Cynulliad Cenedlaethol Cymru

I call Members to order.

The first item on our agenda is questions to the finance Minister. The first question [OAQ54853] has been withdrawn, and therefore question 2 from Darren Millar. 

Llywydd, I understand you've given your permission for questions 2 and 8 to be grouped. 

The Welsh Government's draft budget follows the UK Government's one-year spending round, which does not turn the page on austerity. Our budget in 2020-21 will be £300 million less in real terms than 2010-11, but, nonetheless, the Welsh Government is investing in a more prosperous, more equal and greener Wales.

Well, thanks to the UK Government, of course, you've got an extra £600 million in the budget for 2021—2020, is that right—2020-21, compared to the previous financial year. And that gives you some great opportunities. One of those opportunities, of course, is to mitigate the impact of climate change, particularly around the coasts of Wales, which are at risk of flooding. Now, I do welcome the investment that has been made available for the Old Colwyn promenade in my constituency in recent months. It's not quite the amount that the local authority, Conwy County Borough Council, were looking for in order to do the proper job that is required in the longer term, but it at least will make some sort of difference to the flood risk in that particular community. But, of course, there are other parts of the north Wales coast that are also at risk, including in the Towyn and Kinmel Bay area, which, of course was devastated by floods 30 years ago this year. 

Can I ask specifically what resources you've made available for flood defences in the Welsh Government's budget for 2020-2021, and whether any of that which has been allocated is going to go to shore up those defences in the Towyn and Kinmel Bay area, so that we can prevent the sort of devastation we saw 30 years ago?

I'm grateful for the question, and, as I was able to set out in my statement on the draft budget yesterday, additional funding has been found for next year to provide funding to support communities at particular danger in terms of climate change and flooding, but that's on top of the additional funding that we're putting through our innovative housing programme for coastal risk management. And that's a programme worth £150 million over the course of this Assembly, which has been previously announced by my colleague the Minister for Environment and Rural Affairs. The schemes that we support are clearly the ones where the evidence base says the most need is there, but obviously I'd be happy to have conversations with Members if they have got particular concerns about areas within their own constituencies. 

I'm grateful to you for that earlier answer, Minister. In terms of the overall budget, during our conversation in the Finance Committee before Christmas, you confirmed that there would be a real-terms cut to the funds being available to support and to sustain bus services across the country. This is something that I think many of us will find very difficult, because a Government that is committed to climate change—and I think I welcomed yesterday the funds available for climate policy—and committed also to public transport, with the legislation that the First Minister referred to yesterday as well, means that we do need to be able to provide real support for public transport, and particularly public transport in communities such as those that I and yourself represent. There is already a great deal of funding going into active travel, which I support; there is a great deal of support going to rail, which I also support. But I'm increasingly concerned that the Government does not regard bus services as a sufficient priority. The fact that it's being cut in real terms in next year's budget will be a grave disappointment to many of us on all sides of this Chamber.

I'd therefore be extremely grateful, Minister, if you would consider reviewing this element of the budget to ensure that we do have the funds available to support and to sustain the bus services that link sometimes some very fragile communities with the services that they require. 

Well, obviously, there have been difficult decisions that have had to be made within individual portfolios in terms of whether or not they're able to increase funding for particular elements of their budgets or simply maintain those areas of spend. And, as Alun Davies quite rightly says, the spending of £25 million has been maintained rather than increased in terms of the bus services support grant. But, of course, the bus services support grant is only one of the ways in which we support bus services in Wales, and local authorities are generally responsible for deciding which services should be supported financially out of public money, based on their assessments of the local circumstances and needs. And local authorities very often do put in funding from their own revenue support grant in order to support those local bus services and community transport schemes as well. And, of course, every single local authority across Wales will have seen an increase in their budget in the next financial year, as set out in the draft budget, which I think is something to be recognised. But, alongside this, we support the bus and community network through our funding for Wales's TrawsCymru network of longer distance bus services, the all-Wales Traveline Cymru line, which provides information and journey planning, and the work of Bus Users Cymru, which represents passengers, and of course the Community Transport Association and the Traffic Commissioner for Wales's office as well. And, importantly, we are continuing to support the bus travel scheme for 16 to 21-year-olds, and of course our hugely popular bus travel scheme for older and disabled persons. And those are important of course, because they do increase demand for buses and help to keep those services sustainable in the longer term.

Mohammad Asghar.

Sorry.

It's okay. I'll move on.

It's not me, sorry.

Question 3, David Rowlands.

The Welsh Government operates within the budget regime set by the UK Government. Budgets are monitored closely by officials, and this includes forecasting and explaining budget variances. I receive monthly reports from the finance director, and discuss financial performance with officials. I am responsible for approving budget amendments during the year.

I thank you for that answer, Minister. I'd like to examine one aspect of your budget, and that is the local government settlement. With regard to that, I'd like to quote some figures to you: 2 per cent, 4.2 per cent, and 6.5 per cent. The first figure, of 2 per cent, is the UK inflation rate; the second figure, of 4.2 per cent, is the generous average increase in the budget allocated by your Government to local authorities. So, why is it, Minister, that the third figure, of 6.5 per cent, indicates the average increase in local authority council tax charges? Does this not point to poor financial management by local authorities, and should you revise your reward with regard to that?

Well, of course, the setting of council tax is a matter for local councils themselves. And I have to say the Welsh Local Government Association have recognised the settlement that local authorities have received this year as being an exceptionally good one. And we've worked really closely with the WLGA and others in terms of setting the budget and understanding the pressures that they're under. And it was our commitment at the start to give local authorities the best possible settlement, and I think it's fair to say that many local authorities have been pleasantly surprised at the settlements that they've been able to receive. And some have indicated that the increases in council tax in their local areas won't be as large as they perhaps had first envisaged, because of the support Welsh Government has been able to give.

Minister, the Future Generations Commissioner for Wales has said that there's still a disconnect between budget allocations and our quite proper aspirations to reach a low-carbon and carbon-neutral Wales. And I notice the committee also said that the draft budget should explain and demonstrate clearly how funding allocations will support the decarbonisation priority. So, can we expect that future budgets will be more transparent and clear in this regard, or do you think that this year's one is best practice?

I certainly don't think we've got to the point where we can say we have achieved complete best practice yet, and that's been very clear, because we've set an ambitious budget improvement plan. I see that as a five-year rolling plan in terms of how we can continually strive to improve the way that we set our budget and the way that we can make considerations about where we put Welsh Government—or the Welsh public's—money. In terms of developing that budget improvement plan, we did so with the future generations commissioner, who, I have to say, has commended the Welsh Government on taking a good step towards creating a greener Wales. Obviously, we recognise we have some way to go yet. But that budget improvement plan takes on board the journey checker, which the future generations commissioner developed, and that's all about how you can demonstrate in practice, and how you can ensure, that the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015 is right there, front and centre, at the decision-making point, throughout the budget process and its monitoring and assessment.

Questions now from the party spokespeople. The Conservative spokesperson, Darren Millar.

Diolch, Llywydd. Minister, can you tell us how your budget for the year 2020-2021 is going to support Welsh businesses?

Certainly. Only yesterday I was able to announce, as part of the budget 2020-21, that we would be continuing to extend our high street and retail rate relief scheme into 2020-21. So, that's more than £24 million of funding, which supports over 15,000 businesses with their rates. I think that's really important, but, actually, that goes alongside £230 million of other relief for businesses in Wales, meaning that around half of businesses in Wales pay absolutely no rates at all.

Well, of course, we welcome any business rate relief, but the fact of the matter is that, in spite of that relief, which you are extending, we've still got the most punitive business rates regime in the whole of the United Kingdom. And, of course, in addition to having the highest business rates in Great Britain, we also have very high land transaction tax for non-commercial properties, and they will continue to be higher than in either Scotland or England for the foreseeable future. Why is it that you didn't take the opportunity to have a look at reducing those taxes in order to promote investment and to promote business as the wealth creators in Wales in your budget, and will you reconsider that position before bringing the final budget to this Chamber later in the year?

Well, I'd start, of course, by suggesting that Darren Millar is wrong to suggest we have punitive business rates in Wales, because, actually, a larger proportion of businesses in Wales pay no rates at all than do across the border in England. And the place where we set our business rates really does reflect the fact that our average rateable value in Wales is different to in England. So, in England, it is around £50,000, and only £30,000 in Wales, so I think it is only right that our system reflects the different rateable values and the different picture that we have here in Wales.

In terms of land transaction tax, obviously we do have a different, higher rate for non-residential taxes. And those are for purchases of over £1 million. When you get to £1.1 million, the land transaction tax does start to become higher than stamp duty land tax. Of course, that rate was agreed by the Assembly when we voted on that. I think it's important to recognise that this is the first year of those particular rates, so we are obviously keeping a close eye on them, but we're also keeping a close eye on what is happening in Ireland and Scotland as well. Because we've all set out on different paths and we have no indication thus far that those rates are putting off businesses from locating in Wales, because, when businesses locate, it's for a multitude of reasons, one of which will be the land transaction tax, but, obviously, other issues such as skills and Government support for business will obviously be factors. 

Well, you had a golden opportunity, Minister—and you've missed it, frankly—to reduce the business rate multiplier and to make it more attractive for people to come here and invest in Wales—an extra £600 million provided by the UK Government, a Welsh block grant at a record high level. And, of course, in spite of this, you expect us to believe that there's nothing that you can do in order to reduce the impact of those taxes on business. 

The reality of the situation is that we've got a Government here that doesn't keep control of its expenditure properly. We've had a £51 million additional cost as a result of delays and overspend on the Heads of the Valleys road, £221 million invested in uncompetitive enterprise zones and, of course, we've seen—and it was highlighted again just yesterday—tens of millions of pounds each and every year going into a black hole down the road at Cardiff Airport.

Now, we know that, each year, when January comes around, many people take the opportunity to reflect and establish some new year's resolutions. Can I suggest that you have a new year's resolution, and that is to stop wasting taxpayers' money and to do everything you can to support businesses as the wealth creators in Wales that will help to generate the income that your Government so desperately says that it needs?

I think, in terms of our support for business, the figures that we've already seen for land transaction tax do speak for themselves, because, in the first year of land transaction tax, the changes to the rates ensure that we do maintain our attractiveness to commercial enterprises. And, as a result of these new tax rates, over 90 per cent of non-residential transactions in Wales pay the same or less tax than they would across the border in England, and we expect those changes to lead to an increase in commercial activity in Wales.

Plaid Cymru spokesperson, Rhun ap Iorwerth.

Minister, it's totally unreasonable, I think, that the Welsh budget for the coming year is having to be scrutinised before UK Government spending plans, including details of the Welsh block grant, have been announced. The UK budget statement is now due on 11 March, just after our scrutiny of the budget here ends. It's just another example on a long and growing list of why Westminster isn't working for Wales. But is this why Welsh Government's budget is so unambitious and lacking in innovation? 

I do have to say, what I think is lacking in innovation and lacking in ambition is when opposition parties put out press releases that could have been written before. I think it's almost par for the course, isn't it, that an opposition party will say that there's been a missed opportunity or that they're disappointed? How about studying and scrutinising the budget and genuinely challenging things that you think should be different? How about putting forward alternative budgets? How about putting forward ideas for ways in which Welsh Government money should otherwise be spent? I think that would just be a much more useful contribution to the debate. 

I've no idea to which press release you're referring, but I'll continue with scrutinising Welsh Government's budget. There are no step changes to be seen in Government thinking; it's budget management, that's what we see. Climate change is one of those areas where your Government has failed to demonstrate meaningfully, I think, how spending is really addressing the climate crisis—taking big decisions now for our long-term good. Now, as the future generations commissioner has pointed out, the Government can't even tell us how your spending plans will impact on carbon emissions. To see why we need that kind of assessment, look at the Wales infrastructure investment plan update for 2019; it shows an investment of £1.56 billion on roads compared with an investment of £818 million in sustainable transport, which suggests to me that elements of your budgeting could actually be undermining your net zero carbon objectives. Now, will you as Minister give us an assurance that all future budgets will be accompanied by a carbon impact assessment? And given that we have to focus on the preventative more and more right across Government spending areas, will you also provide a detailed document in future on where Government is spending for prevention?  

I have had the opportunity to discuss this particular issue with the Minister for environment and rural affairs just this morning, because we are keen to be able to demonstrate the decisions that we make and the impact that they do have on our carbon reduction. However, it really is not that simple.

So, for example, investing in the infrastructure to support electric cars is only one part of the picture, because the actual carbon savings as a result of that will depend on uptake of electric vehicles, and that, in many ways, is dependent on various levers that the UK Government will be pulling in terms of tax. So, if you ask me how much we will save in terms of carbon because of our investment in electric charging points, as an example, we're unable to say. We are able to say how our investment, for example, in changing the refuse truck fleet across Wales will save, because we can demonstrate how much each truck emits.

So, you know, it is very difficult to demonstrate a full carbon impact assessment. Often, carbon savings are the primary reason why we do things, and often they are secondary benefits of the reasons why we do things. So, the picture is extremely complex. But, obviously, as we set out in our budget improvement plan, we will continue to strive to explain the decisions that we take in terms of carbon impact assessments. But, it really is not as simple as perhaps the Member suggested. 

But, Minister, if I may suggest, the truth of the matter is that of course it's difficult for you to measure the impact, because you're not carrying out impact assessments. So, I'm asking you, as a Government, to ensure that, in future budgets, you do carry out an assessment of how exactly the expenditure decisions you take are going to have an impact on our ambitions in terms of cutting our carbon outputs.

This budget is an opportunity missed, as I said yesterday. There is some relief—and that is temporary, I fear—in terms of the funds available for spending in the next financial year, but the opportunity hasn't been taken to invest properly now for the long term. We are not thinking sufficiently about the well-being of our nation in the long term.

Plaid Cymru has already committed to introducing well-being budgetary processes, including carbon assessments, for example. But, nobody really sees this as a budget that is ground-breaking, a budget that provides hope and that shows ambition for following a new path. So, when will you, as a Minister, realise that management of itself is not enough?

I would obviously disagree with what the Member's suggesting—that this budget is business as usual. Of course it's not. We see a major package of investment in decarbonisation and biodiversity, which I'm sorry that he can't bring himself to welcome.

So, we'll see £5 million used to create town centre green infrastructure and encourage biodiversity. How often do we talk in this Chamber about how important it is that we green our town centres? We have got a specific environmental growth fund, which will be looking after local places for nature and encourage applications to support a halt to the decline of nature in our local communities. The Member says that this is scheme—of course it's a scheme, but it is part of a wider package that is changing direction and changing the focus of our budget.

Brexit Party spokesperson, Mark Reckless.

Diolch, Llywydd. Finance Minister, I spoke with you the day that the budget was announced and made some of the points that we have heard from Rhun today, and partly yesterday. And I'm pleased to hear that you met with Lesley Griffiths this morning to consider some of these matters. However, in your statement yesterday, you said that you're investing in the areas where we can have the greatest impact for our environment. You then cited four of them: active travel; electric bus fleet; new ways of building homes; and the national forest. Could I ask, how did you prioritise these areas and decide how much to invest in each of those different areas?

So, these particular schemes came about as part of the work that we did cross-Government, where every Member of the Government took on one of our eight cross-cutting areas, which is an area that they normally wouldn't have oversight of, and then endeavoured to work across Government with colleagues to look for opportunities for new ideas, new areas of spend, that could really make a difference, and those areas where the evidence tells us that a difference can be made. So, these are the schemes that came out as a result of that cross-Government work.

Looking at the evidence, we don't have to do all the empirical evidence gathering ourselves—just looking for examples of best practice globally in terms of what we know works, and taking advice from the UK Committee on Climate Change in terms of what they would like to see Welsh Government focusing its efforts on in terms of decarbonisation and lowering our carbon emissions across Wales. 

I can see that the Minister wants to draw on best practice. And to the extent there's a UK Committee on Climate Change and it has a list of various projects that it considers may be effective, I can see why she uses that as a starting point. But, as a finance Minister taking a decision about how much of our precious resources to invest into particular areas, surely, to the extent this is badged as about climate change, she would like to make the maximum difference she could for the amount of money that she has available? Whether the climate impact assessment Rhun suggested is the right way or not, I don't know. But, surely, she needs to do more work on understanding what the bang for her buck—if she does get such—is in each of these different areas?

For example, she mentions the national forest—and, on balance, it strikes me as a good initiative to plant more trees and to have a national forest and work on that in Wales—but, what is the relative cost of that compared to another of her initiatives, which is to invest money in planting trees in Uganda, given the different types of trees that grow, how fast they grow, how much carbon dioxide they absorb, how much it costs to plant them, and how effective is the governance going to be about that? Surely, we need to consider that?

She talks about the way we build new homes, and elsewhere in the budget she emphasises the importance of affordable homes. But, may there not be a trade-off between these two different ambitions? One area where there is, I think, strong evidence of the effectiveness of spending is on energy efficiency and on home insulation, where you both reduce energy bills for the person involved and may have some impact in terms of what she seeks to do around climate change. Is that not an area where she should be investing money, relative to other areas that may be more expensive? For instance, what is the cost of getting that electric bus compared to, say, investing in a few more buses, for example, for Blaenau Gwent? It might either get people out of their cars or allow them to transport in ways they wouldn't otherwise be able to do. Please, in advance of next year's budget, at least, can we have a more rigorous way of making these assessments?

And, she talks about wanting to invest money in communications—I assume telling people how wonderful the Welsh Government is and what it's doing about climate change—but, will she consider actually effective messaging? One of the things that stops those trees being planted is the CAP, because farmland is subsidised but, generally, not woodland. If that's going to change, how will she publicise that? How will she encourage people to do that home insulation, which will benefit them as well? Will she work harder to join up and improve policy in this area?

I think the two areas that Mark Reckless focused on—well, two of the areas that he focused on—are actually two of the areas where the evidence from the UK CCC indicated that decarbonisation efforts should be focused on. So, one is the road transport sector—one that's crucial to delivering a net-zero target—and so, in response to that and the evidence that the UK CCC provided, over £60 million of additional targeted investment in decarbonisation is now directly aimed at the transport sector in our budget for next year.

And, alongside that, Mark Reckless identified housing, domestic heating and domestic energy as important areas to address. And again, UK CCC says that's somewhere we should be placing our attention. So, the budget provides an additional £25 million in our innovative housing programme to look at just that. So, we are taking the evidence that's being provided to us and the recommendations from experts and using them to inform our budgeting decisions.

Obviously, there are ways to compare things. So, Mark Reckless refers to our ambitious tree-planting project that we have in Uganda and then looks at the national forest work that we're doing here in Wales. And obviously, we want to do both. You can get more bang for your buck if you only plant those trees in Uganda. It's generally cheaper to do, they grow faster and so on. Depending on what kind of trees are planted, then you will have different results in terms of carbon. But, equally, we want to plant trees in Wales, because we know what the benefit will be for your well-being and so on if you do have the opportunity to walk amongst trees and in woodland. So, there are obviously several benefits to planting trees and they're certainly things that we would want to be doing in Wales, even though you could technically get more bang for your buck doing it elsewhere.

I have regular discussions with the Minister for Health and Social Services about a range of financial matters within his portfolio, including issues that impact on the provision of dental services.

Minister, in response to the Health, Social Care and Sport Committee's inquiry into dentistry in Wales, the Welsh Government failed to commit a single penny of new investment. The British Dental Association has stated that:

'The crisis facing NHS dentistry in Wales won't be solved with a few warm words'.

Their words, not mine. Therefore, what discussions are you having with the health Minister to ensure that the necessary contract reforms and additional recruitment in dentists are supported by sufficient and additional funding?

I've had a number of discussions with the health Minister with regard to the contract reform and with regard to the issues facing dentistry across Wales, because I know this is an issue that comes up frequently in the Assembly. We've acknowledged that the current contractual system does need reform, and that's something that we are absolutely getting on with, and significant changes are already being made and those changes are being welcomed by dental teams.

We've said we want to see the number of practices participating in the reform programme expanding further, and we do expect now to see over half of practices being part of the programme by October 2020. Currently, there are 132, so that's around 30 per cent of dental practices currently taking part.

Obviously, there are workforce and retention issues that we're seeking to address as well. Part of that is through the training programmes that we're putting in place. There are year-on-year increases now in the number of dentists providing NHS care in Wales, but we recognise recruitment and retention is a particular issue, and particularly so in some parts of Wales—north Wales, mid Wales and west Wales, particularly—and it is causing some difficulty in terms of filling vacancies.

But, I can confirm that Health Education and Improvement Wales are now looking at the commissioning of training numbers, training and education packages to develop the workforce, and considering whether there are more effective workforce models to deliver services that could improve dentists' workloads and help make practices more sustainable and the career more attractive.

That was interesting to hear, really, but these contract reforms have been going on in terms of pilots, or general progress, for about three or four years now. Bearing in mind that the change in the contract was about helping people become better at taking care of their own oral health, I would have thought that there might have been a reduced need for Welsh Government spending, not just due to fewer unnecessary appointments, but also fewer treatments for preventable damage.

In 2015-16, the old-style dental care and oral healthcare programmes cost Welsh Government £137 million plus the £33 million revenue from patient charges, which is 2.14 per cent of the NHS spending total. How does that compare now with the spend under this revised contract and what evidence did you get from the Minister to justify the changes?

This year, we're providing over £146 million to the Welsh NHS for the provision of primary care dental services. We are seeing increased use of dental services, which is a good thing. So, the latest published data shows that 1.7 million people were regularly accessing NHS primary care dentistry, and that's 42,000 more people than was the case five years before the latest figures. We now have over 1,500 dentists working in the NHS in Wales compared to 1,439 back in 2014, so we are gradually seeing an increase in the number of dentists, but also a corresponding increase in the number of patients accessing those services.

It is understandable that many care home residents have poor dental health when they first move into care, as they often move into care due to deteriorating health and lack of mobility. As dental access for children is at an all-time high, and, as you know, I speak very regularly about how good Designed to Smile is, does the Minister agree with me that it's fantastic news for older people that the A Lasting Smile programme budget will double next year, ensuring that the scheme reaches all care homes across Wales?

I thank Mike Hedges for raising that particular, important issue and for his constant support for Designed to Smile. I remember in the finance scrutiny session just recently, he was able to cite that as one of the excellent examples of really, truly preventative spend that we do have in Wales. I think it's only right that we seek to focus our efforts to improve the dental and oral health of older people who are living in care homes, so I'm delighted that the Minister for Health and Social Services announced an additional £0.25 million to extend that Gwên am Byth—A Lasting Smile oral health programme into the next year, and we're doubling the available funding for that now to ensure that it's rolled out to every single care home in Wales during 2020.

The Welsh Government is committed to ensuring spending decisions are informed by robust evidence and value for money is considered throughout policy development. We draw on a range of guidance to make the best use of public resources, including the high-level principles set out in HM Treasury's Green Book.

The Minister will know there's no shortage of candidates for increased spending where there is a real need, whether it's the health service or reducing fuel poverty or whatever. I think most Welsh taxpayers will scratch their heads, therefore, when they discover that £1.2 million is to be spent on organisations like the Welsh Centre for International Affairs—two thirds of whose income is spent on the salaries of its staff. Of the part of its income that is not spent on staff salaries, it supports organisations like Hub Cymru Africa, which receives £640,000 a year. It provides no accounts of its own, so we've no idea how many people it employs or what they earn, and it spends the money it doesn't spend on staff salaries mostly on non-Welsh items or other entities, who themselves mainly spend the money on staff salaries, like the sub-Sahara advisory panel, whose income is £68,000 a year, and its staff costs are greater at £74,000.

The Welsh Government has no responsibility for foreign aid, foreign development or foreign policy, so why are we indulging in this taxpayer-funded merry-go-round of virtue signalling for middle-class politicians in Cardiff Bay when there are real needs outside? As the blogger Jac o' the North has perhaps more pithily described it:

'A country with homeless on the streets, where kids go to school hungry, where people die waiting for ambulances, apparently has millions of pounds to spare so that dilettante English activists and useless Welsh politicians can feel better about themselves.'

