered this initiative, or a very similar initiative, created in England, a blended mentoring project, which they ran in Yorkshire for two years, following funding awarded by the Department for Education. And the most fully trialled model is a once a week face-to-face mentoring system over a six-week period, followed by an award ceremony at the host university. However, they've also got a blended version and a fully digital pilot being delivered through Hwb, which, of course, is very timely.

The group has also devised an online post-16 recovery programme to help overcome the effects of COVID. And the primary key performance indicator of the project has been to get more learners to choose to study a modern foreign language at GCSE, and its target learners are the 'probably not's and the 'no's, the learners who are pretty sure that this is not for them. This is not about the low-hanging fruit. And its success—well, I am summarising a lot of evidence when I say this, but it's effectively doubled the uptake of modern foreign languages in those schools where the scheme operates. So, in just those six weeks, it's converted some of the least interested into GCSE language students, as well as lighting the fire for those who really weren't sure at all. And while this does wonders for the morale of the language teachers in these schools, guess what? Above all, it has been the learners from economically disadvantaged areas who have benefitted the most from this direct personal contact with university students who've had a recent experience of living in a foreign country and, I suppose, who embody a wider range of experiences and options.

Now, Minister, I'm sure you'll want to talk about Erasmus+ in your response to this debate, but I really want you to talk about this scheme, which is every bit as compatible with Turing as it is with Erasmus+, and that really plays to that primary goal of Turing, which is about reaching the most economically disadvantaged areas. Can we please do Erasmus versus Turing another day, and today relish the success of the mentoring project, accepting that one of the main reasons this scheme is so successful is that connection between our year eight and nines and our domestic university students who have that recent experience of living abroad, which I'm sure we both still want to happen?

But the great news is there's no shortage of students wanting to be mentors. More apply than are taken on. There are 100 new mentors this year, chosen after a rigorous recruitment process, working with eight pupils, and, actually, it's a bit more than that, when it's offering the work online. Part of their work is overcoming the challenges we know about and that we've heard from the British Council often enough: 'These languages are hard'; 'It's boring'; 'Learners start too late compared to other subjects'; 'There's too little space on the timetable'; 'Parental attitudes'; and, I would say, this lack of national celebration. And they focus on what I started to talk about a little earlier, and that's the philosophy of languages, how do we communicate, language as being key to being curious, feeling comfortable playing with and experiencing other languages, and the safe space to get it wrong. And while I still say there's a place for using languages to sell careers and sell Wales, Wales, of course, is a part of the UK where we can demonstrate that we are not afraid of languages that aren't English.

I think this project does something very interesting. It asks our young people to—it asks them to think about who and what they are. So, are they kind? Do they want to make people feel welcome by offering them the chance to use their own language, to feel less vulnerable when trying to communicate with each other? Just think of the way we all feel when we're abroad and someone is kind enough to speak English to us. Language and how we use it is very personal and it's very exposing, and helping learners function in a world that's much bigger than the world they live in is one of the wonders of language. But another is the ability of languages to form intimate connections—small and human, yet vast and expansive at the same time. So, Minister, I hope, when we've both left this place, that the future of this project is confirmed as a permanent feature of our education offer.

Before I go, I'd like to just mention two things: first, is to recommend a Facebook page to you. Please, please, please look up Steve the vagabond and silly linguist—he's got a website too. But if you want to rediscover playing with languages, then I'd pay him a visit. And then, secondly, and for another day—this is one for the sixth Senedd and another Government altogether, including the UK Government—I wonder why we seem to be unable to deliver even one foreign language channel through Freeview. Grazie.

Can I thank Suzy Davies for giving me a minute in this debate and also for the enthralling way that she's led this debate, which I certainly enjoyed, and I'm sure other people did? In 2019, the BBC reported that foreign languages were being squeezed out of schools' timetables by core subjects like the Welsh baccalaureate. There's been a 29 per cent fall in language GCSE entries in Wales in five years—a steeper fall than in the rest of the United Kingdom. A GCSE pupil in a school in Wales will have a minimum of six and a maximum of eight mandatory subjects that they must take, with between two and four optional. For those options, as well as languages, they've got history, geography, ICT, drama, physical education, RE, and, as I've only got a minute, I can't read out the rest of them. But there's a whole range of options they've got, and they've got a maximum of four and a minimum of two. Is it any surprise that modern foreign languages are reducing? You're competing against some of the more popular subjects that are not themselves mandatory. Is there a solution to this? The solution is straightforward—I don't expect it to be done, but it's straightforward—if somebody wants to do two modern foreign languages, they only have to do the single science option, rather than a double science option. That would mean that pupils who don't like science—and I know what it's like, because I had a daughter who didn't like science at all, but who liked languages—give them the opportunity to do two languages. It's not going to happen otherwise. You've got two to four options—are you going to choose two languages out of those? Almost certainly not. If we want foreign languages to be used, it's really important that we don't make people do double science as well.

