Cynulliad Cenedlaethol Cymru

Welcome back to you all. We will begin this afternoon with questions to the First Minister, and first of all, question 1, Steve Bayliss. 

Diolch yn fawr iawn. The Welsh Government has sought comprehensive assurances from Cwm Taf Morgannwg University Local Health Board on safeguarding arrangements and health visiting capacity during the industrial action. The health board provided evidence of safeguarding oversight, risk assessment, multi-agency working and recovery planning. This evidence demonstrated appropriate governance and action to protect children and families. As recovery progresses, ongoing monitoring remains important to identify any emerging needs and ensure safeguarding continues to be prioritised.

Diolch, First Minister. I accept that the health board is the employer, but holding it to account on child safety is your responsibility. On 16 September, your Cabinet Minister for health told this Chamber that he had sought and received detailed assurances on safeguarding. Eight days later, the board's own nursing director proposed only qualified assurance on safeguarding, and limited assurance on capacity, warning that reduced contact diminishes opportunities to identify hidden harm. That is the child nobody yet knows is at risk. When the First Minister was first told about the safeguarding and capacity concerns, its quality committee's paper records 'ministerial requirements'. On 13 October, you spoke of full transparency. Then let families see the evidence. Within seven days, will you publish what Ministers required, what the board replied and the number of child health contacts missed or deferred—totals, not names? Diolch. 

This Government, of course, has been transparent throughout, and I should emphasise also that the review was commissioned because of the exceptional duration of the dispute, not because there was evidence of safeguarding failures. And where services experience prolonged disruption, it is of course entirely right that Ministers seek additional assurance and challenge, and that is precisely the action that we took as a Government. Our responsibility is to be satisfied that appropriate safeguards remain in place, that risks are being identified, and that those risks are being managed effectively, and that is exactly what the review was designed to do. I welcome the assurance provided by the health board, while recognising, of course, the need for continued vigilance. And this has all been done, as I say, in a transparent manner.

First Minister, on several occasions during this dispute, I and Plaid Cymru colleagues have met with health visitors and, indeed, with Unite. It's clear that the lack of regular family contact as a result of the strike has created, and continues to create, risks for children. We know that the number of safeguarding referrals across the constituencies of the health board has fallen. The longer this dispute continues, the greater that concern. 

I know that the Cabinet Minister has been challenging the health board to provide regular updates and robust evidence of the mitigation measures in place, recognising that the best way to ensure the safety of children and families is by finding a solution to this long-standing dispute that started way before this Government came into office. Given that, First Minister, what extra pressure is the Government exerting in order to ensure that this matter is resolved soon? Thank you. 

I, of course, share that concern about the impact that this long-running dispute is having on children and on families. And that's why, as I said earlier, we have asked for assurances in some detail from Cwm Taf Morgannwg University Local Health Board on the safeguarding arrangements that were in place. We continue to keep a very close eye on those arrangements, and we will, of course, hold the health board to account in order to ensure that children and families are protected. 

This Government has engaged actively in every way that we can with the health board and with representatives of trade unions in order to try and encourage early resolution of this dispute. We do want to see it resolved as soon as possible, and we will continue to do everything that we appropriately can in order to ensure that a resolution is found.

We are, Llywydd, currently considering the implications of the autumn budget announcements for Wales. The Welsh Government remains focused on prioritising permanent support for the small businesses that are the heart of our vibrant town centres and high streets. We have made significant early progress on delivery of that commitment, with the permanent 30 per cent reduction in business rates for eligible retail, hospitality and leisure premises from April next year.

So, you've probably guessed, First Minister, that I'm going to talk about the threshold, which has been increased to £18,000 for small retail, hospitality and leisure premises in England. In Wales, if we just remind the Chamber, it's £6,000, with tapered relief up to £12,000. Will your Government assess how many Welsh businesses would actually benefit if the threshold matched over in England and publish that estimated cost ahead of the Welsh budget? Diolch.

It's not so much looking at what's happening in England as deciding what best we can do and how far we can push the support that we give businesses here in Wales. We showed a real declaration of intent, I think, by taking that permanent measure from April next year with the 30 per cent relief. So, I think we have shown our determination to find every way we can of supporting businesses. We will look at all opportunities, moving forward, including any that might emerge as a result of a budget that still leaves Wales with less money to spend in real terms next year.

Last week's recess gave me the opportunity to speak to many businesses across Brycheiniog Tawe Nedd, many welcoming the decision by this Plaid Cymru Government to cut business rates by 30 per cent for eligible high-street hospitality and leisure businesses. But the UK Government ignored Plaid Cymru's calls during the autumn budget to cut VAT for our high-street businesses, many of which are still struggling. Would the First Minister agree with me that this is a missed opportunity that could have made a real difference to our hospitality, hair and beauty businesses across Wales? Diolch.

I'm pleased to hear that businesses in the Member's constituency welcome our early action to rebalance the business rates system. This permanent reduction will apply to 20,000 or so retail, hospitality and leisure properties across Wales. It's a significant number. It will provide a total benefit worth over £30 million to eligible businesses from April next year. We are using the levers available for us to support businesses in the sector, using our devolved powers. VAT isn't one of those, of course. Whilst those calls on the UK Government to take action are on one side of the balance, we also look at what we can do within our powers now, and that, as I say, is what we will continue to do, moving forward, looking at every opportunity to make sure that we target those businesses that are most in need of our help. Helping those leisure, retail and hospitality businesses in Wales, we thought, was a very, very important step to take.

I think we can all agree that we want to see our high streets thriving and keenly await some of the decisive action from the Government in relation to the budget. But there also, I guess, really does now need to be a conversation about where we target that support and how we sustain strong and vibrant communities in all of our constituencies, which is why I welcome the fact that the UK Labour Government is raising taxes on gambling, increasing machine games duty from 20 per cent to 25 per cent for higher stakes machines. Following this Labour budget, vape and adult gaming centres in England will no longer be eligible for small business rates relief. The extra revenue that then this creates will help fund and support the kinds of businesses that support stronger communities and healthy high streets, which, again, we all want to see here in Wales. So, when it comes to supporting small businesses in Wales, will this Government, then, consider following the example of the UK Labour Government and ask that vape and gambling shops also pay their fair share?

Again, I make the case that it's not a matter of us following what happens in England, where the UK Government is able to take action using reserved powers. That is one thing. We must always look at the way in which we can use our powers in the most effective way. We have limited funding. The fact that public spending is going down next year in real terms as a result of the budget doesn't make things easier, but it's a matter then of targeting those specific areas that we believe can benefit most from the help that we can put in place. If we have a focus on the kinds of high streets that we want to build, and the way that the help that we put in there, including through the work of the taskforce, helps to create those vibrant high streets, I think that is the way that this new Plaid Cymru Government shows that we are serious about supporting towns and city centres the length and breadth of Wales.

First Minister, I recently visited the Wolfscastle Country Hotel and Spa, and restaurant, in my constituency, which is celebrating its fiftieth anniversary this year. It's a fantastic hospitality business that is a significant employer, supports local suppliers and helps boost the local economy. During my visit, we had a frank discussion about the significant challenges facing the hospitality sector and the need for Governments at both ends of the M4 to do more to support the sector and safeguard its future. As we've just heard, whilst some announcements were made in relation to business rates, unfortunately the UK Government's autumn budget failed to deliver the support that many hospitality businesses in Wales had hoped for. In addition to your earlier answer, can you give us an indication what the Welsh Government will be offering in its own upcoming budget to specifically support hospitality businesses like the Wolfscatle hotel so that they can continue investing in the local economy and providing vital jobs in the local community?

Let me wish the Wolfscastle hotel a happy fiftieth birthday and hope it remains a thriving local business for many, many years to come. I agree with the Member that this is a budget that fails to deliver for Wales in a number of different ways. But, again, I make the case that we haven't waited for just the results of the UK budget; the announcement that was made by the finance Minister and I—she even pulled a pint for me while making that announcement—was a clear declaration that we wanted to act as quickly as we could. Having said that, we will always look for opportunities to see how we can use the powers that we have to identify those businesses that are most in need of support. We have identified this as a sector that is important to us in terms of the economy, in terms of the vibrancy of our high streets and our communities. We will always look for different ways, more ways, and push the boundaries of what we can do as a Government within the limitations that we all know arise from that budget, which did indeed let Wales down.

I now call on the party leaders to question the First Minister. First of all, the leader of Reform UK, Helen Jenner.

Diolch, Lywydd. First Minister, when you were in opposition, you said that Wales needed its own COVID inquiry and that the bereaved families deserved answers. Now you're in Government, you're offering them a review without the powers of public inquiry. Are you becoming Wales's answer to Keir Starmer, saying one thing in opposition and doing another in office?

This Government is doing exactly what we said. Just as we said we would introduce the most generous childcare offer anywhere in the UK, we're pressing ahead with it; prioritising the NHS, we're pushing ahead with it; supporting farmers, we're pushing ahead with that. On the COVID issue, we were very, very clear in the manifesto, and for some time before the manifesto, that what we wanted was a means to find the answers that we need to give people assurances that, when another pandemic happens—I hope it's not for a very, very long time, but when it happens—we have learnt the lessons from it. We have an ability now—and we will get more detail this afternoon from this Government—and we have now a mechanism that helps us, yes, to learn from what has happened, but, in doing so, looking forward to giving the people of Wales what they deserve, which is the answers about that future response to COVID. That, surely, is what we're looking for as a nation now.

Will witnesses be compelled to give evidence under oath—yes or no? The fact is the answer is 'no', First Minister, isn't it? I want to remind you of some of the commitments your party made to COVID bereaved families. You've stood in this Chamber and been on the airwaves to argue that Wales needs its own specific COVID inquiry. You criticised the then Labour Government for resisting scrutiny and said the families deserved answers. Your party repeated that commitment in your 2024 general election manifesto. In March this year, your Trefnydd privately reassured one of the bereaved families campaigners that there would be no rolling back on that commitment—no rolling back, First Minister. And on 20 March, just seven weeks before the Senedd election, your now health Minister confirmed to BBC Wales that witnesses would be compelled to give evidence under oath. His words, not mine, First Minister. Yet, on 22 October, you confirmed that the Government's review would have no statutory powers to compel witnesses. First Minister, these families were given repeated assurances by senior members of your party, including you. So, what has changed? Did you dupe bereaved families for votes?

Again, I'd make the case that we are delivering exactly what it said in our manifesto we would deliver, which is to provide answers in order to prepare us for the eventuality of another pandemic in future. I've been here for a few years longer than her, and most of those years—

You can't tell.

—were spent as health spokesman for my party. And the Member is right that we were the first, back in probably April or May 2020, to call for a COVID inquiry for Wales. There was no talk of a COVID inquiry at all. The reason we wanted that was not that we wanted a particular model of inquiry, but that we wanted answers to whatever it was that was emerging around us in those early days of COVID. We knew that this was of such a serious nature that we would want to make sure that we were prepared to face a pandemic in future, learning lessons. 

Now, standing here, I'm not interested in a witch hunt, I'm not interested in particular models, I'm interested in the answers. And in the election and for a long time before the election, it is this model that I totally believe—. She may disagree with me, but I am totally convinced, and have been for some time, that this is the best way to provide the answers that we owe the people of Wales and the victims and their families.

First Minister, these were your commitments, not mine, not Reform's, and I'm simply holding you to account by asking you why you haven't kept to them. And I'll say once again, the question is: will witnesses be compelled to give evidence under oath? And the answer is 'no'. And that's simply not good enough for these families.

First Minister, a leaked letter to Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board staff has revealed that the health board has approved a formal consultation on proposals to cease its urgent primary care centre services across north Wales by 31 March next year. These centres were established to relieve pressure on GP surgeries and emergency departments. And you know as well as anyone in this Chamber what that pressure looks like, especially at hospital emergency departments. Penrhos Stanley hospital in Holyhead has already lost the St David's Hospice ward. The award-winning specialist leg ulcer and complex wound service has been reduced to just one member of staff, while the minor injuries unit has, on occasion, operated on reduced hours. Where does this end, First Minister? What next? Are we eventually going to see somewhere like Penrhos Stanley hospital close altogether? Betsi Cadwaladr remains in special measures, and I don't want to hear that these decisions are simply a matter for the health board. Your Government has responsibility for overseeing this health board, and your health Minister, sitting right there, has statutory powers of intervention. So, will you ask your health Minister to urgently examine the use of those powers to prevent these proposed cuts? Because the people of north Wales expect their Government to take responsibility, not stand by and wipe their hands while more local healthcare services are put at risk.

So, just as this Government did exactly as we promised we would on finding answers following the COVID pandemic, we are delivering exactly as we said we would on Betsi Cadwaladr—a troubled health board that all of us want to see desperately turning a corner. We are in the privileged position of being able to try to help it to turn that corner. It's why my health Minister pressed on in the early days of this new Government to find what those steps are that need to be taken. Measures were announced in June, commissioning an independent review of leadership, governance and culture at the health board, which is expected to be submitted to the Welsh Government imminently so that we can move forward. 

When it comes to operational decisions by health boards, we all know, of course, that those are decisions for the health board itself, and this has to be put, though, in the context of the sustainable GP services that we all want to see in place. There is an expectation by this Government that health boards engage openly and transparently with patients, with staff, with communities about proposals that they have, and my understanding is that no decision has been taken by the health board on this matter. But we also, of course, as a Welsh Government, expect very, very clearly that health boards, wherever they are, deliver sustainable, accessible GP services, and that is our expectation for Betsi Cadwaladr, as for the rest of Wales's health boards.

Leader of Welsh Labour, Ken Skates.

Diolch, Lywydd. First Minister, before May's elections, your party made a raft of promises. But, six months on, health visitors in Cwm Taf are still waiting for you to end a dispute that you'd promised to end within days; parents on low incomes are still waiting for payments that you promised within weeks of the election; council tax revaluation, one of the key issues on which you walked away from the co-operation agreement in the last Senedd, has been kicked into the long grass; and you promised never to repeat the injustice of Thatcherism, but you're looking at snatching free milk from schoolchildren. We thought that The Traitors season had come to an end, First Minister, but isn't it the case that people in the public gallery today and across Wales have found themselves with a Government that isn't being faithful to its promises?

All those, with respect, are nonsense, of course, because, on council tax, whereas the previous administration kicked it to one side and did nothing, we are determined that we need to find a more progressive solution to council tax as it is. On school milk, a consultation is happening because a contract came to an end, and milk continues to be delivered in schools as part of free breakfasts. We're looking at a Government here that made a set of promises, and I know it's a new concept, but it's a Government that's sticking to those promises in making sure that we are delivering the free childcare; that we are delivering those free school meals, with further announcements this week on expansion; that we are delivering help for families with the cost-of-living crisis. That is what people are seeing in this Government: a Government of action.

I apologise for laughing. This is no laughing matter, I'm afraid. People do feel let down by broken promises, and perhaps a review or a plan to review or a plan to establish a commission to review the broken promises of your Government is required.

Six months into your Government's term, families caring for children with complex and additional needs are finding that support is disappearing rather than getting better. Last week, funding ran out for Clwb Cwtsh, Wales's only provider of support for children with complex needs over the school holidays, and Sarah, a parent who relies on this service, has contacted me about the impact that it's having. Her son, Thomas, attends Ysgol Pen Coch in Flint. She wants to know why children with disabilities are being left behind by this Plaid Cymru Government. And, First Minister, it goes without saying that Welsh Labour will be seeking reinstatement of this vital support, obviously, through the process of budget negotiations and through correspondence. But that, surely, shouldn't be necessary. Will you, today, make a commitment, to Sarah and so many others, on what they are calling for, for this Government to reinstate the support immediately?

So, we remember, don't we, Labour going into the recent election with £9 million for additional learning needs. We didn't think that was enough. And I'm pleased that we now have come to an agreement where we're able to, hopefully, release some £60 million as a first step towards strengthening additional learning needs, which is something that the Member and I want to see happening. This is about using our position here, and working constructively with other parties, to make sure that we do deliver on additional learning needs.

We have now a position where an opposition Member here in the Senedd, after last week's budget, seems to be hanging out the bunting, celebrating great wins for Wales, despite the truth being that we are now receiving a real-terms decrease in the public spending that we have in order to spend on matters such as additional learning needs. When we have a Labour Party that, on paper, says it has £14 billion for rail, but the Labour leader here was again hanging out the bunting, celebrating £30 million, one five hundredth of what the Labour Party in Government say they will offer Wales.

Let's be realistic about the need for us to all work together, recognising the pressures that we are under and finding the ways that we can work together, such as on ALN, to make a difference to people's lives, and it comes from co-operation.

Leader of the Welsh Conservatives, Darren Millar.

Diolch, Lywydd. I will say, it's a bit rich of the Labour leader complaining about broken promises when we've still got hundreds of thousands of people on waiting lists and lots of people waiting over two years in spite of your broken promises.

Now, if I can turn to the First Minister. First Minister, back in early 2025, I was contacted by Emily Vaughn. She was a victim and survivor of grooming gangs. She was trafficked around the UK and raped more than 1,000 times by hundreds of men. Your predecessor as First Minister declined every invitation I made to meet with Emily Vaughn. Instead, she said that Emily would be involved in the Welsh Government's own work on tackling this issue, but there's been a lack of progress. I raised concerns about this last year, and again in February. Emily contacted me again just a couple of weeks ago. She's still heard nothing now for months, in spite of these assurances. She's heard nothing about the work that Ministers are doing on modern slavery; she's heard nothing about the promised adult victim survivors advisory group. And yet this is in spite of the fact that, in September, the Deputy Minister for Social Care, Mental Health and Women's Health told this Chamber that survivors' voices would be heard and that their experiences would drive change. Well, I say this to you, First Minister: Emily has a voice, she wants to be heard, but she doesn't feel as though anyone in the Welsh Government is listening. Will you take the opportunity today to agree to meet with Emily and me in order to listen to what she has to say?

Listening is at the heart of everything that we do. I'm a firm believer that we as politicians are conveners of the ideas that we need to bring together to sort out the many issues that we have as a nation and to make the most of the opportunities that we have, and that absolutely includes learning from lived experiences. It's why I want bereaved families to take part and to contribute towards the review that we are putting in place, to learn lessons for the future following the COVID pandemic. And the same is true in this case. If Emily wants to speak with Government Ministers to share her lived experience, why would I not want to engage with that?