This Welsh Government is proudly a global, internationalist Welsh Government that takes its responsibilities to the planet and to others very seriously. We're absolutely proud of the work that we're doing through our Wales for Africa programme. I think that perhaps it might speak more easily to the Member's set of values if I just make the point that, actually, it's in our own best interests if countries overseas that are currently struggling are able to cope better in so many ways. Peace overseas is in our own best interests. Ensuring that overseas countries are able to make their contribution to the climate crisis is in our own best interests. So, I think that perhaps those narrow thoughts might help the Member understand how important our Wales for Africa programme is.

Clearly, managing resources to ensure value for money and effectiveness includes play, which is key to children's health and well-being. The recent review of play sufficiency assessments carried out for the Welsh Government by Play Wales reported that the all-Wales play opportunities grant funding from Welsh Government has resulted in increased activity to secure play opportunities across Wales, and that the Welsh Government should be clear on how anti-poverty and other focused investments should be used to support play sufficiency. How do you therefore respond to concerns raised with me by play sector representatives this week who've been informed that the all-Wales play opportunities grant is not going ahead again in the next financial year; that the only thing that's been keeping the last remaining bits of play and play work infrastructure going across Wales has been this grant; and that, as a sector, they're haemorrhaging excellent staff who have jumped ship to pastures new, and whilst there is excellent work going on in some areas, there are still huge gaps in the infrastructure and provision is dwindling?

I'm aware of the good work of Play Wales. I've had the opportunity to see some of the things that they do locally within my own patch. What I will say is I'm not familiar particularly with the specific grant to which the Member refers, but if you would write to me with some further information, I can then discuss it perhaps with the relevant responsible Minister.

The budget invests in all parts of Wales to support our public services, businesses and communities. This includes a £20 million boost for the north Wales metro within the Minister for Economy and Transport's portfolio, continuing our investment in an integrated, modern and efficient transport system for the region.

Thank you for that response. You’ll be aware, I’m sure, that I have a number of hydro energy schemes in my constituency, and I’ve raised this with you on a number of occasions in the past. There is grave concern in the sector, of course, about the situation of business rates—non-domestic business rates—and the impact that that will have on the sector. There have been calls and consideration has been given to changing the methodology for calculating the level of taxation, or there’s the grants scheme that’s been available from the Government to assist these hydro schemes with those payments, which will come to an end at the end of this financial year. There’s no assurances as to what the next financial year’s arrangements will be, and that throws a cloud over the sector and creates uncertainty. Having listened to you say how much you’re doing for the environment and tackling the climate emergency, it does raise a question as to why you haven’t been able to give a response and assurance to the sector before now. So, could we hear an update on this and can you give me an assurance that you will do everything that you can to safeguard this sector from the impacts of having to pay this tax in full?

I'm grateful to Llyr for raising this issue. I know that he's got a very strong interest in the hydro energy sector, as do I and the Minister with responsibility for energy. We are currently awaiting a paper from the representative body of the hydro sector, which does refer to those potential changes in methodology that you described, but I'm open to having some further discussions, as I've already indicated to the Minister, in terms of support for the sector next year.

In welcoming the £400 million increase to health and social care, we must note that this is less than the three-year cumulative overspend across the NHS. In north Wales, we have seen Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board record deficits of £20 million in 2015-16; £30 million in 2016-17; £39 million in 2017-18; and £41 million in 2018-19. These failures to break even are despite the health board having received £83 million in special measures funding. Now, as you know, Minister, light is not yet there on the horizon as the board is forecasting a £35 million deficit for 2019-20, missing your own target by £10 million. Since special measures, it cannot be argued that the health Minister has overseen and indeed allowed a poorly performing health board to become a huge financial vacuum. What assurances can you give me that money sent to this health board for 2020-21 will come with a solid strategy in place to clamp down on excessive spending and even more excessive waiting times?

As I mentioned in the statement yesterday, the local health boards across Wales will be coming forward with their plans and their proposals for 2020-21 by the end of the month, and the health Minister and his officials will be robustly scrutinising and challenging those and then the health Minister will accept or not accept the plans as they come forward. Obviously, a focus on improvement and a focus on value for money will be at the heart of those considerations.

Minister, one of the reasons I got into politics was the perception that north Wales just doesn't get its fair share of attention, funding or consideration as compared to the south. We've had a Minister for north Wales for over a year, he is yet to make a statement in that role, and I am frankly none the wiser as to whether that perception is correct. Minister, can you confirm that north Wales does actually get its fair share and how can we tell that?

Well, it isn't the case, of course, that north Wales does not get its fair share of funding. I'm just having a look at the figures on capital spend, which I have in front of me, and they show that the total projected cost of capital spend in the most recent year, for which we have those figures, is £2.5 million, and that is actually the second highest of all the regions. And that's just the first figure that I have in front of me. So, I think that the figures don't bear it out, and as much as it would come to the Member's disappointment, those arguments just aren't valid.

The draft budget 2020-21 delivers on our promises to the people of Wales and invests in the future of our planet. For example, our plans include funding to complete the £25 million investment for phase 2 of the women and children's scheme at Glangwili hospital.

Thank you for that and, of course, the £25 million for Glangwili is extremely welcome. But, actually, I'm seeking clarity today from you regarding the budget allocation provided to maintain and update the NHS estate. It's not very clear in the overview where and how that capital funding could be deployed. I have a number of GP surgeries in my area that are not really fit for purpose anymore. We are asking general practice to provide more and more services to a greater number of people, many with comorbidities, and they need special access abilities and we need a raft of healthcare professionals that need premises to work from. We used to have a discrete fund of about £10 million that GPs could apply to to update their estate. That fund has disappeared over the last few years. I do note that there's £1.8 billion allocated to maintain and transform the NHS estate, but I'm not clear as to whether or not GPs will also be able to access that £1.8 billion or whether it is entirely for trusts and health boards.

I thank the Member for raising that question. I will perhaps, if she's content, ask the health Minister to provide the detailed answer to that question.FootnoteLink

Yes, of course.

Question 8 has already been asked. Question 9, Jack Sargeant.

In line with the priority this Government places on supporting the most vulnerable in our communities, and despite almost a decade of austerity, the Minister for Housing and Local Government is maintaining investment in the housing support grant next year at £170 million—sorry, £127 million.

Thank you for that answer, Minister. The housing support grant is one of the best lines of defence we have against the continued chaos caused by Tory austerity. The result of years of indifference from our UK Government about the impact of their welfare policies can be seen on our streets: shameful levels of rough-sleeping across the UK, not just in our cities, but in all of our communities.

Minister, councils in Wales use the housing support grant to protect the most vulnerable. If the March budget provides any additional funding to Wales, will you consider making more money available to the housing support grant? 

Jack Sargeant recognises the importance of the housing support grant, as do I, in terms of it being one of the levers that we have in terms of preventing homelessness here in Wales. He's right that, despite being able to maintain budgets at existing levels, we unfortunately haven't been able to provide real-terms increases to every item in the budget. Pressures continue, of course, going into next year.

I think that our record in Wales does compare favourably with that across the border, where Supporting People was dehypothecated, leading to significant cuts in the funding, according to the National Audit Office. But, of course, when the budget is announced on 11 March, we will see then to what extent there is additional funding that does come forward to Wales, and, obviously, any changes will be made then in an early supplementary budget, should those changes be significant.

Minister, the majority of additional funding to deal with homelessness seems to be targeted at Swansea, Cardiff, Newport and Wrexham. So, can I ask what additional money is going to be provided to support homelessness in rural local authorities in particular, for example Powys? 

So, Russell George is correct that there is specific funding that is going to Swansea, Newport, Cardiff and Wrexham, because those are real areas where there is significant rough-sleeping, and those local authorities do have significant pressure on them. But we absolutely recognise that homelessness doesn't just occur in cities and urban areas, it actually occurs across Wales, and that's one of the reasons why the local government and housing Minister has just launched a campaign that does set out that homelessness actually happens across Wales, and it can often be a hidden form of homelessness. So, she's particularly concerned about those people who are sofa surfing, for example.

So, there is support across Wales for homelessness—those homelessness budgets have been maintained at £17.9 million in 2021. And I'm sure that the Minister will be keen to provide an update on support within your particular area.

Thank you to the Minister.

The next questions, therefore, are questions to the Minister for International Relations and Welsh Language, and the first question is from Darren Millar.

The international strategy is underpinned by clear values and principles, including an emphasis on support for human rights. We have a long and proud tradition of being a welcoming nation to people of all cultures and countries and a commitment also to the United Nations sustainability goals.

Can I applaud the commitment shown by the Welsh Government and indeed the UK Government on human rights and championing those rights around the world? Having said that, I am a little concerned that the Welsh Government has been cosying up to the communist Vietnamese Government in recent years, particularly through the Wales-Vietnam education link. Now, indeed—[Interruption.] Indeed, the Welsh Government rolled out the red carpet for a visit by the Vietnamese education Minister last year, less than 12 months ago. As you will be aware, Minister, the Vietnamese regime is a police state, which is regularly accused of human rights violations, not least in relation to the minority Christian community there. [Interruption.] I think the education Minister should be educated in related to the rights of Christians in Vietnam, which are being violated on a regular basis. According to the charity Open Doors, Vietnam is one of the top 50 persecutors of Christians in the world, with those from ethnic minorities particularly hard hit, facing violent attacks, harassment, the tearing down of their places of worship and imprisonment. Can I ask, as the international relations Minister, what discussions you've had with Vietnam on its human rights record, particularly in relation to the Christian community there? And what action are you taking cross-Government to ensure that there's a joined-up approach in addressing these human rights issues with Ministers, such as the Vietnamese education Minister, when they visit in the future?

Thank you, Darren. I'm disappointed, because I think we should be very proud of the fact that we are developing a very strong education relationship with Vietnam. The fact that we are helping them to improve their education systems, that we're encouraging more people from that country to come and study in Wales, that this is an up-and-coming country and that there are opportunities for us, therefore, to help to influence the—

Are you challenging them on their human rights record?

—direction of the country, I think is a really important strategic partnership for us—

Are you challenging them on their human rights record?

—to consider.

Can I just—? Darren, you have asked your question and you must give the Minister the opportunity to respond to the question. Minister.

I think it is worth underlining that it's not just us that have a relationship with Vietnam, but also UK Government. The Tory UK Government have a very close relationship as well. I do think we have to acknowledge that international relations in the area of human rights is always potentially quite difficult, but you have to make some decisions that are difficult sometimes, and we have made in this instance a decision that it is in our constructive and our partnership interest to make sure that we work with Vietnam to help them in developing their education system.

Where I would agree with Darren is that all Governments—this Government, the UK Government, the European Union, all Governments—should, as appropriate, make sure that they are raising issues of human rights with any nation—any and all nations. But it's as appropriate, and part of that, I have to say, has to be to do with developing links where you can have those conversations as well.

What I would like to ask—it's an issue I've raised before, but I haven’t quite yet had the clarity that I'm seeking—is on, in future, wider international affairs, and particularly in future trade deals, where I do have a worry that we are going to see watered-down commitments, Darren, to human rights, because, in effect we've seen it, indeed, in the Vietnam agreements, where what was legally binding under the European Union's legally binding and legally enforceable human rights obligations are now parked into a form of words alongside it. So, could I seek clarification that the voice of the Welsh Government through the Minister will be made clear that we want to see binding human rights obligations on any future trade deals, whether with the USA, whether with Vietnam, whether with anybody? And that will need an understanding from the UK Government that they will force that issue.

Thank you, and I think it's probably worth underlining that, in the past, the Conservative manifesto wanted to update the Human Rights Act—they previously wanted to scrap it altogether and to replace it with a British bill of rights. I've got to tell you that I've got more confidence in the system that we have at the moment than any other system that they are likely to introduce, because I think that international benchmarking is really, really important. And if he wants to be in the situation where the kind of people that he is mixing with—. If he wants to walk away from the Human Rights Act, the people he will be mixing with, the only people in the European Council, are Belarus and Kazakhstan, and that's potentially the route that we are going down. That was certainly the perspective of the Conservative manifesto. So, let's be clear about who is the party that is looking to downgrade human rights.

Now, coming on to your question, I think first of all it's worth saying that human rights is commonly not something that is substantively provided for within trade agreements. What happens is they are referred, they are referenced, on to broader framework agreements, and what we in the Welsh Government would want to see is clearly a reference to those broader framework agreements that would cover human rights to make sure that there is a link between the trade policies and those broader human rights situations. I think it's also worth noting, however, that the UN sustainability goals have suggested that human rights are a prerequisite for sustainable development. So, to think that you can divorce them completely would probably also be wrong.

I meet regularly with the Minister for Education. We had another meeting this week to discuss aspects of Cymraeg 2050 relating to her portfolio, and, following the consultation on the Welsh in Education Strategic Plans (Wales) Regulations 2019 and the associated draft guidance that went out to consultation, we'll be holding a conference now in March to discuss planning and promoting Welsh in education.

Thank you, Minister, for your answer. I've been contacted by parents, and I'm continuing to be contacted by parents in increasing numbers, who are concerned that there are no discrete ALN classes in Welsh medium schools in my constituency, and they feel that their children are put at a disadvantage and are unable to access education in the language of their choice as a result. What discussions have you had around ensuring adequate provision of ALN education in discrete classes through the medium of Welsh in Cynon Valley, but also across Wales?

Thank you very much, Vikki. Just to let you know that the education Minister has offered to meet you to discuss this further, but just to let you know that within the new Welsh in education strategic plans there is a provision that demands that ALN is taken into account. So, that is something that has been strengthened. I know that this is something that Rhondda Cynon Taf County Borough Council is aware of. They had a meeting in December. So, this is an issue that they understand needs to be addressed, but it is certainly something that would concern us, I think, to think that there wouldn't be that provision. Absolutely, ALN needs to be accessible through the medium of Welsh as it is through the medium of English. 

Minister, I'm sure you will join with me in congratulating Ysgol y Preseli in my constituency. As you know, it's a Welsh-medium secondary school graded second in Wales, according to The Sunday Times school guide this year, for its excellent performance. It's important that other schools learn from Welsh-medium schools such as Ysgol y Preseli in terms of promoting the use of the Welsh language through the education system. So, can you tell us, in the discussions that you have had and are having with the education Minister, how you as a Government ensure that other schools can benefit from the excellent work that Ysgol y Preseli is doing in promoting the Welsh language?

Thank you very much. May I too congratulate Ysgol y Preseli, which has been developing over the years? I know that in the past they had a good reputation. They went down a bit, but they have gone up once more, and we're very, very pleased with the difference that they're making to the pupils in that area. Of course there's an opportunity to learn, and one of the things that we're doing is to ensure that these networks across the centres provide opportunities for people to learn from each other, in particular through the medium of Welsh. This certainly is something that is looked at in that area specifically.

Questions now from the party spokespeople. Plaid Cymru spokesperson, Siân Gwenllian.

Thank you, Llywydd. During a question to the First Minister yesterday, I raised the case of an elderly Welsh-speaking man from Anglesey who's living with dementia. The fact that a health board that is supposed to be acting in accordance with the language standards is even considering providing care for this individual in England, where, of course, there would be no Welsh language service available, is unambiguous proof that the standards placed on the health board are deficient.

Now, under your own standards as they stand, the situation facing this gentleman from Anglesey is entirely legal and there is no legal safeguard for patients. Surely it should be an expectation on a health board to provide a service for vulnerable patients, such as dementia patients, in their first language, and it shouldn't fall to families, politicians and pressure groups to safeguard the human right of Welsh speakers to a service through the medium of their own language. Do you agree with the suggestion of the First Minister yesterday that there are fundamental deficiencies in the health standards and that they must be revisited as a matter of urgency?

Well, if I could add to what the First Minister said yesterday, it’s difficult for us to discuss personal matters regarding one individual, but it is important that we understand as well that there are clinical matters sometimes that mean that it is a requirement for people to leave our country. But I do agree with the First Minister when he said that there is a need for us to recognise that the rights of Welsh speakers to have their issues dealt with through the medium of Welsh, and their care through the medium of Welsh, is something that we see as something that’s fundamental and that’s what we should be offered in Wales.

According to an e-mail that you sent to officials asking questions before passing the health standards—. It becomes apparent, in reading that e-mail, that you were entirely aware of the deficiencies of the health standards. And I quote—you ask this: 

'So, I want to be clear, if a little 90-year-old lady from Gwynedd who speaks poor English goes to hospital and is about to have a complicated operation, she cannot legally ask for someone to explain to her in Welsh what is happening, and that what we are offering is that the health board makes plans so that they can set out to what extent they will be able to carry out clinical consultations in Welsh five years from now, which presumably could mean they still won't be able to.'

And you go on to say: 

And you also say:

'I think this is quite a tough sell. Any ideas?'

Isn't the truth of the matter that your Government's policy can't guarantee Welsh language services—even basic Welsh language services—for vulnerable patients today, and that you are entirely right in your own analysis that they won't be available in five years' time either, unless we change those health standards? As you said yourself, a situation like this is a tough sell for Welsh speakers.

I do think that there are differences across the country. I think if you look at somewhere such as Betsi, there is a commitment towards the Welsh language and it's something that is now being seen as something that is fundamental. They have to be aware of what the language requirements of the patients who come to see them are. And I do think there has been a change in the attitude within health departments that we have across Wales.

Well, I'm hugely disappointed by that response. We are talking about Betsi Cadwaladr health board in the case of the gentleman with dementia from Anglesey, as it happens. So, what you say is, simply, wrong.

Another problem that you identified in the discussion on the health standards, before they were passed, was the lack of coverage for workforce planning in the medical workforce through training. The advice of your officials at the time was that that would need to be dealt with through policy steps, and I agree. It's crucial that you do plan the workforce appropriately. Setting targets in order to ensure that you recruit an adequate number of candidates who are Welsh speakers on courses of that kind would ensure that the future workforce would be planned on the basis of the needs of the people of Wales.

So, can you confirm that your Government will do that? Because, in failing to do it, the danger is that we will be no nearer providing these services that are so crucial in terms of safety and quality of care for the people of Wales in their hour of need?

We are aware that there is a need to do more in terms of language planning, and that's why we've brought forward the 2050 project. That will start with the Government and will look at language planning within the Government, and then it will ensure that we are effective outside Government, ensuring that we're pushing some of those opportunities in terms of the public services, to ensure that they take on their responsibilities in a considerate way.

I also think that it's important to underline that we have asked Academi—they are committed to ensuring that leaders of the future within the Government are aware of their influence and of their responsibility towards the Welsh language in the way that they are going to lead in our public centres in the future.

Conservative spokesperson, David Melding. 

Diolch yn fawr. Minister, you'll know that we're in the middle of the tv and film awards season around the world, and I'm sure you will want to join me in congratulating Aberystwyth's own Taron Egerton on his fantastic—

Hear, hear. [Laughter.]

I thought this might be pleasing to you, Presiding Officer.

I congratulate him on his fantastic success so far. His talent is making people remember that Wales is renowned as a breeding ground for extraordinary success on the big screen, and I wish him all the best for his future career. Whilst he's a shining example of what we can achieve in the Welsh film and television industry; as a whole, Minister, I think it's fair to say that we're not quite reaching our full potential at the moment, especially when we compare ourselves to other countries of similar size.

New Zealand, for example, has a thriving film and tv industry that is built upon its attractions as a fantastic physical location—and that's a feat, obviously, we could also emulate. The industry there is worth around £0.5 billion a year to New Zealand. Now, I'm not saying we'll necessarily set our sights that high, but, at the moment, I think it's fair to say we've not done as well as we would have hoped in the last five years. What is your Government doing to promote Wales as a top location for the film industry now that the media investment budget is in abeyance?

Can I also offer my congratulations to Taron Egerton? We are very, very proud of him, and we look forward to the Oscars, where I'm sure we are hopeful that he will also be awarded. He was very helpful to us in the last Government, in helping us to promote Wales as a place to come and invest in relation to tv and film, back in November. So, it is a relationship that we're very proud to have. And of course, we must also underline the fact that we have two starring Welsh actors in the main roles in The Two Popes as well, which is a great film that I would recommend that you also look at.

I must say that I'm very aware of the fact that, actually, we do have a tremendous reputation now as a place where we can make quality tv and films. That's why, in terms of the international strategy, which we'll launch next week, one of the three sectors that we're hoping will really promote Wales, in terms of how we want to be perceived internationally, is tv and film. And if you look at the developments over the past 10 years, we now have about 50,000 people working in this industry, and that, I think, is a growth of about 50 per cent in the past 10 years. So, I think we're heading in the right direction, but we need to shout about it internationally, and that's certainly something I hope to be doing.

Thank you for that answer, Minister, and I think everyone shares this ambition, but it's really what's the roadmap to get us there; because, if we look at the draft international strategy, it's very thin on what we're going to do to build on our past success to reach full potential in terms of what the transformation of the creative industries of tv and film, in particular, could achieve.

And, again, if you look at what tv programmes can do in terms of generating tourism, programmes like Game of Thrones have had a huge impact on the tourism of Croatia and Northern Ireland, for instance, and other areas. And in New Zealand, as I earlier referenced, a whole part of their tourist economy is now based on Tolkien and the success that's followed The Lord of the Rings production there.

I just wonder if we're going to get some real detail in the full strategy, because at the moment it does seem to be very, very thin. And this is clearly—I do grant you this—this is clearly an area where Wales can have a profound competitive advantage, and we should really move to take that full potential to fulfilment now.

The Deputy Minister is in charge of issues relating to the creative economy. What you will see is, shortly after the international strategy is launched, there will be a Creative Wales strategy that will be launched, and that will be the opportunity to put some more meat on the bone, which you were asking for. And that will go alongside the tourism strategy as well, so that's being refreshed. So, I think it's really important to see these three strategies together as an opportunity for us to shout. And of course, His Dark Materials is another example where Wales now has sold that series internationally, and there's an opportunity for us also to make sure that we bounce off not just how brilliant technically we are in terms of these film developments, but also our opportunity to show a bit of the landscape of Wales as well. That should hopefully encourage more tourism as well.

Minister, if I could turn to domestic production, it's now been 27 years since a Welsh language film was nominated for an Oscar; Hedd Wyn, in 1993, and a very fine film it is. And of course, this can be a key part of our international strategy in portraying to a modern Wales the vital Welsh language culture that we do enjoy here. Now, during the Culture, Welsh Language and Communications Committee's inquiry into this area, there was a perception that Welsh language films were commercially unviable, which made it hard for producers to secure financial support. There was also criticism about the bureaucracy involved and many people complaining about how frustrating that was, legally restrictive, and other requirements were described as onerous. But, I think the international strategy allows us really to capitalise on these sorts of things as well. And is there not scope for the Welsh Government to do much more to promote Welsh language film making for the international arthouse audience, which could have huge benefits for how people around the world perceive Wales? And indeed, that audience tends to contain many, many opinion formers and decision makers.

Thank you, that's absolutely right, and it was great to see Hedd Wyn being nominated in that situation for an Oscar. But, there were several examples before that. My first job was to sell animation for S4C and there were several occasions when S4C's animation production companies in Wales actually succeeded in those international arenas as well. 

I think one of the things that we do need to do is to look at where were are uniquely placed in terms of tv and film, and an example of that is how we make back-to-back productions. So, if you think of some of the productions that S4C create, they do a Welsh version and an English version, and that is something that we think is worth exploring to see if other nations would like to look at how we do that. 

This is something that I've discussed with S4C and with some other tv companies. I held a round-table recently with the heads of tv and film in Wales to discuss exactly this: what is it that, uniquely, Wales can offer in this space? So, one of the things I've been trying to do is really trying to hone what is the message when we are selling tv and film to the world? What makes us unique? What makes us different? And certainly, that back-to-back production is something that came across.