Thank you, Suzy, for letting me a have a minute in your debate. The learning of international languages I've always thought to be very important, and it's very regrettable that, in the current state system, we have a situation in Wales and the UK where our primary school education system merely pays lip service to them. I attended a Montessori school when I was two until four, a nursery, where I spoke French all the time. Everything was done in French. And I had no idea that that had happened until I got to comprehensive school and then, in my first French lesson, understood everything the teacher was saying and had no idea how I knew what she was talking about. The impact of learning languages at an early age is just phenomenal. That's when children are soaking in languages, and that's why I do French in the bath with my son now. It's just—. It's just—. Their brains are wanting to learn, learn, learn, so that's the time to learn the languages the very best, in my opinion. 

I've always been immensely proud to be Welsh and British most of the time, as we are world leaders in most things, but in languages we lag behind not only Europe but the rest of the world. Modern foreign languages like Spanish, Mandarin and so on—why we aren't learning them is beyond me, especially in an ever-changing world, particularly post Brexit, when we are naturally establishing an array of international partnerships now. It would be of great advantage to our future workforce if they were armed with a few languages. Welsh is great—all for it—but it is not much use on the international stage of business. Yes, English is one of the predominant languages in the world, but we shouldn't rely on everyone else speaking it just so we don't have to learn other languages. We should also be competitively using modern languages, not only for the obvious ever-increasing international networks that we're building now, but also because languages really teach people to engage more sensitively with other cultures and facilitate greater understanding of different heritages. 

I just—

Can you wind up? You've had more than a minute, sorry. 

Here's hoping the new curriculum will—[Inaudible.]

Thank you. Can I now ask the Minister for Education to reply to the debate? Kirsty Williams.

Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. Well, I'm sure colleagues who have stayed to listen to the short debate this afternoon will agree with me that Suzy Davies's decision to retire from the Senedd is a real loss—it's a real loss to our work here, and I'd like to put on record my thanks to Suzy Davies for her service, not just to the people of South Wales West but the service to her nation. Suzy, your contribution, as I said, will be greatly missed. I'd also like to thank you for recognising the wonderful civic mission showcase that was recently hosted by Universities Wales. On coming into office, I challenged our higher education institutions to rediscover that sense of civic mission, and I'm so glad that they have embraced that challenge, and the project that you've talked about this afternoon is just one of the ways in which our higher education institutions are serving not only their students, but are serving us as a nation. 

Given that, potentially, this is the last short debate that Suzy Davies, or, indeed, I, will ever do in this virtual Chamber, just once, Suzy, I'll give in and I'll leave Turing to another day. But can I thank you most sincerely for bringing forward this debate to the Chamber? As Suzy says, learning languages doesn't just equip our young people with qualifications, it provides them with an opportunity to broaden their horizon, to deepen cultural understanding, and provides skills that they can use both here and across the globe. I have a very clear vision for all our learners to become multilingual, global citizens. And set within the world that we find ourselves in, it would be easy to dismiss the challenges that international languages face as insignificant in comparison to those that we're currently facing in our schools—that the decrease in the number of learners studying MFL and the narrowing of provision could be set aside as problems for another day. However, we will come through these incredibly challenging times, and I'm committed to continuing our support for learners to understand the wealth of opportunities that international languages bring. 

Our new curriculum for Wales offers the exciting opportunity to develop language-rich environments and provision across Wales, and it marks a change of culture from one of telling schools what to do and what to teach to one that gives the responsibility to those schools for developing a curriculum that works best for all of their learners, but within a national framework. And it will bring in the learning of international languages from a very early age, with clear expectations for learners' progress while at primary school. I've used this story before, I know, but it's such a delightful one, I'm going to use it again. A visit to a through-school in the community of Aberdare; I'm visiting their very youngest pupils, where the children were reading The Hungry Caterpillar, not just in English, and not just in Welsh, but learning the fruit and the items that the hungry caterpillar was munching through in Spanish as well. And just like Laura said, those children were oblivious to the fact that they were learning and improving their vocabulary in three different languages. For them, it was just the excitement of new words, new phrases, and the new sounds that they were listening to. And my goodness me, if we can roll that out across all of our foundation phase provision, my goodness me, what a wonderful, wonderful legacy we will be creating for those children. The removal of subject boundaries should empower schools to plan truly holistic language provision and schools should feel empowered to be creative and to develop meaningful learning opportunities.