Well, thank you for that response, First Minister. I think it is important that she meets with you, as the leader of the Welsh Government, in order that we can assure her and other brave victims who have talked about their experiences that you will be determined, as we all need to be, to stamp out the abuse, the horrible abuse that's been experienced by people like Emily and many others, especially when they were children, at the hands of these evil and wicked perpetrators.

One of the things that you and I still have yet to agree on is the need for a Wales-wide inquiry. We clearly have a UK Government-initiated inquiry into grooming gangs. That has taken the decision now to undertake an investigation in Wales, and that is welcome. But in spite of that, we know that Wales is very different from England. It's a more rural nation; we have more fragmented local government; social services legislation is different; we have a rights-based approach to legislation around children; and community safety is devolved, while policing isn't. These are the same sorts of arguments that you used to posit when you called for a Wales-specific COVID-19 inquiry.

So, after meeting with Emily, which I hope can be scheduled very, very soon, will you agree to look again at the case for a Wales-specific inquiry into grooming gangs, so that we can be sure that we learn lessons and prevent more vulnerable children from being groomed and raped by gangs of paedophiles across our country, and so that we can hold public services to account for any failures?

I will repeat what I've said before, because there's nothing more important than making sure that people are safe, that people feel safe, that they trust authority to look after them, and goodness knows people have plenty of reason to mistrust authority. I have said previously that I will always be open to considering what are the best means to find answers on these issues. It could be on a whole raft of issues.

We've returned again to the COVID issue. I believe we're doing the right thing on that. I believe we're doing the right thing in engaging with the UK inquiry on grooming gangs, especially given the engagement that we had as a Government with that inquiry, wanting that inquiry to be as intensely involved in looking at what was happening in Wales as possible. And now that we have that assurance that work specifically is being done to learn the experience of Wales as a part of that inquiry, that gives me confidence that this is an inquiry that is very relevant to our situation in Wales and that will help us find answers. We'll wait and see what comes out of that, and if we feel that that is woefully inadequate and has failed to get to grips with some of the issues that we face here, let's look again. I am satisfied that the measures being taken now have, at their core, the interests of women, young people and vulnerable people in Wales who need answers about whether authority can be trusted to look after them.

We want to put community pharmacy at the heart of a stronger primary care service. We will be investing to enable pharmacies to provide more clinical care closer to home. We want to build on current arrangements, working in partnership with the community pharmacy network, to make sure that it is sustainable for the future and build on the clearly vital role pharmacies already play in communities across Wales.

Thank you, First Minister. It's quite nice to hear you talk about funding. I've been speaking to pharmacies across my constituency and wider, and they tell me that their colleagues across Wales share the same concerns about underfunding and rising costs. They tell me they are regularly dispensing medicines for less than they pay for them. How is that fair? And how can we expect them to keep absorbing these losses alongside rising staffing and running costs? Our pharmacies are pillars of our community. We rely on them, our GPs rely on them and so do our accident and emergency departments. They need our support and we cannot afford to lose them. So, I'm asking today: will your Government review how pharmacies are reimbursed for medicines and take action when they are constantly being paid less than the medicines cost them? Yes or no? Diolch.

Again, I can only emphasise how important it is that we have a sustainable community pharmacy network. We talk about primary care, and all too often we can think that we're only talking about GP surgeries. GP surgeries are very important, but we're talking about the whole raft of providers of primary care. I think positive steps have been taken in recent years around the expansion of the minor ailments scheme to emphasise the fact that a community pharmacy really is a first contact point for more and more people, but we have to make sure that the support is there for them. Our manifesto committed to putting the NHS on a new and sustainable footing, with greater emphasis on prevention, keeping people well and shifting focus and resources towards day-to-day health services. The role of community pharmacy in that clearly is vital. A strong, sustainable community pharmacy network is absolutely essential to our ambition to shift towards prevention and deliver more care closer to home. In our deliberations about how we make sure that we get money to the front line in the context of falling funds as a result of the UK Government, we will absolutely have a focus on how we can work as positively as we possibly can to make the most of our community pharmacy network.

First Minister, the Welsh Government has a vision to shift more emphasis onto primary care, which is so welcome and so long overdue. We've heard that community pharmacies are a central component of that and I'm sure there's no Member here who disagrees with that statement. I was going to ask you what work you're doing to invest in the community pharmacy network, but I'm going to ask you what we can do to stabilise the network so that the sector can continue to bring their expert care closer to the people. And if I could sneak—. And what further work can be done to improve public awareness of pharmacy services to strengthen their role in front-line services and help to ensure that sustainable future? Because it's what they do and they do it very well.

Public awareness is very important, and, just as we were mentioning earlier, making sure that more and more people know about what they can get out of visiting their community pharmacy first is very important. We can all play a part in that. In terms of sustainability, yes, I use that word a lot, but it's not just freezing what we have. We want to expand clinical services, don't we? And expanding those clinical services is key to the sustainability of community pharmacy in Wales. The more people know about the services that they can offer, the more that they are able to offer. They're at the business end of health within our communities. They are the ones who are there, able to nip problems in the bud, their doors open to the communities that they serve. Through the Help Us Help You campaign, for example, we provide pharmacies and health boards with national communications materials to promote services locally, to ensure more people understand what their pharmacy can do. Creating that momentum behind the growth of the sector is key to its sustainability in the long term.

We all depend on community pharmacies. There was a pharmacy in Morriston, run by Jhoots, which had a shortage of medicines and where the staff were not paid for several months. In January this year, Jhoots Pharmacy entered administration, with the administrators' statement outlining £19 million of debt. Fortunately, the pharmacy was taken over, and also fortunately, Morriston, where I live, has a large number of pharmacies. This is not true across Gŵyr Abertawe. Pharmacies need more support. I support better publicising of what pharmacies can provide, such as flu vaccines. Will the Welsh Government consider increasing the number of items pharmacies can prescribe? For example, rosacea cream needs a prescription. If we do let pharmacies prescribe more, it will reduce pressure on GP surgeries and help pharmacies.

I think we should always have a view to looking at how we can expand the services that are provided by community pharmacy. We have learnt, through the minor ailments scheme and people's engagement with it, that there's a lot more that a community pharmacy can offer than most people think. It would be a mistake by any government not to work very closely with community pharmacy to see what can be expanded, how that would work. Of course, we have now more direct prescribers within community pharmacy. That is the direction of travel that we want to continue on. 

First Minister, community pharmacies are often the first point of contact for people seeking healthcare, playing a vital role in keeping people well, supporting our NHS and taking pressure off already stretched GP practices and emergency departments. Not only that, they also deliver more than 84,000 NHS clinical service consultations each and every single month, yet the network has fallen from 716 pharmacies in 2019 to 683 today. That's 33 fewer local pharmacies at a time when prescription volumes, clinical activity, workforce costs and expectations are all increasing. The loss of a local pharmacy can have significant impact, particularly on older people, those with long-term health conditions and people who may struggle to travel further afield. As well as outlining what the Welsh Government is doing to support the sustainability of community pharmacy networks in Wales, will the First Minister also explain what steps are being taken to reverse the drop in the number of pharmacies here in Wales?

The answer to that last question is the sustainability of the sector as a whole, and making sure the contracts that are in place allow those businesses to be viable. We need them to be viable. When deciding on how contracts work between Government and pharmacies, that's at the core of it. The Member mentioned some statistics; here are some more: 0.5 million consultations have been delivered through the common ailments scheme. I think it was 200,000 independent prescribing consultations in community pharmacies last year. That is significant, as the Member says, in terms of the pressure that it takes off general practice. I also make the case—. We often have questions here, as we have had today, on the vibrancy of high streets. The pharmacy plays a key role in terms of footfall on our high streets. It's very important that we maintain and support pharmacies as a beating heart of town centres.

Co-operation takes many forms, of course. In recent weeks, for example, I proposed an economic partnership to make sure that the Welsh Government and the UK Government work better together in delivering prosperity to people in Wales. It's an issue I was able to discuss with the Prime Minister at the National Economic Council last week. That partnership, which must be based on respect, has to also sit alongside changes to our devolution settlement, so that we have the tools we need to improve delivery of Welsh public services.

Thank you for your response, First Minister, and I was pleased to see you at the National Economic Council in Glasgow as well. I'm sure you entered into those discussions with a genuinely open mind, because it's clear from the people of Wales, First Minister, that people want close collaboration within the United Kingdom, not just to drive growth, but because they understand the deep, long-held links we have, and because we want to see Wales, England, Scotland and Northern Ireland work together for an ambitious future. This seems at odds, First Minister, with your separatist summit held with the leaders of Sinn Féin and the Scottish National Party here in Cardiff just a couple of months ago, where you spent time plotting to break up our United Kingdom—completely the opposite to promoting co-operation and building the stronger links that the people of Wales want to see. It is clear that Plaid Cymru’s plans to sever those crucial economic, cultural and human links that Wales has with the rest of the UK would be disastrous for Wales. So, First Minister, I'll ask you now: what plans do you have to listen to the people of Wales and strengthen Wales's future inside the United Kingdom?

He's still shuddering at the idea of three First Ministers meeting to talk about how we can work together in the interests of the people that we serve. Let me go back to his opening remarks. It might come as a surprise to him—I'm not sure why it should, given what I've said over the years—that I also believe in close collaboration between us as nations within these islands, and I also appreciate and think we should make the most of the deep, long-held links between us in these islands. The difference between he and I is that I don't believe the way that we work together in these islands works particularly well when all the cards are held by a UK Government that cares very, very little about the well-being of the people of Wales. I say let us have the powers in our own hands and use those powers to build those very close, collaborative links that make the most of the deep, long-held links between us in these islands. That's the difference between us: I don't think things as they are now work as well as they could for Wales.

We are within the United Kingdom now, which is why I engaged with the Prime Minister and his Cabinet colleagues in Glasgow last week in a positive spirit, and why I was pleased to leave with genuine gains for Wales, with a significant step forward on fiscal flexibility and on borrowing powers, so that we can use our tools as a Parliament and as a Government in the interest of the people of Wales. We now have an assurance that the Prime Minister personally will look at how he can invest more politically in understanding the injustice of rail underfunding for Wales. That's an important step forward. We have agreement that the proposal I put on the table for a partnership of growth will be looked at in detail now, between Welsh Government and UK Government officials, so that we can find that common ground to create prosperity in all parts of Wales, which is what I've always wanted, and what I'm reading that Andy Burnham wants too. This is positive. I believe in positive collaboration. Don't be scared.

Wales's interests are best served by making its own decisions, and the current constitutional setup is essentially unfair. But as long as the current arrangements continue, they need to genuinely empower Wales. Last week, as a result of a meeting with the Prime Minister, you came out of the meeting with more of an agreement from the UK Government on what is needed for Wales. However, would you agree with me that the assurance from the Prime Minister that allowing more financial flexibility for the Welsh Government is a matter of how and when should become a reality without delay? And does he further agree with me that if the Prime Minister is to be guided by what's best for Wales rather than what's best for some MPs in Westminster, that has to mean immediate and meaningful talks about devolving policing and justice?

I strongly agree. I'm grateful for that question, to be able to build on the comments that I made just a few moments ago. I agree that the constructive calls made by this Government have led to positive comments from the Prime Minister on fiscal flexibility for Wales, as I said. I had an opportunity, as I said, to set out a number of other areas with the Prime Minister—on the growth partnership and the railways—where there are real gains to be made, I think. But it's very clear that the argument on the devolution of justice and policing isn't moving at the pace that the Welsh Government would want to see. So we will, again, strengthen and reinforce how we take that argument to convince Ministers in Westminster that the case for the devolution of justice and policing is stronger than ever. All of the evidence points to that as a step that would benefit the people of Wales. Likewise, we are still waiting for the Treasury to move to allow the Welsh Government to proceed with the Cynnal child payment pilot, and we would encourage the Government not to hamper the Welsh Government's efforts to deal with child poverty. So there are great steps needed to be made by the UK Government.

Well, First Minister, you've certainly succeeded in one kind of cross-border co-operation, haven't you? People travelling from Wales to England to buy alcohol for a start—good news for English retailers, but not for Welsh businesses. 

Turning to a matter of a more serious nature, I know personally the pain of losing someone close from the scourge of cancer, and there are other people in this Chamber for whom the same has happened. So, what practical arrangements are you pursuing with NHS services elsewhere in the UK so that people in north Wales waiting for cancer treatment or specialist treatment can access available capacity when services here cannot meet their needs? And how will you show that those arrangements are reducing delays?

On alcohol pricing—Members might laugh—this is a serious health issue. The question of cross-border trade is one that was taken very seriously on a serious issue by the committee that looked at this and in the previous Government, when it introduced this legislation. These are serious issues, as is the question of cross-border health provision—people travel in both directions, of course, for healthcare across the border, as is normal. Making sure that those agreements are solid and in place to provide for patients in Wales when they go across the border is something that my health Minister works on with his team, to strengthen and to make sure those arrangements are as resilient as possible. And, of course, on cancer services in particular, we will become the first Welsh Government to have a long-term cancer plan, because we recognise that this is something that the people of Wales deserve.

On the First Minister's reference to what he's on the as record saying, can I give another quote by the First Minister? When he met the European Union's ambassador to the UK last year, he said that

'Brexit has caused deep damage to Wales’s economy, and unless the structural barriers to trade and investment are removed, the UK Government’s growth ambitions will remain unrealised.' 

Now, I entirely agree with him, and I hope that he will join me in welcoming today's news of an UK-EU draft deal removing post-Brexit checks on food and agricultural exports. The UK Labour Government is getting on with delivering for the Welsh economy; Welsh voters will be expecting the Welsh Government to do likewise. But the First Minister has devoted a significant amount of time since coming into office promoting Welsh independence. Now, do you accept, First Minister, that you are campaigning to introduce the very trade barriers, frictions and, indeed, borders that, in the case of Brexit, you have argued have caused such damage to the Welsh economy?

We're getting used to the Labour, Conservative and Reform alliance against Wales daring to have ambition.

Oh, come on. 

Let me respond to the question on Europe—

We want to see Wales succeed, First Minister. What are you doing?

Welsh Government has been working—

Can we listen to the response from the First Minister?

Welsh Government has been working constructively with the UK Government on the sanitary and phytosanitary issue. I was able to discuss with the UK Prime Minister last week the question of our relationship with the European Union. I am pleased that we have warmer words from a Labour Prime Minister. I encouraged him, though, to be braver. I encouraged him to go further and to talk about now getting back into the customs union and back into the single market. That is where we want to see an alliance being built of people who are genuinely pro a close relationship with the European Union. Plaid Cymru is clear that that is the relationship that we want to have. I invite the Member to join me in calling on the UK Prime Minister to act in the same way.

We are making good progress towards our programme for government commitment for a compassionate Welsh welfare system. As an initial priority, we are improving the administration of existing Welsh benefits, helping more people receive the support that they are entitled to. We will continue to press for additional welfare powers to deliver made-in-Wales support schemes that reflect our values and meet the needs of communities across Wales.

Diolch, Brif Weinidog. I recently met with the Bevan Foundation and discussed a Welsh benefits system and how it could help deliver real outcomes for some of the poorest households in Wales, without stigma or requiring people to provide duplicate information and navigate duplicate systems. The Bevan Foundation has also long called for a Welsh child payment, and I'm pleased that the Welsh Government is working to develop the Cynnal pilot. This represents not only an important part of a Welsh benefits system, but something that could be life-changing for so many low-income families.

We know the payment could interact with benefits and tax, but the UK Government could introduce a disregard so that families living in poverty in receipt of these payments would not be penalised. What assurances has the First Minister had from the UK Government that these barriers will be lifted so that the Welsh Government can proceed to roll out Cynnal and support can reach those that need it most?

This is a crucial issue. We're still awaiting confirmation from the UK Government on the treatment of Cynnal payments for tax and reserved benefits. We continue to press for the assurance needed to maximise support for families. Ministers and officials have consistently raised these issues with UK Government counterparts and stressed the importance of resolving how the payments are treated in relation to tax and benefits. I should report that there's still positivity around this. We hold the UK Government to account over it because we remain committed to delivering the Cynnal pilot as intended, to ensuring that eligible families receive the full benefit of the support available, as we make the case for the devolution of broader welfare powers. So, we'll continue to engage closely with UK Government on this and press for the decisions needed to remove those barriers to implementation.

The Deputy Minister for Social Care, Mental Health and Women’s Health keeps me and Government routinely updated on the implementation of the strategy. That includes how the work to develop the open access model for mental health services will support our children and young people.

Given that specialist psychological therapy waiting times in Wales remain at the highest levels since the pandemic, with thousands waiting more than 26 weeks, what concrete commitments, if any, emerge from those discussions with the Cabinet Secretary to reduce specialist child and adolescent mental health services and therapy waits for young people in the Betsi Cadwaladr and Powys health board areas that serve Gwynedd Maldwyn?

I'm not sure if it is one issue. Whether it's child and adolescent mental health or adult mental health, it will always be a range of measures that we need to make sure are robust. So, on children and young people, we can look at the broad range from school-based counselling to the open access support that I mentioned, and, of course, there's the CAMHS in-reach itself. The in-reach to schools teams focus on early intervention rather than waiting for problems to escalate. That's the key thing, and they do that by providing expert consultation, liaison advice and training. What we want to do as a Government is to make sure that that suite of measures that young people are able to access, depending on the nature of the issues that they face, are there for them where they want to access them, and that we genuinely have a no-wrong-door approach to the delivery of mental health services.

As the Cabinet Minister for Culture and Sport said in Plenary here on 14 October, Sport Wales is right now working with governing bodies, local authorities and other partners to develop, for the first time, a national picture of sports facilities across Wales. This initial phase of the work will identify gaps in the evidence that we have on what provision is in place and then establish how that information can be maintained, creating a stronger evidence base to support, then, policy and future strategic capital investment.

Thank you, First Minister. Grass-roots sport is essential to the health and well-being of our communities, particularly in rural areas where alternative facilities can be many miles away. In Powys alone, the council estimates that £16.8 million is needed over the next decade simply to bring its leisure facilities into good repair. Meanwhile in Gwynedd, concerns have been raised about the equality of leisure facilities and the declining number of children receiving swimming lessons. Your Government recently announced £13 million in capital funding for sport across Wales. What assurances can you give that rural communities, such as those in Gwynedd Maldwyn, will receive a fair share of that investment, and that access to basic sporting facilities will not become another casualty of the pressures facing local government?