We proactively work with partners in Wales, the UK and internationally to identify and pursue long-term hosting targets for attracting major cultural, sporting and business events to all parts of Wales. In addition, we support the establishment, growth and development of a wide range of home-grown events in Wales.

Thank you, Minister. In December last year, the new International Convention Centre Wales in Newport hosted the BBC Welsh sports personality of the year. It was a tremendous success and I was extremely pleased to see the peerless Alun Wyn Jones win the top prize.

Following this, I've written to the BBC and the ICC urging them to consider the venue for the UK sports personality of the year. Three of the last 13 UK sports personalities have been Welsh, yet the event has never been hosted in Wales, the only country in the United Kingdom not to. So, now is the time to correct this.

Newport, along with the ICC, is the perfect place to host the UK BBC sports personality of the year, and offers huge potential for similar events and the benefits that they bring. Please could you add your support and your cajoling to bring this event to Newport and Wales?

What a brilliant idea. That's certainly something that I'd like to follow up on. I have regular meetings with the Celtic Manor hotel and the people responsible for the ICC, and that's certainly a great idea that I'll pursue with vigour. Thank you.

Minister, you may remember that I asked you in November last year about maximising the benefit for Wales of the 2022 Commonwealth Games being held in Birmingham. Then, you confirmed that you had met the games' organisers to see whether some of the teams competing could be based here in Wales. In view of your answer, could you say whether you have made some progress on this to attract some of the sporting events themselves to be facilitated in Wales, or is there still a possibility of this happening? Your update on this issue will be highly appreciated by our hospitality sector in Wales.

Thank you. Well, I haven't had a recent meeting with the Commonwealth Games people, but I'll attempt to see if I can find out if they have made any progress in trying to get teams to base themselves here in Wales. So, this is something that we're obviously very interested in progressing, because we want to get as much focus as we can during that time on Wales. 

I'm aware that the Urdd Eisteddfod, for example, have now got a strategic alignment with the Welsh team in terms of promoting Wales, and they're using the Urdd mascot as the method to really promote Wales during those Commonwealth Games. So, I'll pursue that and see if we've got any further in tempting people to base themselves here. 

I'd like to push the Minister on that, if I can, about any bid in the future to host the Commonwealth Games and whether you've actually learnt or spoken to the Scottish Government about the benefits that came to Scotland, not just in terms of sports, but also the cultural benefits and public health benefits that that country received after hosting the Commonwealth Games. Obviously, we were disappointed alongside millions—well, millions internationally—of sports fans when the plans to try to host fell through. The bids for 2026 and 2030 have been decided simultaneously, but can you commit to putting work in place now to pave the way for us to be able to bid for the 2034 games? 

I think 2034 is quite a long time frame, it's quite a long horizon for us to be working towards. It's got to be made clear that this has got to be balanced out against other initiatives that are also in play. For example, the new Prime Minister has said that he's very keen to host the football world cup. There are opportunities and we just have to work out—we can't do everything—which one of these we want to plump for. Of course, they're expensive, to host these events, but there are real opportunities as well. To get the attention of the world on us is an opportunity that we shouldn't miss. But I think 2034 is probably too far away in terms of the horizon scanning that we're doing. 

One of the advantages of the international convention centre and Jayne's excellent proposal is its location on the east side of Newport at Celtic Manor, so that people coming to events there from England by road don't need to travel through the Brynglas tunnels. Wouldn't a wider strategy of events coming to Wales, for instance to Cardiff, and making it possible for more people to get to them without being stuck in very long delays, as, again, has happened over the Christmas and new year period and indeed today, be to build an M4 relief road?

Well, I know that the events people at the ICC work very, very closely with Cardiff council and understand that, actually, if they do have a major event and they don't have the capacity, even with the Celtic Manor and the other hotels that they own nearby, that actually, they need to share the prosperity and they're anxious to share the prosperity. The ICC, I think, is a really unique development for Wales. There's a real opportunity for us to bring people to Wales to business events—we had the space conference held there as one of the opening events, which was a great success. But what happens with business events is that people come back as visitors. Very often, they're high net worth individuals who are anxious, then, to come and spend some money in Wales. That's certainly something we're interested in. You'll have seen recently that we are very proud to see that we will be hosting a major golf event in that area in the near future as well. 

The international strategy will be based upon a clear set of values as outlined in the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015. At its heart, it will promote the three themes of creativity, sustainability and technology, with the core value of promoting Wales as a globally responsible nation. 

I note your comments to the first international trade dinner of the South Wales Chamber of Commerce just before Christmas. During your speech, you mentioned the focus on data mining and cyber security, trumpeting Wales being the largest cluster for cyber companies in the UK. Now, jobs, particularly in the most deprived parts of our country, are much needed and I recognise that cyber security is a fast-growing sector that will play an increasingly important role in the years to come. But, what I find hard to accept is the Welsh Government funding of cyber security initiatives run by companies involved in the arms trade. Take the £20 million cyber centre that you've established with the French arms manufacturer Thales. This arrangement effectively makes the Government an investor in a company that produces arms for despotic regimes like Saudi Arabia. Thales is also believed to be supplying components for Russian tanks. Do you agree that we should have an ethical responsibility to invest in companies not involved in the business of producing weapons designed to maim and kill? How does that fit in with the Government's policies for well-being of future generations? And if you don't agree that we should have an ethical responsibility, can you explain to this Senedd why not? 

Well, I'm not going to back away from our commitment to support the cyber sector in Wales. It is something that I think we should be really proud of, and the fact that we're developing the cyber centre in Ebbw Vale, an area of massive deprivation, where there is a commitment to help develop an education facility there, there have been events to encourage women, in particular, to enter into the cyber security sector. I think this is something we should be really proud of, and there is, of course, a danger and there's a possibility that there's a link between defence and other areas, but I think you've got to understand that, also, we all need cyber security. We need it for our computers here. Factories need it. You need it to get on an aeroplane. It is something that permeates every aspect of our society, and if you think you can divorce one from the other, I think it's really important that we understand the importance of cyber security for almost every aspect of our lives.

Presiding Officer, my question's a little less bellicose. [Laughter.] If I can turn to Susie Ventris-Field, the chief executive of the Welsh Centre for International Affairs, she's pointed out the wonderful civic record we have in Wales in promoting international peace and solidarity. She cites examples like the message of peace and goodwill from the young people of Wales, which, in the next couple of years, will reach its centenary; the peace appeal that took place in 1924, where 40 per cent of Welsh women signed a petition to the women of America so that they would lobby the American president to join the League of Nations, and that could have led to very different outcomes; and long-standing links between Wales and Somaliland, Uganda, Lesotho and other places; and organisations like the Wales anti-apartheid movement. Clearly, non-governmental organisations and the civic sector in general have played a huge amount informally in our international relations strategy, so, now, in your formal strategy, how will you be involving this vital sector in fulfilling your strategy and developing it in the future?

Thank you. Well, we have had long conversations with the sector, they've certainly been very involved in helping us to develop the strategy, and I do think we should be proud of our record in terms of promoting peace from Wales. As you say, the Urdd's message to the world annually is something that I think we should be really proud of and something that we should be celebrating, certainly when they celebrate that centenary in 2021.

In terms of the other things that we're anxious to develop, Llangollen international festival—we mustn't forget that was initially established with very much a peace message involved with it. That is something I know the First Minister's very keen to see if we can reinvigorate, and we've been speaking to the organisers there to see if that can be put more centre stage once again.

I know also that Mererid Hopwood has made great strides in developing the peace academy now, working with various universities throughout Wales to see what can be done in that space. So, I think there are some really interesting developments here that we could be building on in terms of the kind of messages we will be giving alongside our international strategy.

Thank you very much. The 2020-21 draft budget includes over £37 million for the Welsh language. Of this, around £13 million is directly related to promotion activities. Our grant partners play an important role in providing opportunities for people to use the language. We’re pleased to continue to fund 27 partners and 52 papurau bro.

Thank you for that list. The finance Minister, during the debate on the draft budget yesterday, stated that the budget for the Welsh language wasn't going to be cut. So, just for the sake of clarity, can you confirm for us that there will be an inflationary increase in that budget? Otherwise, it is a real-terms cut, so I just wanted confirmation that there is going to be an increase in line with inflation for your budget for the Welsh language.

I also understand that this morning you suggested in the Culture, Welsh Language and Communications Committee that you may be required to cut the Welsh for Adults budget in order to direct some of that funding to mitigating the impacts of Brexit. Can you confirm whether that is something that you are truly considering, and perhaps explain why you target Welsh for Adults particularly? Which other elements of your budget will be cut for that reason?

I think it’s important that people understand that Welsh is mainstreamed across Government. The fact is that we haven’t seen cuts in the funding for the Welsh language. What has happened is that some of the expenditure that was in the budget for the education lines has moved to another line, and that is why, perhaps, there was some confusion as to whether cuts had been introduced.

We have found an additional £50,000 to pay for the staffing costs of the Welsh Language Commissioner, and we have also provided capital funding of £0.38 million to the commissioner so that he can have a new computer system. What we’re doing—in terms of looking at the budget in general, one of the things I did was to ask those who assist me, in terms of ensuring that we’re on the right track, to look at the direction and whether we’re doing the right things in achieving that aim of a million speakers. What was clear was that we were spending a lot more than half of the budget that I have on Welsh for Adults. So, if we’re doing that, we have to ensure that the money is spent correctly and ensure that we have value for money. So, for me, what’s important is that we are consistently looking at whether we’re spending in the right places.

I have to say completely clearly that I’m very pleased with the work that the National Centre for Learning Welsh is doing. About 12,000 people are learning through the medium of Welsh. We are giving about £13 million to the centre, so it is quite a large proportion of my budget. That’s why I just want to scrutinise in more detail how that is being spent.

Well, perhaps I could try to respond to that question. Just to avoid a future of buck-passing on this issue, can you be clear about the changes to the budget of the Welsh Language Commissioner that can be attributed directly to his new promotional responsibilities? What funding will be retained by the Welsh Government to cover its promotional responsibilities? Because I would want to keep a close eye on this.

Could you also tell us whether there will be an increase in local authority budgets and health budgets? Will that include funding for improving their compliance with standards, including any responsibilities for promoting the Welsh language, or will they be able to access funds from the Welsh language main expenditure group in order to do that?

Well, we have ensured that we are co-operating better with the language commissioner. We have a memorandum of understanding so that we know who’s doing what, so that we’re not duplicating the work that we’re doing as a Government and the work that he is doing as commissioner. I do think that savings can be made, therefore, in that area, because we’re not duplicating work.

In terms of what’s happening in the field of health, one of the things that we have been doing is helping people to train and to learn through the medium of Welsh. That budget currently is coming from us for health. We do hope that, ultimately, the department itself will take responsibility for training people through the medium of Welsh. The same is true in relation to training teachers to teach young people. So, currently, that does come under the national centre and we’re funding that, but I hope that in the long term that will be incorporated into the departments themselves.

The early years sector is vital to our aim of reaching 1 million Welsh speakers. We're working on programmes such as Progress for Success and Camau to develop Welsh language skills within the current workforce and ensuring that those joining the sector can use the language confidently.

Thank you. Minister, you'll be fully aware that there is increasing demand for Welsh-medium education at primary and secondary level, and, in light of that rising trend, I wondered what consideration the Government has given to making a further leap in bilingualism amongst monolingual English-speaking communities by ensuring that the expanded childcare offer, which was primarily in the medium of Welsh, would give three and four-year-olds the ability to absorb bilingualism in the way that the cat laps up a saucer of milk. It seems to me that this is a missed opportunity within this very welcome offer of childcare to families and the cost of caring for young children, as well as to those children. So, given that in a place like Cardiff the early years practitioners are predominantly drawn from English-speaking communities, I wondered what strategy could be employed to rapidly increase the number of people who are excellent early years practitioners as well as Welsh-medium speakers.

So, we do have to be aware that we are very keen to reach this target, but to make that work we have to make sure that we have the right number of people in place who can actually teach. So, that's why we have 350 practitioners who will benefit from this Camau programme. What that is is free access to Welsh language training by childcare and play practitioners. The fact is that we now have this childcare offer and about 30 per cent of that childcare offer is through the medium of Welsh. So, that is really important, that people understand that there's an opportunity there. We've also got Mudiad Meithrin. They run a programme called Croesi'r Bont and this is an immersion system to make sure that people have the skills in childcare development. There's a level 3 diploma that has been developed with Mudiad Meithrin, so people are going through that system. And then, on top of that, our officials are working with the Urdd, and they've got a lot of experience of apprentices and so we're trying to get them to take on more apprentices through the medium of Welsh to look specifically at childcare.

Thank you, Dawn. The National Lottery celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary last year. Since 1994 National Lottery players have supported around 50,000 projects across Wales with nearly £1.75 billion of investment. This obviously has had a transformational effect on funding for arts, sport, heritage, charitable causes and community projects throughout Wales.

Thank you for that response, Deputy Minister. I'd see first hand the value of lottery funding within my constituency, particularly when I meet community groups and other organisations that are local beneficiaries. However, I'm keen that all efforts are maximised to secure even more funding for our more disadvantaged communities. So, can you tell me what more could be done through your role in relation to the distribution of lottery funding to help meet the needs specifically of communities like Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney?

Well, I'm pleased to confirm that the lottery spending in Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney, as you know, amounts to over £13 million over the period of that spend and 70 projects have been completed or are currently in delivery. And you'll be aware, because we've visited some of these projects together, of the important work that has been done and is still being developed at the Cyfarthfa Castle Museum and Art Gallery, which was awarded an audiovisual project in January 2018. Now, as far as Cyfarthfa Park is concerned, the Cyfarthfa Park Rediscovered project application, submitted by Merthyr Tydfil County Borough Council, is still open to further discussion—I can confirm this—between the borough council and the lottery. And I do hope that a way will be found to deliver this, because, clearly, community benefit is one of the tests of the effectiveness of lottery spend. I will continue to ensure, in my discussion with the National Lottery in Wales—I meet the chair and the chief executive on a very regular basis, and I'll make sure that these aspects are fully discussed at our next meeting.

We're committed to building on Wales's success in hosting major events and work proactively with event owners from Wales, the UK and internationally to maximise the wider benefits of events, sporting, cultural or business, to communities across Wales.

Minister, as you'll be aware, over recent years, south Pembrokeshire and Tenby in particular have become synonymous in the triathlon community with hosting the Ironman Wales event—one of the toughest sporting challenges in the Ironman calendar. Every September, thousands of people descend on the area to compete in the competition, which offers qualification slots for the world championship event in Hawaii. This event only takes place over one weekend of the year, but attracts competitors from all over the world. What efforts are the Welsh Government undertaking to harness the international attention that the area receives every September and to ensure that the legacy of this event is realised throughout the year and for the next generation of potential local Ironmen and women?

And, Minister, if I may, can I ask you to join with me in congratulating, when we talk about the next generation of potential Ironmen and Ironwomen, my constituent Cameron Tallis? Cameron lives in Pembroke, he goes to Pembrokeshire College, and, at 18 years and four days, in 2019 was the youngest ever Ironman Wales.

Well, I would like to congratulate him. I just think it's remarkable that anyone can get anywhere near this. This is phenomenal in terms of the scope of what they have to achieve. My cousin did it this year and it was quite incredible, the stamina that you need to do it, and they start at some ridiculous time of the morning as well. So, congratulations to anyone who gets anywhere near this. I'm sure we've all got new year's resolutions, but this isn't one of mine. [Laughter.]

Question 9 [OAQ54860] was withdrawn. Question 10—Dai Lloyd.

Thank you very much for the question. South-west Wales is an outstanding visitor destination. Welsh Government continually invests to improve the quality of the local offer and is committed to continuing to grow tourism to this area and to promote tourism there and throughout Wales.

Minister, as Wales has reached the Euros this year again, this is an excellent opportunity to promote Wales to tourists—I hope that you'd agree. Businesses in my region, in South Wales West, are already asking what the Welsh Government is doing to use this important event to promote our excellent attractions, not only in that area but across Wales. Can you outline the work of the Government on this and suggest ways that local businesses can be part of any marketing campaign while Wales is winning a football championship?

Thank you very much for that comment. I can assure you that I will be discussing this issue specifically with the Football Association of Wales and with Sport Wales in order to see how we can particularly develop the community aspects related to this, because one of the successes that emerges from the high profile of international teams, in rugby and in other sports too—and in this particular case it's football, of course—is that community football and interest in football can develop and increase. I can assure you that that will be on the agenda for discussion, so that Welsh Government funding for the football association and Sport Wales will also have an impact on community interest, and will excite further community interest, including in women's football, which is a development that I've particularly enjoyed during my period as Minister.

And finally, question 11—Rhun ap Iorwerth.

Thank you very much for that comment. We have invested substantially already through Sport Wales, which is leading on our investment in 3G football and artificial pitches. They've invested £3.731 million in the collaborative sports facilities group, which includes the Football Association of Wales Trust, the Welsh Rugby Union and Hockey Wales. This has helped the FAW Trust in establishing 77 3G football pitches in Wales, with a target of 100 by 2024.

Thank you very much for that response. I would encourage you to invest further and to invest specifically in Ynys Môn. Referring to the earlier question on international football, well, there’ll be no international football without successful grass-roots football in our towns and villages across Wales. I look forward to following the Wales team to Azerbaijan later this year, but we won't be able to do that in coming years unless we invest in the grass roots.

There's a wonderful 3G facility in Llangefni and there's going to be investment in upgrading facilities in Menai Bridge. We truly need new 3G pitches in Holyhead and Amlwch, and I've held meetings already with representatives of those communities, who are willing to do whatever is necessary to bring that investment in. The local authority has a plan to invest over the next few years, but we need that investment now. Can I ask for a commitment from the Government to work with me and with others and with the council and community groups, community interest groups, on Anglesey to ensure that we see seek all means possible of drawing the funding in to bring these resources that are so crucial not only for the future of the beautiful game but for the health of our nation too?

Naturally, I’m going to agree with that. I had the opportunity of opening a new pitch in Parc Eirias in the county that I live in, and I know how important this resource is for all sorts of sporting activities where these pitches are suitable. So, what I will do is convey what has been said here today to Sport Wales and ask for a further report on the progress that they're making in Ynys Môn in particular. I accept that it’s not possible to have international football in Wales unless it includes Anglesey as well.

Thank you to the Minister and the Deputy Minister for answering all of their questions this afternoon.  

The next questions are to the Assembly Commission. The first question is from Jack Sargeant and is to be answered by Joyce Watson. Jack Sargeant.

Thank you for that question, and the Commission does actively support the White Ribbon Day every year by allowing the estate to be used for an event that I have managed since 2007. That is advertised across the estate. There are notices posted on Member and staff intranets, and money is raised now through the sale of the white ribbons in Tŷ Hywel and in the Senedd, and that is not to mention that, since 2007, many Members here have actively campaigned and championed the White Ribbon cause.

Thank you for that response, and I commend you for your hard work over the many years, since 2007—it really has been instrumental in raising the profile of the campaign here in Wales, and I was privileged to speak at your event you helped manage at the Senedd just last year. As you will know, as Members will know, following Dad's tragic passing, I have been committed to continuing his hard work to support this very important campaign, so to me it seems logical that our next step is for this institution, this Senedd, to follow in the footsteps of councils like my own in Flintshire and Connah's Quay Town Council and become fully accredited. So, will the Commission meet with me and the White Ribbon campaign to make sure this happens in the future? Diolch.

We have committed to pursue this in the coming year, because last year the Commission has been focused on the overall workplace dignity and respect, and that includes well-being, race and gender equality as some of those items, and that work is being reviewed. I have met with the new chief executive officer of White Ribbon—I did in November—and I did discuss their accreditation scheme. And from that discussion I found that they are actually reviewing that scheme. Since we are also reviewing our scheme, it seemed to make some sense to wait until next year, once that review has been done, and we're also able to assess the schemes that we've got to put the two together and move forward positively next year.

Thank you to the Commissioner. 

The topical questions are next. The first question is for the Minister for Economy and Transport, and this is to be asked by David Rees. 

Can I thank Dai Rees for his question and assure him that we will continue to engage with Tata Steel at every level to discuss how we can support the long-term sustainability of steel plants in Wales, including, of course, the Port Talbot site?

Can I thank the Minister for his answer? On Sunday, in The Sunday Times, the interview published with Mr Natarajan Chandrasekaran—who is the chair of Tata Sons, which is the parent company of Tata Steel—clearly indicated that effectively they were no longer going to look at supporting losses in steel making outside of India. His comments were, 'Why should India keep funding such losses?' This is not new to the workforce, I'm assuming. Clearly, I've met with the unions, I've met with the management, and they're clearly understanding that the transformation programme was about creating sustainability so that their business can be self-sustaining in the future.

However, this comes as another shock to the workforce, making it quite clear to them the challenges ahead following the announcement before Christmas of 1,000 job losses in the UK through Tata. It creates more uncertainty in the workforce. The workforce have done as much as they can, effectively. They are doing everything possible to ensure productivity is improved. They are doing everything possible to make the high-end products.

It is now time, perhaps, for the UK Government to take the decision as to whether it wants a steel-making industry in the UK. I also appreciate the Welsh Government's actions to date. You've been supportive of the Welsh steel industry. But, there now comes a point when you've got to make strong recommendations and calls to the UK Government. Will you now actually call upon the UK Government, whether it's in writing or go and visit them, including the Prime Minister, to reinitiate the steel council, to get this discussion agenda going so that we can talk about the future of UK steel to get the steel sector deal agreed with the Secretary of State?

Perhaps invite the Secretary of State down to have discussions in the Port Talbot works itself, so we can have her seeing, at the position, what the importance is of steel to the economy of Wales. And perhaps yourself could go to India and meet Mr Chandrasekaran to discuss how Tata's future in Wales will be going ahead, because this is a crucial industry, not just for my communities but to many communities across Wales. Therefore, we need to ensure that we can protect steel, but the levers, unfortunately, are not with you—most of them—they are with the UK Government, and we've got to get them to do something.

I'd agree entirely with what Dai Rees has said. I don't think many countries anywhere on this planet would be willing to give up their steel-making abilities. I would urge the UK Government to demonstrate as soon as possible that it is not willing to give up on Britain's steel-making capabilities either. The interview, as Dai Rees has said, contained a statement that is entirely consistent with previous statements from Tata Steel, including those contained within the transformation plan documents.

Now, I think it's fair to say that there are huge challenges and a vast range of challenges that the European steel-making community face. But, here in the UK, the UK Government can implement three actions, more or less immediately, to address the pressures that Tata in the UK and many, many other steel-making and high-intensity-energy companies face.

First of all, they must take action on high and volatile energy prices, as Dai Rees has identified. Secondly, they must deliver on the steel sector deal. And thirdly, as I have long been calling for, they must convene the cancelled UK steel round-table meeting.

Only on Monday of this week, I met with UK Government Ministers and again pressed home the need for them to take immediate action on those high energy prices that are making steel making in the UK unproductive, and are also affecting the competitiveness of the base here in the UK. They must take action soon because, as that interview has probably demonstrated to many readers, patience is running out with the way that the UK Government is not taking action. 

Can I agree with some of what David Rees has said in terms of the disappointing comments from the chairman? That is obviously going to be worrying for the 4,000-strong workforce at Tata Steel.

Clearly, there are roles here for both the Welsh Government and the UK Government; both Governments have levers at their disposal. I wonder if the Minister would welcome the measures that the UK Government has taken to compensate energy-intensive manufacturers for the costs of renewables and climate change policy costs.

Would the Minister also agree with me that the issue with the steel industry is not limited to one thing, it's not limited to just electricity, there are a number of issues, the main one being the low international steel price caused by the global overcapacity? There is the issue of business rates as well, and I wondered if the Minister could update us on whether there's any further action that he can take in terms of alleviating business rates for the industry.