Last year, as part of my ongoing commitment to international languages, I agreed a further funding round for the Global Futures programme. This funding has resulted in centres of excellence where schools work in partnership with universities and partners to improve the teaching and learning of modern foreign languages across our nation. It also provides funding for the regional consortia to enhance their support offers for modern foreign languages with a specific focus on supporting primary schools to deliver MFL. Global Futures funding supports our primary school teachers to take part in the Open University's TEachers Learning to Teach languages—the TELT programme—in primary schools, which offers beginners lessons in French, German, Spanish and Mandarin.

The programme also grants funds to Cardiff University's MFL student-mentoring project, which Suzy has focused on this afternoon. As she says, it places undergraduates from Cardiff, Swansea, Bangor and Aberystwyth universities into local schools in Wales to mentor year 8 and 9 pupils and to support them in their studies and encourage them to consider choosing modern foreign languages at GSCE level. Last year, recognising the need to adapt in how they deliver to schools, they very quickly developed a digital approach to support schools remotely across Wales at this challenging time. The project plays a key role in broadening the horizons and aspirations of learners. Over 115 secondary schools engaged in the project over the last five years, and that meant reaching 10,000 individual pupils. It has received, quite rightly, not just recognition this afternoon in the Chamber, but also as the recipient of the prestigious Threlford Cup in 2017, and has developed an excellent reputation both nationally and internationally. It is a real credit to the team at the respective universities, the student mentors who take part, and also the learners who are engaging in their programme.

And I have to say, having visited the project myself in a high school in Barry, and seen the mentor deliver a lesson, and talked to the children in receipt of that lesson, it goes so much beyond just learning and encouraging people to study for a foreign language. We came across individuals who had never considered a career in teaching, but had enjoyed their time so very much working with young people in schools, they now were looking to undertake PGCEs to become MFL teachers themselves. And for those young people, some of whom had never met anybody that had attended a university, the opportunity to work alongside a graduate and at the end to be able to visit a university themselves—sometimes an institution that they perhaps had driven past or travelled past on a bus, but had never thought, never, ever thought, of crossing the threshold—it gave them a new look and new outlook on what they could achieve and how university could well be a place that they could aspire to attend also. So, the benefits are manifest in many, many, many ways.

Universities, along with our Global Futures partners—who include regional education consortia, Estyn, language institutes, Qualifications Wales and Careers Wales—all provide expertise and support for language teaching and learning in our schools. And through my commitment to the civic mission of our universities, this approach is now also being funded and pursued in other subjects, and Suzy mentioned our physics mentoring project, which is also really, really successful and potentially gives us the opportunity to think about where else we can employ bright, sparky undergraduates studying at our universities to be real role models for students in our high schools.

As we continue to move forward, we will see developments to other areas of the education system designed to support learners. Qualifications for international languages will also change. As members of the Global Futures steering group, Qualifications Wales are engaging directly with the group's expertise as they look to develop language qualifications that meet the needs of our learners, and I think a focus on linguistic ability and the ability to speak a language, I'm sure, is a very important part of that work.

We're also introducing a new framework for school evaluation, improvement and accountability that requires the use of a wider range of information when considering schools' effectiveness. This approach will better capture the progress of all learners and their whole learning experience, as opposed to a narrow range of key stage 4 examination outcomes. Importantly, these new evaluation and improvement arrangements will support and align with the implementation of the Curriculum for Wales, as recommended by the OECD. By doing so, they will help to reduce the attainment gap and support the realisation of the four purposes of our new curriculum.

I am always encouraged by the excellent attainment of our MFL students, which is testament not only to the learners' hard work, but also to the excellent teaching that they have received. We will continue to work in collaboration with our Global Futures partners to support our schools through these difficult times. I want to once again place on record my thanks to all those involved in the delivery of our MFL mentoring project. It's one that, if Members are not familiar with it, as Suzy says, they really should take a look at. Thank you very much. Diolch yn fawr.

Thank you. That bring today's proceedings to a close. Thank you.