Government is determined to look at all the options that are before us. The Member mentions swimming lessons—of course, we have a programme that is rolling out swimming lessons to children throughout Wales. We've identified that as something that's important for health, for safety and so on. But the truth of the matter is we don't have a sense of the scale of the problem that we face. The Member references a number of estimates that have been brought forward by local authorities, and I've no reason to doubt those figures at all, but the totals that we're looking at in terms of the gaps in provision are going to be greater than that, aren't they? So, the answers that we need to be putting in place are long term. The truth is, though, that we need to understand the scale of the problem. There are examples of investments going on right now: Bro Dysynni in Tywyn, a new all-weather hockey and football pitch, supported by £360,000 of partnership investment between Welsh Government, Sport Wales and partners. Again, in that part of Wales, Byw'n Iach facilities across Gwynedd are seeing investment in improved leisure, fitness and wellbeing facilities, supporting that sort of broader agenda of local participation across all age groups.

But on rurality in particular, I'd include this in the work that we're doing on rural-proofing, so that when we make decisions as a Government on investment in improving our estate for sports and leisure, we remember, as the Member says, those specific requirements of rural areas, where rurality and distances make access to provision more challenging than it does in many urban areas.

The Welsh Government makes a significant investment, of course, in further education in Pontypridd Cynon Merthyr and across Wales. We recognise the vitally important role of further education in supporting economic growth and skills development too, with some £466 million being provided for mainstream further education provision via Medr in this financial year.

Thank you for that answer, First Minister. Naturally, I'm really pleased that thanks to the UK Labour Government and pressure from Welsh Labour MSs, there will now be an additional £60 million to support ALN, including £2.5 million for the FE sector through that second supplementary budget.

Now, FE is really under pressure to support learners with ALN. My local college, Coleg y Cymoedd, has noted a 50 per cent increase in demand, and that's before we look at the participation pressures, which have now risen from an estimated 5,000 learners this year to 5,500 learners unfunded, the equivalent of an entire college of young people without funding.

Now, as the finance Minister confirmed, the extra money for ALN that Labour has secured will include an allocation of funding for long-term planning, which is vital. The college in Merthyr Tydfil has told me they're experiencing increased need in year, as learners are diagnosed. So, how will that resilience and flexibility that's really needed to address this be built into future funding?

Again, I'll take this opportunity to say that I'm pleased that we were able to deliver on this joint determination of ours to deal with the pressures on ALN, and as I have maintained, an element of it has been about agreeing on a quantum of money, but it's about how we can use that and how that's rolled out. So, it's not just that we've been able to talk about a sum of money, it's that we've been able to sit around the table and decide between us how we spend that money, and I think that's very positive co-operation between us, and I'm very pleased that within that is the £2.5 million that's specifically around ALN in further education.

Now, the Member knows full well, as a former tertiary education Minister, that we have seen increasing pressures on FE in recent years, and we inherited from her, from the last Government, a significant set of pressures. That's something now that we deal with, but that we look to building partnerships to make sure that we are as able as we can to build an FE sector that really is fit for the future. We have such great strengths within FE, and that represents opportunities for our young people. That is the key thing. Our job as a Government, and we're always looking for partners to work with on this, is to unlock those opportunities.

Thank you, First Minister.

We have a long day ahead of us, so we will move on to the business statement and announcement. I call on the Trefnydd, Heledd Fychan. 

Thank you, Llywydd. There's one change to this week's Senedd business. No topic was tabled for this week's short debate. Consequently, this has been removed from tomorrow's agenda. Draft business for the next three weeks is shown on the business statement, which, as usual, is available to Members electronically. 

November is Men's Health Awareness Month, commonly known as 'Movember'. In Wales, life expectancy for a man is 78. For a woman, it's 82—almost a four-year gap there. More men are dying by suicide, at a rate almost three times that of their female counterparts. Prostate cancer in Wales is going to increase by 2035. Men are facing a lot of health issues, and I'd be grateful if the Trefnydd could ask the health Minister to come forward in this men's health month with a strategy for men's health specifically, because far too many men now are dying young, and of diseases, without getting the care that they need. So, I'd be grateful, Trefnydd, if you could ask the Minister to come forward.

I thank the Member for raising this issue and requesting a statement. I will make the Minister aware of that. The Member has mentioned a number of statistics. Clearly, there are major inequalities across Wales. There is great variance in terms of age, and in terms of inequalities in different parts of Wales. So, I will certainly make him aware of the issues that you've raised today. 

May I request a statement from the Cabinet Minister for social justice? Stories about sexual assaults in universities are not unique to Wales, but what is clear in Wales is that people, at a time when they are most vulnerable, are expected to go through a complex complaints process. We need a process that is robust and independent enough to ensure that those policies are being effectively implemented, and to ensure that organisations are accountable for any failing to do so. At the moment, what we have in Wales is a regulatory framework through Medr that doesn't go far enough, and which has been criticised for being a self-evaluation process by the universities themselves. So, Trefnydd, can I request a statement by the Cabinet Minister for social justice on what assessment has been made of the need to change the regulatory framework in Wales in order to prevent similar failings from happening again?

I thank the Member for raising this issue. Evidently, I hope that all of us are unanimous in this Senedd that there is no room for sexual harassment, sexual violence or abuse anywhere in Wales, including in our universities. And students have to be able to study and take part in university life safely. That's the starting point for all of us.

The Welsh Government has strengthened the regulatory framework recently, and the requirements of Medr do deal specifically with the safety of staff and teachers, including freedom from harassment, violent misconduct, including sexual abuse, and hate crimes. Medr is working with Public Health Wales and the National Adviser for Violence Against Women, Domestic Abuse and Sexual Violence in the Welsh Government to target the support package on VAWDASV to improve consistency across the higher education sector.

We also have to be clear that it's not just an issue of regulation through education. Preventing sexual violence requires a whole-Government response, and we're committed to doing that. It also needs a response from all of society, bringing the wider VAWDASV agenda together.

Trefnydd, can I ask for a statement on eating disorder in-patient services in Wales? It's more than three years since I updated the Chamber on the predecessor to the joint commissioning committee being asked to undertake a feasibility study on in-patient eating disorder services. Still there is no outcome from that work, and, meanwhile, patients with eating disorders are having to travel to England for their treatment, with all the consequences that entails. This is urgent. Can I ask for a statement on when we can expect an outcome from the JCC on this vital piece of work?

I thank the Member for raising that issue. I will ensure that the responsible Minister is aware of that request and does consider whether further steps are required. 

Trefnydd, I'd like to request a statement from the Cabinet Minister for Health and Care regarding dentistry, following reports that Hywel Dda University Health Board has a £5.1 million underspend in dental funding for 2026-27. Now, this news is, of course, deeply worrying for patients across west Wales as access to NHS dentistry remains one of the most significant healthcare challenges facing local communities. My constituents continue to report difficulties accessing an NHS dentist, and so it's difficult to understand how such a substantial amount of funding can remain unspent. This of course raises serious questions about workforce capacity planning and what impact this could have on efforts to improve access to NHS dental services in west Wales. Therefore, I'd be grateful if we could have a statement from the Welsh Government regarding dentistry so that we can openly question the Cabinet Minister about any discussions that have taken place with Hywel Dda University Health Board regarding this specific underspend, as well as what further steps are being taken to improve access for patients who continue to struggle to get an NHS dentist.

I thank the Member for raising this issue. Dentistry is a concern for many Members, I know. You will have heard the Cabinet Minister recognising those challenges, and outlining what the Government is doing. In terms of the specific issues that you raise, I would ask you to write to the Cabinet Minister for Health and Care specifically on Hywel Dda health board, and, also, there is an opportunity to ask questions to the Cabinet Minister next week in the Chamber.

I'd like two statements, please, Trefnydd. Now, there's something totally wrong with socialist Governments at both ends of the M4 utterly content to give away British taxpayers' money to everyone except the British. At a time when British people are really struggling and our infrastructure is crumbling, I ask myself why on earth is Labour spaffing away £40 million in the Caribbean on green projects and is this Plaid Government wasting £60 million on the nation of sanctuary policy whilst our own Welsh people are on their knees. It has to stop. Can the Government make a statement, setting out exactly how much it gets to spend on foreign aid, foreign people and foreign projects? Because I for one think this Chamber and everyone in it deserve a proper explanation of how, in these times of hardship, you can possibly justify that.

Secondly, I'd like to call for a statement from the Welsh Government recognising the bravery, the courage and the sacrifice of Welsh men and women who fought to suppress the slave trade—Welsh men like Robert Everett and Morgan John Rhys and our great Welsh, English, Scottish and Irish sailors that served together, united in the Royal Navy, under the British Empire, fighting to stop this evil trade. We should be proud of their courage, their sacrifice and their contribution. Will the Welsh Government affirm this in the statement, setting out how their actions will be remembered in our schools, in our museums and in our commemorations? Diolch.

Well, I'm pleased to see the Member taking this opportunity to speak in the Chamber, without actually introducing a short debate that could have covered one of these topics that she has asked for statements on today. It is one thing to ask for time, but when the Member has that time to table a short debate and doesn't do that, then I have to question why ask for statements in Government time when she can't even table her own short debate.

Could I ask for a statement from the Cabinet Minister for Health and Care about the decision by Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board to consult on closing urgent primary care centres in Holyhead, Bangor and Tremadog? I totally accept that this is the health board's consultation to own and that the Welsh Government has no say in the strategic and operational work of the health boards. However, I think it's important that I convey the scale of the concerns prompted by this news in Bangor Conwy Môn and across north Wales. I would appreciate a statement from the health Minister that sets out a clear view from the Welsh Government on the importance of urgent primary care centres as a means of providing key health services within our communities.

I thank the Member for raising this issue. You will also have heard the First Minister's response earlier today. But, certainly, we as a Government recognise the strength of feeling on access to healthcare across north Wales, and particularly on Anglesey. I do understand why the future of emergency care services locally is so important to patients and communities. Certainly, we would ask everyone to engage with the health board on this issue. It is important, of course, that health boards engage openly and transparently with patients, staff, communities and broader stakeholder groups in accordance with national guidance. You will be aware that the urgent primary care centre is continuing to operate as usual until any future decision is taken. The fact that you've raised this does show the strength of feeling locally on this issue, without doubt.

Prynhawn da, Drefnydd. I'd like to request two statements, if I may. One is on the provision of speech and language therapy in our youth justice services. Three years ago, the Senedd's Equality and Social Justice Committee recommended embedding speech and language therapists in every youth offending team in Wales, but at the time the Welsh Labour Government rejected this. So, I'd be pleased to hear how the Plaid Cymru Government will ensure that this funding is in place.

Secondly, I'd like to request a statement on British Gas resuming forced prepayment meter installations. British Gas made £56 billion in profit, and yet they are going into the houses now. This has now resumed. They are planning to go into houses to install, forcibly, prepayment meters. So, I'd like to hear how the Welsh Government is going to protect vulnerable families in Wales. Diolch yn fawr iawn.

I thank the Member for raising those two important issues. On that second point, a number of Members will remember what happened in 2023 when this issue was raised, and on a cross-party basis there was a strong response, from the Government at that time but also from all of the parties in this place. Certainly, the Minister will contact British Gas about this. We do recognise that this causes great concern and that it will cause more pressure on already-pressured households.

In terms of the first issue, as you mentioned in your question, the previous Government didn't accept the recommendation to embed a speech and language therapist in every youth justice team. We are looking anew as a Government at how young people and children who are involved with youth justice services can have more consistent access to the correct speech, language and communication support when those services are needed from them. The Wales youth justice advisory panel discussed these issues on 30 October, with the Deputy First Minister present. The panel was invited to make comments on the challenges noted and the proposed direction of travel, and also to help to steer the next stage of that work.

Trefnydd, I'd like to call for a statement on how the Welsh Government is ensuring that HMO licensing puts the concerns of local residents first and that access to housing prioritises local people. Byba Properties Ltd has submitted plans to Cardiff Council to convert 50 Hendre Road in Trowbridge into a five bedroom house in multiple occupation. This has caused significant concern among local residents, who have stated in their petition that, quote,

'Hendre Road is predominantly a residential street where many families have found a peaceful and supportive environment. The change into an HMO could disrupt our way of life, exacerbating existing problems and creating new challenges.'

Another quote from that petition:

'HMOs often lead to transient populations, which can undermine the sense of community and stability that we have worked so hard to build.'

I am proud to stand alongside Trowbridge's Reform Councillor Ed Topham in opposing this. I therefore call for a Welsh Government statement. Diolch.

There has already been a debate on this issue very recently here in the Senedd, and providing further time wouldn't be a good use of Government time at the moment.

Trefnydd, can I call for a statement from the Cabinet Minister for enterprise on the Global Centre of Rail Excellence, a company that is owned by the Welsh Government and therefore Welsh taxpayers? In 2021, £70 million-worth of public funding was invested into this project on the promise that hundreds of millions would be delivered by the private sector on top of the Government investment and that many jobs would follow. But what happened was that the Welsh Government simply bought a big hole in the ground, which is largely still a big hole in the ground. There doesn't appear to have been any progress on securing any investment, and the Welsh Government at the moment has simply kicked down the road a further decision on what to do about the project until next year. In the meantime, the chief executive's remuneration package has risen by more than 11 per cent in two years and now stands at more than £267,000 per year, with £39,000 per year in employer pension contributions alone. They are eye-watering sums. The taxpayer deserves to know whether they're getting value for money from this project. So, I would like a statement demonstrating who authorised those sorts of pay increases, when the promised private investment and jobs will materialise, and whether we can have some clarity from the Welsh Government on the timetable, because many people think that the taxpayer has been sold a pup on this issue and that we need to make sure that we safeguard our money in the future.

I thank the Member for raising this issue. I will ensure that the Minister responsible will be aware of what you've raised. You will have heard responses by the First Minister and the Minister giving that assurance in terms of value for money and the questions that we're asking as a Government. So, I do hope that you have heard that assurance. I do restate that assurance and, as I said, I will make the Minister aware.

I would like to request a statement from the Welsh Government on their policy towards face coverings and religious dress in Government buildings. Llywydd, I've just come back from my ninth visit to Turkey, which is a Muslim country, and one type of face covering, the burqa, is banned in their public buildings. Here is a list of all the other countries that have also banned the burqa in public buildings: the Netherlands, France, Italy, Denmark, Austria, Portugal, Belgium, Bulgaria, Sri Lanka, Tunisia, Kazakhstan, Chad and the Congo. So, I would like a statement from the Welsh Government on whether they will ban face coverings, including the burqa, in Government offices, schools and hospitals, and whether any guidance to local councils will require them to do so. Diolch, Lywydd.

A statement was given by the Deputy First Minister last week, and let me give another statement: all cultures are equal in this Senedd.

Business Minister, can I please request a statement from the Cabinet Secretary for health about support for people living with ME across Wales? Recent research suggests that around 18,500 people in Wales have ME, or chronic fatigue syndrome, but Action for ME estimates that it's nearly as many as 62,000. Around one in four people with ME experience severe symptoms, with some left homebound and bedbound as well. I recently met with Action for ME, who shared concerning findings from their latest big survey, which revealed 81 per cent of respondents in Wales said they do not feel supported by the NHS, while 82 per cent reported receiving no ongoing support or follow-up care for their ME. Despite these challenges, Wales has no ME delivery plan or named national clinical lead responsible for improving services. Action for ME has called for both measures to help improve consistency of care alongside greater investment in research. Will the Cabinet Secretary, therefore, make a statement outlining what action has been taken following the Welsh Government's recent engagement with ME charities, what steps are being taken to address the gaps in NHS care identified by Action for ME's survey, and whether the Government will commit to introducing a Wales-specific delivery plan and appointing a named clinical lead for ME?

Well, I thank the Member for raising that issue. The Cabinet Minister is here and will have heard the comments that you made. As you mentioned, he recently met with those groups and plans will now be developed.

Trefnydd, can I have a statement from the health Minister outlining how the watered down COVID review will deliver justice for COVID bereaved families? I'd like to read a quote:

'The Government has chosen not to subject its pandemic record to full, Wales-specific scrutiny, unlike the approach taken in Scotland. If we are given the opportunity to lead the next Welsh Government, we'll take a different path.'

Now, those aren't my words, they are the words of your health Minister. Just weeks before the election, your health Minister assured bereaved families that the review would have statutory powers. Those families believed in Plaid Cymru. They believed in you. Trefnydd, bereaved families are watching today—some are here in the gallery, some are watching from home—and after years of fighting for answers, they deserve more than another political explanation. They deserve to know why the commitment has changed. They deserve to know why the statutory inquiry that they painstakingly handcrafted with Plaid Cymru has been abandoned. Now, you yourself said we need a statutory inquiry just like they have in Scotland, in this very Chamber, 11 months ago. It's clear that this can only be called a shameful betrayal from Plaid Cymru of these families, and they deserve answers. Diolch.

Well, I'm content to provide a copy of the agenda to the Member if he's not aware that there is a statement to be made on COVID this afternoon. But I will make this point: some of us in this Chamber have worked with COVID bereaved families for many years, have got to know them very well, and have got to know the heartbreaking stories in their families. And there are some people here now who are playing political games rather than trying to find the solutions to the genuine questions, and also looking to the future. You can use my words from the past today—of course, you can do that, as can the COVID bereaved families. But my conscience is clear, as there's a commitment from the Welsh Government to learn those lessons and to ensure justice for those families. So, unambiguously, I can give that commitment. But if you want to use my words, I have the opportunity to use my words back, and I have worked with those families for many years, as have many in this Chamber, and it does mean a great deal to us, as it does to many people around Wales, to get those answers and solutions.

Finally, Trefnydd, James Evans.

Diolch, Lywydd. I'd like to have two statements, please, Trefnydd, with one from the Minister for education around the protection for small rural schools. In my constituency, Gladestry Church in Wales School is under threat of closure from the local Liberal Democrat-controlled Powys County Council. So, I'd like to know what further protections the Government can offer for small schools that are under threat of closure.