Last year, I think it was either in a statement or in a question like this, you talked about how Tata's announcement may affect the skilled workers at Port Talbot and other Welsh sites. You mentioned that it would be a couple of months before an analysis could take place on a function-by-function basis—I think those were their words. A couple of months later, I do wonder if you have received any update from them, or if not, when you might expect that might be.

Turning to what else the Welsh Government can do, since November, when I asked the question—it mentioned something about business rates again. But, what else do you think, besides business rates, that the Welsh Government can do to help the industry be structurally competitive here in Wales?

We are on the other side of the general election, and now that Brexit is going to happen, I wonder what discussions you've had with the new UK Government—I appreciate that time has been limited since that Government's been in place—on revisiting the competition concerns that were expressed by the European Commission regarding the proposed merger.

Also, in a post-Brexit world, some would argue that there's some flexibility over the current EU emissions regulations, and I wonder what the Welsh Government's view is on providing additional flexibility over emissions regulations for the steel industry, also taking into account, of course, the Welsh Government's declaration of a climate change emergency. I wonder if you've got a gauge, really, on your thinking on that.

And finally, what has the Welsh Government done to update public procurement guidance in the Welsh Government's departments so that any environmental factors can be taken into account when the Welsh Government procures steel?

Can I thank Russell George for his questions? Whilst I do acknowledge that some action has been taken by UK Government, according to industry itself, that action is insufficient, whether it be in the form of the fund that's been established for high-intensity-energy companies, or the green steel initiative. I think what's absolutely vital is that it listens to the sector at a reconvened round table and takes action based on what they say, what those businesses say is needed in the UK. Based on what I hear consistently, the single biggest issue that they face concerns the volatile and often excessively high energy prices.

I'm expecting feedback next month on the roles that are to be affected by Tata's announcement before Christmas. If I receive any information before February, I will of course update Members accordingly.

Other areas of support beyond, perhaps, business rates—which is an issue that my colleague the finance Minister will give great attention to—we are, of course, considering further support for research and development opportunities to ensure that new and emerging technologies are exploited here and that new products can be manufactured here in Wales and the steel for them can be produced at Port Talbot. In all likelihood, there will be no revisiting of the merger by Tata, and therefore revisiting the decision of the EU Commission is highly unlikely. However, during the course of discussions that I'll be having with Tata in the coming weeks, this is an issue that I'll be raising with them.

In terms of emissions, there is an absolute need to reduce carbon emissions across Wales and around the world, and that's why we have been investing in improved power-plant structures within the Port Talbot site and why we, through the calls to action in the economic action plan, are investing in the decarbonisation of industry, and manufacturing in particular. I would urge UK Government to assist in this regard by making sure that the UK industrial strategy and the various challenges that it supports benefits Wales as much as it benefits other parts of the UK

Finally, on procurement, and the incredibly important matter that the Member raises, he will be aware that, in January of last year, the Cabinet Secretary for finance announced the publication of a procurement advice notice supporting the sourcing and procurement of sustainable steel in construction and infrastructure projects in Wales. In addition, since its launch, Value Wales has been promoting the benefits of signing the steel charter—Welsh Government was the first signatory of the steel charter—to local authorities across Wales, through direct contact and through group sessions, both in the north and in the south.

Minister, the futures of the sites in Port Talbot and Shotton are linked through the production chain, and I stand solidly by my colleague David Rees in supporting the workforce at Port Talbot and the steelworkers right across Wales. This Welsh Labour Government has always supported the steel industry, and once again we have to show how important it is to Wales. Now, key to that demonstration is to continue to support and fund the training of the next generation of steelworkers, whilst upskilling the current workforce. This would send a clear message that Wales is committed to the future of its steel industry. Will you pledge to continue that funding and support? Also, will you use your time today, Minister, to put on the record your frustrations with the UK Conservative Government in Westminster, who have completely failed to support the industry over the years? My constituents have seen it more than anyone, back over 20 years ago. Will you call on them to follow your lead in the Welsh Government and come back to the table and demonstrate the support that is finally needed to save our steel?

Can I thank Jack Sargeant for his questions and his contribution? The UK Government has been making very recent soundings that would suggest it is willing to be more interventionist than it has been since 2010. I would urge them to use steel and the need to intervene in what's happening to the UK steel industry to demonstrate that willingness to be more proactive to save valuable, highly skilled, well-paid jobs. The First Minister and I will together be visiting Tata in Shotton in the coming weeks. I'm looking forward to receiving the Member there, speaking with management, with unions, and with the workforce, and in particular discussing opportunities for the site. Of course, there's the potential for a Heathrow logistics hub at Tata in Shotton, which could bring huge opportunities to the area. But, I'm keen also to support the role that Welsh Government could offer in terms of skills training. We've already put on the table and utilised £11.7 million for skills training at Tata across its sites, and that has made a great difference to the life chances of people employed in the company. I'm keen to make sure that we are maximising opportunities for people to reskill and to upskill accordingly.

These comments from the head of Tata clearly are very worrying. I'd just like to briefly reiterate one of the comments made by David Rees. You'll know that I've been calling for an industry summit for Wales. The Member for Aberavon emphasised now the need to bring the UK steel industry players and key stakeholders together at the highest level and, whether that's a steel council or the kind of summit I've been talking about, these aren't talking shops. These are about emphasising the importance of these sectors and the need for urgent action. Will Welsh Government specifically demand now the reconvening of that council with a seat for Welsh Government around that table in order to make the case always about the importance of the steel industry to Wales? It's not just about energy, of course, but we do need cheap energy for steel. We need cheap, clean energy for steel. We need to clean up the steel industry, and it's clear that we're running out of time.

Can I be absolutely clear with Members? We have made repeated calls for the convening of a UK steel council meeting. I wrote to the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy on 25 November urging her urgently to reconvene the cancelled UK steel round-table meeting that had been granted following my urgent requests earlier in the autumn. There have been phone calls with the Secretary of State as well, in which I have pressed the case for bringing together key industry leaders to ensure that we are exploring all opportunities to improve the resilience of the sector in the UK. I would repeat today there is an absolute urgent need to reconvene the UK steel council; we have to ensure that the right people are around the table to discuss the actions that could be taken by Governments at every level across the UK to help the industry.

And the Member is right. There is a need, I think, to convene industry leaders more widely as well to discuss the future of manufacturing in Wales, which is why, before Christmas, I agreed to host a manufacturing summit. That will take place this winter at the Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre in Broughton. It's also why, before Christmas, I hosted an automotive summit concerning the future of the auto industry in Wales, which proved to be incredibly productive. And we will ensure that we stretch every sinew to save the steel industry, and manufacturing more generally in Wales. 

Finally, John Griffiths. 

Diolch, Llywydd. Minister, of course, in Newport, we have the Llanwern site, which is integrated with Port Talbot. As Dai Rees and Jack Sargeant have already said, these Tata operations are very much seen as a whole. So, we have a great deal of concern in terms of the jobs at Llanwern, and also, of course, at the moment, at the Orb works. The plant is mothballed, with potential buyers still in talks with Tata as to the possible future use of that plant.

You talked about the UK Government signalling a more interventionist approach now. There is such a strong case, I think, for an electric vehicle industry in the UK, with the Orb steelworks supplying the electric steel for such an operation, where we could gain real advantages in terms of what is sure to be a big, big growth industry for the future. An interventionist approach by the UK Government would understand that; would make sure that the necessary support is given to the potential buyers and Tata Steel, working with Welsh Government and the trade unions, so that that viable, promising future would be realised. So, will you, as well as stating the case more generally, as Members have called for already today, Minister, make sure that the Orb works, and the situation there, as well as Llanwern, are at the forefront of your discussions with Tata, with the UK Government, with the trade unions, and all other players in these matters?

I thank John Griffiths for his questions and his contribution, and assure him that Orb is indeed at the forefront of our communications with Tata, and with the UK Government as well. I think it's absolutely essential that if they are to intervene, they won't just intervene with warm words, but with hard cash. And it wouldn't take, in the great scheme of things, a vast sum of money from the UK Government, through the industrial challenge fund, for Orb, to provide it with a future, particularly with regard to the manufacturing of electric vehicles. And, at the moment, as John Griffiths is aware, Orb doesn't currently make the advanced steels used for electric vehicles, but the Syndex proposal outlines the work that would be required in order to move the site to making non-grain-oriented steels, in addition to grain-oriented steels. 

Now, we visited, together with the First Minister, and with Jayne Bryant, the Orb facility back in mid-November. We met with the trade unions' representatives; we met with the workforce, and we discussed the opportunities for the site, which are very, very real. I'm pleased to say that Tata will continue to discuss with potential buyers any opportunity to ensure that there is continued manufacturing at the site, and we will do all we can to ensure that those talks come to a fruitful end. 

Thank you, Minister. And now a question to the Minister for health, and that question is to be asked by Helen Mary Jones. 

Thank you. I'll just start by reiterating my thanks, together with those offered by the First Minister yesterday, to our staff right across the health and social care system in a period of truly exceptional pressure. Every winter provides difficulties, but we have seen exceptional pressures across our system at the end of the festive period and into the start of January. Without their dedication, we would not be able to provide the level of care that is still being provided across Wales. 

The decision to postpone inpatient operations within Hywel Dda was an operational, clinical decision made by the health board to ensure that patient safety was not compromised. My officials have been in regular communication with the health board to ensure that they're implementing all necessary actions to enable them to de-escalate as quickly and as safely as possible. 

I thank the Minister for his answer. And, of course, I'm sure we would all agree with his comments about the excellent work that the staff are undertaking under very difficult circumstances. But I wonder how he would respond to the Royal College of Nursing's call to him yesterday to get back in the room, and to start talking about the extent of these pressures. I wonder how he would respond to Dr Philip Banfield, from BMA Cymru, saying— and I quote—that they are really concerned about the impact of current workload and workforce pressures on the NHS staff. He goes on to say that there is seriously a real chance of lives being needlessly lost.

I'd also be interested to know what the Minister would have to say to my constituents, and those of others here, who have had their operations postponed. We know—and I should be clear, Llywydd: I'm not criticising the decision that the health board has made; if the services are not safe, they didn't have a choice. But I wonder if the Minister would wish to join with me in expressing his regret to patients that their operations—some of which they've been waiting for for a very long time, some of them are in very severe pain—have had to be postponed. I'd be grateful if the Minister can let us know what the situation is with regard to Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board, because my understanding is that they've postponed some planned operations today. It's also been suggested to me that, in fact, Betsi Cadwaladr has not got an agreed plan with the Welsh Government to deal with winter pressures. And I wonder if the Minister can tell us whether that is or is not the case, and whether, in fact, they have got their share of the additional resources that he has put in.

The Minister talks about exceptional pressures, and I would once again put it to the Minister that winter comes every year, so does norovirus, so does the flu. These things are entirely predictable. The First Minister, questioned on these matters yesterday, described the arrangements in place with the health board as 'resilient'. Well, I would like to suggest that he comes to the Hywel Dda health board area, and explains that to my constituents, because this doesn't look like a set of resilient or acceptable arrangements to me. And, most importantly, perhaps, Llywydd, what assurances can the Minister give us that the kind of all-systems approach that the BMA are asking for—? We need to see an urgent increase in the number of beds. Longer term, the message remains the same—we've got to increase staffing levels in healthcare settings and in communities. I wonder what he can do to reassure us that we will not be having this same conversation, in this Chamber, this time next year. And more importantly, what can he do to ensure those front-line staff that he speaks so warmly of, and patients, that they will not be in this position?

Well, there's a wide range of questions in there, Llywydd; I'll try and deal with the points as they've been provided. The starting point is that, of course we know there's extra pressure that comes over winter, and that the start of January is the most difficult time of all, with the pressure that comes in from the end of one festive period, people have put off care, people have gone home in the middle of that, who then require further treatment. It's not just in our hospitals either—this is a real challenge in primary care as well. And what we see in Hywel Dda, with the cancellation of inpatient activity, is a symptom of that whole-system pressure. And in terms of describing the whole-system pressure, nine out of the last 11 months in 2019 that have been reported on were record months for activity—nine out of 11 reported months. That's the scale of demand that is coming into our system. And, with respect, last winter, no-one in this room would have predicted that that is the activity that we would have seen.

What is being done is a plan for winter within each health board. I have no idea where the idea that there is somehow no plan for Betsi has come from, and it's rather difficult for me to deal with works of fiction and imagination. But there is absolutely a winter plan across north Wales—it has been agreed, not just within the health service, but direct matters under the health service control, and their share, which every health board, including north Wales, has received of the £30 million winter moneys, but the joint plan undertaken by the regional partnership board for what to do across the whole system. That does include extra bed capacity—and I announced before the break that that amounts to about 400 additional beds across the system. That's the size of a large district general hospital of additional capacity that's been put into the system. That includes additional capacity within Hywel Dda.

In terms of the conversations taking place with staff, the BMA made their comments on the way to a clinical summit that my officials are holding today—which includes the RCN and other stakeholders—to examine the reality of where we are, the response, and what more is possible at a national level. And, in terms of where Hywel Dda are, they are in a position now where they are seeing more progress being made on discharging patients to at least three of the four sites, because of the work they're doing and because of the implementation of the winter plan, but more than that, because of the relationships that exist between the health board and local authorities. And without those relationships being in a much better place than in previous winters, we'd be unlikely to see those discharges taking place.

It is a whole-system problem and it is a whole-system response in the here and now, and the continuing reform that I've regularly spoken about that is required to make sure we have additional capacity, and domiciliary and residential care, which includes health and social care working together to provide that. And it is also about how we choose to use the system as we continue to see more demand driven into our system. We need to look again at how we deliver and how we design it. And given all the peaks and troughs of activity, we need to recognise that we're unlikely to see a significant fall-back in demand. It's about how we deal with that demand to make sure that patient safety isn't compromised, and that is exactly why it was the right thing for Hywel Dda to do, with all of the different risks involved, to make sure that they prioritise people with the greatest need first.

Wow, where to start? We talk about the word 'safety', which has been used a couple of times, but let's be clear, the beds in Hywel Dda—the operations have been cancelled because the orthopaedic ward at Prince Philip Hospital has been closed to orthopaedic, to elective surgery, and they're putting medical cases in there. That takes care of an enormous number of the problems with the elective surgery. There is a lack of clarity from Hywel Dda management, who I've spoken to today, as to why the operations were cancelled in Bronglais, in Withybush and in Glangwili hospitals, but there's a real clarity about why they were cancelled in Prince Philip. Prince Philip's elective surgery wards are being used for medical cases, because they say that they've had a greater increase in medical cases.

Now, when I spoke to the chief executive earlier, discussing this with him, one of the things that I felt very strongly was that I accept that there are winter pressure plans in place with all of the health boards, but I do not think that they are imaginative enough or building enough contingency. We know what the trends are doing; we know what the trends are doing throughout the year. You tasked them, Minister, with coming up with winter pressure plans. You gave the extra £30 million. But listening, and carefully, I listened, it seems to be that there was a real 'I don't know what the pressure is' in terms of whether they felt that they didn't have the funding to do it, or whether it was 'let's produce the winter plan we had last year. Dust it off, increase it a bit and redo it'. But it comes down to—an awful lot of it—a lack of contingency planning, that extra fat in the system, where we've had to go away and close down entire elective wards.

I would be very interested in understanding from you what can be done to ensure that there's a real analysis of the data. Because, again, when I spoke to the chief executive, he said that they would be looking into what's happened—they would be looking into why this situation's been caused, but somebody's just made the decision to stop the operations on Monday and on Tuesday and again today. So, somebody already knows that data. So, I'm at a loss to understand why that data isn't currently available as to what is the absolute crux.

I wonder if you could look to encourage the health board and indeed now, Betsi Cadwaladr, to ensure that there is a really strong programme put in place to catch up with elective surgery. And let's be clear, folks: we're not just talking about hips and knees; in Hywel Dda, there's a 19.4-month waiting list already for that. So, imagine if you thought you were going to have your knees done, and puff, you've got to wait again. But it's ventral hernia surgery, bariatric surgery, reflux surgery— all manner of elective surgeries have been cancelled with waiting lists of up to 15 months. So, we're going to make our waiting list problem longer. So, Minister could you look at what might be done in the health boards, where they have had to cancel operations so that they can accelerate a catch-up programme so that our waiting times have an opportunity to improve rather than lengthen?

Finally, I think the elephant in the room is that social services need to be on call seven days a week all year around, like our health services. On call in terms of being able to do delayed transfers of care, because, again talking to the health board, what they're saying is that they can't get people out of hospital, because, although they have great relationships with social services, during periods such as Christmas and new year and bank holidays, people rightly, of course, have time off. No-one's saying, 'Gosh, you've got to work all the time', but we have to have a system in place where there's cover so that the ordinary business of discharging people, which in turn would free up beds to enable people to go into hospital who present at the front door, could carry on apace. Because, again, what I've been told is that part of the problem is they cannot get people out of there. That needs to be part of the winter planning that actually has a few more boots on the ground in terms of social care to get people out. I'd be very interested to know your thoughts on that.

And, finally, I would like to add that I think the staff have done a wonderful job and I'd like to say that the chief executive was absolutely crystal clear, in my conversation with him earlier on, that staff have come in, they've come in on their days off, they've worked overtime, they've cut short holidays in order to try to help this. So, this is not about the front-line effort and commitment and dedication, it's about the planning side of it and the contingency planning side of it being smarter and more agile in order to prevent this happening next year. 

Well, I understand why a range of questions have been asked by Angela, but I think a number of the conclusions she reached are significantly unfair and I think she should return again to them. I'll happily go through why I think that is. It's very easy to say this is all about planning and about the inability to deliver and the plans aren't imaginative enough. Actually, I think that's significantly unfair, because, if you look at the plans for this winter, they are different, they have learnt from last winter. Planning for winter started in spring last year to learn the lessons—what had taken place last winter, what had been successful. That's why this winter we've increased capacity in a number of areas. It's why we've rolled forward the Red Cross commitments, it's why the Care and Repair scheme has carried on as well. It's also why they've built in deliberately additional capacity together with partners across local authorities. The easiest thing to say is, 'You can be more imaginative and you could do more'. Actually, there's a finite number of things that you can do with a finite list of resource, and that isn't just money, that's people.

And, actually, in terms of your comments about social care, social care already works seven days a week. And, actually, the period between Christmas and new year isn't the particular problem period, because we already see hospitals seeing people leave over that period of time, and the challenge is at this point in the next two weeks. And, actually, the challenge really is about capacity within the wider social care system, in domiciliary care and in residential care. In west Wales in particular, but in other parts of the country—not just Wales but across the rest of the UK too—the fragility of parts of domiciliary and residential care is a real problem and a real limiting factor in being able to get people out of hospital and into their own home, whether that home is a street in a community that you or I live in or it's a residential care facility as well. So, there's a real challenge about how we do that and that's why the longer term reform is so important for the future, because, in terms of coming back to next year, that is about how successful can we be to commission capacity that is sustainable and of the quality that all of us would wish for our own families when we're providing for the wider public.

That is also why, though, I think it's entirely right that the health board have announced that they're going to do an objective deep dive into the decisions taken over this weekend and in the last few days. That doesn't mean to say that those decisions are wrong on the information available, but it is about wanting to learn in the here and now and not wait to review this in six months' time, but to learn, with a small bit of distance, objectively how were those decisions taken, are there things we could have done differently, so that actually it's not for next year, but for next week and next month to learn that. And that is absolutely the right thing to do. In fact, if they weren't doing that there'd be criticism in this Chamber for not undertaking that process at a near point to the events in time. 

I think the leadership of the health board, together with front-line staff, are doing the right thing. And it is an exceptional period of time with an exceptional response from our staff. I look forward to a de-escalation taking place and you and others being able to look at your constituency and see that elective surgery has returned to more normal levels. But I'm not going to criticise the health board for errors where I don't think it's fair to criticise, and that's why I don't agree with the range of conclusions that Angela Burns has reached. 

The first thing I want to do is to thank all the staff who are working incredibly hard to give dedicated support to those who need it and to recognise that they are completely driven to attend to the needs of their patients. I want to start there because I feel that's of importance and reassuring to those that we recognise that. I've read the e-mail from Dr Philip Banfield of BMA Cymru and the concerns that he's raised, because he's sent that, I would imagine, to a number of us. But I'm also aware of the distress that will happen for those patients who've been waiting for a procedure, whatever that procedure might be, and that people get anxious and then it is cancelled. So, I want to put on record that I recognise that; I'm sure everybody in this room does. So, what I'm interested in now is trying to move this forward, and there were a few suggestions that have come out of Dr Phil Banfield's statement. And he calls for an urgent need to expand the capacity of beds that are available as one possible solution to move people through the system. I don't know what your thoughts are on that, but I'd be interested to hear them. 

I know that you've made extra capacity available in Hywel Dda, as you have across Wales, and again that is welcome news. But I think the one thing—and where I agree with Angela—is that, those people who've missed out this time on their procedures, they don't somehow get pushed back to the back of the list but they stay where they were, at the forefront. And if there's any way whatsoever that we can, in Wales, wherever that might be, bring these procedures forward or at least offer that possibility to the individuals so that they do see an end to what it is that they're hoping to resolve in their care package and their care procedure—. 

So, those are the questions that I would like to know and I do understand also that there's going to be a joint meeting between yourself and the Deputy Minister for Social Services to look at moving forward perhaps more quickly and more carefully the domiciliary care challenge that we know is out there and also has been somewhat exacerbated by lots of the individuals who are working in that sector feeling unwelcome as a response of the Brexit. So, we are now even more short-staffed than we were before. 

It's a fair point that Joyce Watson makes about the reality of wanting to recruit staff and people working in both domiciliary and residential care, and we do rely on a range of people from outside the UK to do so. So, any barriers to recruiting those people, who are often under the Government's proposed immigration cap, is a real problem for all of us in every one of the UK nations. If we were having this conversation in England, Scotland or Northern Ireland you'd find providers and elected members expressing exactly the same concerns about the practical impact on health and care services. 

In terms of what we are in control of and what we can do, I'm happy to confirm to Joyce Watson that people who have had their operations postponed by the health service will be informed of a prompt early date for that operation to be re-arranged. The operations haven't been cancelled and moved to the back of the queue. It's part of what we do when the health service does say that it needs to put off an operation; they will automatically be offered a new and a prompt date. And, of course, I want to highlight, as the health board has done, that I'm really sorry and I understand the impact upon individuals who have been looking forward, often with a degree of anxiety, to a surgery, to then have that put off. That is not a pleasant position to go through, and yet we also know that objectively the people that are having emergency care and having cancer surgery—if we were not prioritising those people we would rightly be criticised for failing to do so across the system. 

On the challenges and the potential answer that Phil Banfield has suggested—he said is a possible answer—more beds is often a seductive answer. We have surge capacity, so, as I've said earlier, 400 extra beds right across the health and care system—beds or bed equivalents. The challenge is that if we want to permanently increase capacity we need to understand what that's for, how we staff that so we have the permanent staff to be able to do so, and yet, actually, when the Royal College of Emergency Medicine talk about what they want to see to release what they refer to as exit block, they are not just talking about more consultants—and everybody typically asks for more of their own members—but they're saying they want to see investment in social care and in the social care system, because they recognise this isn't just a problem at the front door of the acute system in our hospitals, it's a challenge about people being kept at home safely, but also about being able to go to their own homes with a package of care and support. You'll have seen in the draft budget that, yet again this year, the health budget has put a deliberate sum of money into social care. I've increased that sum of money within the budget. It's also about why we put money into regional partnership boards that require health and social care to work together with other partners, and that is the system reform we need to see continuing at pace to try to make sure that we can deal with these problems as effectively and as quickly as possible, because they're not going to disappear.

We have these heart-searching sessions so often because of extraordinary pressures on the health service, but that indicates that the extraordinary pressures have in some ways become routine and that's the systemic problem that we've got here. Operations have been cancelled now for the third consecutive day in Hywel Dda and people might be forgiven, therefore, for thinking we should change the name of the health board to Hywel Ddim Mor Dda—you know, Hywel Not So Good, as a health board.

Nobody questions, I think—I certainly don't—the commitment of the staff and the management in Hywel Dda to make things better, and they've been working very, very hard since the change of regime to improve things and have met with a great deal of success, I think. There is obviously still a long way to go, but there is a systemic problem, not just in Hywel Dda. Figures published last month showed accident and emergency performance at hospitals throughout Wales was at a record low for the third month running and the Welsh ambulance service failed to meet its response time target for the first time in four years.

Dr Banfield, who's been mentioned several times in this session this afternoon, has said that there isn't one person to blame for this. He said this is an issue within the system. And he says:

'We're hearing reports of cancer surgery now being cancelled as well throughout different hospitals in Wales.'

I hear what the Minister said about the beds question a moment ago, but, again, Dr Banfield does make what I think is the elementary point, that surgical beds are full of medical patients and that puts the wrong type of patient in the wrong hospital bed at the wrong time and they're clearly not getting the care that they should do.

Nobody expects anybody in the health service to have perfect foresight and things will go wrong, often for adventitious reasons that nobody could have predicted, so we have to be reasonable about this. But, as Helen Mary Jones said right from the start, we do know that winter takes place every year and that there are extraordinary pressures that are likely to hit, and I heard the First Minister yesterday saying, 'Well, we knew this was coming anyway. That's why we didn't have operations planned for last week.' Well, in which case, surely we could have perhaps been a little more accurate in our predictions as to the kind of pressures that would be added on top of what was in the system anyway.

The Minister comes here so regularly now he just has a sort of look of resignation on his face at the points that we all have to make. And if he were in our position he'd be making them in the same way that we have, I have absolutely no doubt. Again, I don't doubt his commitment to improving the health service in Wales at all, but something has to be done.

More money somehow has to be provided as well as some sort of improvements at the micro level within each of the health boards that is suffering from these kinds of systemic problems. Hywel Dda has been in a difficult position, it has been making improvements, but clearly there's a long way yet to go. I hope that the Minister will do his best to ensure that Hywel Dda is given the resources that it needs to cope with the pressures that it has been enduring. 

Well we've provided significant support as a Government to the health and social care system, sustained investment over and above consequential sums of money. So, in terms of financial support, this Government has absolutely—. And that's objectively undeniable: the Treasury's own figures show that we continue to put more money into our health and health and care system than England, and we've sustained that investment for a deliberate purpose.

It's not just the money. As I've said on several other occasions, it's about how the health and social care parts of the system work together. The BMA and the RCN recognise that it's complex. It's not as simple as saying, 'Provide more money and just try harder and everything will be fine.' It is about the level and the nature of the demand, and one of the best examples of how that demand has increased in complexity is that the red calls that the ambulance service respond to—. When I made the decision to change the red call status, there was some criticism—there's still a bit of it every now and again—to try and suggest that that was really about changing the figures to suit me. It actually came because of a clinical review, supported by our front-line staff, supported by every medical director in Wales. We have a new category, a new definition to get to the sickest people. That's why there's a new red category. And yet, now, we have 15 per cent more red calls to the ambulance service than last winter, and over the last three months there have been record volumes of red calls. These are very, very unwell people who do require hospital care. So, the demand profile has changed since last winter.

So, all the measures we took last winter, the additional measures we've taken now, and our ability to get people out of the hospital system and into social care is the nub of the challenge. That's why the fragility of domiciliary and residential is such a threat and a problem, which is why we look at health and social care more and more closely together. And I'll say it again, without the improved relationships and the steps that local government must take side by side with the health service—those things are taking place now, as I speak, to get more people out of hospital—this problem would be significantly worse.

But, it is not finished. I'm certainly not complacent or satisfied, because I recognise that means that the experience of some people is not what it should be. And the small number of planned operations that were due to take place but have not—that is the system planning for what it can expect to see. But, these are still, nevertheless, acceptable beyond the planned-for activity. So, the deep dive that I've referred to, that Angela Burns referred to, will take place. That will be useful not just for Hywel Dda but for other parts of our system as well. And I look forward to answering probably similar questions next week when I make a statement on winter pressures.

Thank you, Minister.

The next item is the 90-second statements. There is one statement today, and that is a statement by Russell George.

Diolch, Presiding Officer. The Knife Angel arrived at the Oriel Davies Gallery in Newtown on Saturday. It's the first Welsh location to host the monument as it continues its tour across the UK, and it will remain in Newtown until the end of January, in an effort to end knife crime and violent behaviour. Thankfully, Powys does not have a serious issue with knife crime, but the Knife Angel also exists to act against bullying and county lines and other attacks.

The angel was transported from the British Ironwork Centre in Oswestry, and the sculpture, which is made completely of knives, aims to bring the issue of knife crime to the forefront of society's consciousness. After contacting police forces, 200 knife banks were placed at locations across the country and the creation of the Knife Angel began. 

The ceremony last Saturday to welcome the Knife Angel to Newtown was led by Councillor Joy Jones, who has worked very hard as well with Dafydd Llywelyn, the Police and Crime Commissioner for Dyfed-Powys, and Powys County Council to bring the sculpture to Newtown. So, I'd like to pay tribute to her and all the others who've worked to bring this about. 

The turnout at Newtown was amazing and it showed what impact the Knife Angel is having in every place that it goes to, communicating the message of anti-violence. And for the rest of this month, Powys County Council are conducting various educational workshops and programmes, and the drive encompasses schools and youth groups as well. Only with the public's help can the national monument against violence and aggression send its message to those it was intended for. So, if you are in Newtown or passing Newtown this month, then please do visit the Knife Angel.

The next item is a statement by the Chair of the Committee on Assembly Electoral Reform and an update on the work of that committee. I call on the Chair of the committee to make her statement—Dawn Bowden.

Diolch, Llywydd. The Committee on Assembly Electoral Reform was established by this National Assembly in September 2019 to examine the recommendations of the expert panel on Assembly electoral reform. Members will recall that, in 2017, the expert panel reported on a wide range of issues, but at the core of its work was a recognition that the Assembly and its Members need to be able to carry out our responsibilities effectively if we are to properly serve the people that we represent. The expert panel concluded that, as devolution in Wales enters its next phase, the Assembly cannot continue as it is without risking its ability to deliver for the people and communities it serves.

The expert panel's recommendations on votes for 16 and 17-year-olds have been given effect by the Senedd and elections Bill. Our role as a committee is to examine the remaining recommendations, which embrace a range of significant issues. These include: the size of the Assembly; its diversity; how Members are elected; and, the areas that we represent. These can be seen as complicated and technical issues, but we must help to continue an informed public debate as they lie at the heart of our still-developing democracy in Wales. As a committee, we will look at each issue in turn.

We see no need to go over the previous ground, So, in carrying out our work, we will consolidate and add to the existing evidence, using the work of the expert panel as our starting point. I believe that the conversations that we hold and any recommendations that we make will be most effective if they underpin a long-term vision for the Senedd and are rooted in a broad base of political and public support. To achieve this, the committee will be outward looking and open minded. We will provide accurate and accessible information, seek evidence and gather opinions. We will use a broad range of methods to gather evidence and listen carefully to people's views.

Most of us in this Chamber have engaged with or have been part of this institution since its early days, but we must also remember that younger people—including the 16 and 17-year-olds who will have the right to vote for the first time in 2021—will never have known a Wales without devolution. To make sure that their voices are heard during our work, we are exploring options for working with the Welsh Youth Parliament and for engaging with young people across Wales through the Assembly's education and outreach teams.

So, today marks a key moment in the committee's work. Since you voted to create this committee, we are aware that most of our deliberations have been in private, as we've received technical briefings and discussed the work programme that we're presenting today. This statement now provides the opportunity to share our plans with you. Today, we've published our strategic approach, setting out our aims and objectives for the coming months, as well as the terms of reference for each of our inquiries. I hope that this will provide clarity about how we will explore the three key issues within our remit.

We've also launched our first consultation today. We're seeking evidence from the electoral community, political parties and other stakeholders to inform our work on electoral systems, boundaries, and boundary-review mechanisms. In addition to gathering formal written evidence, we want everyone to be able to follow our work and tell us what they think. To facilitate this, we will be using the 'Your Wales' digital-engagement platform to share information about our work and to provide opportunities for people to offer their thoughts and feedback on an ongoing basis. I hope that you, as Members, will encourage people in your constituencies and regions to engage with our work in this way.

I'm pleased today to have been able to outline our ambitious and comprehensive programme of work, which we intend to complete by autumn 2020. Indeed, our work has already begun, with an evidence session in December with the Llywydd, and discussions with stakeholders earlier this week. We're approaching our task with a sense of realism as we know that there is a range of different views amongst Members present here today. There will doubtless also be a range of views among those who will sit in these seats in the next Assembly, and amongst the constituents they will represent. We each approach these issues from our distinct perspectives, but we hope for meaningful discussion with, and hopefully between, political parties and the people who we all seek to represent.

We don't underestimate the task, but we will approach it with enthusiasm. As a minimum, we intend for our evidence-based conclusions to offer a roadmap for reform, which we hope will help political parties as they consider their manifestos for 2021 and maximise the chance of a consensus emerging on a way forward. As a committee, we have a challenging task ahead of us, but we also have a real and exciting opportunity to contribute to the continuing and flourishing democracy in Wales. Diolch yn fawr.

I welcome the establishment of this committee, and I'm very glad to sit on it. Although, it is a shame that any changes we recommend will not come into force until at least 2026. It's all the more essential that we work cross-party to get this to be a project that everyone in the Senedd can feel that it belongs to them—and I really do hope that the Conservative benches will feel able to add a Member to our midst.

Now, as Dawn Bowden has said, the committee will partly be looking at how we can address the lack of capacity we have in this place, to allow us to be more innovative, to do more cross-party work, for more effective scrutiny to take place, and to allow Members of this Senedd to develop expertise in particular fields.

Now, Llywydd, this isn't about increasing numbers for the sake of increasing numbers; it's about ensuring that this Senedd can fully fulfil not just its potential but its obligation to be a truly national Parliament of Wales. To become a legislature that reflects the people it represents, a Parliament where the people of Wales can see themselves not just spoken for but exemplified, a Parliament where anyone in Wales could see people who look like them, who have similar characteristics to them, present. Because our committee will also be looking at how the increase in Members could lead to more diversity in this place.

After all, there is more than one meaning to the word 'represent'. Yes, it can mean to act or speak on behalf of or to present officially for another person or group of people, but it can also mean to be the result of something or to be something. When we are elected to this Parliament, we're given the tremendous honour of speaking on behalf of and voting for the benefit of our constituents. Up until now, and with some exceptions, there has been a disappointing lack of diversity in our midst. This is our chance to put that right. Imagine a Senedd where every person living in Wales recognises the Senedd as a place that is relevant and belongs to them. Now, wouldn't that represent a change we could all be proud of? 

Whilst my party is willing to engage in discussion and debate on the expansion in the number of Assembly Members and the other matters under the committee's remit, we believe that there must be a robust and exhaustive examination into the current role and workload of the existing AMs, which also takes into account the expansion in the workload of the Assembly as a whole. This would then inform whether there is a call for the expansion to 80 or 90 AMs, as envisaged in the expert committee report commissioned by the Welsh Government. 

Above all, the Welsh people themselves must be convinced, via the arguments put forward, that such an expansion is not just desirable but unavoidable. We as a party chose to be involved in the process by representation on the electoral reform committee because we believe such dramatic changes to the Assembly structure should be subject to rigorous scrutiny.

As has been outlined by the Chair of the committee, the committee is determined to engage with all those who shall be affected by the changes, and this, above all, will include the Welsh public at large. In order to achieve these aims, we have set out how we intend to facilitate this engagement and, indeed, have already begun this process with initial discussions with the chair of the expert panel on Assembly electoral reform, Laura McAllister, her officers, and the Llywydd and her staff. We have also hosted a round-table event with relevant stakeholders.

Our deliberations are, of course, not confined to the increase in the number of AMs. There are two other important proposals that we shall be examining in depth. The first of these is what changes may be made to increase the diversity in the Assembly, and the second being that of electoral reform. That is, the method by which Members of the Assembly shall be elected, and this will include any intended border changes that may be needed in order to implement alterations to the electoral system chosen. 

Given our deliberations so far, I'm convinced that we have an extremely competent Chair of the committee in Dawn Bowden, and there is a definite desire amongst those parties who have chosen to engage in this process to reach consensus on the way forward. Thank you.

It's my mistake: I should have asked the Chair of the committee to respond to the statements made by Delyth Jewell and David Rowlands. It is a statement, not a debate, and I've confused myself there. So, if I could ask the Chair of the committee to respond to the statements already made—

Thank you, Llywydd.

—and I'll try and switch myself back on. [Laughter.]

It's okay, I was waiting for the questions, and they were very supportive statements, so thank you both for that. Can I just deal, firstly, with the point that Delyth Jewell raised about the lack of a Conservative Member on the committee? I think I too and other members of the committee would very much welcome the Conservative Party reviewing their position on that. I have had conversations with the leader of the Conservative group, and I know that the Conservative group are very keen to be involved in the work of the committee, and it's certainly the view of the committee that we need to reach out to all political parties, even those that are not on the committee and to seek their views, and we will be looking to do that. But, of course, the committee can change its membership at any time, and if the Conservatives do come forward and offer somebody up to sit on the committee and work with us, then I believe the Business Committee can look at that and can make recommendations to this Assembly, and we can take an additional member on board, so I very much hope that will happen.

The other issues that have been picked up are the issues of capacity, diversity and scrutiny. Certainly, on capacity, we've already had, as was described by David Rowlands, a round-table discussion with some initial stakeholders, and these were primarily third-party organisations and the media that work with the Assembly very closely, and they were able to give us their observations about how they work with the Assembly. I thought what was interesting about that was how they were able to contrast and compare how they can interact with MPs in Westminster and how they are unable to interact with us in the same way, because of our lack of capacity, our lack of numbers, our availability and so on, and the need for us to be able to specialise in particular areas.

Again, they referenced the fact that MPs quite often only sit on one committee, and I think, Llywydd, when you gave evidence, you mentioned the fact that something like 100 MPs don't sit on any committees. So, that does give the MPs much more scope to be able to specialise, to concentrate on particular areas, that we as AMs don't. I think one of the things that have come across loud and clear in the information that we've received so far is that, to enable us to scrutinise more effectively—and that is, after all, what this Assembly should be here to do, to scrutinise the Government—we need to have the capacity to be able to do that.

Another point that came out of those discussions that I think is worthy of flagging up here was that we constantly talk about having 60 Members, but, in actual fact, we've really got about 45, because 15 are in Government, and so, we really only have 45 Members then, who are available for committee work, Commission work and scrutiny work. So, we need to look at it in that context.

But I think one of the key aspects for us, and I think all of us have identified that, is that we have a huge amount of work to do with the public. That will be very, very important for us in terms of the outward-looking approach of the committee, how we engage with members of the public, how we explain to them what this place does, and how they can influence that and how they can make us more effective.

Could I welcome the statement by the Chair today, and in so doing, thank her and my fellow committee members for what has been a very collegiate, very open and very frank and engaged way in which we've all, together, approached the work of the committee? Whilst we may all come forward with our own ideas, and, sometimes, our preconceptions, we've all made the undertaking to be open and to reflect upon the evidence as it comes forward. These are tricky political matters: examining the case for further electoral reform, for additional Assembly Members and related issues. But we have been charged as a committee with examining these matters in a meaningful, informed and evidence-led manner, and we are doing so.

Now, there are many parts to the strategy underpinning the inquiry, which the Chair has laid out in her statement today and in the accompanying documents that are on the website, but one of the most important facets is that of engaging and informing the public to help shape our work as a committee. So, my first question of our Chair is to ask whether she can expand upon our approach to engaging the citizens of Wales and seeking their informed views on matters such as the optimal number of Assembly Members for this Senedd, and the electoral system deployed, and other matters. This engagement, early and consistently through the process, is also important in establishing whether the case can be made and won for further reforms, as the broad support of civic society and a well-informed electorate is important in taking forward any possible future reforms.

Now, as the Chair said in her opening remarks, any recommendations we make will be most effective if they're rooted in broad-based political and public support. So, the public engagement at this stage and throughout is crucial, but so, I have to say, is the political engagement. So, my second question to our Chair is to ask whether and how she'll continue to engage with all political parties in the Senedd, but also those significant other political entities in Wales who are not represented here, so that their views are also fed in, but so that they can also see and engage with the evidence that we hear. In particular—it has been mentioned already—I seek the Chair's confirmation that a seat does indeed remain at the committee table for all the major political parties represented here, and we would want to see that single empty blue seat be occupied by an able, meaningful and insightful Member from the benches directly opposite from me here, and that she will continue, on behalf of the committee, as I will personally, to encourage that seat to be filled, so that we can all engage with the evidence together, regardless of our individual or our party political standpoints. That surely is the most basic task we have as legislators and policymakers—to wrestle with these difficult questions together.

I genuinely am missing the voice and the contribution of colleagues from directly across the floor on this committee, and I'm sure that that party, who, under Disraeli and under Gladstone, wrestled with difficulty, but I have to say with confidence as well, with things such as the Irish question, as extending the franchise, and major parliamentary reform in the nineteenth century, is more than able and confident, I have to say—. I look at individuals across from me now, any one of those Members would be able to engage on this little, time-limited committee on electoral reform. [Interruption.] I'm doing my best to encourage this, Presiding Officer. They'd be more than able, from that party, to engage with this time-limited little committee here on electoral reform in the twenty-first century.

Could I also ask the Chair to expand a little on the schedule, the timescale, of this, in effect, task and finish committee? Ultimately, it's going to be in the hands of all Senedd Members here to make any final decisions on electoral reform, informed by the public and their own parties, but also informed by the work of this committee. So, can she lay out her broad thinking, as Chair of the committee, on when our recommendations must emerge to enable this Senedd to productively consider them, and whether she'll be discussing with the Presiding Officer, Welsh Government and party leaders of all parties how this timetable enables any reform proposals that may be brought forward, if the evidence supports it and if it's felt that proposals can garner the support of the Senedd, in the timescale that allows this or future Senedd gatherings to do the necessary preparations, the necessary legislation, if appropriate, and bring it forward?

Finally, could I ask the Chair for her reflections on some of the evidence that we've heard already? She touched on it a moment ago—on the implications for the performance and the effectiveness of this Senedd and on our working methods and working week, or on what we might have to choose not to do with our existing powers, let alone powers that we are not using at the moment, or any future powers, if we choose not to undertake further reform that could increase the capacity and the diversity of representation to fully reflect this, our nation, our Senedd of Wales. We've already heard evidence on this and it was fascinating to hear what those organisations that regularly engage with us and lobby us on important matters of health and the environment and so many other things, thought would be the implications of choosing not to proceed with some form of electoral reform that would increase the capacity and diversity of this place. Would she care to expand on that?

Yes, thank you, Huw, I'll take that in reverse order. The final point that you made about the implications on our performance, I think, from the limited evidence that we have taken so far, the evidence that we have taken was consistent and was very clear in terms of the implications for us. If we come to a point where we are unable to expand the size of this Assembly, then I think that it is clear to everyone that we have spoken to so far that the way in which this Assembly works will have to change dramatically. And there will probably have to be some recommendations that many Members of this place would find unpalatable.

And if I say to you that one of the things that was even suggested to us, which would be hugely unpalatable to me and to most Members in this room, was that we may have to put a pause on devolution itself if we are not in a position to carry out our functions effectively. What those people were talking about was that we would have to say, in terms of further powers, that if we are unable to take on further powers more effectively, then we may have to say that we can't and we may have to look at the powers that we already have and say that we can no longer carry through those powers unless we can do them effectively. Now, I am not saying that that is something that the committee agreed with, I'm not saying that that would necessarily be one of our recommendations; what I am saying to you is that that was one of the suggestions that was coming forward from people who engage with us and were saying that we would need to seriously consider.

Other aspects of our work that we would have to look at are our working week, how many days a week this Assembly sits, how long our days may be, how many committees meet, whether we need to merge some of our committees, whether we can send people home on a Thursday or whether people have to stay here five days a week, and all of these kinds of things. If we are serious about being a law-making body that is serious about scrutinising the work of this Government, then unless we expand the capacity then we will have to take some very, very difficult and unpalatable decisions. 

In terms of the timescales, the timescale that we're working on at the moment is to produce the committee's recommendations in advance of summer recess this year with a view to coming back to the Assembly for a debate in the autumn session—so, before the autumn recess in October. That is the kind of timescale that we're working to. That may or may not slip. I don't know how much latitude the committee would be given to slip its timescale because that decision has been taken by this Assembly in terms of, you know, this is a time-limited task and finish group. I think we need to work to that timescale. The committee clerks, I have to say—. Can I offer my sincere thanks to the committee clerks who've worked very hard on producing a timetable for us, setting out very clearly the pieces of evidence that we need to take and the groups that we need to speak to during the course of our work?

That will bring me on to the point that you raised, Huw, and I touched on in my previous answer, around engagement and the engagement of citizens. What we are proposing around the engagement of citizens is that we establish a citizens assembly. The reason that we have proposed establishing a citizens assembly is that that gives us the best chance of having a very representative sample of the wider electorate in terms of age, gender, location, language—English, Welsh and so on—that we can bring together with various views, various political views, and that can be done quite scientifically, that we get people together in a kind of mini parliament, a mini kind of citizens assembly. But, and this is a big 'but', that is a very costly exercise. We would be looking to do that—. We've discussed with the clerks how we could do that in the most cost-effective way. So, we've looked at the lower end of the scale, but even at the lower end of the scale, it is not an insignificant amount of money that would be involved in running a citizens' assembly. But if we are serious about doing it, and we are serious about wanting to make sure that we have an informed opinion from the general public, then we feel that that would be money well spent. And I understand that the Assembly Commission is going to be looking at that on 27 January to hopefully approve our request for a citizens' assembly. If we don't get a citizens' assembly, then we will have to look at other ways of that public engagement, and that could be focus groups, that could be opinion polling, that could be other ways of engagement. But we're very keen that we move down this road of a very deliberative consultation with people across a wide range of views and so on.

So, the other point I think that you raised, Huw, was about the seat open for the Conservative Party, which, again, I will just reiterate what I said in response to Delyth Jewell: the seat is there for the Conservative Party to join in. I hope that we can continue our conversations with them, that they will be engaging with the work on this committee and that that they will review and reflect on their decision and will come back to us with a more positive position in the future.

I'll join with other Members in the Chamber in saying what lovely people the Conservatives are and how wonderful it would be to see them engaging with this. Llyr, don't say, 'Don't go that far'—I think it would be a really good thing if they engaged. [Laughter.]

Llywydd, I'll use your words that you said to the committee, and the Chair has already mentioned it. You said of Westminster MPs that, of the over 600 MPs, over 100 sit on no committees at all, and in your words, you said they

'take no part in Government or shadow Government, and—. I wouldn't know what they do.'

You said:

'I wouldn't know what that life must be like, to turn up to the Parliament and then not have anything to do for the week.'

And that is quite a long way from our experiences. Of every single person in this Chamber, that is quite a very, very big distance from our experiences, being on two or more committees, spending weekends getting your head around your papers for two committees in the following week, for those of us who are on committees. And I can't imagine, then, how Government Ministers balance both constituency work and being in Government. It must be absolute hell for work-life balance. I cannot imagine ever being in that position, especially with two young children. I can't imagine how it's done with the numbers we currently have and the workload we currently have.