I'd also like a statement from the First Minister, who is sat beside you, on the wildfire summit, because a number of my constituents and bodies have contacted me concerned that the round-table was actually full of the usual suspects and not many people who were actually out there battling the fires, including our farmers. There was only one farmer in that summit who was actually battling fires. So, I'd like to have—[Interruption.] Well, you can chunter away; perhaps you'll give us a statement, First Minister, because I'd like to have that statement from the First Minister to update us on the wildfire summit and what actions are going to come out from it.

Thank you. The First Minister heard your request there. However, in response to what you said, there were agricultural unions there, there were affected farmers, there were more than 40 representatives of the public and private sectors, volunteers and other stakeholders, who all came together for that summit. Clearly, on behalf of constituents, you can always write to the First Minister or any other Minister on any issues that you wish to raise with Ministers on behalf of constituents.

Thank you very much, Trefnydd.

We'll move now to item 3, a statement by the Cabinet Minister for Government Effectiveness and Constitution on the Wales COVID-19 review. I call on the Cabinet Minister for Government Effectiveness and the Constitution, Dafydd Trystan Davies. 

Today, therefore, I announce that an independent panel, a review-and-assurance panel for COVID-19 Wales, will be established. Its main aim will be to assess whether Wales's capability to respond to a pandemic or a national emergency in the future is strengthened. It will assess whether lessons have been learnt and have led to practical improvements, and whether those improvements have taken root and are delivering the impacts needed, and whether we need to do more. Having read the most recent module 6 report from the UK COVID-19 inquiry, it is clear to me that much work remains to be done in order to ensure that the lessons for Wales are properly and thoroughly learnt.

The panel will be expert led and independent of the Welsh Government. It will focus on health and adult social care, services that are substantially within devolved responsibility. They were a central part of Wales's response to the pandemic and were frequently raised as matters of deep concern to bereaved families and others significantly affected. We must—we must—be able to demonstrate, not simply assert, that the lessons have been understood, acted upon and sustained across the system. And we must be able to do this in a focused and timely manner.

I'm pleased to announce, therefore, that Professor Daniel Wincott, professor of law at Cardiff University School of Law and Politics, has agreed to serve as the panel's independent chair. He brings extensive expertise in public law, Welsh devolution, constitutional governance, public administration and the operation of government. The panel will also consist of experts in healthcare systems, social care and public health, giving the panel the breadth of knowledge needed to test evidence, to challenge assumptions and also to challenge the Welsh Government. I will soon confirm the membership, and I expect the panel to meet for the first time early in the new year.

The review will complement, not duplicate, the UK COVID-19 public inquiry. It will make best use of the substantial evidence already collected, including inquiry findings, published reviews and other relevant work. Where evidence is insufficient or where gaps remain, it will be able to examine issues in greater depth and identify what more needs to be done. The UK COVID-19 inquiry has made significant further progress in recent months, with substantial evidence having already been considered, and that emphasises the need for the Welsh review to complement the work of the UK statutory inquiry rather than to duplicate it.

Lived experience will be an important part of the work of the review in Wales. Alone, published and documentary evidence cannot show how changes are impacting communities, families and individuals. I will therefore ask the panel to consider how best to ensure that citizens' voices inform its work and help it to judge whether improvements are making a practical difference.

The panel will report publicly. Evidence-led and outcome-focused assessment will identify progress and remaining vulnerabilities and provide assurance about the readiness and resilience of health and social care services here in Wales. When the panel finds good practice, we will want to share it. Where it finds weaknesses, uncertainty or incomplete implementation, we will consider its conclusions carefully and act to ensure that they are addressed, and do so transparently.

We must also ensure that the work of Government to learn from COVID-19 is strengthened, and that the lessons from the pandemic lead to practical improvements in terms of preparedness and resilience arrangements as swiftly as possible. In recent months, as a Government, we've provided substantive responses to both modules 3 and 4, with policy teams and relevant organisations implementing actions and beginning to implement those actions. We've adopted the national infection prevention and control manual developed by NHS Scotland. Public Health Wales is continuing to work with UK partners to ensure that guidance that future assessments of transmission risk consider the wider context, including how easily infection spreads, the environment, ventilation, the type of care setting and the care being provided. We've also concluded our year-long participation in Exercise Pegasus, the largest pandemic preparedness exercise ever undertaken in the UK, bringing partners together from across Government, NHS Wales, Public Health Wales, local resilience forums, the third sector and wider UK organisations. And the Welsh Government's report on the findings from this exercise will be published shortly.

I'm confident, therefore, that the review that we are announcing today will reinforce the substantial range of activity that is taking place to futureproof our services and emergency response protocols. But Ministers remain accountable for progress in their portfolios, with collective responsibility across Cabinet and Government for ensuring that lessons lead to lasting change. I will bring together ministerial colleagues regularly to assess progress in implementing lessons and consider where further action is needed. This will maintain sustained attention and scrutiny across Government, ensuring that momentum is maintained and lessons continue to inform our work.

Let me reiterate my earlier point: there is much work to be done to ensure that the lessons are properly learnt. Dirprwy Lywydd, learning lessons doesn't diminish the dedication shown by staff, volunteers, carers and communities across Wales; it honours their contribution by ensuring that public services can respond to future crises with confidence and clarity.

Our commitment to action is also grounded in remembrance of those whose lives were lost and changed by the pandemic. We must remember those who lost their lives to COVID-19 and the deep impact this has had on their families, friends and communities. I have asked officials to consider how this Government can suitably mark the commemoration of the pandemic here in Wales. There is significant grief in our communities that is still keenly felt. We owe it to those communities to properly mark that grief and those bereavements.

Our responsibility is to turn remembrance into resolve and lessons into lasting change. This review will help to test our progress honestly and transparently. We will act where needed and strengthen public confidence in our preparedness by so doing. Learning lessons from the pandemic that affected so many lives here in Wales is at the core of the steps I am announcing today, and that is how we will honour all of those affected and build a safer, more resilient Wales for the future. Diolch yn fawr.

I'd like to thank the Cabinet Minister for his statement and acknowledge the fact that the Welsh Government is finally taking steps to establish a Wales-specific COVID review. But, having listened to what we've just heard, I have to say, I am concerned that this isn't going to deliver what the bereaved families have actually been asking for. Because there's a big difference between looking at whether we're better prepared for the next pandemic and properly investigating what went wrong during the last one, and that's the distinction I want to focus on today.

Dirprwy Lywydd, more than 13,000 people in Wales lost their lives to COVID. Behind every one of those deaths is a family, families who have waited years for answers about what happened to their loved ones. Last week, Members received the voices of the Welsh COVID bereaved, and some of those accounts were absolutely heartbreaking. One daughter described watching her mother die through a care home window because she wasn't allowed inside. Another account described a care home losing 26 of its 52 residents after untested hospital patients were transferred in. And one family lost their father after he caught COVID in hospital, only to receive a letter inviting him for his vaccination the following week. These are the people this process must deliver answers for.

Cabinet Minister, you've announced an independent review panel, and I acknowledge the appointment of an independent chair, but your statement makes it very clear that the panel's main purpose is to assess whether Wales is better prepared for a future pandemic. That's important, of course it is, but what about accountability for the decisions made during the last pandemic, because there are still some very serious questions that need to be answered? Why did the Welsh Government wait until 23 October 2020 to introduce the firebreak, despite receiving advice weeks earlier? Why were more than 1,000 patients reportedly discharged into Welsh care homes without being tested? Why were there delays in vaccinating some of our most vulnerable care home residents? And why did the Welsh Government have personal protective equipment stockpiles containing equipment that had expired years earlier? These weren't just administrative decisions. They potentially affect people's lives, and the families deserve to know why those decisions were made and who was responsible.

So, here's my first concern. Nowhere in your statement do you confirm that this panel will have legal powers to compel witnesses to give evidence or require documents to be handed over. And that matters, because if a former Minister or senior official refuses to co-operate, what can this panel actually do about it? Can it compel them to attend? Can it demand the evidence, or will it simply have to accept whatever information people choose to provide? Because surely we cannot have a process where the people responsible for making decisions can decide for themselves whether they want to answer questions about them or not.

And there's another issue. You say the panel will consider how best to involve bereaved families. I'd like to thank the Cabinet Minister for his—. Sorry, let me start again. You say the panel will consider how best to involve bereaved families, but why is that still something to be considered? That's the point I'm making. Surely those families should be guaranteed a meaningful role from the very beginning. They've waited long enough, and they've already made it clear what they want. They want a process that can establish the truth and hold decision makers accountable. I understand the Government doesn't want to duplicate the UK COVID inquiry, and I agree that we shouldn't waste tax moneys unnecessarily, but the families themselves have suggested a focused Wales inquiry, using evidence already gathered by the UK inquiry while retaining the powers needed to obtain further evidence where necessary. So, why has that option not been taken forward? And what evidence does the Government have that the panel announced today will deliver the same level of scrutiny?

Dirprwy Lywydd, I also notice that the Minister hasn't given us a budget or a reporting deadline. We're told that the panel will meet for the first time in the new year, but how long will it take? How much will it cost? And when will the families finally get some answers?

So, I want to finish with four straightforward questions. First, will this panel have the legal powers to compel witnesses and to obtain documents, and if not, why not? Secondly, will bereaved families be guaranteed a meaningful role in this work? Thirdly, what is the budget, and when will the panel report? And fourthly, will it investigate the decisions made by Welsh Ministers during the pandemic, or will it only examine whether we're better prepared for the next one?

Thank you.

Because that's the real issue here. Nobody disputes the importance— 

Can you conclude, please?

—of learning lessons and preparing for future emergencies, but we cannot simply move on to the next pandemic without properly examining what happened during the last one. The families deserve more than assurances that lessons have been learned. They deserve to know what went wrong, why it went wrong, and who was responsible.

Sorry, Iain. Conclude, please.

And until those questions are properly answered, I don't believe this Government can honestly claim to have delivered what families were promised. Diolch.

I thank the opposition spokesperson for those questions. Let me begin in reverse order. In order to properly learn lessons, you have to be clear what went wrong, and that is clearly part of the process of learning lessons. I was struck by module 6, which you may have seen, recently published by the UK COVID inquiry, which looks in some depth at some of the issues in Wales around social care particularly. Some of the personal accounts that you've referenced there were very clear in that—I mean, in the failures identified by that module 6 report. So, I am clear that the review will need to learn lessons, and in order to learn lessons, will need to be able to identify what went wrong as part of learning lessons.

The budget is within the public inquiries line of the Welsh Government, and that is subject to the ongoing process. We've allocated that there will be money within that budget line, which is some millions—that is the budget line for the public inquiries unit of the Welsh Government. It is £1.5 million in terms of the initial budget that we've been looking at there for the year ahead.

Are we talking about the bereaved families being part of the review? I very much hope that they will play a full part in that review, and I will do anything I can to ensure that they can play that full part, and encourage the chair and the panel to involve them as far as is possible.

You have identified the issues. It is a non-statutory review. We've been clear about that. I would expect every Welsh Government Minister who’s served in this place to support this review in completing its work and in learning lessons for the future. I think that is a reasonable expectation that I should place on Welsh Government Ministers and on the public sector in Wales.

My thoughts and the thoughts of all of my Welsh Labour colleagues are today with those who lost loved ones during the pandemic and those who continue to live with its consequences and, of course, with all those who worked tirelessly to keep our communities safe during what was the biggest public health challenge this country has faced in living memory. It is vital that we continue to learn lessons from that time and to ensure that Wales is as prepared as possible for any future pandemic. That must remain our shared objective.

The UK COVID inquiry has received thousands of pages of evidence from the Welsh Government and has heard extensive oral evidence from former Ministers and from civil servants, and importantly, that work is ongoing. It has not yet fully reported. I think it is important that the purpose, scope and intended outcomes of the Government's review are clearly understood. In particular, the Minister needs to be clear about how this work will complement the UK COVID inquiry and what additional lessons it's intended to identify for Wales. That clarity will be important for everyone affected by the pandemic, including bereaved families who understandably want answers and reassurance that lessons are being learned.

So, can the Minister set out how the review will complement rather than duplicate the work that's already been undertaken by the UK inquiry, and how it will relate to the recommendations that are yet to be published? And given the concerns already raised by some bereaved families, can you tell us what steps the Government will take to ensure that those affected feel their voices are properly heard? It's difficult to see at this stage how this matches the expectations of bereaved families who feel let down, to say the least, by this Government.

Today's statement fails to identify the terrible harm that COVID-19 inflicted on young people and on their well-being, on education, on employment, businesses and the economy as a whole. Why? Infection control was a key concern in these areas as well as, of course, in health and care settings. How can you guarantee the independence of the review panel where political appointments are being made? And, as I've already said, infection control was the biggest issue influencing what happened during the pandemic, so do you agree with this, and who do you believe has the adequate expertise in this field to be part of the review?

With regard to Exercise Pegasus, in which I and a number of my colleagues participated, I'm afraid it did not reflect the recommendations of all modules of the UK inquiry. And turning to those previous modules, does this Government have a different position or a different view on any of the recommendations from previous modules?

Will the review meet publicly? Will all documents submitted to the review be available to the public? And how much will this review cost over the course of not just the single financial year that it will take place over, but in total? You mentioned a figure of £1.5 million. What will be the total amount that the review will cost, and how does that compare to the cost of a Wales-specific COVID inquiry?

Finally, I think the most important question to ask in any form of inquiry is not necessarily when, what or where, but why. Minister, why were Plaid Cymru promising a Wales-specific COVID inquiry before the election, only to drop it after getting into power? If you argue that a review is the same as an inquiry, can you therefore explain why you allowed the public to believe you meant that they'd have a public inquiry, if it was only ever your intention to set up a review? Diolch.

Diolch to the spokesperson for a wide range of questions. I'll begin by stating very clearly that the Plaid Cymru manifesto set out—and I've read it numerous times recently—that

'we will establish a review of Wales’s Covid response, its legacies and lessons for the future within the first year of the next Senedd term, with a targeted focus'.

That's the 2026 manifesto for this election. That is the manifesto upon which we stood and upon which we were elected to this Senedd. I would hope that the inquiry is as public and transparent as possible. The spokesperson will be aware that there are some issues of confidentiality around medical issues that would need to be dealt with, but I would expect the inquiry to be as public and transparent as possible. I would expect us as a Government—and we will—to set out all of our responses to the UK COVID-19 inquiry and our responses to those recommendations.

There is a programme of work, as the spokesperson will be aware, in the UK COVID inquiry, and what my officials have been working on is a prospective programme of work for our review, which would complement that and would build upon the work and the evidence gathering that is being undertaken by the UK COVID inquiry. I, like the opposition spokesperson, pay tribute to the bereaved families, acknowledge their grief, and very much hope that their experiences will form a central part of the considerations of the review, as I have set out.

Can I thank the Cabinet Minister for this afternoon's statement and also for taking the time out to speak with me before the contribution today?

Where do we begin? What on earth has happened here today, Cabinet Minister? Because for years, Plaid Cymru, like the Welsh Conservatives, supported calls for a Wales-specific COVID inquiry. Both of our parties lobbied the previous Labour Government to launch the probe relentlessly throughout the last Senedd term. It is probably one of the very few things on this planet that we actually agreed on together.

Given how vocal Plaid Cymru has been on this important topic, I think most people thought that this was going to be a done deal and that we would get just that when your party came into power in May this year. Well, how wrong could we be? Because this review is nowhere near enough. It is certainly nowhere near what we and, more importantly, the people who lost loved ones during the pandemic were promised. How have we gone from being promised a full-blown independent Wales-specific COVID inquiry to a mere review, Cabinet Minister? Because just under a year ago, the now First Minister said, and I quote:

'despite failings during the COVID response, the Labour Welsh Government still refused to establish a Welsh COVID inquiry so we can truly learn lessons. Plaid Cymru will right this wrong.'

On another occasion, Plaid Cymru's leader told the Welsh Parliament, and again I quote for everyone:

'Surely Welsh government can see now what I and the Covid-bereaved campaigners have long called for, which is that we need that full Welsh Covid inquiry, if we're to have any chance of getting at the real truth and learning lessons.'

Mabon ap Gwynfor, now our health Minister, said last summer, and again I quote:

'From the very outset, we on these benches were firm in our belief that the scale of the pandemic, as well as the influence of Welsh Government decisions in dealing with its impact, deserved a full Wales-specific public inquiry'.

'That's why a Plaid Cymru Government would establish a COVID inquiry for Wales within the first year of the next Senedd term'.

These were clearly nothing more than hollow words and empty promises, weren't they, Cabinet Minister? Did Plaid Cymru ever have any genuine intention of delivering on its pledge to hold an inquiry, or were you just making the right noises in the run-up to the election? Because, quite frankly, for me, this is an unbelievable u-turn.

What I find a particularly bitter pill to swallow is the fact that Plaid Cymru politicians have totally disrespected and strung along bereaved families. You have genuinely sold them down the river. It is no wonder the COVID bereaved families group—who, I must say, have been truly remarkable in every way in their campaigning—feel like they have had the rug pulled from underneath them. By not holding a statutory inquiry, I fear important questions will remain unanswered, Cabinet Minister.

Last term, as I'm sure many of you will recall, the Senedd established a COVID committee. Conservative Member Tom Giffard was, in fact, a Co-chair of this committee, and Members from all different parties were sitting on this committee too. It was a great start, but, unfortunately, its powers were limited. That's why a review simply cannot achieve what an inquiry can. Can't you see that, Cabinet Minister? With an inquiry, you can compel witnesses to give evidence. You simply can't do that with a review. Do you honestly think, Cabinet Minister, that the likes of Vaughan Gething, Mark Drakeford and other key players are going to voluntarily take part in such a thing? We all know that a review cannot guarantee the proper transparency an inquiry can.

Does the Cabinet Minister accept that a review is destined to fail from the start, or is that part of Plaid Cymru's plans? Because, Cabinet Minister, the UK inquiry will not, I fear, put the Welsh Government's actions and decisions under a microscope in the same way a Welsh inquiry would. Wales runs the risk of becoming a footnote in the UK inquiry's final findings, and we cannot allow that to happen. The Plaid Cymru Government—in fact, the Plaid Cymru party as a whole—used to share the same train of thought until recently. Cabinet Minister, there's nothing wrong in admitting that you've made a mistake. It is to be expected with a new Government still finding the ropes, although I'm still not quite sure how Plaid Cymru can make a blunder as big as this one. So, will you and your colleagues drop this review and instead bring forward an independent Wales-specific COVID inquiry, which Plaid Cymru originally promised? Thank you.