But with regard to the more popular argument for persuading people, I think you need to say to people, 'If a Government Minister is under scrutiny, what would you prefer? Would you prefer them to have lots of people scrutinising what they do, or fewer people scrutinising what they do?' And I would say that people would say, 'Well, I'd rather there were lots of people who are experts in small, limited areas scrutinising Government, rather than a few people trying to do everything.' You get better scrutiny, I believe, with more Members—[Interruption.]—and also the depth of the scrutiny becomes better as well. I'm sorry, I'd love to take an intervention, but it's a statement, so I can't do that. But I don't know you've just said, Janet Finch-Saunders, I'm sorry.

And the other issue is electoral fairness and clarity. Electoral fairness and clarity. I've had complaints, Delyth Jewell, from constituents in Nelson who've said they've received Plaid Cymru leaflets saying that I was no longer the Assembly Member and Delyth Jewell was the Assembly Member. And they were complaining to me, 'When did you stand down?' Well, of course, that wasn't what you did, you just put a leaflet out saying, 'I'm the Assembly Member for South Wales East and I'm here to help you.' Of course you did, I don’t think you did anything wrong. Delyth, if you'd have done anything wrong, I'd have gone straight to the standards commissioner. [Laughter.]

I object to this. [Laughter.]

But what you did was the right thing to do—you were a new Assembly Member and you were introducing yourself to people in Nelson. But the people in Nelson we're confused—they thought that there was a new Assembly Member and I'd somehow stood down. People didn't understand that they had more than one Assembly Member representing them with this dual system. That electoral system doesn't work and it needs changing. I think that that should be part of what is looked at, and I think the only way you can argue for more Assembly Members is if you also argue for electoral reform that is more representative of the society we seek to represent.

In a multi-Member constituency—and I suspect using the model that Laura McAllister proposes—the kind of constituency we'd have in Caerphilly, perhaps you and I would both be Assembly Members representing the same constituency. Well, that's fine, because then you've got a clear explanation of why you were there, what you were there doing, and I would also argue it would enforce parties to work together better than the current system does. And also, it would be more representative of the percentage of the vote, because currently, even with the D'Hondt system, this Assembly is not electorally representative of percentages. So, it currently doesn't work, and I urge—. I know committee members have taken a step back from taking these quite bold positions, but I argue for these positions—. As a backbench Assembly Member, I argue for these positions. I think you should be looking deeply at a fairer electoral system, more Assembly Members taking on more scrutiny roles, and that balanced across a more balanced Chamber, and I think we can win that argument publicly, especially with no MEPs and probably fewer MPs, too, in the future. I think that argument can be won if we are bold enough and we make those cases.

And also, if you've got a good representative democracy, there will be no need in future for direct democracy, because your representative democracy will be functioning. We can take the divisions on behalf of society. We don't have to pass those divisions on to citizens in the form of referendums in future—[Interruption.]—I would argue. I would argue. Mark Reckless, I'm not arguing on behalf of my party.

So, with these cases being made, my question to you, Dawn, is: your committee's got a consultation opening on 19 February—I found it quite hard to find the detail of that consultation on the website, so I think it would be helpful to make that more user-friendly. And also, how are you going to make this—? The words used in the consultation are not the kind of words that I would, for example, be able to share on Facebook. How are you going to get people responding to that consultation in the first instance? Because if all of these arguments I've put are going to be out there, it must be accessibly done, and I don't think that that first consultation is necessarily as accessible—notwithstanding the people's assembly—I don't think that that first consultation is as accessible as it could be.

Thank you, Hefin, for those comments. I think there's probably much in that that the committee would agree with. Now, what I'm not going to do as the Chair of the committee, and neither are any of the members of the committee at this stage going to come down and say what we believe should or will happen around electoral reform, but electoral reform is part of the brief that the committee has. So, we will be looking—. We already have had the Electoral Reform Society come in and give us a technical briefing on the various forms of a voting system. You will be aware that Laura McAllister's report, the expert panel report, did make a recommendation about moving away from the current D'Hondt system that we have, for the very reason that you've talked about: the different type of AM and the confusion that that causes. I know, as a constituency AM, I do things very differently to how a regional AM has to work. So, that was identified within the expert panel report. That was something that people generally didn't favour going forward. They wanted some more clarity around the way that people are elected. They wanted clarity in terms of knowing who their Assembly Member was.

So, part of the work that we will be looking at will focus on electoral reform, and alongside electoral reform, of course, will also have to come a discussion around electoral boundaries. Now, for the purposes of the expert panel—and that was a pragmatic approach that was taken because at that time there was a hope, I think, that the recommendations of that would have been in place for the 2021 elections. Clearly, that isn't happening. As a pragmatic approach to that, the expert panel suggested twinning constituencies, and my constituency would have been twinned with yours. So, Hef, you and I may have been Members in the same constituency, with Delyth and who knows who else. But that was a pragmatic way of doing it where we would have just reduced the number of constituencies but doubled the size, and increased the number of Members representing each constituency on an STV system—single transferrable vote.

So, all of that is for the committee to consider and we've got to take more evidence about that. We will be taking evidence from political parties about that, because we know that political parties have different views about that, and people within the political parties have different views on that, and you will know, Hefin, that in our party, there are many people that have very different views about what is the best voting system—[Interruption.] Yes, absolutely, because we have to be—. We have to live in the real world and we have to recognise that this is politics, and we have to recognise that political parties will look to see which system they think will favour them the most. Now, that's just the politique réal. So, we have to consider that. But we have said—and as I said in my opening statement—from the outset that we are going to be open-minded about this, and we will base our recommendations on evidence that's presented to us that shows us what would be the best way forward.

In terms of electoral boundaries, one of the things that have been devolved to us is the ability to set our own boundaries, but we don't yet have the primary legislation in place to enable us to do that. So, we have the competence, but not the legislative process to do that. So, we would have to put that in place as well. There would have to be a piece of legislation introduced through the Assembly to enable us to set up our own boundary commission to determine our own boundaries. So, that will be, again, one of the areas of work that the committee will be looking at—so, electoral reform, electoral boundaries.

The final point I think that you made was around the consultations being user-friendly. I take that on board, I take your point, and I will have a discussion with the committee clerks about how we might make that a little bit more user-friendly, and perhaps looking at some of the language used as well, certainly, when we're doing the more outward-facing public consultations, as opposed to consultations with organisations that work with us on a regular basis. That, I'm sure, will be very important, so I'm happy to look at that.

We're out of time for this statement, but I will call the two remaining speakers for short contributions. Janet Finch-Saunders.

Thank you, Llywydd. I'm a little baffled—I stand, actually, in a personal capacity now, when I make the comments I do, and I just feel this has given me the opportunity, with you introducing this, Dawn. Certainly, as a Member who travels from north Wales, at great expense, actually, to the taxpayer—four, four and a half hours on the train, there and back—when I'm here, obviously, I want to fulfil the time in the best possible way.

What I have got concerns about are two things in your statement today. First off, we did have a referendum in 2011, the alternative vote referendum—was it two thousand and—? [Interruption.] No, no, but it was still a referendum: the people spoke, the people decided on the voting system they wanted, and for me as an Aberconwy Member, with health and education and the concerns they have there, it doesn't figure highly on their Richter scale as to what we should be doing here.

But you mentioned greater scrutiny. Now, another disappointment I have, when we've travelled down here, is First Minister's questions used to be an hour, then that was soon shortened to 45 minutes. I feel, personally, that we could be doing more in the time that we are here—the numbers we're given. Quite often, I am asked in my constituency, where people have gone to Senedd.tv, 'Why are the benches always empty or very few people on those benches?' I go to committees where people are only on one committee, and they don't attend committee on a regular basis. I genuinely believe, and I would like to ask—my overriding question is: what or who in this institution would perhaps look at how we could perhaps make greater use of the time that we as Assembly Members are here, and not always keep looking to how we can increase the cost to the taxpayer?

Members, Wales has the highest number of politicians, as I understand it, from a study I did, across Europe. So, I think, really, before we start saying, 'More, more, more—more cost to the taxpayer', we should look—[Interruption.] I'm asking—

The Member is trying to contribute to this important discussion. Allow her to continue.

And I'm asking that question: what considerations have you given to making this Assembly make better use of the Assembly Members who actually attend here? Thank you.

Just before the committee Chair responds, for the record, I cannot remember a time when the First Minister's questions was last 45 minutes. It may be allocated for 45 minutes, but it hasn't been 45 minutes for quite a long time. Committee Chair.

Thank you, Llywydd. I'll keep my response very brief. Janet, you're absolutely right, and I think I did touch on this earlier on in a response, about looking at—it was actually in response to Huw Irranca-Davies. One of the things the committee will be doing is looking at the way that we work, because even if we get agreement on recommending an increased Assembly, and the Assembly votes for that, and we get it, and the next Government approves that—because it won't be this Government; it'll be the next Welsh Government that would take that through—there will still be a period of five years where we're going to be working with 60 Members. So, the status quo is not an option in terms of how we currently work. That was the view expressed to us by a number of people, and so that will be one of the things that we—. That is one of the things that we have to consider in the evidence that we are taking: if we do not move to a greater number of Assembly Members, then we would be looking to make recommendations about the way in which the Assembly operates differently, because it cannot continue to operate in the way that it is now, with the current number of Members.

Could I emphasise the need for speed in debating and coming to a conclusion on these matters? In the 20 years since democratic government was introduced in Wales we've had what appears to me to be an embarrassment of riches when it comes to commissions and committees and when it comes to examinations by some of the greatest minds in this country—certainly a greater mind than I have. And if all—[Laughter.] I accept that doesn't set the bar especially high. But all these people who have studied this issue have come to the same conclusion. Their conclusions have been somewhat different in minor matters, but they've come to the same conclusion—that this place doesn't have the resources and the capacity to do its job properly, and it is elected in a way that does not demand popular connection with the political process.

I was shocked yesterday, speaking to the Electoral Reform Society, when I learnt that 52 per cent of people who voted in the general election last month voted for losing candidates—didn't have somebody they voted for elected. Fifty-two per cent—a majority of people who voted in the general election last month—did not elect anybody they wished to see representing them. That is an absolute condemnation of first-past-the-post.

But we also know—we also know—that the additional member system that we operate here also creates a disconnect between the people we seek to represent and this place here. We know that people do not appreciate and understand the two-tier system with the list system. We know that people find it difficult sometimes to understand who is representing them, in the same way as my colleague from Caerphilly has explained this afternoon. We also know that the list system doesn't work and is broken. We know that from events in this place over the last three years. It doesn't provide the proportionality that it sought to do.

So, the system we have creates a disconnect, is broken, is not working, and therefore we need change. It's the easiest thing in the world—it is the easiest thing in the world—simply to stand back and sloganise, to make easy, lazy arguments. But let me say this to those who do so: the Government is not the people who will necessarily benefit from this reform. It is this place, and it is us as parliamentarians that will benefit, because we will be able to scrutinise the Government in a more profound way than we are able to do today. We will have the time and the space to represent our constituents in a more profound way. At the moment, I would argue that this Government here is the least scrutinised Government anywhere in the United Kingdom, and it should be the most scrutinised Government. [Interruption.] And it is the opposition, Darren, who should be doing that.

Darren made the argument yesterday that opposition parties shouldn't oppose Governments, which I thought was a very courageous argument for somebody who's been in opposition for 13 years to make, but it is the opposition that will benefit greatly from this reform, not the Government. And I believe that we have to make that. And I also believe—and I know I'm testing your patience again, Presiding Officer—that, as parliamentarians, we have a higher responsibility than simply looking to personal and to party political benefit and advantage. As parliamentarians, we have a duty and a responsibility to ensure that this place works properly for the people of this country, and that is a responsibility that I hope I've always taken seriously in my membership here.

I do believe that Janet Finch-Saunders is right on some matters. I do believe that there are changes that we need to make to the way that this place operates, not just to maximise the opportunities we have here to make change. But I do believe, for example, that we should change the way that we deliver the Government's budget. We should have a legislative process to put the Government under more scrutiny, to make the Government work harder to get its way, but we can't do that if we do not have the capacity to deliver it. I also believe that we should be putting the Government under more pressure to legislate, in a way. I've written to the Minister today about Lucy's law, asking why that isn't being delivered as quickly as perhaps it should be. But you can't argue that the Government isn't working hard enough and then argue that it needs less scrutiny. You can't do that. That means that you do need certainly to make changes to the way we operate here, and particularly when we have a unicameral system. But you can't do that if you don't, at the same time, argue to have the capacity and the structures and the resources in place to maximise the work that we do as parliamentarians.

Thank you for those comments, Alun. Not much there to disagree with, other than to say that obviously we haven't yet concluded our deliberations and so we haven't reached conclusions on a number of those issues that you raise. 

My final comment, really, is just to say that we are seeking evidence and submissions from political parties both inside and outside this place. We are also seeking evidence and submissions from individual members of political parties and Members. So, any individual Member that wishes to make a submission on any of the points that have been raised today, please feel free to do so. You can do it through the website or you can do it through writing to me personally. I will also make myself available to speak to any Member of this place who wishes to talk to me personally about any of the issues that have been raised today and the work of the committee, and all of that I will add in to the deliberations that the committee makes over the next few months.

Thank you very much.

Item 7 on our agenda this afternoon, then, is the Welsh Conservative debate on community regeneration. I call on Mark Isherwood to move the motion.

Diolch. Our motion proposes that this Senedd regrets the failure of the Welsh Government's Communities First programme to tackle poverty in the most deprived communities of Wales. Like many, I gave my support to this tackling poverty programme when it was launched because we were told it was about genuine community empowerment and ownership. However, concerns developed as evidence grew that the programme wasn't delivering the improved outcomes needed by people in Communities First areas.

Eight years ago, the Welsh Government rejected the Wales Council for Voluntary Action and Centre for Regeneration Excellence Wales report, 'Communities First—A Way Forward', which found that community involvement in co-designing and co-delivering local services should be central to any successor tackling poverty programme. Five years later, and after spending almost £0.5 billion on it, the Welsh Government announced that it was phasing out Communities First, having failed to reduce the headline rates of poverty or increase relative prosperity in Wales.

As the WCVA and CREW said in 2011,

'any successor programme to Communities First needs to create the conditions to migrate from a top down government programme into a community led strategy for tackling deprivation and promoting social justice.'

As CREW's 2014 'deep place' study in Tredegar found:

'In recent years the community empowerment agenda has been increasingly framed within the co-production approach'

and

'governance for resilient and sustainable places should...seek to engage local citizens',

requiring

'a very different perspective from the normal approach to power at community level and...dependent on a willing and open ability to share power and work
for common objectives.'

As the 2017 Equality, Local Government and Communities Committee 'Communities First: Lessons Learnt' report found, Communities First had a mixed record because

'there was too much variability across Wales, and inadequate performance management frameworks'.

As the Bevan Foundation stated in 2017,

'Communities First did not reduce the headline rates of poverty in the vast majority of communities, still less in Wales as a whole.'

Oxfam Cymru has specifically called on the Welsh Government to embed the sustainable livelihoods approach in all policy and service delivery in Wales, helping people identify their own strengths in order to tackle the root problems preventing them and their communities from reaching their potential. As the Bevan Foundation states, if people feel that policies are imposed on them, the policies don't work and a new programme should be produced with communities, not directed top down.

The 'Valuing place' report, commissioned by the Welsh Government, based on research in three communities, including Connah's Quay, found that establishing local networks to connect people together who want to take local action should be of priority. I, personally, have been pleased to work with local GPs and third-sector co-production change makers on Deeside seeking to do this.

However, the Welsh Government has proved averse to implementing the Localism Act 2011 community rights agenda, which would help community engagement. Although the well-being objectives in the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015 include people contributing to their community being informed, included and listened to, too often this hasn't happened, either because people in power don't want to share it or because of a failure to understand that delivering services this way will create more efficient and effective services.

UK Government policy on non-devolved matters applies across the UK, but only Wales has had a Labour Welsh Government for almost 21 years. The Joseph Rowntree report on UK poverty published in October 2018 stated that of the four countries of the UK Wales has consistently had the highest poverty rates for the past 20 years. Two months previously, a Bevan Foundation 'State of Wales' briefing found that the relative income poverty rate in Wales was higher than that in England, Northern Ireland and Scotland, the proportion of working-age adults in poverty in Wales was higher than any other UK nation, and the pensioner poverty rate in Wales was far higher than in the other UK nations.

Last May, the End Child Poverty Network reported that Wales was the only UK nation to see a rise in child poverty the previous year to 29 per cent. Well, child poverty levels in Wales had already reached that level in 2007—the highest child poverty level in the UK—after a decade of UK Labour Government, eight years of Labour Welsh Government and before all of this could be blamed on the financial crash or the post-2010 UK Government.

Despite billions of structural funding intended to close the relative prosperity gap, figures published last month show that Wales still has the lowest prosperity per head amongst the UK nations at just 72.8 per cent of the UK level. The five-yearly publication of Wales's index of multiple deprivation last November revealed that many of the wards at the bottom had also been in, or just outside, the bottom five, 10 and 15 years previously.

Age Alliance Wales has raised repeated concern that the third sector has been seen as a bit-part player, with little or no strategic involvement in the integrated care fund and little input into programme planning. Despite the Welsh Government's repeated championing of prevention and early intervention services, its actions have, in practice, been stripping out key third-sector early intervention and prevention services at huge additional cost to our health and social services.

A Wales Audit Office report last September noted that the Social Services and Well-being (Wales) Act 2014 places a duty on local authorities to focus on prevention and early intervention, and deliver a wider range of community-based services through partnerships and multi-agency working, but reported that wide variation in the availability, visibility, accessibility and quality of information provided by local authorities is resulting in inconsistent take-up across Wales. They stated that councils should involve third-sector partners in co-producing preventative solutions to meet people's needs and ensure people have equitable access to these services.

Well, all mainstream political parties want to tackle poverty. Labour claims that only the state can guarantee fairness, and, of course, the state is key. But their centralised top-down approach means well but fails badly. Welsh Conservatives understand that social justice will only be delivered by really empowering people to fulfil their potential and to take ownership in their own communities. Labour sets limits on what the voluntary sector, social enterprises and community groups can do. Welsh Conservatives recognise that it is these social entrepreneurs and poverty fighters who can deliver the solutions for the long-term problems of our most deprived communities—they can succeed where the state alone fails. 

Our motion proposes that this Senedd recognises the need to deliver, in practice, a co-productive approach to community regeneration, with community involvement in co-designing and co-delivery of local services. This means adopting international best practice, enabling people and professionals to share power and work together in equal relationships to make public services more effective and relevant, and unlocking community strengths to build stronger communities for the future. As the Bevan Foundation emphasises, a theory of change that builds on people's assets and enables them to improve their lives is more effective than meeting needs or addressing deficits. The Welsh Government should focus on long-term outcomes not short-term inputs, and programmes should be co-produced by communities and professionals, drawing on evidence of what works.

Our motion proposes that this Senedd acknowledges the particular challenges faced by seaside and market towns with higher retail vacancy rates and higher levels of deprivation than in other parts of Wales and calls on the Welsh Government to establish seaside town and market town funds to support regeneration in communities across Wales. Five of the 10 most deprived areas in Wales are located within towns, including Rhyl, Merthyr Tydfil and Wrexham.

As the Federation of Small Businesses Cymru has argued, towns are fundamental to the way that Wales works, with small towns in Wales accounting for almost 40 per cent of the population of the country, and they say we need a new approach to our high streets, struggling under the weight of a number of issues, and we've now reached a critical time for these businesses.

A Welsh Conservative Government would therefore establish a seaside town fund and a market town fund to help regenerate Wales's local communities, with £200 million to be invested in our local areas over a five-year term. These funds, which would enable communities to decide how the fund is to be invested within their local area, will help to support vital local services and businesses and emphasise the Welsh Conservatives' commitment to levelling up investment across Wales and restoring Welsh towns and communities. 

As the Welsh Retail Consortium notes, Wales has the highest non-domestic rates multiplier in Britain, and a higher empty shop rate than in any other part of the UK. Whilst Labour only provides 100 per cent rate relief for retail properties, up to a rateable value of £9,100, a Welsh Conservative Government would extend this to £15,000.

The Welsh Government amendment recognises the important role of business improvement districts. But, their website states that only 24 of these exist or are being developed in Wales, that support is only available until March 2020, and that only funding of up to £30,000 is available for each district. Enough is enough. As evidence repeatedly confirms, embracing the co-production revolution in our towns and communities trumps top-down approaches towards community engagement any day. After 20 years, we need real change. 

Thank you. I have selected the two amendments to the motion. If amendment 1 is agreed, amendment 2 will be deselected. Can I ask the Deputy Minister for Housing and Local Government to formally move amendment 1, tabled in the name of Rebecca Evans? 

Formally.

Formally, thank you. Can I call on Leanne Wood to move amendment 2, tabled in the name of Rhun ap Iorwerth? 

Diolch. I'm yet again staggered to see the Tories bring forward a motion in this Senedd lamenting poverty and deprivation. What next? What can we expect next? Can we expect to see a motion lamenting capitalism from them perhaps?

Now, I've got a large amount of sympathy for arguments that hold this Labour Government to account for their failure to replace the Communities First programme with an alternative anti-poverty programme, and indeed their failure to have a poverty reduction strategy at all. I would also have sympathy with arguments that show the woeful failure of this Government, having been in power for the entire 20 years that we've had devolution, to make anything more than a small dent in overcoming the poverty faced by people in our former industrial areas, those areas that have been in deep and intractable poverty since Margaret Thatcher deliberately de-industrialised us. These are failures that have had widespread and deep effects and those effects can still be felt today. I have to say, though, it's nothing short of bare-faced cheek to outline these failures without looking in the mirror.

The benefits policies of the Tories in Westminster have been heavily criticised by the UN special rapporteur and the impact of those measures has been outlined in this Chamber by many Members on many occasions. We all understand why there are so many more people forced to live on the streets: it's a direct result of your Government's policies. Yet, you come here and you wring your hands about poverty in Wales. 

In the debate that follows, Plaid Cymru will outline practical and effective measures to tackle child poverty in particular. It's beyond a scandal that child mortality rates, in fact, overall mortality rates, in England and Wales are worsening while child mortality rates are improving in Scotland. That means people are dying younger here. Yes, that's partly because we've lived with 12 years of austerity, but it's more than that, otherwise the Scottish mortality rates would be the same as those for England and Wales. But, Scotland has a Government with a strategy to tackle poverty that includes prioritising investment in maternity and early years services, and that investment is paying off.

Poverty is not a natural phenomenon. Poverty is not inevitable. It's created deliberately by policy, and it can be stemmed. It can even be stopped, with political will. But, I don't see that will in the Government here. And I see the absolute opposite of that from the party run by your Government on the other end of the M4. We can overcome poverty, but, as I see it, we can rely on neither the Labour Party nor the Tories to do that. It's only going to happen if we decide to do it for ourselves. 

Rarely a day goes by that I do not regret the ending of the Communities First schemes in my constituency. Firstly, anyone who thought that a £30-million-a-year scheme would eradicate poverty was somewhere between hyper-optimistic and delusional. This is echoed by the evidence that Caerphilly council gave to an Assembly committee when we were looking at it. Can I just say that to expect a single programme to single handedly reduce poverty is naive and unrealistic? You will never eradicate poverty, generational poverty, by a single anti-poverty programme. It has been very successful at some things and not so successful at others, but, actually, poverty, fundamentally, is down to economics. Anti-poverty programmes and employment-support programmes are all well and good, but, actually, unless we have a robust economy, then we're never going to eradicate poverty. We also know that the first thing the majority of people who live in a homogeneously poor area do when they increase their income sufficiently is move. We have examples of that not just in Wales but we have examples of that in England as well.

We know the characteristics of poor communities: poor health; a high number of people on benefits; those not on benefits, which are more and more, on very low pay at the minimum wage, and more crucially with low guaranteed hours, leading to low and variable income, and many are going through serious problems this month as they were getting 30 and 40 hours last month and are now down to their guaranteed seven and 10 hours this month; general low educational attainment; few books in the home; with many a sense that things cannot get any better.