Thank you to the spokesperson for those questions. We have been clear that the COVID review as set up by this Government will ensure that we learn those lessons. I would expect this Senedd and the people of Wales to hold us to account for learning those lessons. The measure of the success of this Government in this area will be how we learn those lessons. We have set out, you've set out, our colleagues have set out eloquently why those lessons desperately need to be learnt. They need to be learnt in a timely fashion, they need to be learnt in an effective fashion and that is why we are setting up the review today.

You've made comments that the UK COVID inquiry would give no attention whatsoever to Wales—[Interruption.] A footnote, even. Thank you. I would gently suggest to the Member that it would be good to read the module 6 report, for example, which has recently been published, where there are over 100 comments regarding the performance of the Welsh Government and Wales in relation to social care. I'm afraid to say it is grim reading, it is damning reading, but it is clear in its view on the actions of the then Welsh Government. That, amongst many other things, persuades me that we need to learn those lessons promptly, effectively and efficiently, which is why we have settled on a review.

While there is so much to be welcomed and much that I would agree with in the Minister's statement today, I do remain confused and disappointed by the Government's stated position this afternoon. After calling for a statutory Welsh inquiry for many years, like so many others, whilst in opposition, Plaid Cymru have now downgraded to a non-statutory review. Like others, I have met with representatives of the bereaved families and they do feel deeply let down by this decision. A non-statutory review risks unnecessary duplication of work already carried out by the UK inquiry whilst lacking the power to compel witnesses to provide evidence under oath. The COVID-19 Bereaved Families for Justice campaign proposed a short, sharp statutory inquiry focused on the issues that have been insufficiently scrutinised by the UK inquiry, which they believe could be delivered within a budget of £10 million. They have stated that they are not prepared to participate in yet another review that has no powers to hold decision makers accountable or drive forward meaningful changes. Is the Government confident that this proposed review can go ahead in a meaningful way without participation from bereaved families? Diolch.

I thank the Member. One of the reasons for establishing a review is that that is an effective way of complementing the work of the UK COVID inquiry and ensuring that there is a forum for a focus on Wales. I shall repeat the point that I have already made: I should very much hope that the COVID bereaved families and those who have suffered from COVID in all its forms will play a full and active part in the review. That is what I will be asking the chair of the review to ensure and that is the commitment I make today to this Chamber. 

I feel very sad standing here today. I feel very sad for the families affected, many of whom are in the public gallery and are actually shaking their heads at what you've said, I'm afraid. I feel very sad that the integrity of this Senedd has been compromised. The reason I say that is I sat here in the last Senedd term hearing very clearly from both the current Cabinet Minister for health and the First Minister how important it was to have that independent inquiry. And I feel very sad that I haven't heard the word 'sorry' in your statement this afternoon: sorry that you've let down the families, sorry that you have to have another tack. Being honest, there are things that change, but the people who deserve to hear that you are very sorry are those families sitting in the gallery and those families affected. So, will you now use this opportunity to apologise and to say 'sorry'? Diolch yn fawr iawn.

Diolch to the Member. We have been clear, the manifesto was clear, that a Plaid Cymru Government would seek to establish a COVID review. That is what we are doing today. I acknowledge the immense work that the COVID bereaved families have done, their loss, their grief, how they were let down during the pandemic. I am deeply sorry for that—I am deeply, deeply sorry for that. I don't think any human being who sat there listening to the families talk of losing loved ones in detail, and in awful detail, could not be moved by that experience. That leads me to the conclusion that we must learn the lessons and learn the lessons promptly and effectively. I acknowledge—and I acknowledge those who have campaigned—that is not the conclusion that others have reached, and I am sorry we have not reached an agreement on that. But that is the conclusion—conscientiously, carefully, thoughtfully—that I have reached.

After six years and three different Labour First Ministers, your announcement that Wales will finally have our own focused COVID review marks real progress. The ongoing UK inquiry started four years ago, but it has been criticised for minimal scrutiny of Welsh decision makers. Testimony from Welsh Government officials and Ministers was very limited, and their written evidence was described as often slow, incomplete or missing entirely—not to mention the disappearing WhatsApp messages. Last month's UK care sector report has been described as weak on establishing responsibility and lacking recommendations, both crucial here in Wales, where so many untested patients were discharged from hospital back into care homes. There is also concern that the UK inquiry has failed to properly consider the impact on young people on so many different levels, especially the most disadvantaged. Rather than focus wholly on blame, our review must consider deeper lessons to be learnt and provide a road map for long-term support for the children who have paid a hidden price. Finally, the concerns of the COVID-19 Bereaved Families for Justice Cymru should be addressed. In particular, will the Minister confirm what steps can be taken should witnesses refuse to come forward or the UK inquiry does not co-operate? Diolch.

I thank the Member for the questions. I think the impact on young people is clear and continuing. I was discussing matters with the Cabinet Minister for education yesterday about the work that she is doing to make sure that we learn the lessons and we improve our education system around attendance and around those issues with schools that have been clearly a hangover from COVID.

I repeat my statement from earlier: I would expect former Welsh Government Ministers and public servants in Wales to fully co-operate with this inquiry; that is a wholly reasonable expectation. I set that out in front of the Senedd, and I will report to the Senedd if that expectation is not met.

In terms of the UK COVID inquiry, the points are very well made. Officials have already been in close discussion with the UK COVID inquiry to ensure that the vast amount of evidence submitted by the previous Government, and others, is available to this review, so we can build on and complement the UK inquiry, not duplicate what has already gone on. These are the core elements of why I have taken the decision that I have, and proposed to my Cabinet colleagues that this is the way we properly learn the lessons from the COVID pandemic here in Wales.

vast amount of evidence submitted by the previous Government, and others, is available to this review, so we can build and complement the UK inquiry, not duplicate what has already gone on. 

These are the core elements of why I have taken the decision that I have, and proposed to my Cabinet colleagues that this is the way we properly learn the lessons from the COVID pandemic here in Wales.

This review is a broken promise, and it's a pale imitation of the accountability that the people of Wales were led to expect. Plaid Cymru spent years demanding a fully-fledged, Wales-specific COVID inquiry, with the powers to compel evidence. And instead, they have chosen to undertake a non-statutory process that cannot require the attendance of witnesses, or compel evidence under oath. I understand, Minister, that you expect former Ministers and civil servants to participate, but you had the power to force them to, and you've chosen not to use it. 

Bereaved families in Wales have rightly pointed out that without those necessary powers, this review risks becoming nothing more than an expensive exercise in reputation management. 

The UK inquiry has already shown that there were serious failures in Wales that warrant further investigation, but this review may be unlikely able to explore those failures in a necessary level of detail. The people of Wales deserve a process with real teeth. They deserve a process that examines failures to protect the vulnerable. And they deserve a Government that actually delivers on what they promised. Diolch yn fawr. 

Diolch. I agree. We need a review to look with teeth, with effectiveness, at what has gone on. As you've mentioned, there were very serious failings identified by the UK COVID inquiry. We need to learn those lessons, and we need to learn those lessons effectively so that those things do not happen again. 

Finally, Cabinet Minister, Andrew R.T. Davies. 

Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. Minister, I have a very high regard for you, but you've sold the COVID bereaved families out here. Your telling remark in answer to a question was that this is an inquiry. It's not an inquiry; it's a review. And you have sold out on what Minister after Minister who sit on that front bench now, when they were shadow spokespeople, were saying to the public, and to this Senedd, that you were going to come forward with a statutory inquiry that, ultimately, would have powers to compel witnesses. 

So, I have three questions for you, Minister. One: if your witnesses do not turn up, or evidence is withheld, will you put powers before the commission to ultimately compel those witnesses to come before them? Two: when you look at the Senedd Cymru (Member Accountability and Elections) Act 2026, if you look at what your colleagues said in opposition, and you compare it to the contents of that Bill, I would suggest that the First Minister, the health Minister, and the leader of the house would be on a charge today for misleading people and not holding true to their word when they came into Government. 

And the final point I will make to you is: why did you rule out the inquiry that the COVID bereaved families put before you, that was worked up with the health Minister—and the e-mails are there for all to see—working with the COVID bereaved families, that would cost £10 million and would be delivered within 18 months? Why did you rule that out?

I thank the Member for the questions. Let me just return once more to what was in the manifesto, upon which everyone, everyone on these benches, stood: We will establish a review—a review—of Wales's COVID response, its legacies and lessons for the future, within the first year of the Senedd term, with a targeted focus. That is what I am delivering today. 

The Member has made the point regarding the compelling of evidence. That has been made by several colleagues. I do expect Government Ministers to play a full part in that inquiry. If that isn't the case, then I will report it to the Senedd and take what steps necessary following that. But I do not believe we will get there, because the focus of this inquiry is on learning lessons, is on ensuring the people of Wales are safer in the future, by understanding what happened, by honouring the legacy of those who fell during the COVID pandemic, and by ensuring better preparedness for the future. 

Let me acknowledge: these are not easy issues. These are not issues where there will be agreement. There are people who have campaigned for many, many years 

There are people who have campaigned for many, many years on various aspects of this, and I want to pay tribute to all of them. I will say this: as we return to these matters, as I'm sure we will, in questions in the months and years ahead, what I very much hope to be able to do—to this Senedd, and to the families, and to everyone else—is to report on genuine progress on learning the lessons, on being clear where there were failings, and on building a safer and more resilient Wales for the future. That is what my pledge is to you as Members of this Senedd. Diolch yn fawr.

Thank you, Cabinet Minister.

We will move now to item 4, a statement by the Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Minister for Social Justice and Equality: partnership working with the third sector. I call on the Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Minister for Social Justice and Equality, Sioned Williams.

Thank you very much, Dirprwy Lywydd. Our programme for government, quite rightly, places community empowerment and partnership working and prevention at the heart of delivery. It is in this context that today I want to clearly set out the relationship we as a government want with the third sector, how we will support the sector and recognise the importance of volunteers.

We are fully committed to discharging our duties to promote the community and voluntary sector and to delivering on the commitments set out in the existing third sector scheme, because the devolution journey in Wales has always been steered by the relationship with the community and voluntary sector. Wales has strong foundations for better partnership between government and the sector, and we have seen other parts of the UK look to Wales as they develop their own mechanisms and arrangements.

The current third sector scheme was put in place back in 2014. Since then, we've seen significant events and changes impact Wales and its communities—from COVID-19 and the pressures of the cost of living to important legislative changes such as the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015. With our ambitions for Wales and our commitment to partnership working, it is now time for us to shape a new relationship with the sector, a relationship that builds on recent lessons and reflects our shared ambitions for Wales. I want to see a scheme that continues to be fit for purpose and that works for Government and the voluntary sector. Whilst having a scheme is important, in order for it to have genuine impact, it needs the right infrastructure and mechanisms to bring it to life and to realise its ambition.

We are fortunate in that we already have the Third Sector Partnership Council and Third Sector Support Wales. These important pieces of infrastructure enable positive working relationships with the community and voluntary sector and effective representation at national, regional and local levels. The scheme also includes the code of practice for funding the third sector, which is a key tool in guiding Welsh Government's funding of the sector.

We will all have visited community groups, I'm sure, and voluntary organisations, recognising and valuing the contribution that they make. But as with our public services, we also see the pressure facing those voluntary organisations, which are often the first places that people turn to, not just in a crisis but also when they want to see change in their communities.

Last month, Cabinet confirmed its commitment to the third sector funding code and its five principles. These principles include, for example, the fact that early and continuous dialogue ensures we develop strong relationships with the third sector. These relationships in turn support policy development, service delivery and a team Wales approach to tackling the challenges facing our communities.

challenges facing our communities.

The code advocates for the use of longer-term funding agreements where this is appropriate. The benefits of longer-term funding include allowing funded organisations to plan better services, without the stop-start cycle we often see with one-year agreements. It also means longer employment contracts, leading to improved recruitment and retention of staff, and it cuts bureaucracy for both the funding department and the funded organisation.

Annual funding agreements mean that the funded organisation bears all the risks and burdens of delivery of services. The uncertainty around whether a funding stream will continue or will be processed in a timely manner can see organisations issue redundancy notices for employees or lose staff due to short-term contracts or continued uncertainty. High turnover of staff has a cost implication and can affect the ability to deliver services. This is why, as a Government, we are committed to implementing the code.

Volunteers and voluntary organisations are at the heart of every community. They are the social glue that keeps our communities together. That is something we should never forget. Blood Bikes Cymru, mountain rescue teams, lifeboat crews, and community first responders are all volunteers. The public perhaps are not always aware of that. Volunteering is special because it's something we can all do with the right opportunities. A person’s background or upbringing should not be a barrier

Our communities and society are all the richer for volunteers, and this is something we should be proud of and celebrate. The co-developed vision for volunteering in Wales, along with its implementation plan, is focused on creating safe, supported and sustainable volunteering opportunities. They form a coherent narrative that will allow organisations across all sectors and parts of Government to unleash current and future volunteers’ potential in ways that will benefit both the volunteers and those people they support. This Government will provide the strategic leadership, along with other key partners, for volunteering in Wales. We will help to remove barriers, widen participation, support volunteer-involving organisations, and ensure volunteering is recognised as a key contributor to community well-being and community life.

The community and voluntary sector is our nation's social and moral conscience. They ensure no-one is left out or behind. However, without good organisations and community centres, volunteering cannot take place. Whilst the act of volunteering is free, there is a cost associated with ensuring it is safe and well managed. By working in partnership, the Government and the sector can provide creative solutions that enhance our offer and remove duplication, because the third sector is able to be both nimble and flexible to the needs of communities. For example, the positive connection between sports activity and health.

Our programme for government cannot be delivered without the independent community and voluntary sector and the volunteers who support it. As a Cabinet, we recognise that, and that's why we've confirmed our commitment to the third sector scheme and agreed the principles of the code of practice for funding the third sector, as well as the vision for volunteering in Wales.

Next week is trustees week. Our charities cannot operate without your contribution. So, to all those people who volunteer or help in any way, I’d like to say 'thank you' on behalf of our Government. Our communities are safer and healthier because of your contribution. Thank you.

and healthier because of your contribution. Thank you.

I thank the Deputy First Minister for her statement, and I join her in thanking the thousands of volunteers and third sector organisations across Wales. Their contribution is enormous. But that is precisely why they deserve more from the Government than warm words, and Deputy First Minister, there are a lot of warm words in the statement—partnership working, community empowerment, strategic leadership, shared ambitions, a team Wales approach—but remarkably few targets, deadlines or measurable outcomes. And we have heard this language before.

The current third sector scheme dates from 2014, so if Government now wants to shape a new relationship with the sector, what exactly is going to change? Because perhaps the most revealing part of your statement is your own description of the current funding system. You acknowledge that one-year funding creates uncertainty, that organisations can be forced to issue redundancy notices, that they lose experienced staff, that high turnover affects service delivery. I agree. But those are not theoretical problems, they are consequences of the funding environment over which your Government presides. So when you tell us the funding code advocates longer term funding, I have a simple question: how much Welsh Government third sector funding is currently awarded on a one-year basis, and by what date will you substantially reduce it? Because advocating longer term funding is very different from providing it, and partnership cannot mean Government holding the purse strings whilst charities carry the risk. Your own statement says that under annual agreements, the funding organisations bear the risk and burdens of delivery. That is quite an admission. So what are you going to do about it?

This brings me to accountability. The Welsh Government distributes hundreds of millions of pounds in grants to third sector organisations. Taxpayers have every right to expect proper scrutiny, but accountability must operate in both directions. Organisations receiving public money must demonstrate what they have achieved, and Government must demonstrate that its funding decisions are transparent and based on evidence of what works. What changed for the person who needed help? That is the outcome. So what outcomes will you publish? How many organisations will move on to multi-year settlements? How much bureaucracy will be removed? And when can this Senedd objectively judge whether any of this has worked?

I also want to ask specifically about small community organisations. When Government talks about the third sector, there is a danger it hears disproportionately from organisations large enough to employ policy officers, bid writers and professional fundraising teams. The small organisations in Wales may have one employee, or none. It might be five volunteers around a kitchen table. They don't have a compliance department of somebody permanently available for another grant application, consultation or procurement exercise, yet they are often closest to the people we represent. So what assessment have you made of whether the current system inadvertently advantages large professionalised organisations over smaller grass-roots organisations? And what will you change to ensure those smaller voices are genuinely heard?

There is another sentence in your statement that deserves scrutiny. You say,

'our programme for government cannot be delivered without the independent community and voluntary sector'.

Precisely. But if Government increasingly relies upon the third sector to deliver its programme, partnership must not become a polite description for outsourcing responsibility. Charities should complement effective public services. They should not become the emergency service permanently filling gaps left by the state. Nor should organisations become afraid to challenge Government because Government is also their funder. So what safeguards will protect their independence, including their ability to criticise you?

Deputy First Minister, nobody disputes the value of volunteers or the importance of the third sector. The question is whether this Government can turn around another statement of good intentions into something organisations can actually see. So, I'll finish with three straightforward tests:

I'll finish with three straightforward tests: how many organisations will receive longer term funding, by when, and what measurable outcomes will you publish so that this Senedd can hold you accountable? Because, the existing scheme has been in place for 12 years. After 12 years, another declaration of commitment to partnership is not enough. Partnership will be proven by what changes, not by how often the word appears in a Government statement. Diolch.

Thank you very much for those questions. I will focus on funding. As I set out very strongly, I think, in the statement, I did emphasise that this Cabinet is committed to ensuring that we commit to the code of practice, which is part of the statutory third sector scheme that has been co-produced with the third sector through the third sector partnership council, and that ensures that it is accessible and that it continues to be relevant and that it is regularly updated.

There are five principles in the code, which are not only focused on funding; they are also intended to create a holistic environment for that positive relationship and understanding between the sector and whoever provides the funding to it. So, we are very clear that multi-year funding is something that does support better services in what is provided through the third sector. As I mentioned in the statement, it also ensures that the organisations and voluntary groups can plan more effectively, and certainly for those that have staff, that they can provide assurances to staff too, and as I set out very clearly in my statement, in terms of that funding environment, because we have committed to provide multi-year funding where that is appropriate and possible, then we will continue to promote longer term funding and also encourage all those in the public sector that are also funders to follow that code of practice in relation to the funding of the third sector.

You mentioned and I also referred to the fact that the third sector scheme hadn't been updated since 2014, and that's why we are now reviewing that, because as I mentioned, there are so many things that have changed in our society in that period—all of those things that we've been through since 2014. the way that people engage with each other, the technology that's now available—and I'm sure that many of the people in this Chamber hear from groups that there are challenges in attracting volunteers and that might have been easier in days gone by. People now work in different ways, for example. Their weekends look different. And of course there have been those major events, as I mentioned, such as COVID, of course, which has had a profound impact there. So, it is about time that this was reviewed.

Therefore, a group has been established. It is the third sector partnership council group that has been established to consider how that relationship can be strengthened and made more effective. So, when I have further details as to how that work is progressing, I do commit to bring that update back to the Senedd.

Finally, you mentioned smaller groups and smaller organisations, particularly those that are volunteer led, and I do recognise

and I do recognise that those challenges can be different for smaller groups, particularly those groups that are run by volunteers. So, I have raised this issue myself from the opposition benches, and I do understand that the requirements, in relation to monitoring, evaluation and reporting, do have to reflect the scale of the funding provided, and recognise the nature of the organisation that is funded, because I do think that that element of proportionality, in terms of that relationship in fair funding, is very important indeed.

I want to thank the Minister for her statement today, and I know that she is genuinely committed to the sector, and it's a sector that does incredibly important work for us across the whole of Wales. According to a report from the Wales Council for Voluntary Action, published in May this year when this Government formed, more than 200,000 regular volunteers support the work of more than 10,000 registered organisations in Wales. And as someone who has volunteered and represented and worked in the sector, I know, genuinely, the difference that the organisations make to everyday people's lives in so many different ways. In Wales, the total value of the sector to the economy has been estimated at £2.5 billion, with £4 billion of a tangible social value. So, clearly, it's a crucial part of Wales's future as well as the current.

I want to take, of course, this opportunity to recognise the long-standing contribution of Jane Hutt, the previous Minister, whose years and years of dedicated service were integral in building many of the partnerships and the networks and structures that still do underpin the relationships between the Welsh Government and the third sector today. The sector still benefits from initiatives like the revised third sector funding code and the longer term arrangements through the single advice fund. So, I welcome the Minister's commitment to the third sector partnership council, which will be a continuation of that good work done by the previous Labour Government. So, I'm sure the Minister will continue to engage.

During the pandemic, of course, we know that volunteers demonstrated the very best of us, supporting vulnerable people and keeping communities connected. These opportunities are valuable, particularly for young people who develop skills and confidence and have that pathway into the world of work.

Now, through my work, I have seen: support for refugees and asylum seekers as they settle and integrate into our communities; services that are helping people facing homelessness and housing insecurity; support for disabled children and their families, VAWDASV services supporting women and children; and programmes that help, actually, people gain the skills and confidence and experience, of course, that they need to access employment.

Now, without the third sector, the safety net protecting some of the most vulnerable people would become much smaller, and the job of Government would, clearly, be way too big. And we know that Wales is always stronger, as you say, Minister, because our voluntary sector actually exists. Now, we should also, of course, recognise their vital contribution to social care—the organisations that help people live independently, that support unpaid carers, and that work alongside the NHS and local government to deliver essential services. Quite simply, we couldn't deliver many of the care and support services that we rely on without the contribution of volunteers.

The sector's a major employer and a workforce largely made up, of course, of women, from care and support services to housing advice, all of the above. They provide vital support every day. Now, this success has been built, of course, on years of social partnership between Government, trade unions, local authorities, volunteers, voluntary organisations, and I welcome that you will continue to do that work and strengthen that approach as well.

Which then, I guess, leads me to also welcoming the focus on sustained funding. I think it's absolutely critical. Longer term funding arrangements, such as those introduced through the single advice fund, have demonstrated, clearly, the benefits that greater certainty can bring for organisations, staff and service users, including helping them in terms of recruitment and retention. However, many organisations continue, of course, as you recognise, to face challenges recruiting and retaining skilled staff. Funding pressures can make it difficult to offer competitive pay, secure employment and clear opportunities for progression, despite the essential services that these workers then provide. If we are serious then, of course, about sustainable services, we must also be serious about fair pay, fair work and workforce development. So, can the Cabinet Minister then please outline how the commitment to sustainable funding will translate into improved workforce sustainability and better retention across the sector? What measures will the Government use

Can I ask you to conclude, please?

—that the Government's pledged to honour the funding code. And now, of course, the five tests that are within it are going to be the next bit.

Thank you very much to the Member for her support for today's statement. I think we are completely in agreement, aren't we, about the importance of volunteering to our society, and as she mentioned so clearly, all the different kinds of difference that the third sector can make.

All over Wales, it's remarkable. I know many of us have seen this in action in our constituencies. Good people are giving help for free, where they feel it is needed. They're making things better for other people, putting themselves at the service of other people, for the places where they live, and also, of course, for the wider environment. And we know, of course, that although it's 32 per cent of people in Wales, which is an awful lot—one in three, nearly, of people in Wales—are doing formal volunteering with charities and other volunteer-involving organisations, so many more, as we know, volunteer informally in the heart of the communities where we live. Just good people giving whatever time and effort they can spare to make things better. So, you know, those voluntary actions, as the Member spelt out, touch every aspect of the lives of our communities.

I'm a trustee of a foodbank. The volunteers we have there are incredible. They keep that foodbank going. They raise the money for the foodbank. They keep the community hubs running. They run our sports clubs. Think of all the sports clubs that run in our communities that would not be there and would not give those opportunities to our young people, and people of all ages who enjoy activity, if it weren't for those sports clubs. And you're quite right to point out the vital work that's being done in social care and also in our hospitals. There are many friends of hospitals organisations out there, which I'm sure every one of us come into contact with when we visit loved ones in hospitals. They're working with refugees. They're working with victims of crime. They're working with prisoners. Our faith and belief groups, they hold our communities together and provide pastoral care when people are at their very lowest.

So, you can tell that I've got a similar passion for this work. We, as a Government, will do everything we can to support those organisations. But we do recognise, as I said, that we have this long-standing infrastructure, to which the Member has referred, to support and promote this activity, including the Volunteering Wales platform, which is run through the WCVA in conjunction with the county voluntary councils, of course, which cover the whole of Wales. And I'm sure, again, we all know the great work that they do.

As I said, I think how and why people want to volunteer is developing. So, we have to be nimble as well in our support of that. And that is something that I want this Government to really look at, in partnership, to make sure that what we are looking at—. As I said, the scheme is from 2014. It really does need a new pair of eyes looking at it, aligning it with policy and legislation that's happened since then, as well as those societal changes. But what we can do is try and make sure that we have a bright and uniquely Welsh future for volunteering; something that is safe, something that is supported, and something that is sustainable.

So, obviously, I've talked about the multi-year funding; we absolutely recognise the importance of that and I think I spelt that out in my statement and in the previous answer, so I won't reiterate that again. But we would also urge anyone else who is funding the community and voluntary sector—because it isn't just Government—to also adopt the code of practice for funding the third sector for the very reasons that you've set out.

Can I thank you, Deputy First Minister, for your statement today, and for recognising, as I knew you would, the vital contribution that Wales's third sector makes to communities across Wales? I share many of the sentiments that have been shared today. We will all talk about the same things, but it's important we all do share the importance of this issue. There's no disagreement that voluntary organisations and community groups are often the first to identify local needs and the last to walk away when challenges arise. They are vital in supporting vulnerable residents. So, I welcome the positive messages, but very clearly, from my experience, positive messages have to translate into tangible outcomes. For decades in public service, I've heard the same calls from the third sector and fine words from those of us in governments, and we haven't delivered and filled those gaps. So, it's important we do do that.

Deputy First Minister, you've spoken previously about the importance of respect, solidarity and fairness and about working with partners across the public, private and third sectors to tackle poverty, reduce inequality and strengthen communities. Those are objectives, I believe, that Members across the Chamber can support, however, if partnership is to mean anything meaningful, it must extend beyond just consultations. Across Wales, many organisations continue to tell us that whilst partnership structures exist, they often feel excluded from decisions that directly affect them. Too frequently, funding arrangements remain short term—I know you're addressing that—uncertainty persists from year to year, and organisations are forced to devote valuable resources to securing their own survival rather than focusing on the communities they serve. So, I also welcome your commitment in the statement to revising or revisiting the code of practice for funding, and this is absolutely fundamental—and I welcome multi-year settlements—but sometimes there's a conversation about the quantum as well because so many bodies are just really struggling to make ends meet.

In my own constituency, organisations such as Age Connects Torfaen provide invaluable services. The Widdershins Centre, which I visited the other day, becomes a hub for community activity, supporting families, carers and vulnerable residents. It's a crucial facility. And there are hundreds of those across Wales that save us billions of pounds a year and help people in a way that public services couldn't do, and this should be truly valued. Just look at St David's Hospice. It provides exceptional end-of-life care and support for families at the most difficult moments in their lives, yet like many hospices across Wales, it continues to rely heavily on charitable fundraising to sustain services that ultimately help reduce pressure on the wider healthcare system, and that has to be taken into account somewhere.

If Government and public bodies rely upon the expertise and reach of the third sector, then funding must reflect the true cost of delivering services. Long-term planning requires long-term certainty. Deputy First Minister, I would therefore welcome further detail on how the Welsh Government intends to strengthen implementation of the funding code of practice, increase the availability of multi-year funding arrangements and ensure that voluntary organisations are involved at the earliest stages of policy development, rather than consulted only after decisions have largely been made. Given your commitment today to develop a refreshed third sector scheme and shape a new relationship with the sector, can you also set out the timetable for this work and explain how voluntary organisations themselves will be involved in designing those changes?

The third sector remains one of Wales's greatest assets and strengths. It possesses local knowledge, deep community trust and an ability to reach people who often will be overlooked by statutory services. If we are serious about tackling poverty, reducing inequality and building stronger communities, then the third sector must be treated as a true partner, and that means not only recognising its contribution, but recognising and providing the certainty and resources and influence necessary for it to thrive. Diolch.

Thank you very much, Peter Fox, for that welcome that you've given to the fact that we are making a statement today regarding the value and the recognition that we give to our voluntary and third sectors.

The points that you've raised, I fully agree with and, I think, I have addressed in this statement. But I will reiterate: we, as a Cabinet, have committed to fully discharging our duties under the existing scheme, under the third sector scheme, of which the code of practice, as regards funding, is a part. But that third sector partnership council relationship group has been established now to consider—so, fully in partnership, fully co-developed between Government and the sector—how that relationship can be strengthened, be made more effective under the third sector scheme. So, we are working closely, I can assure you, with our third sector partners to create the environment that we all want, I think, from the contributions I've heard today, where we can make sure that our third sector organisations can thrive. So, as I said, that code of practice, which is the part about multi-year funding, forms part of the statutory third sector scheme. That has been co-produced with the third sector, through the funding and compliance sub-committee of the third sector partnership council. So, that's, as I was saying, to make sure that it's relevant and accessible and up to date. So, that is an ongoing relationship, a two-way relationship.

As regards the question that you asked around rising costs, there's a squeeze, as you said, that is on, with finances becoming constrained and things getting harder. We know, and as I've said, that there are tens of thousands of voluntary organisations and third sector organisations across Wales, supporting the most vulnerable in our society, and as I've spelt out, we understand how crucial they are. We obviously can't provide direct financial help for every single one of them, but our infrastructure is there to support them all. So, the code, for instance, recognises the importance of full cost recovery and the need, as I said previously, to be flexible. Many of the factors that have led to the rising costs and those pressures on funding are beyond the control of the Welsh Government, but that doesn't mean, of course, that we can't do anything. And that's the attitude we're taking. So, other parts of the infrastructure, as well as obviously looking at how we fund, are also about making sure that organisations can access support on safeguarding, how they can get support on encouraging and supporting volunteering, and, of course, that funding through Third Sector Support Wales, which is the WCVA and the 19 county voluntary councils.

Of course, there are other things, and you quite rightly pointed out those sort of hubs, because many organisations depend on places, don't they, in the communities, to be able to do the activities that they do to support people in those communities. So, of course, we have a community facilities programme. That's something else that the Government provides, capital funding, which gives grants for community-led projects, which is to aim to improve and aid, assist and expand those much-needed community facilities. That has provided over £82 million to 673 projects across Wales. Some of them will be funded now by the supplementary budget that we're about to pass, because there is capital funding within that that will help support specifically the community facilities programme.

So, I hope you can see absolutely funding, absolutely partnership are crucial parts of this relationship and the support that the Government must put in place for voluntary organisations and the third sector generally. But there are specific things that we can do also beyond that general funding.

I welcome the opportunity to highlight the vital contribution that the third sector makes to communities across Wales and that the Welsh Government and the Cabinet Minister also recognise its importance. Third sector organisations are at the forefront of tackling inequality, supporting our most vulnerable in society, as well as promoting social justice and cohesive communities, often relieving pressure on our public services. However, many partners are struggling with short-term funding cycles and the uncertainty that comes with that, which ultimately makes it difficult for these organisations to provide quality services and plan for the future. We've seen a real-life example of this with Chwarae Teg in 2023. Firstly, I'd like to know how the Welsh Government will ensure the resilience of the third sector in the face of current financial pressures. I also want to raise another scenario that I really think we need to start preparing for, around the growing use of and reliance on AI technology. We have already seen AI take jobs in the private sector, so I'd like to know how the Welsh Government is mitigating job losses in the third sector in Wales specifically as a result of developments in AI, for example with administration jobs. Will AI be included in the new scheme? 

Diolch yn fawr. Thank you very much for that question. As I've already spelled out, although the Welsh Government can't provide direct financial support for every single organisation—and we do give a lot of direct financial support through many of our grant programmes—what we try and do is provide advice to support the resilience of third sector organisations. There's advice on governance, advice on funding, advice on safeguarding and volunteering. As I said, the things that we are able to do that can help with resilience from a financial point of view are on that funding code, things like promoting full cost recovery, flexibility, and constructive early engagement between funders and the funded body.

Your point about AI is a very interesting one. This is something across Cabinet that we're all considering, I think, in all of our portfolios: the effect, in so many different ways, that this revolution is going to have on ways of doing things, and certainly on workforce. It is something that, across our portfolios, we are actively looking at. So, I can't give you a direct answer on that, but that is something I'm sure will come up in the group that I mentioned that has been established to look at the third sector scheme, and to make sure that it is current and relevant. This is precisely why I think we need a review, because things happen, don't they? Technology and society change. The third sector can't stand still because society doesn't stand still. So, thank you for that really interesting point. Diolch.

Deputy First Minister, community groups across Afan Ogwr Rhondda deserve fair access to funding, and taxpayers deserve to see where it goes. Your programme for government commits to good value for money across the third sector. I agree. But publishing a payment to an intermediary does not show who ultimately received the money or what it achieved. More than £330,000 went through one charity, the Books Council of Wales. In September, the internal review of my Books Council of Wales freedom of information request confirmed that the Welsh Government does not hold a final recipient list, individual payment accounts, or recipient-level reconciliation. Will you publish an annual register of Welsh Government grants to or through third sector bodies showing recipient organisations, amounts, criteria and results, with the first published alongside the next third sector scheme annual report? Diolch. 

Of course, a number of our organisations have charitable status in order to take advantage of different kinds of funding as things get tighter and tighter in terms of the public purse. What I can assure the Member is that we will continue to ensure that there are good outputs and transparency and accountability in terms of the funding that we provide through our relationship and engagement with the third sector partnership council, how we deliver the funding code, and, of course, through schemes that come under that. A review of the third sector scheme, I think, provides an opportunity for us to strengthen transparency and to strengthen accountability.

Finally, Deputy First Minister, Jane Dodds.

Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer, and thank you very much for the statement.

I'm pleased to hear the statement. I'm pleased to hear about the code. I have absolutely no doubt about your commitment to the third sector. But there has been a theme across the contributions, about that multi-year funding. Many organisations just cannot continue on the basis of one year of funding. In the Powys Association of Voluntary Organisations, 55 per cent have seen their income remain static over two years, and around a third are already using their reserves to cover their core costs. I know you would not find that acceptable. We're seeing that impact in many organisations. Montgomeryshire Family Crisis Centre, which helps people across Powys in relation to domestic violence, has seen a £100,000 cut, and that's going to affect their services to children. So, could you just give us a timetable for when you will be able to look at that multi-year funding programme? Diolch yn fawr iawn.

Thank you. We've already committed to that as a Cabinet, as I've said, in terms of our commitment to providing multi-year funding across all the third sector programmes we provide. We have committed, where it's appropriate and possible, that we will do so. So, the Cabinet has agreed to that, and that's why I'm making this statement before the Senedd today. Of course, we will continue to encourage multi-year settlements between anyone that funds and receives funding from funders, including, as I mentioned, other funders—other people who provide funding for the third sector within the public sector—to follow the code of practice and to ensure that they commit to that and implement that in more than just words. The code, as I said, provides clear expectations on the funding that the Welsh Government provides, and we have committed to that fully. We will continue, of course, to work with the third sector to ensure that implementing that is strengthened and to ensure that that is adopted on a wider level. 

We move now to item 5, a statement by the Cabinet Minister for Health and Care. I call on the Cabinet Minister, Mabon ap Gwynfor.

Thank you, Llywydd. When I became Cabinet Minister for Health and Care, I committed to developing a long-term strategy to address the key workforce challenges facing the health service in Wales. Today, I'm pleased to update Members on this work. This is work that's being developed alongside our wider long-term vision for health and care, bringing the process of workforce and service transformation together to realise a coherent vision for the future of NHS Wales.

The issues facing the NHS workforce are complex and sometimes contradictory. The NHS has more staff than ever before, but the fact that there is rising and increasingly complex demand, along with workforce supply pressures and financial constraints, mean that dedicated teams remain under significant pressure. Simply increasing workforce numbers and training numbers is not the simple answer that will solve these challenges. We must improve and stabilise services now, modernise the way that our workforce is planned and deployed and create the conditions for longer term transformation. The workforce strategy will support each part of that journey.