Where you have an area that is heterogeneously disadvantaged, then, to quote Welsh Local Government Association evidence to the same committee,

'if you look at the most disadvantaged areas, they've got the most parts of the system where intervention is needed, so they need a multi-agency approach, an intensive piece of work, to put all the bits back, and get them working again. In a more affluent area, where you've got pockets of poverty, the system isn't quite as broken, and, therefore, you need fewer interventions—more specific interventions—to help those people get back up and running again.'

Ynys Môn council said:

'The programme has reaped success for changing and improving individual people's lives by supporting them into training, volunteering and work opportunities and improving their life skills.'

To quote Swansea Council:

'Community based, accessible services allow staff to understand communities, building relationships and trust that support disengaged people to participate in and access services that they would not otherwise be able to access.'

Community successes: health; weight-loss programmes; improved-diet programmes; smoking-cessation programmes; exercise programmes. I hold the view that stopping ill health is more important than seeing health as a treatment system, which is what we do, we put more money into health and treat more people, but let's have fewer people needing treatment.

On poverty, a project looked to help people through reducing their utility bills. At a committee meeting this morning, we were talking about the fact that a lot of work has been done by Nest and Arbed in actually improving the buildings, and by the Welsh housing quality standard, but people are still paying a lot more if they're poor. As I've said on more than one occasion: it's very expensive to be poor. The amount that people pay when they have to put tokens into the system in order to get gas and electric is substantially more than we in this room do. In fact, I've said, again on more than one occasion: I have constituents who spend more money on heating to be cold than I do to be warm. 

We have projects sorting and recycling unwanted clothes. There's a lot of work, it's not just in Swansea, there was good work done in Denbighshire, as you know, Deputy Presiding Officer, in recycling clothes within schools. These sorts of things, they do make a difference to the lives of people. A project promoted a local credit union and getting people out of doorstep loans, and doorstep loans really are a huge problem for very many, many people; where someone comes and offers them money and all of a sudden it's going to cost them a huge amount in the end. Education and low educational attainment is a major cause of poverty. Projects prioritised improving education attainment by helping adults back into learning; family learning projects in partnership with local schools; parent and toddler groups aimed at increasing the development and learning of preschoolers; a homework club providing support to children and their homework. 

Society has got a lot worse than since I was a child living in a very poor community. I had access to everything anybody else did because I could go to the local library. No-one had better access to books than I did. Nowadays, you have people with their electronic devices in their bedrooms, when people like myself, if I was living there now, would have a two-mile walk in order to get to the library. There was also a scheme that encouraged a learning environment in the family and home.

Communities First was, in many ways, an excellent scheme, and it was a very, very sad day when the Welsh Government decided to do away with it without bringing anything to replace it on those things that really matter: improving live chances for those in our poorest communities. 

We all wish to see bustling high streets at the heart of our towns. To achieve this, we need thriving local businesses and positive engagement by our communities with their high streets. However, the sad reality is that today many of our high streets are in crisis. Too many shops in Welsh town centres are empty. Figures from the Welsh Retail Consortium show that, in the most recent quarter, Wales had a retail vacancy rate of more than 13.4 per cent. This is a higher shop vacancy rate than any other part of the United Kingdom.

There are many reasons for the decline in our high streets: changes to people's lifestyles have meant changes to the ways they shop; the development of out-of-town retail, in some cases, has had a detrimental effect on town centres across Wales: shoppers like and appreciate the convenience and choice offered by out-of-town retailers, with the benefit of free parking; e-commerce is one of the fastest growing markets in the Europe, with more and more business being carried out on the internet. All these factors combine to increase pressure on our high streets.

Without taking action, they will just disappear, Deputy Presiding Officer. They cannot survive unaided. We need a package of measures to support local businesses and communities. That means addressing the issues of non-domestic rates. The Welsh Government's written statement yesterday on rate relief was welcome here. However, local businesses in Wales are still being hampered by high non-domestic rates that are stifling business creation and hindering their growth. Non-domestic rates in Wales raise over £1 billion.

The lack of Government support has resulted in our town centres being blighted by empty shops. This brings the risk of vandalism and crime, adding to the run-down appearance of our communities. As the Federation of Small Businesses recognises: for renewal to take place, town centres need to be more business-like and they need to learn from our competitors, like other devolved nations. The behaviour and expectations of consumers has changed and we need a more informed approach to town-centre management.

I believe that business improvement districts have a vital role to play in the regeneration of our high streets, but it's not just about shops. Leisure and services have essential roles to play. We need a balance of large retailers, small shops, leisure services, cafes, bars and restaurants, as well as housing. We need a town strategy that goes beyond the targeted regeneration strategy outlined by the Welsh Government's Vibrant and Viable Places approach, one that recognises the particular problems faced by our seaside and market towns and provides the retailer support these communities need and deserve.

The Welsh Conservatives would unleash Welsh potential by establishing a fund for our seaside market towns worth £200 million over five years. This funding commitment would be far more ambitious than the Welsh Government's current top-down regeneration strategy and would enable these communities to grow and thrive. Deputy Presiding Officer, there is an urgent need to revitalise our high streets as centres for economic growth and we need to act now.

Finally, as a matter of fact, since 2014-17, £124 million has been spent on 18 areas, Ministers. What is the development there? EU funding—£150 million in the last six or seven years, and also £100 million for the regeneration national plan, which should be carried on until 2021. What is the development in those areas? Are the vacancies on the high streets getting better? No, they're getting worse, especially in my region in south-east Wales—we are really suffering. The most deprived areas in the United Kingdom are in my region.

I think it's a big shame to us here. We are doing a lot of verbal—. I heard our colleague on the other side of the bench here talking about all these blames going towards the other side of London. That's not the case. Nearly £370 million in the last seven years and where has the money gone? Regeneration for local communities—what happened there? There are still many empty shops—. I don't want to learn lessons from Plaid Cymru. They gave an example of UN law and the other side of the bridge. Why can't they ask the Government to make sure they deliver the best possible service to our communities? We should regenerate our poor communities in all of south-east Wales.

I oppose the motion for different reasons for each of the four points. The first point, I think it's fair enough to regret the failure of the Welsh Government's Communities First programme, but there are an awful lot of Welsh Government programmes that have failed in one way or another, but generally, they drag on without the Government admitting the failure. In this case—and I think they deserve some credit for it—the Welsh Government grasped the nettle, assessed the programme, came to a view that it hadn't worked as proposed and closed it down. As you heard from Mike, there's been a lot of opposition from within Labour circles and from people involved in the delivery of the programme to what they did. I've heard Ken Skates speak to a degree about an alternative approach and a focus on economic growth, but I think it's churlish not to recognise that response from the Government in this case.

Point 2 recognises the need to deliver in practice a co-productive approach. I looked up the word 'co-productive', Dictionary.com said 'no response' and in the Oxford English Dictionary in the library, 'co-productive' is not a word in it. I heard a bit of what Mark was saying and he's looking to intervene, so I'll happily give way.  

Can I commend to you Coproduction Wales, the Co-Production Network for Wales, the huge funding they got from the lottery to deliver that project and look at the international meaning of 'Co-production', capital 'C'? It was launched originally in Western Australia some 30 years ago to huge international success since. 

I thank him for that assistance. 'Co-produce' is in Dictionary.com, not 'co-productive', but 'co-produce'. It says,

'to produce (a motion picture, play, etc.) in collaboration with others.'

In any event, I infer it has something to do with community involvement and co-designing and co-delivery of local services and that is a good thing, but the actual word 'co-productive' is not one I'm familiar with.

I think more substantively, looking at point 3, I think there's a real ambiguity about point 3. I'm not sure whether the Conservatives are saying that, where seaside and market towns are in more deprived parts of Wales they should get greater assistance. I'm not sure if they're saying that particular seaside and market towns, where there's a particular issue of deprivation need assistance, or I'm not sure if they're making a point or a claim that seaside and market towns are more deprived than other parts of Wales, in which case, I've got sympathy for Leanne Wood and her reference to our industrial and post-industrial communities, who potentially seem to be excluded from this definition. I will, again, give way, in this case to Darren Millar.

It's not that we don't recognise, of course, that there is poverty outside of seaside towns and market towns. It's just that there are very often peculiar challenges that are faced by seaside towns and market towns that we want to shine attention on, and bring some regeneration focus to. Very often, those have been overlooked in the past by previous Welsh Governments, and it's something that we want to see addressed.

I congratulate the Member on his work, actually, over a long period of time, putting the case for seaside towns, and I congratulate the Conservatives, who are representing rather more, at least at Westminster level, than they were before. But not all seaside towns are deprived. I'm not sure whether we'll hear from David Melding—perhaps he'll be putting the case for Penarth, but I'm not sure that, as a category, seaside towns are necessarily under greater deprivation, and I don't understand the linkage to market towns. Perhaps expanding the reach of the motion gets more support from across the Conservative group, but overall, I don't associate market towns as being, on average, or the first word that comes to my mind to associate with market towns, as one of deprivation. I'm sure there are pockets of deprivation in market towns, and I'm sure some market towns are more deprived than others, but the idea of setting up a special new fund just for seaside towns and market towns I worry is, (1) bureaucratic, and a new fund and structure for doing this may be over the top, and (2) do all seaside towns and market towns—do we want to see that benefit spread on the basis that they are deprived?

So, what are the market towns? We need a definition. We have from Visit Wales a list of 21 market towns, and I have a rather wonderful book I've had at home for some years, Market Town Wales, from David Williams, and he also gives a list, in his case of 25, and some sort of definition. He says there are about 50 towns in Wales where you've got a medium size of lettering on the map. Some were defensive sites, and others—he specifically excludes the linear towns of the southern coalfield, the quarry communities of Snowdonia, and also the industrial centres of north-east Wales. So all those are excluded from his definition of market towns. I'm not sure whether the Conservatives want to exclude it from theirs, or from the benefit from these funds, but I would just question whether this motion as it is written is one that should have support, or whether it's as well thought through as it might have been. Thank you.

I'd like to focus my contribution today on the challenges that face seaside and market towns, of which I have many in my constituency, and explore what options there are to help with the regeneration of such communities throughout the whole of Wales. I will be addressing your issue in a moment, Mark Reckless, if you are prepared to bear with me.

Minister, as we know, across Wales, we are blessed with beautiful countryside, historic towns and vibrant communities, and towns such as Narberth, Cowbridge and Conwy regularly bring in visitors and are very well lauded. But whilst we have these jewels in the crown, there are plenty of towns and villages throughout the nation that have fallen on hard times, and that the Welsh Government appears to have no clear strategy to deal with.

The House of Lords select committee on regenerating seaside towns and communities stated that

'the seaside and our coastal heritage is a vital part of our country's greatest assets',

and, of course, I represent a constituency with a long coastline, and I have a duty to ensure that this asset is maximised and realised appropriately. I don't want to go back to the past, where we all imagine skipping down market towns with our rose-tinted glasses, with baskets over our arms, and being able to go into every candlestick maker, baker and the rest of them. But I am going to claim that, with the right support, market and seaside towns can adapt with the times, make use of the unique selling points they have, and thrive and grow in the twenty-first century.

I'm going to focus on my constituency, so please indulge me, where we have communities such as Laugharne, with its links to one of Wales's greatest authors, and westwards to Tenby, which has modelled itself as a true year-round destination, obviously with the Iron Man event I referenced earlier, and of course the towns of Pembroke, which is the birthplace of Henry Tudor, and Pembroke Dock, with a very rich military history. Whilst each of these towns has their unique selling points, they still face the challenges of a changing retail sector.

Before Christmas, I attended an excellent Christmas fair at Pembroke castle. It attracts visitors from near and far, but as I walked back to my car at the other end of Pembroke high street, it really brought home to me the decimation of that high street over the past 15 years since I have lived there. It used to be a vibrant, busy high street, had a supermarket right in the centre of town, but now, it's bookies, it's charity shops, and everything else is pretty much boarded up. And I do wonder what we can actually do to bring that kind of life back into that type of high street, because if it's not Pembroke, it's Pembroke Dock, and it's slowly becoming Narberth, which has been a jewel in the Pembrokeshire crown for a long time, and Whitland, which is dying on its feet, St Clears going the same way.

Now, I mentioned this in a question to the economy Minister before Christmas, and was told that Welsh Government was promoting a town-centre-first initiative, encouraging more business improvement districts, and encouraging people to focus on promotions such as Small Business Saturday. But, Minister, I do not feel that this response adequately addresses the problems that are being faced. It's not just about retail offerings and conditions that need to be looked at, but other fundamental aspects of life in rural, seaside or market communities. And I would recommend that one might choose to go and study the Carnegie Trust reports into seaside and market towns, particularly seaside, because the points that they make are that, by the very nature of them being by the ocean, they tend to be further away from the centres of government; they tend to be more isolated; they tend to be more rural. And there are, very clearly laid out by the Carnegie Trust, very clear and particular issues that seaside towns and small market towns on the fringes of the coast face. And that's where we've looked for an awful lot of our research, and I'd be very happy to share that with anybody going forward. 

That is why a Welsh Conservative Government would look to establish a seaside town fund and a market town fund to help regenerate local communities, with £200 million earmarked to be invested over a five-year period. Minister, our aim would be—and we would like this to be your aim—to create a more level playing field around investment between our towns and our cities. We would like to give more power to local communities to take control of their local regeneration efforts. We want to adopt the community rights agenda, established by the Localism Act 2011. We believe that strong towns will help to develop strong communities, and cohesive and engaged communities will help to improve the whole area for the benefit of all. And that has an enormous spin-off effect into education and health and the economic drive. And, therefore, we really urge that this is something that Welsh Government should have a look at. 

[Inaudible.]—the time as well. 

I know. Finally, let me briefly touch on the importance of marketing our towns and communities better. I've already mentioned the Iron Man event that takes place in Tenby. We should be looking much more at destination marketing; that is something that really sits well with market towns and seaside towns. 

In short, we have a lot of towns with unique and varied histories. They tend to be in the far flung places. It can't all just be centred on big cities, large, large conurbations. We need just a little bit of that to help, because if you walk through rural parts of Wales, if you walk through some of these towns, and, in fact, not even so rural, as you will know yourself, Deputy Presiding Officer, but along the north Wales coast, there is a dearth—. There are closed high streets; there is wind whistling through these empty streets. We have a plan to make a difference, and we'd like you to help us to do that. 

I thank the Conservatives for actually bringing this debate under the title of 'community regeneration', and for reasons I'll expand upon in a moment, I won't be supporting the motion in their name; I will be supporting the Government's motion. But, actually, some of the characteristics that you've talked about that some coastal towns—not all, but some coastal towns—are affected by are not dissimilar to the same characteristics that are affecting Valleys communities. And it's curious, in the discussion that Mark Reckless has just had around what defines a market town—well, market towns, curiously, also do exist within parts of the south Wales Valleys as well; they're just not immense market towns, but they are markets. Maesteg itself is known as a market town destination, but it's also a lot of other things beside.

But what I want to talk to you about are some of the possible solutions going forward, and I think some of these are place-specific. They are to do with people and places and pride, and identifying what is unique and special about certain areas that we can build upon. Because I know that I've certainly got within my area—and I am going to be very parochial, because I'm going to put something of a wish list forward to Government in going forward as well—real assets that we can build upon in different areas. No one of my Valleys is actually the same. I will indeed give way. 

I just wanted to clarify one thing. I do understand that not all coastal towns are in need of that kind of support. But, like we do in much of the rest of Wales, you can actually have a fund and say what the eligibility criteria are. And you make the point about the Valleys towns, but a very clear report:

'Their location on the periphery of the country places them on the periphery of the economy, bringing consequential social problems. This combination of challenges warrants dedicated attention and support.'

Not my words—this is research. And, therefore, like other areas of Wales, we need to have a good, dedicated programme for those kinds of areas.

And in fact, it's an argument that former colleagues of mine in Westminster who represented those seaside areas put forward quite strongly, and repeatedly. And some of those are thematic funding areas, not coastal resort specific. So things like what once existed—the Future Jobs Fund, and things like that, with the UK Government—those were things that disappeared subsequently, but were replaced by Welsh Government funding. I'll turn to some of them now, because some of them I think can be thematic rather than purely coastal, and so on. And in saying this, I would remark that, in Bridgend and from the north Bridgend valleys perspective, we're not at the centre of a lot of these initiatives—we tend to be at one end of the health board, we tend to be at one end of the Cardiff city region, at one end of the metro, et cetera, et cetera—so we have to shout really loudly and argue the case. But, within what is available, we've been quite successful, but we need to do more.

So let me just turn to some of these. So if you look, for example, in the Garw and the Ogmore valleys in particular, they are in crying need of some civic renewal—empty buildings, empty shops that have been standing there for a long, long time. Now, the sort of approach that's been taken by Rhondda Cynon Taf council, and in fact that they are leading on, in terms of real spatial regeneration—physical transformation—that not only does shops and units but also does accommodation and above, we'd definitely benefit from that, and getting our act together to do that within those valley areas.

The regeneration that we're going to do with some of the last of the European money around Maesteg Town Hall, turning it from an old-fashioned town hall—it's been a brilliant venue for many, many years, but into a real cultural hub and venue that will do a range of civic matters there, and cultural matters. That will be a real hub for that community, and has real potential, working with the college and with others, to do a lot, lot more.

The Ewenny Road site, which Ministers will know, because I keep banging on about this, is nearly an 8 hectare site in the centre of Maesteg. It's been sitting empty for so long now. It's got issues to do with remediation on the land, but they've been there for some time. I think there are two or three Government departments involved in looking at it, but we just need to now pull it together. Because that could be a multi-use business and residential, and so on, right in the heart of one of our prime valleys.

Transport, for us, is a major issue around community regeneration. And it's across the valleys, as well as up and down the valleys. So, the sooner we can bring together not just the rail issues but the fast, speedy buses, and re-regulating the buses so we can decide where the routes go, and get people to work at the time they need to get to work, is critical as well. I'm not sure of the time, because I took an intervention, and I've gone well beyond here.

The other aspect I would say, which was mentioned in terms of seaside resorts as well, is the tourism and cultural potential here, because we have a great outdoors experience. If you do a figure-of-eight from Pontycymer in the centre of the Garw valley up one side of the glacial, and down the other, and then back up and round, you've just done a circuit as demanding as any day on the Tour du Mont Blanc in the French Alps. So we need to be making more of that. And the number of international cyclists who use the Bwlch mountain and the Ogmore valley as their training ground—up that hill and back down the other side as well. So we need to do more of this. But we have some of the tools at our disposal; what we need is the masterplanning to make this work.

And I suspect, with some of those thematic areas, it's equally what we need to do in seaside areas as well. It's looking at what funding is available, is there more needed—yes, absolutely—but what is available right now. And one of the things I would say as well, in future, one of the aspects—as we withdraw from the European Union—is to look at the thing that was remarked upon yesterday, which is additional flexibilities that could be used in those thematic areas to drive more regional and local priorities. That may mean we don't need a seaside fund, what we need is greater flexibility for people to decide what's important in their areas.

Small towns in Wales account for almost 40 per cent of the population of Wales. In constituencies like Aberconwy, almost the entire population is dependent on towns, such as Llanfairfechan, Llanrwst, Conwy, Penmaen-mawr, Betws-y-coed, and Llandudno of course, for banking, shops, libraries and many other service industries. In fact, FSB Cymru has found that only 8 per cent of the population feel that towns are no longer relevant.

By looking after our towns in Aberconwy and in Wales, we would reap rich dividends, building up our high streets, empowering our entrepreneurs and building up our tax revenue, and, in general, creating more money for our public services and placing more people in gainful employment. Unfortunately, though, many towns are experiencing challenges, such as struggling high streets.

In the most recent quarter, Wales has had a retail vacancy rate of 13.4 per cent. This is a higher shop vacancy rate than any other part of the UK, and in the four weeks between September and October last year, overall footfall declined by 5.2 per cent compared to 2018. As a Government, you must take urgent steps to help our businesses, our high streets and our communities.

Businesses in Wales are being hampered by high, non-domestic rates, with Welsh companies having to hand over more than half of their estimated annual rent in tax—that's 52.6p for every £1. It is time for you to follow the Welsh Conservative lead, and our continued calls to adopt a policy of up to £15,000 for 100 per cent rate relief. This would succeed in achieving real business growth. More so, as chairman of the cross-party group on small shops, I have been working with many others in our pursuit of seeing genuine relief reform, such as by merging the small business, high street and discretionary rate relief. Have you ever spoken to a business that has tried to access this much-needed funding?

It is fair to say that some town centres have benefited from Vibrant and Viable Places. However, I've already spoken about Aberconwy and the amount of business rates revenue that comes into Wales, yet, the regeneration investment in north Wales has been agreed and allocated across the region, with the concentrating of investment funding being outside Aberconwy. And that's in a letter to me from the Minister. So, it will come as no surprise to you, therefore, that I agree with the findings of the House of Lords Select Committee on Regenerating Seaside Towns and Communities that seaside towns have been neglected for too long. In fact, five of the 10 most deprived areas in Wales are located within towns. And the Welsh index of multiple deprivation has shown that there are pockets of high deprivation along the north Wales coast.

We need to help the businesses within them to thrive and develop and give communities a say on their own progression. For example, through co-production—thanks to Mark Isherwood making that very much in our Record of Proceedings—we could see people providing and receiving services—[Interruption.] Would you like an intervention?

No. You carry on. Leave the noises off and you carry on.

—share responsibility and work in equal relationships.

Now, according to the Carnegie UK Trust 2019 assessment, your mainstream policies are focused on collaboration rather than transformative co-production. There is a failure to sufficiently engage with communities. Problems with implementing the Localism Act 2011—as Angela Burns, my colleague, has mentioned here today—are proof of this, as provisions have not been enforced, such as the right to community challenge, to submit expressions of interest for running local authority services and bid for assets of community value. These are things that you can do in England, but not in Wales.

There are more simple steps that you can take to encourage co-production, such as the changes proposed by the future generations commissioner: a participatory budget process, early involvement of people in service development, and co-developing community spaces—

You are almost out of time.

I'm almost out of time.

There is the will for community involvement in town regeneration and progression in Aberconwy, but residents are facing barriers. Consequently, I support the calls on the Welsh Government to establish seaside town and market town funds. You've got the levers, you've even got the money. Just, please, work with our business owners, and together in that partnership we'll have far more money for our public services. Entrepreneurship, employment and ambition—that's what Wales needs, and it's sadly lacking at the moment.

'No deal' hasn't gone away, it's just been deferred, so we are going to have to be very imaginative in the way in which we're going to protect our communities. As the special rapporteur warns, it's going to affect the most vulnerable and disadvantaged members of society, who are going to be least able to cope with changes and will take the biggest hit. So, we're going to have to rely on our ingenuity to create and keep wealth in Wales if we are to avoid the significant public discontent, further division, and even instability that the special rapporteur warns about.

I was interested to listen to Huw Irranca-Davies about the Ewenny Road site, because I would recommend that he looks at the Goldsmith scheme in Norwich, which is in the centre of Norwich and which won the Stirling prize, and which has been a wonderful way of regenerating an area at the centre of a town. That's the sort of thing I would like to see. I feel that good planning is essential to good regeneration, because you can see how seaside towns like Llandudno, Conwy, Aberaeron, et cetera, they've all been well planned, and that's why they continue to thrive and people continue to want to live there. Other areas have had disastrous planning decisions imposed on them and, as a result, they have suffered. So, we need to ensure that we have really good planning in the way that we develop our towns in the future. I'm confident that we can do really exciting things now that we've got all the good examples from the innovative housing programme, and we need to ensure that we build on that.