Over the summer, we made significant progress by bringing together workforce, service, quality, operational and financial considerations together. Front-line staff told us what they need in order to empower them to improve services, namely better service design, teamwork, support and deployment, as well as closer alignment between workforce planning, education, training and future needs. This work has crystallised a clear direction for the workforce strategy, based on three connected priorities: developing sustainable services that deploy people, skills, time and public resources effectively; secondly, creating healthy and inclusive workplaces where people are treated fairly and are led well, where they are safe, supported and able to improve the services that they deliver; and thirdly, building the skills and teams needed for the future, aligned with changes in population needs, as well as a focus on prevention and new models of care. This includes strengthening Welsh language skills across our workforce so that people receive the care they need in the language that best meets their needs.

These priorities share one ambition: people across Wales receiving safe, high-quality and joined-up care from well-supported, appropriately skilled teams that can adapt as needs change. They will be underpinned by strong leadership and sustainable services.

The workforce strategy is part of a wider programme of health and care transformation, and we can't deliver it in isolation. The emerging long-term vision for health and care will set the direction for modernising services around prevention, population need and care closer to home. Community by Design and our work on cancer, mental health, women’s health and digital transformation will shape how and where care is provided.

The workforce strategy must support these developments by ensuring Wales has the skills, roles and teams needed for future models of care. Workforce planning must connect with service design, clinical pathways, finance, quality, education, digital capability and the shift towards prevention and community-based care. The strategy will be clinically led, credible and deliverable, and developed with those responsible for putting it into practice. It will help drive generational change for the people of Wales in the way care is planned and delivered.

We're now beginning targeted engagement on the workforce strategy to test and strengthen the approach with NHS staff, trade unions, professional bodies, workforce leaders, education partners and other stakeholders. This will sit alongside the wider period of engagement and collaboration on the future of health and care in Wales that I will set out to system leaders tomorrow.

This Welsh Government is determined to bring renewed energy and pace to the shift towards prevention and care closer to home, creating a more sustainable NHS in which services are planned around the needs of individuals and communities rather than organisational or professional boundaries. As promised in our first 100 days plan, we convened senior NHS leaders at the primary care and Community by Design summit in June to agree practical action. There was strong energy, a shared focus on solutions and agreement on the direction. Our priority now is delivery, supported by practical implementation and clear accountability.

Over the summer, Community by Design developed a national model supporting local action on population health and prevention, co-ordinated care for people with chronic conditions and urgent same-day care. Greater integration across the NHS—from primary care contractors and community teams to hospitals—will provide joined-up support focused on what matters to people.

The workforce strategy will be central to enabling this integration across settings and professional groups. It will support the skills, roles, teams and cultural change needed to deliver care closer to home, help people remain well and reduce avoidable pressure on hospitals.

Health boards are developing plans to increase the proportion of expenditure directed to primary care and community care by 0.5 percentage points each year from 2027-28. I will convene a further summit before Christmas to review progress, maintain momentum and translate our shared commitment into tangible improvements for patients, communities and practices. 

This demonstrates the practical and collaborative approach that will underpin the strategy. We are already learning from front-line services, bringing partners together and acting where immediate challenges require a national response. The strategy will connect this work, with greater emphasis on staff experience and well-being, workforce stability, evidence, sustainable service design and future skills. It will recognise that future care depends on the combined contribution of the NHS, primary care, social care, local government and independent, voluntary and community partners, and that the process

and that the process of workforce planning must reflect services operating across organisational boundaries. We continue to maintain a firm focus on outcomes, safer, more consistent care, improved patient experience, healthier workplaces, more stable teams, education aligned with future workforce needs, and a stronger evidence base to guide investment and policy. I intend to provide Members with a final strategy in the new year and this strategy will be firmly aligned with our wider ambitions for health and care, and will provide a practical, long-term route towards a sustainable, adaptable and inclusive NHS Wales workforce. Thank you.

Thank you, Minister, for advance notice of the statement today. I'm glad that we are working on a workforce strategy at the moment. I agree with the need for one, especially given the incredibly high number of vacancies throughout our NHS in Wales. It seems to me that a wide variety of organisations and services that I speak to are all coming back to workforce as being one of the central issues that needs resolution.

However, there was a lot of stuff in this statement about the shift towards prevention, community by design, the change in funding for primary care, but it was surprisingly light on the detail of what is actually going to be in the long-term workforce strategy.

You mentioned the work that was done over the summer which yielded things such as making sure that resources are being used properly, making sure that staff are being treated fairly, and making sure that people get the care that meets their needs as priorities for the plan. I'm not sure how long that took to work out, Minister, but a five-minute conversation with us on these benches, and you would have yielded the same results. You now say that you're beginning targeted engagement with stakeholders, but how is that different from the programme of engagement that you've just spent months engaging in? How is it different from the work that was done over the summer?

My issue with the statement today is that it spends a lot of time talking about what a good plan might look like, but it doesn't talk about actually developing the plan itself and the process that is going to be in place with regard to it. Lots of conversation about stabilising services, modernising the workforce; these are all politically palatable phrases, but where is the actual action that is being taken to make sure that these outcomes are adhered to with the plan itself?

One other thing that you mentioned that I wanted to pick up on is you said that increasing workforce and training numbers will not solve the challenges that face our NHS now. So, would you be able to confirm for me that you are indeed looking at increasing the workforce and the numbers of training at this stage, so that we can meet the gaps that are currently present in our NHS?

And something else that you mentioned within the statement was that this needs to be and will be underpinned by strong leadership. But where is that going to be? It seems to me in my short tenure in the spokesman's role for health so far that there's a little bit of ping-pong going on where the health boards will say there's an issue that Government needs to resolve; you as Minister will say that there's an issue that only health boards themselves can resolve. So, when strong leadership, the need for strong leadership arises as a result of this plan, what action are you going to make sure that you take so that it's actually in place?

Coming towards the end of your statement, you said that you intend to provide us with a strategy in the new year, and that raises two pretty obvious questions for me: one is with 'intend'; is that a firm commitment that we're going to get this strategy in the new year, and if so, at what point in the new year should we expect it? Should we expect it in the springtime, or is it going to be later on than that? Because we're already six months into the Government now, and something that was raised during the last debate is the impact that AI is having on sectors across Wales, and my concern is that if there's a workforce strategy under development now, well, in six months' time, AI may play a completely different role in our economy and in our services than it does at the moment. So, a deadline on the publication of the strategy would be incredibly useful.

And I'd also be interested in a few final points in terms of what timescale is the plan working to; I know HEIW published their 10-year workforce plan back in 2020. Is this going to be, as a long-term plan, a 10-year plan, or is it something longer itself? And what's the nature of the plan itself going to be? Is it something that will update over time, or is it a concrete plan that you're going to try and put in place with hopes that it will survive into the future?

And just finally: something that wasn't touched on during this statement, that was touched on by myself—and indeed, the First Minister in his response to me—prior to recess 

prior to recess was the use of agency staff throughout the NHS at the moment. I can't see any mention of that in today's statement, so what weighting will that be given under the new workforce strategy? Diolch yn fawr.

I thank the Member for those comments. Once again, I appreciate the fact that the Member starts positively in terms of what I said, and is supportive of the need for a better workforce strategy for Wales.

You're quite right in setting out the fact that we are expressing clearly our intention to shift resources into the community. The Community by Design programme that has been mentioned is integral in that, and of course, if we are to do that, then we need the workforce to match that shift.

You asked about the difference between what we did over the summer and now the consultation going forward. So, over the summer period, we had to identify what were the needs: clearly, across Wales, clinically, what were the clinical demands from people working in the system, from the clinicians, from managers, from commissioners? And now we have to try and match that demand with the staffing structure that we'll require; what will the workforce look like to match that? So, that means talking to the unions. It means talking to the other organisations that represent the workforce, and other bodies as well, making sure that their voices are heard, because this has to be a consultation where they not just feel like they're heard, but their voices are reflected back to them in the final piece of work that we'll have at the end of this process. It has to be something that reflects the need of the workforce and taking into account their voices during this process.

You were talking about the issue around the strong leadership. Absolutely, that's an integral part of what we need when we develop a workforce plan. The workforce needs to be assured that there is leadership there in place to direct them as things change, exactly when it comes to AI or other changes in working practices. That's why we've set up the 'well-led' process within NHS Wales Performance and Improvement, working with government, and we've got a well-led process in Betsi Cadwaladr at the moment, which looks at leadership, at culture, at governance. So, having a well-led organisation, reviewing how organisations are led and how they are governed, is another integral part of this, hence why we need to make sure that the consultation is broad and takes into account everybody's views on this.

Regarding when the final document will be published, yes, I can confirm that it will be published in the early part of next year, so something for you to look forward to over the Christmas period. I'm trying to think—. I think I covered most of the issues raised there, but if there are other issues, then please keep in contact and we'll keep the dialogue going.

The NHS workforce is the lifeblood of our health service. Workers within the NHS carried Wales through the pandemic, and they continue to face extraordinary pressures and deserve our thanks and the certainty that comes from proper workforce planning.

Minister, we welcome much of your statement today, having ourselves pledged to develop a long-term workforce plan if we were returned to Government. We want to see the new workforce strategy build on the substantial investments already made in expanding medical education, training and workforce capacity under the previous Welsh Labour Government, including, of course, the establishment of the North Wales Medical School. But a strategy is only as good as its implementation. The key questions both staff and patients will have about the new Government's plans are pretty clear. Will the new strategy be backed by sufficient funding to achieve its intended outcomes? Does it contain realistic plans to recruit and retain the staff that we need? Does it have measurable targets linked to training places rather than simply setting out long-term workforce projections? And will it address the workforce pressures facing different professions and specialities across our NHS? Indeed, workforce challenges are not identical across every part of the NHS. A number of royal colleges and professional bodies have long argued not only for a national workforce strategy, but also for workforce planning that reflects the realities of individual professions and specialities. Can you therefore explain how the new strategy will address those specific workforce challenges facing nursing, primary care, mental health services, the allied health professionals and others, rather than treating the NHS workforce as a single uniform group?

rather than treating the NHS workforce as a single uniform group?

Now, Minister, you've also spoken previously about the role that digital innovation and emerging technologies can play in supporting the Welsh NHS. Can you therefore explain how the Government intends to harness artificial intelligence to support workforce planning through the strategy? Used properly, I strongly believe that AI could help identify workforce shortages earlier, improve workforce modelling, support rota planning, and reduce administrative burdens on front-line clinicians. So, how do you envisage AI supporting both the delivery of this strategy and the front-line NHS workforce it's designed to support?

Now, the Minister will also know that retention is just as important as recruitment. NHS staff that I speak to regularly tell me about their concerns around workload, burnout, career progression, and flexible working. If these issues are not addressed, workforce shortages will persist regardless of how many training places are created. And while any serious workforce strategy must look to the future, it cannot ignore the issues facing staff today. NHS workers need to feel properly valued.

The decision by this Government to reject the independent pay reviews body's recommendation of an above-inflation pay award for teachers has, understandably, raised concerns amongst public-sector workers more widely. Can you therefore provide a clear commitment that NHS staff will continue to receive fair and independent pay settlements? And what message does it send to front-line staff that health visitors in Cwm Taf continue to be involved in an ongoing dispute over recognition of their skills and experience when, in opposition, you promised to end it, but have gone to ground largely since coming to power? Partnership working, fair pay, and constructive industrial relations must surely be central to any workforce strategy and, likewise, social partnership.

Finally, given the close relationship between pressures in the NHS and pressures in social care, can you explain how NHS workforce planning will be aligned with workforce planning for social care? Llywydd, we support the principle of long-term workforce planning. Ultimately, the test of this strategy will not be in the quality of the document—it will be whether patients receive better care, whether staff feel properly valued and supported, and whether Wales has a workforce needed to meet the challenges of the future. Diolch.

Thank you very much to the Member for the comments and that series of questions. He started by mentioning the debt of gratitude that we all have to pay to NHS staff, and I'd like to endorse those comments because it's true to say that the workforce in the health service and the care service often go far beyond what is expected of them. So I want to have that on the record today.

The Member, at the end there, spoke about what our plans are for social care and, during your contribution, you said that this is a plan for the NHS. As I said in my opening remarks, this is a plan looking at not just the NHS, but the workforce across health and care. So the care sector is integral in this. We have to consider the impact of the health service on the care sector, and vice versa.

You're quite right that any plan is only as good as its implementation, and that's why, in answer to the question earlier about the well-led review, we are also looking at leadership as an integral part of this plan, making sure that we have a structure in place that ensures that health boards and health managers lead well, that they know what the requirements are within their areas and regions. But, more importantly, this isn't a plan that looks at the vacancies that we have today. We are starting off with the health needs of Wales of the future and the health needs of today, and then building the workforce around the requirements and the needs of the workforce. Because, at the moment, we're at record levels of employment in the NHS—over 100,000 people work there. The levels of employment have increased by nearly 25 per cent over the last seven years. So we've got a lot of people working in the system, but are those people in the right places doing the right thing? So, we might, for instance, say there might be demands or we might say that we need more nurses in hospitals. We might employ more nurses in hospitals. But is that where they're needed? Because we know that we need nurses in the community. So, it's all well and good to employ more nurses, but where are they placed in order to carry out the required work 

the required work looking at the outcomes and the health of people? So, that's what this plan is about: making sure that we're looking across Wales at what the demands are for the healthcare requirements of Wales, and that we match those demands. Again, if there's anything that I didn't answer, then I'll come back. 

Can I thank the Cabinet Minister for his statement this afternoon? Today's publication of a new long-term NHS workforce strategy is indeed welcome. For far too long, our health services have been under considerable strain due to, in part, workforce, frankly, being at its breaking point. Your ambitions are indeed sound: improve workforce planning; strengthen recruitment and retention; greater employment opportunities; expanded capacity and a bolstered social care workforce to closely work with our health services. This, I'm sure, is something we can all support in this Chamber. However, Cabinet Minister, I'm sure you'll appreciate the devil is indeed in the detail. Over the years, we've seen successive Labour Governments pitch new plans and strategies every few years to great fanfare, only for delivery to fall flat and for yet another plan to be required soon after without addressing the fundamental weaknesses in our workforce strategy.

Now, Audit Wales, as well as the Senedd's Health and Social Care Committee, have routinely highlighted the critical issues in workforce sustainability, recruitment and retention. They've also made a case for a strong long-term national approach as well. So, can the Cabinet Minister outline, for instance, precisely how the Welsh Government will be working with health boards, Public Health Wales and with Digital Health and Care Wales to modernise and improve data collection across the NHS, as that will prove vital for the necessary workforce planning needed in this strategy, particularly in identifying vacancies and skill shortages?

I also want to push you on your commitments to staff recruitment and retention, Cabinet Minister. As you know, Wales has long suffered a brain drain of some of our best and brightest, including those pursuing careers in health and social care. During the election, my Welsh Conservative colleagues and I sought to address this with a series of policies that will not just draw people to the workforce, but retain them and keep them there as well. Amongst these commitments was a pledge to refund tuition fees for doctors, dentists and nurses who work within our Welsh NHS for at least five years post-qualification. This is a policy that was met with great praise by many in the sector, with relevant stakeholders recognising it as a bold and purposeful incentive to recruit and retain talent within the workforce itself.

We also pitched an NHS Wales reserve service to establish a bank of trained and vetted volunteer staff to support our regular NHS workforce at times of crisis and peak demands, such as acute winter pressures and national health emergencies. Cabinet Minister, I'd like to know what consideration has your Government given to approaches such as these, and what discussions have you had with industry bodies to explore their feasibility?

But, of course, the problem is not just in sourcing talent for roles in our health service, is it, Cabinet Minister? Because as you know, in many cases, we have indeed actually had overwhelming demand for roles, but due to funding constraints have only been able to recruit a small slice of the applicants, letting all that talent and experience fall through the net and go elsewhere to start their careers, or indeed are likely never to return. We saw, for example, first-hand the Welsh ambulance service have to turn down an entire cohort of newly qualified paramedics this financial year due to the trust facing severe financial pressures.

Earlier this year, we also saw hundreds of graduates unable to get entry-level roles across nursing, midwifery and other specialities until a mad scramble ensued between yourself, Minister, and the health boards to find roles for these people wherever you could. This is clearly not a sustainable approach to our workforce going forward. So, Cabinet Minister, how will the Welsh Government ensure that something like this does not happen again across any health and social care discipline?

Presiding Officer, can the Minister assure us here today, on his watch, we will not again see graduates in Wales faced with no job prospects in our NHS workforce after working so hard to equip themselves with skills that we so desperately need here?

Now, you're in the right frame of mind with the strategy in a way that captures and works right across primary, secondary and social care. Addressing any of the exclusion to the others will not fix the issue at hand. We must have a cohesive strategy and plan in place to ensure that any and all aspects of health and social care services that patients seek to access are well-staffed by qualified professionals that have had the training and resources they need to be effective. As part of this, Cabinet Minister, could you please outline for us how you've engaged with the royal colleges and with allied health professionals in the development of the strategy and how their input has informed you in your workforce planning?

I now want to turn to an issue that the Welsh Conservatives have long championed, which is palliative and end-of-life care—I appreciate I'm conscious of time as well—because it's not just those looking to get better that need well-staffed and resources within the workforce. It is also those seeking dignity and comfort in their final months and years. People in Wales deserve excellent care from the cradle to the grave, and that's why my Welsh Conservative colleagues and I continue to call for a considerable funding boost for the sector to the tune of £10 million each year, every year, for a full Senedd term. With resources of this scale, the dedicated and compassionate workforce that delivers palliative care in Wales would get the support they desperately need. It would also open the door for a comprehensive consensus of a workforce, which for far too long has lacked clear and accurate data on staff numbers and distribution. So, Cabinet Minister, 

So, Cabinet Minister, will you today pledge your support to this vital sector with the resources it needs to ensure that we can all look forward to a dignified final chapter in our lives, and can you assure me that it will fully include this new strategy going forward as well? Thank you.

I thank the Member for that series of questions. And, once again, I welcome the fact that she, like the other Members, offered some warm and kind words about this proposed strategy in these early days, and has welcomed what I said; so I'm grateful for that.

You mentioned at the top of your contribution the role that data and collecting data will play and that's integral in identifying where we're at now and the needs of the workforce here. But I'll reiterate what I said earlier, that it isn't about looking at the vacancies that we have today alone. This is about planning for the health needs of Wales today and tomorrow so that we have a workforce that fits the demands of an ageing population—a population that survives more ill health and carries more chronic ill health with it. Part of the issue around data—and I was remiss not to respond to the question by Ken earlier—is around artificial intelligence and the utilisation of digitisation and health, and that's an integral part of this. AI and digital will play a key role in the roll-out of this. But we are developing a 10-year strategy on digitisation, which will have to dovetail with this, along with the other strategies that we're developing, such as the cancer strategy, women's health and others so that we work together, ensuring that we have a workforce plan suitable for those demands.

The Member referenced the need to—. You had the opportunity to repeat the manifesto pledges of the Conservative Party and said that they were welcomed and praised by a number of people. So were ours, to the degree that we're now in Government trying to implement them. [Interruption.] So, I will encourage you to continue to try and push your manifesto pledges from the benches. I am now trying to fulfil our manifesto pledges, which is what I'm doing here today in part.

But when you mentioned the ambulance service—. There was one thing that you said, that the Wales ambulance service turned down an entire cohort of paramedics. I'd just like to correct that for the record. They haven't turned down the entire cohort. Most of those have been employed, but not necessarily as paramedics as yet, but they will work—[Interruption.] Exactly. They will work through the system, but it's not a situation we should have been in and it's not a situation that was acceptable to anybody here, I'm sure. So, that's why we need a workforce plan to try and make sure we don't reach that point again. However, we are going through a four-year cycle at the moment because the issues that were raised this year relate to four years ago and it'll take a number of years for that to go through the system. But may I just remind you as well that here in Wales, we've got a streamlining process that isn't in England nor elsewhere, which tries to allocate positions and jobs for those graduates? And that should be welcomed, and that's what we have to try and do—make sure that as many of the people that are trained in Wales and graduate from Wales are found positions in Wales. [Interruption.] Ideally, it would be all of them, but it's going to be really difficult moving forward over the next number of years because they were commissioned based on the information of four years ago and three years ago and so on, but we will certainly work on that. And that's part of why we need a workforce strategy, to work with HEIW and to work with employers and everybody to identify where graduates and others need to go.

You asked about engagement with the bodies. Well, that's what we're doing now, which is what I set out in my statement, over the next number of weeks, through to the new year. And on palliative and end-of-life care, we had a debate on that a couple of weeks ago, but the workforce plan will be looking at the needs of the whole spectrum of the service, from birth until end of life.

We now  move to the one-minute contributions. And first of all, Gwyn Williams.

Diolch, Lywydd. The NHS is nothing without its workforce. As a declaration of interest, I am part of it. It shocks me how much work needs to be done as a nation to properly plan ahead to protect this precious, limited, but also, ferociously expensive resource from being lost to us. Why spend so much time, effort and money training the best healthcare providers around only to lose them because of a criminal lack of planning? I am glad that, due to your efforts, 253 nursing graduates who did not have jobs now have been given them, but we need to address this scandalous history

we need to address this scandalous history that we have of paramedics, midwives, nurses, highly trained healthcare workers leaving Wales. I can myself personally attest to the fact that, through HEIW, we train the best consultants in the world, who then can't get jobs in Wales and leave. They need a job. But why is this happening? Because health boards release jobs only once a Byzantine job approval process has been completed, unrelated to when the trainees are ready. Workforce planning in Wales is so difficult because we have too many health boards. Will the Minister agree that workforce planning needs to be undertaken outside of the broken health board system, to better protect this most vital resource of ours, which, I have to say, is across the board, including strokes as well? We had a stroke event upstairs. Postcode lotteries in Wales are a big problem, including with this.

Diolch. Well, we agree that our NHS workforce is our most valuable asset, and retaining talented healthcare professionals trained in Wales is a priority. The challenge that the Member raised is exactly why we're developing a long-term workforce strategy that strengthens the link between workforce planning, education, training, and the future service needs. The strategy places a much stronger emphasis on workforce intelligence, long-term planning, and ensuring education and training are aligned with future models of care. Our workforce planning must be connected to wider service transformation, including the prevention, community-based care and multidisciplinary team working, rather than considered separately from these changes.

As a parent myself, I very well remember the stress that's caused when a birth plan has to change. Sometimes, of course, this is necessary for medical reasons, but we know that some parents are sent to different hospitals, to the one they'd expected, because there aren't enough staff, or, shockingly, that no midwives were available to support a planned home birth. A report issued by the Royal College of Midwives warns that nine in 10 midwives say unsafe staffing levels affects the quality of care for women and babies. Sustainable, safe staffing is essential to ensure every maternity service has enough staff to provide safe, compassionate, personalised neonatal care. Cabinet Minister, in July, you assured me that the Government was working to recruit as many graduate midwives as possible. Can you provide an update on this and commit to publishing transparent workforce plans across the NHS services, particularly in midwifery, so that expectant parents and midwives can see action being taken to address staff shortages?

I thank the Member for those comments, and it's perfectly right to say that there are far too many reports historically by the NHS in Wales that have been critical of infant services that we have.

And far too often we've seen that there's a lack of midwives in Wales, and that has contributed to some of the problems in the services that we've got here. So, that will play a part of this workforce strategy, that we identify the demands, current and future, where those demands will be, and how we can best mitigate those, or best make sure that we've got the workforce required to carry out the needs, either in the hospital, but also in the community, which is often forgotten. So, I've said before that we will be publishing the strategy in the new year, and it will be transparent, and it will be there for everybody to scrutinise, and we'll have another session in the new year along the same lines as this today.

Diolch, Cabinet Minister, for your statement. Last August, Healthcare Inspectorate Wales found that discharge delays at the Royal Glamorgan Hospital were causing long waits and overcrowding in its emergency departments. The same health board, Cwm Taf Morgannwg, spent around £26.5 million on agency staff in 2025-26 to fill gaps in its workforce. Yet this summer, dozens of midwives trained here in Wales, qualified, and found no NHS postings waiting for them. This is not a shortage of people willing to work in the NHS, it's a failure to plan. Cabinet Minister, how will this strategy match training places in funded posts so that health boards can reduce their reliance on agency staff? Will you publish targets for agency spend, delayed discharges for each health board, so that my constituents can judge whether it's working? Diolch.

Diolch.

Once again, thank you very much for that series of questions. It's entirely right to say that we have seen historically too much expenditure on agency staffing.

The Member might be aware that it was one of our commitments to reduce agency staff, and I'm glad to say that we've seen the spending on agency staff reduce significantly over the last number of years, and we are still trying to drive that down again. We're at a more difficult position now where we're trying to make sure that we don't spend as much on some of the doctors that we have working who are agency workforce, but we're still driving down on agency staff costs. That will be something that we're working on over the coming months and the coming years, and it'll play a part of the wider strategy that we will be publishing in the new year on how we can shift from depending overly on agency staff through to having homegrown and locally employed staffing members. 

I'll declare an interest in my contribution. Minister, through my own lived experience and work in transitional care, I understand how vital support during adolescence and young adulthood is for people living with long-term conditions. Policy has often treated transition as a paediatric issue, yet those growing through our services I've listened to over decades rarely describe problems within paediatric services. Instead, they describe being lost to follow-up with support falling off a cliff edge when they leave them. We've worked hard to develop a paediatric workforce that understands children's needs alongside their clinical conditions, but young adults have distinct needs too, particularly as they take greater responsibility to manage those lifelong conditions. As you develop the workforce strategy, how will you ensure the NHS builds expertise in adolescent and young adult health care rather than simply trying to manage a transition between services? Diolch.

I thank the Member for those comments and that question. She makes such an important point where the needs of children and young people are different to the needs of adults for a great number of different reasons. And so, we need to develop services and, around those services, a strategy that meets the needs of that specific cohort of people.

You're quite right in stating that too many young people get lost between that process, when they move from childhood into adulthood, without it being recognised fully and without service continuity. That's why we are developing a children and young people health plan, which will then in time also dovetail with the broader workforce plan, because that cohort of people have their own needs and requirements and they will be considered in both plans, therefore.

I thank the Cabinet Minister.

We will move now to a statement by the Cabinet Minister for Finance—Wales procurement policy statement. I call on the Cabinet Minister for Finance, Elin Jones.

Llywydd, today I'm pleased to announce that a public consultation on the draft Wales procurement policy statement will open in the coming days. It's an opportunity to shape how we use the more than £11 billion of annual public spending to build a stronger Welsh economy. Our programme for government includes an ambition to increase Welsh public procurement expenditure with Wales-based suppliers towards 70 per cent. This will see more value retained in Wales so that businesses, workers and communities benefit from public sector investment. The statement will help to create the conditions in which Welsh businesses can compete successfully while protecting fair, open and lawful competition.

I'm determined that every £1 spent should work harder for Wales, strengthening businesses and supply chains, supporting good jobs and skills and delivering fairer, greener and more resilient outcomes. Procurement is one of our most significant levers for delivering our priorities. The draft policy statement therefore sets one clear strategic priority, namely to strengthen the Welsh economy. That sharper focus does not diminish our ambitions for sustainability, fair work, social value, community well-being, the Welsh language, decarbonisation or cultural outcomes. Those ambitions are integral to the economy we want to build and they're reflected in our wider legislative framework.

Spending alone does not guarantee these benefits. It's not simply by completing a procurement exercise and awarding a contract that we measure success. It must be measured

It must be measured by what those contracts deliver: stronger businesses, good jobs and skills, resilient supply chains, innovation and thriving communities. The ambition in our programme for government is not a quota or a preference for suppliers based on where they're located. Competition must remain fair, open, transparent and legally compliant. But we must enable capable Welsh firms, including small and medium-sized enterprises and voluntary, community and social enterprises, to compete on merit.

The statement will turn that ambition into practical action. It will set out the practical levers we can use to open up opportunities and remove unnecessary barriers for Welsh businesses. In practice, that means clearer procurement pipelines so that businesses have time to prepare, invest or form consortia; earlier market engagement so that public bodies understand what suppliers can offer before requirements are fixed; and appropriately designed contracts, with proportionate evidence requirements and lots where suitable, so that smaller suppliers can compete. It also means prompt payment, outcome-based specifications and stronger contract management so that commitments on jobs, skills, fair work and environmental benefits are delivered—not simply promised.

There must be stronger leadership, capability and collaboration across the Welsh public sector to support delivery. I want to recognise the important work of the Welsh Local Government Association and its national procurement network. Our new procurement leadership board for Wales at official level will provide co-ordination and challenge, while our new community of practice, Cydweithio, will connect professionals across Wales to share expertise and translate policy into practice.

A fantastic example of where that is already happening is through the work of the Caerphilly Business Club, which brings businesses together to collaborate and build stronger networks. It reflects the approach that we want to see in Wales: businesses seizing opportunities, using public money to prosper and share locally.

The new Wales procurement policy statement is a starting point, not an end in itself. In addition to the Wales procurement policy statement, we are also developing complementary legislation to enable Welsh local authorities to reserve lower value contracts for local and UK suppliers, making effective use of flexibilities under the Procurement Act 2023 and bringing more opportunities within reach of local businesses. Our ambition on procurement will also need to be underpinned by a stronger understanding of the value that public spending creates. We are therefore developing a new measure of Welsh economic value to give us a clearer picture of how procurement is strengthening our economy and how much value is being generated and retained in Wales.

Policy alone will not change practice. Success depends on public bodies having the capability to act and suppliers having the opportunity to respond. We will therefore back the statement with leadership, guidance, training, better data and practical support. And Welsh Government must lead by example. Too often, procurement can be considered only once the major policy and delivery decisions have already been taken. I want commercial thinking to happen earlier, when it can help shape policy, understand markets, identify opportunities and secure greater value for Wales.

That is why the consultation matters so much. We want to test whether we are addressing the right barriers, whether our proposals are practical, what support is missing and what would make the greatest difference to businesses seeking to compete for public contracts. So, today I'm asking contracting authorities, businesses, trade unions, social partners, the third sector and communities if they'll respond to the consultation, challenge us and share experiences. Help us to shape a Wales procurement policy statement that turns the power of public spending into lasting value for Wales. I urge Members, therefore, to encourage participation at a local level throughout Wales.

Responses will inform the final Wales procurement policy statement before it is brought before the Senedd for the statutory 40-day period. Once the final statement takes effect, Welsh contracting authorities within scope will have a legal duty for the first time to have regard to it, and I want its principles to be embraced more widely across the Welsh public sector.

We will measure success by outcomes, not activity: whether practice changes, participation widens, smaller suppliers succeed and contracts deliver jobs, skills, community benefits

deliver jobs, skills, community benefits and environmental improvements. The consultation will help us determine what meaningful and proportionate measures should look like before the final approach is agreed. It's a time for a shift in mindset. Procurement needs to be more than merely a transactional process; it needs to be used deliberately as a strategic lever. If we get this right, the prize is significant, a stronger Welsh economy, better jobs and skills and greater opportunities for businesses and communities in every part of Wales. Diolch.

I support the principle behind this statement: Welsh public money should create more opportunities for Welsh businesses. More than £11 billion is spent on public procurement in Wales every year, so getting this right matters. Reform's own manifesto calls for public bodies to buy locally wherever that represents value for money.

However, I have a few points of concern with your statement, Minister. Let me start with the target. The Government wants to raise the share of spending with Wales-based suppliers to 70 per cent. Minister, an ambition is not enough to see change; we need solid details. What is the verified starting point? Will you publish a delivery plan with annual milestones towards 70 per cent, and will individual public bodies be held accountable for their progress?

Public procurement must also follow the rules on fair competition and equal treatment. You say 70 per cent ambition is not a geographical preference, yet you are proposing new powers to reserve lower-value contracts for local and UK suppliers. How will those powers operate in practice, and when a local bid costs more, how will you make sure taxpayers still get value for money?

My second point is about what counts as Welsh. My concern is that we could change how success is measured without actually improving outcomes for Welsh businesses. In a written answer last month, the Minister confirmed that the current measure is based on a supplier's invoice address. It does not look at ownership, headquarters, employment or where the work is actually done. Put simply, a Welsh invoice address does not necessarily mean Welsh jobs. You have confirmed that a new measure of Welsh economic value is being developed, but will it replace the current invoice address measure or simply sit alongside it, and when will it be published? And has the Government independently assessed how many extra jobs this policy will create and what evidence supports those figures?

That brings me to my third point, small and medium-sized businesses. Many smaller firms are shut out by large contract packages, expensive accreditations and layers of paperwork. The Minister's colleagues have talked about breaking contracts into smaller lots, but these are tools public bodies can already use. What has been missing is delivery. What will actually change? What will set the measurable expectations for public bodies to make contracts accessible to smaller firms, and what practical support will you provide to help Welsh SMEs bid together rather than continuing to lose out to larger contractors?

And then, there is the so-called social value. Whether it's diversity, equity and inclusion targets or climate change red tape, it piles on administration that makes it extremely hard for Welsh SMEs to compete for Government contracts. Big companies have whole departments to deal with this; a family firm does not. We should cut out this nonsense so that the Welsh small businesses can compete with big players. Minister, will you cut the bureaucracy facing Welsh SMEs?

My fourth point is that you have also announced the procurement leadership boards for Wales and Cydweithio. We already have enough bureaucracy in Wales without adding unnecessary administrative costs. Even Audit Wales recently warned that Wales's public service landscape was crowded and overly complex and called for fewer, clearer structures. How many people will be working in these new initiatives and how much will they cost?

My fifth and final point is prompt payment. The law already generally requires payment within 30 days; the question is whether that works in practice. Take one example: Powys Teaching Health Board's 2025-26 accounts show that 91.8 per cent of non-NHS bills were paid within 30 days when counted by number, but only 80.2 per cent when counted by value. In other words, the bigger bills are the ones more likely to be paid late. And paying the main contractor on time does not guarantee that smaller subcontractors are paid on time. So, will the Government report payment performance by value as well as by number, and will they make sure existing protections are enforced right down the supply chain?

To conclude, the procurement target is not an outcome in itself. The real outcome is more Welsh business winning viable contracts 

winning viable contracts and being paid promptly for them. So, will the Minister commit to publishing an annual breakdown of procurement spending by region, sector and business size, alongside evidence of value for money? Without that transparency, this Senedd will have no reliable way of judging whether this policy has delivered for Welsh businesses.

Llywydd, to answer those points, I think the Member has outlined the weaknesses of the current system in place and how we measure against the target that the Government has outlined in our own programme for government, and for exactly the reasons outlined by the Member on how we measure the real economic benefit to communities and businesses in Wales of public procurement contracts as they are awarded, currently on the basis of where the invoice address is. That's exactly why in this statement and in this work we are going to be looking at ensuring that there is a new Welsh supplier spend methodology to track the move towards the 70 per cent ambition, so that this will provide a consistent and more reliable basis for identifying expenditure with Wales-based suppliers, establishing that baseline—that is important, as the Member says—in order to be able to work towards the 70 per cent of spend and being able to track that change over time. So, that work is part of what I am announcing today, so that we do have a more reliable ability to clarify what the exact spend within Wales is from procurement contracts that have been awarded, and that we are able to track that, and hold all of us, and the Government especially, accountable for that. So, that work is part of the process and the progress that we're doing as a result of the statement today.

And smaller lots—. You asked about the legislation that I will be bringing forward on lower-value contracts and the ability for local authorities to be able to allow those contracts to be awarded locally for those lower-value projects. There will be measures in place to ensure that value for money is protected in that context, but you will have an opportunity to scrutinise that legislation as it comes forward in the near future.

And I agree with you that the economic impact should be very much the way to measure the success of the procurement statement that we will be consulting on. Economic impact is the driving force of what this new procurement statement is going to look at, whilst also recognising that it conforms to all legislation and that architecture that currently exists. But very much as you have outlined, the real benefit to our economy in Wales will come from being able to ensure that more of the £11 billion spend and more that public contracting authorities offer in terms of procurement work is spent meaningfully here in Wales. So, the work is starting on how we get that meaningful data that we want to ensure, to make sure that when these public contracts are awarded, they are awarded meaningfully in a way that means that the benefit will remain within Wales.

Thank you, Llywydd. Another consultation, Minister. What's this—the tenth, the fifteenth? I've lost count. I'm not sure. However, I would agree that public procurement is one of the most powerful tools available to the Government. Every year, as has been mentioned, public bodies in Wales do spend over £11 billion on goods and services. And we agree that that expenditure should not just provide value for money. It should also support our broader ambitions—economically, socially and environmentally.

Welsh Labour in Government worked to ensure procurement was about more than simply purchasing at the lowest cost. Through the Social Partnership and Public Procurement (Wales) Act 2023, we embedded socially responsible procurement into law,