Walking round my constituency in the last two or three months, I have been thinking quite hard about why some people keep their front gardens neat and tidy while others think it's fine to use them as a dog toilet or a rubbish dump. And I think this is a really important issue for people living in communities. Why should people have to put up with other people's selfishness and laziness? So, I think there's a real challenge for all local authorities to ensure that all residents are taking pride in their neighbourhood and playing their part rather than leaving it to other people to do. In the worst case, I have people saying, 'Why hasn't the council done anything about the litter?' The council doesn't throw the litter, actually. So, as well as celebrating the work that the voluntary litter pickers do, co-ordinated by Keep Wales Tidy—and I think this is a really good example of a very small amount of money that's invested in Keep Wales Tidy to co-ordinate these volunteer litter pickers, without which our communities would be much the poorer—I think there's a lot we can learn from places like Wigan, where the Wigan Deal has actually engaged the whole community in getting them to say what is important to them and how we can all take pride in our community and be part of it and ensure that we think it's—. They've got them saying, 'Together, we will create a clean, green place that we all look after and enjoy.' And I think we need to do that in all our communities to ensure that we're all doing that.

I want to also commend the work done by Swansea council in getting everybody involved in recycling, because it isn't fair if 80 per cent of people are doing their recycling and 10 per cent are saying, 'I can't be bothered; I'm just going to shove it in the black bag', and that increases the cost to councils for disposing of those black bags. And so, I think the work done by the trainee recycling officers to actually inspect black bags and talk to residents and say, 'You know, you will get fined if you don't change your ways' has actually saved £300,000 in just a few short months. And that's the sort of thing I would like to see all local authorities doing. Why is it that most of us recycle and some people don't recycle? Clearly, there can be mental health issues or learning difficulties, and those have to be taken into consideration, but in some cases it's just downright laziness and 'I can't be bothered', and that's the sort of thing we simply can't accept. So, I welcome this debate.

I'm very glad that Mike Hedges has seen off the pseudo arguments about Communities First. Communities First wasn't working well, but it could have been, in my view, revised, and we certainly need poverty eradication programmes to keep going on ensuring we have a more cohesive society. Otherwise, we are really setting up problems for the future.

Thank you. Can I now call the Deputy Minister for Housing and Local Government, Hannah Blythyn?

Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. Can I thank all the Members who've contributed today, with a wide range of different and many thoughtful contributions to this wide-ranging debate and discussion? We talked quite a bit today about supporting both our people and our places and the importance of supporting and enabling that sense of pride in place in our communities, and that actually investing in communities is not just about the economic benefits but those broader benefits bringing communities together and increasing cohesive communities.

This Welsh Government wants our communities and towns to have a fantastic future as well as a great past with the many historic towns we can boast of in Wales. And we have recognised, and people have recognised in this debate today, that the role and purpose of our towns are changing and we need to rise to that challenge to reimagine and reinvent our communities and town centres.

That's why this Government is providing significant regeneration support to over 50 towns and communities across Wales, which is unlocking £800 million of investment between 2014 and 2022. Whether it's old chapels or neglected town halls, decaying cinemas or now defunct bingo halls, whether it's struggling high streets or derelict properties, our investment is helping to breathe new life into them. That may be as offices or enterprise hubs, community or care hubs or events-based and leisure facilities, improved retail offers and even new homes. And we've heard from Huw Irranca-Davies about what's happening with Maesteg town hall as well. So, we're helping communities to repurpose their town centres and buildings for the challenges of the twenty-first century.

The original motion somewhat implies that seaside and market towns aren't currently benefiting from this investment when many of them are indeed. In north Wales, Colwyn Bay is getting over £3 million of regeneration investment to transform town-centre buildings and bring vacant commercial floor space back into use. It's something I've seen for myself first-hand and the difference that that is making to footfall within the town as well. And just along the coast—huge investment in Rhyl. It includes redeveloping vast swathes of rundown property in the heart of town and repurposing the promenade, with much more in the pipeline, and I'm not just saying that because the Deputy Presiding Officer is in the chair. [Interruption.] [Laughter.] Worth a try. In Barry we are supporting the development of the Goods Shed building, bringing along with it 120 jobs, work and community space and a food and leisure offer. We're also providing nearly £1 million to improve commercial and retail space and to convert space within commercial properties into residential use and a £1 million loan fund under supporting town-centre social housing projects.

Turning briefly to market towns and a few examples: in Haverfordwest, we have given in principle support for a £3 million plus project to renovate and convert the Ocky White department store into a food emporium, and in addition a £2.75 million loan, providing 23 residential units, a youth enterprise and commercial trading area and refurbishing a multistorey car park to increase town-centre footfall.

In mid Wales, six market towns are benefiting from £2.14 million to improve town-centre properties and bring vacant properties back into use. And Lampeter and Newtown have also secured funding for projects, with a combined value of £5 million. And in Lampeter, the redeveloped Canolfan Dulais will provide community services alongside a care-focused enterprise centre and will support town-centre footfall and employment. Seaside towns can also access our coastal communities fund, which has provided £16 million to coastal areas since 2011.

We've talked about different funds today and I think one of the things that we have—. I wouldn't say we have enough money, but I think we have enough funds and, in fact, we have probably too many. And I'm more interested in actually how we can consolidate ones rather than creating new ones and maximising the impact that they have in towns and communities the length and breadth of the country.

We're providing lots of support, but years of austerity and an impact on our finances mean that we unfortunately cannot intervene everywhere. So, we want to help empower communities to take the lead.

The recent Carnegie UK Trust report 'Turnaround Towns UK' highlights Cardigan's shift from a failing market town to an example of best practice in using both its physical and historical assets. Cardigan has benefited from our support but demonstrates too the importance of empowered local leaders who know their towns and are key in driving change. They're also embracing digital technology to help drive this all forward.

The Government is committing support and engaging with our communities, as demonstrated by our Valleys taskforce, which has worked with communities to develop plans and ideas that help tackle the challenges faced by the communities but also celebrate and build on their strength. I'm keen as we move forward to look at how we actually better empower communities to be part of this, and involve town and community councils and other community organisations.

We're working to develop new approaches to support our communities through Brexit and beyond, building on experiences such as the LEADER approach and drawing on the rural development programme. Communities will have a say in how future regional investment is targeted within their local areas.

The UK Government's tax and welfare regime and years of austerity have had a huge impact on poverty rates in Wales. This Government has taken a cross-Government approach to tackling poverty and our economic action plan and programmes such as Flying Start, Communities for Work and the pupil development grant and Families First are vital in narrowing the gap between our most deprived and thriving areas.

This Government is strongly committed to supporting and to backing our towns and communities to not just survive but to thrive. We are certainly not complacent and we can always build on what we are already doing. I intend to say more on this in the coming weeks in this Chamber on how we support our communities to move forward to have a fantastic future as well as a great past.

Thank you. Can I call on David Melding to reply to the debate?

Thank you very much, Deputy Presiding Officer. Can I thank everyone for taking part in this debate? A lot of contributions—I won't be able to get through them all.

Mark started with his usual gusto and just the sheer grasp of the subject that he's had because this has meant so much to him throughout his career as an Assembly Member, in which he's championed the whole concept of co-delivery, co-production and that being at the heart of community regeneration.

In a slightly odd contribution, I have to say, later from Mark Reckless, we were told that 'co-productive' is not a word. The computer had said 'no' when Mark looked it up. [Laughter.] Well, I don't know where you've been, Mark, for the last four years but you couldn't have listened to any of Mr Isherwood's wonderful contributions. And he's been with co-production a lot longer than four years as well, so let me tell you, it's there, it's been established as a great idiom and one we should live up to.

Leanne, with her typical generosity and constant search for consensus, flatly condemned the barefaced cheek of the Welsh Conservative Party for even introducing this debate and then reminded us that it was all Mrs Thatcher's fault and then offered some rather vague prescriptions about how she would deal with structural change, forgetting that independence would start us all off with a 25 per cent deficit year in, year out on our spending. But anyway, I'll leave the party opposite to deal with these contradictions.

Mike said that poverty is down to economics—well, fundamentally, I don't think many would disagree with that—and that he was sceptical about single anti-poverty programmes in trying to turn back that economic tide. And then in his speech, he went on to show how specific approaches could bring great benefits—back-to-work training schemes, educational attainment and many others. So, I wasn't quite sure where you were at the end of your contribution, Mike, but I did think it did display what coherent and focused community regeneration schemes could do in terms of upskilling our citizens.

Oscar talked about the need for bustling high streets and the current high vacancy rates that we have in far too many of our towns, and this is something that other speakers also picked up.

Mark, in the other part of his contribution, praised the concept of redundancy and that we should be dramatically closing down Government programmes that don't work. Well, you know, that's true, but we were calling for an effective community regeneration programme. We were well aware of the problems with the Welsh Government's scheme. So, that was the focus of our debate.

Angela then rebutted Mark's epistemological attack on seaside towns and market towns. This was rather a theme of Mr Reckless this afternoon, in his search for definitions. But I thought Angela dealt with the practicalities of these matters, and pointed to that excellent report from the House of Lords select committee, and then the need for destination marketing. The success stories are incredible, and the towns that have not yet achieved that—they have great potential to do the same. We had a hint of this, I thought, from Huw, when his was talking about Maesteg town hall redevelopment, and its status as a hub. It reminds me of my own home town, Neath—it wasn't the town hall, but the Gwyn Hall, where there's been a great example, I think, of just that.

Janet said 40 per cent of the Welsh population live in small towns. I've no idea if that's true, but I was very impressed with the assertion, anyway, and it's a reminder of how important this is to our community life. The Federation of Small Businesses has said how important towns are to our economic future, and we all agree with that. Jenny Rathbone, further on this theme, perhaps, was just saying how important good planning is and how it's needed in terms of town regeneration and development, and I certainly agree with that.

Then the Minister ended with a calm defence of Government policy, and I thank her for her approach. It was a fairly constructive one, and no doubt you've listened to the debate this afternoon, and I do hope that we can see more effective community regeneration, which clearly would have support on all sides of this Assembly.

Thank you. The proposal is to agree the motion without amendment. Does any Member object? [Objection.] So, we will defer voting on this item until voting time.

We move to item 8 on the agenda this afternoon, which is Plaid Cymru's debate on low-income families, and I call on Adam Price to move the motion.

Diolch, Dirprwy Lywydd. I'm very grateful to have this opportunity to introduce this motion on child poverty, which dovetails very neatly—completely unplanned, but serendipitously—with some of the theme of the last debate. Child poverty is one of the most persistent problems that we face as a society. In Wales relative child poverty has been in a band, essentially, between 36 per cent of all the children in Wales and 28 per cent, pretty much for 20 years—around about a third of the total. Wales in the latest year for which we have single-year figures, according to the End Child Poverty network, was the only UK nation to see a rise in child poverty of 1 per cent, up to 29.3 per cent, which equals 206,000 children throughout Wales. Of course, the forecast for Wales, and indeed across the UK, is that this trend now of rising child poverty will continue. There are some forecasts predicting it rising to 39 per cent in the early years of this decade coming.

I think at the broadest level you could say the failure over child poverty is probably one of the greatest failures at the heart of our politics. Some of you may remember a young Tony Blair, in March 1999, heading over to Toynbee Hall, which was itself a symbol of regeneration efforts in that part of London over many generations, and announcing that this was to be the first generation ever to completely eradicate child poverty. And, of course, then we had the policy commitment to abolish child poverty within 20 years, and I think it always pays to remind ourselves of some of that gilded prose: 'Being poor should not be a life sentence. We need to break the cycle of disadvantage.' Well, that cycle has not been broken, and I think that is a cause for us to consider.

The idea that's at the heart of this motion, really, is whether we need a radical shift in our thinking and in our practice, because, obviously, I think it's fair to say, the existing policies haven't worked, and that's been true over successive administrations of both political parties at Westminster.

Now, clearly, almost by definition, the cause of child poverty is a lack of income. Income comes from two sources in our society, largely—employment and Government benefits. Now, we are, of course, very familiar with the narrative that points to the importance of worklessness in sustaining intergenerational poverty, but, actually, if you look at the evidence, the reduction that was there between 2000 and 2010, to give—. A small but significant reduction in the levels of child poverty did happen, but it was almost all of it down to the changes in benefits, not any change in the wider economy and the labour market, and, so, principally, the introduction of the working families tax credit and other changes to the benefits system. Conversely, the increase that we are now seeing is almost universally down to austerity, and the reduction in the welfare budget and associated changes since 2010. The key drivers there, of course, have been the benefit freeze, the failure to increase social security for working-age people in line with the cost of living. Child benefit, for example, a lifeline to many families with children, is projected to have lost 23 per cent by this year compared to where it was in 2010. In addition to that, then, you have the benefit cap, limiting total benefits for working-age households, and then, thirdly, the two-child limit, which restricts tax credit, housing benefit, universal credit to two children per family. 

Now, those are obviously all Westminster policies, and, clearly, much of the focus was last year about changes in those Westminster policies from a change of Government. Well, that's not going to happen now, is it, and it's not going to happen at least for five years, and I would hazard a guess that it's probable that we'll have a Conservative Government at Westminster for at least a decade, given the political arithmetic of where we are. So, I don't think that a solution is to come from that direction. I'm happy to give way. 

You may indeed be right, and I welcome the comprehensive way in which you've gone through some of the policies there that lie with Westminster. You may well be right that they will not change, but it is interesting that some of those MPs elected in former Labour areas are now going to have constituents washing up into their surgeries who will confront them with the realities of this. So, I don't think we should give up hope, if this Assembly were to send a concerted message to Westminster in the budget that is due in March, to actually look at those issues over (1) the vulnerable constituents who are on welfare, and what would be needed to redress some of that, but, secondly, the simple old fact of making work pay. 

I certainly agree with the spirit of the point you're making, that we should definitely hold Westminster to account and continue to do that very vociferously. But I suppose the logic of my case is that we have to ask ourselves what we can do here now, because the salvation will not come, I think, likely any time soon from Westminster. Now, in essence, we've had two elements of an anti-poverty approach in Wales. One of them has focused on intervening directly in the economy, so lowering the number of families in workless households, enabling more women to enter the workforce, for example, raising wage levels for those in work that work in the foundational economy. The second type of policy, then, is the provision of services directly targeted at children in poverty, things like the pupil deprivation grant, many of the programmes that, presumably, the Government is referring to in its amendment, referring to the £1 billion spent—I presume annually—mentioned in its child poverty progress report in December. 

The problem with the former, the challenge with the former approach of directly intervening in the economy, is that that type of deep structural change takes time to bear fruit. And, then, while you're waiting for that structural change to happen, of course, you have an entire generation of children that then have grown up with the problems of poverty. It's important, it's absolutely imperative, but it's not going to provide that immediate relief. 

The problem with the latter is, by definition almost, it's intended to be ameliorating. So, it's dealing with the effects, the consequences, the symptoms of poverty, not the root causes. And this leads us to the discussion of whether we need a new approach, which, essentially, in the form of the Welsh child payment, would involve a cash transfer directly payable to low-income families themselves. Now, there are, obviously, legitimate questions around the detail, some of which we can get into later—the level of the payment, who would qualify, the powers or the agreements with the UK Government that we would need in order to make this as effective as possible. But these are second order questions, in essence. The key first question is: do we agree in principle that this would be a positive policy and it could have a higher impact than some of the alternative approaches that I referred to earlier? 

Now, it's not an original idea. It's based on the Scottish child payment that will be introduced later this year of £10 to low-income families. That started as an idea actually from the coalition of anti-poverty groups in Scotland, with the Give Me Five campaign to top up child benefit by £5 a week. The modelling around that suggested that that even would lift 30,000 children out of poverty in Scotland. That shows, actually, that relatively small amounts—small amounts to us maybe—but relatively small amounts of money can have huge impacts when we're talking about families that are living on the breadline. From this idea then emerged the idea of a Scottish child payment that is set at a higher rate but is not automatic, so it would have to be applied for. It's also estimated that that will have a similar effect in terms of 30,000 children brought out of poverty. 

The cost of the policy is around £180 million—£180 million out of Scottish Government budget of over £40 billion. Well, you know, if this is a priority, and child poverty clearly is for the Scottish Government, then they'd made the assessment that that is a price worth paying, given the impact that it's going to have in those numbers.

In terms of the evidence, the academic evidence is very, very strong. Money makes a difference to children's long-term outcomes. Poorer children have worse life outcomes in terms of their health, their educational achievement, their future employment and their own income prospects. It becomes that intergenerational cycle of disadvantage, and poverty increases stress and anxiety levels, parents are less able to invest in the goods and services that children need for their own development. And the—[Interruption.] Yes, I'll give way.

Thank you for taking an intervention. I just want to ask you: I agree that we need to alleviate child poverty, of course I do, but I'm looking at The Oxford Review of Economic Policy in 2010 and I have to right a statement that you said, that Labour in power—. Between 1996 when we took power and 2010 when we left power, there was a massive decrease in poverty for pensioners, for families with children, and for the children themselves. The question I want to ask is—. That's attributed—and I can send you a link to the article, since you don't seem to know about it— to being because of the increase that we put purposely into the benefits system as opposed to the decrease that has happened. So, we do need to take account of the levers that we have, but recognise at the same time the levers that we don't have and are visited upon us.

I entirely agree with you. The case that I'm making is, look, we should create our own instrument because, as the biggest systematic review in this area by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation has said, income support policies like a Welsh child payment are the ultimate multipurpose policy instrument because of their cumulative impact across so many parts of children's and families' lives. 

The Equality, Communities and Local Government Committee have suggested that the Welsh Government asks for the power to create new benefits. That means that we could do what the Scottish Government is doing later this year. I think, you know, the kind of figures that we're talking about, lifting tens of thousands of children out of poverty immediately, that would be one of the biggest impacts that Welsh Government could have on the lives of so many people, and I would urge Members to support the spirit of this motion. Let's get on with actually reaching that target of abolishing child poverty that was set 20 years ago.

Thank you. I have selected the amendment to the motion and I call on the Deputy Minister for Housing and Local Government to move amendment 1 formally, tabled in the name of Rebecca Evans.

Formally.

Thank you. Rhianon Passmore.

Thank you, Deputy Llywydd. So, I rise to support amendment 1, tabled by Rebecca Evans AM. I have previously spent much time, as have many others, debating and discussing in this Chamber the many cruel and purposeful policies that have gone into the so-called austerity cuts to the welfare net. But today it would be refreshing, I think, for nationalist speakers on the Plaid Cymru benches to acknowledge the £1 billion of measures that the Welsh Labour Government has put in place to support low-income families and to tackle poverty. And the Plaid Cymru proposal to introduce a £35 a week payment for every child in low-income families in Wales is undoubtedly interesting and headline-grabbing, but the devil is always in the detail.

We know—let’s be frank—that the nationalists like to ape the Scottish nationalists, and so Plaid Cymru are either blissfully unaware or are just happy to gloss over that the Scottish Government are utilising—it's not been mentioned—new powers that have been devolved to the Scottish Parliament in relation to the administration of welfare. The powers that Scotland used to introduce the Scottish child payment have not, as has been stated, been devolved to Wales. So, if the Welsh Government were to look at introducing something similar in Wales, it would obviously need the UK Government to agree to the transfer of these powers, and, sadly, they seem much more intent on grabbing back Welsh powers. The devolution of the administrative control of the welfare benefits to the Assembly is indeed something that, as Plaid has again articulated today, want, but I think we do need to look at the evidence, and we do need to smell the coffee, given what happened when the Tory UK Government devolved council tax benefit, when they transferred those powers but cut the funding. Any move in this direction would need to be very carefully considered.

It’s not right, I think, that we fall into a trap of thinking that having administrative or executive control of social security would equally give us the opportunity to improve social and economic outcomes for the people in Wales. It is this learned experience that tells us that the Welsh Government would not receive adequate levels—

Will you take an intervention?

—of funding from the UK Government to support those who would need the welfare system.

I really want to make my points, but briefly, yes.

I'm just not clear from your argument whether you're in favour of the devolution of administration of benefits or you're against it.

I'll come to that point, if I may.

It's a fairly simple question.

In fact, it could leave less support for impacted citizens. I'll continue to the point that you make.

Welsh Labour cannot be agents for the Tory UK Government in Wales. To have administrative control in certain areas would mean implementing policies that we fundamentally disagree with, knowing the damage that they would cause to the most vulnerable in society on their behalf.

Once again, Plaid Cymru are willing to let the Tory UK Government off the hook by calling on the Welsh Government to make up the funding shortfall caused directly by Tory austerity and welfare reforms. If Plaid Cymru practically want to help children in Wales—and that’s the point, practically—on low incomes, then they know how they can do this: you can support, and welcome, and elucidate, and broadcast to the public the measures, our anti-poverty measures, in the Welsh Labour Government's draft budget. [Interruption.] This would be—[Interruption.] This would be mature politics. [Interruption.] You know that the Welsh Labour Government's budget includes—and I’m not going to read out the draft proposals; I won't go there. You know that Welsh Labour will continue to fight this, both in sickness and in health, because we believe in supporting and not harming our citizens.

So, deputy chair, it is Tory policies that have cemented and created the deepest poverty in a century, and it is Welsh Labour that will continue to fight it practically on the ground.

Thank you. Leanne Wood.

Diolch, Llywydd. Wales has one in three children living in poverty, and this figure is rising, and this is a damning indictment of the impact of the Conservatives’ cruel austerity agenda and consequent cuts to welfare, and 20 years of inefficient governing by Welsh Labour. The Institute of Fiscal Studies have indicated that, if nothing changes, the child poverty figure is likely to increase to 40 per cent of all Welsh children living in poverty by 2020—that's this year—with welfare reform a significant factor.

Whenever radical proposals to tackle this are put forward, the reaction of conservatives, in both the Conservative Party and the Labour Party, has been the rhetorical demand of, 'How much does this cost?' A question with the subtext of, 'How much are you going to tax my large income to pay for the scheme for poor people?' So, it's worth laying some context for this first. Poverty costs Wales £3.6 billion of public spending on its consequences every year. For example, spending on health and social services deals with the illnesses that are caused by poverty. And, of course, the cost of paying £35 per week to every child in a low-income household will vary depending on how we define low income and how focused and targeted we need to be. With an estimated 200,000 children living in poverty, giving the payment to all children in poverty would be around £364 million a year, although other options to define eligibility could see that bill drastically increase or reduce.

At the present moment, we want to be keeping all of the options on the table, because we want to reduce child poverty, and as long as we lack powers over the administration of welfare, we would, of course, need to negotiate with the Department for Work and Pensions so that the cash payment wasn't simply removed from other benefits—and I wouldn't be surprised if that particular department was vindictive enough to do just that. But, the principle of topping up the incomes of the lowest earning households is one that should have a political consensus, based on the evidence of its effectiveness.

Some sections of the UK media have been running a relentless propaganda war to convince people that the economic problems that they face are either the fault of immigrants or the undeserving, feckless poor, as opposed to Wall Street creating credit default swaps. Topping up the incomes of low-income families works. Even the right-wing American magazine The Atlantic supports this principle, and it argues: 

'In many cases, cash programs are simply much more effective than in-kind transfers at turning dollars spent into positive...outcomes.'

Neither do any of the programmes evaluated from around the world find that cash payments result in increased tobacco or alcohol use, as the prejudiced propaganda would always have people believe. The evidence shows that these programmes are cheaper than the alternatives. So, it turns out that the cheapest and most effective ways of tackling the problems caused by low incomes is to make those incomes higher. Who would have thought that? So, with Wales experiencing the highest rates of child poverty in the UK, and 20 years of failed initiatives and limitations in what Wales should have been doing, isn't now the time for a radical change in our approach? Plaid Cymru thinks it is.

I would like to thank Plaid Cymru for proposing this debate, which, once again, reiterates the issues facing families that were raised in the Welsh Conservative debate on local communities earlier. Speaking to the Welsh Government's amendment, it is, unfortunately, predictable that, once again, it has tried to shift the blame for its own failure to reduce inequality in Wales, instead rehearsing its own tired argument of austerity, rather than taking responsibility for its own actions.

Will you take an intervention?

No. Sorry, I've got a lot to get through.

The fact is, Wales has had a Labour Government in power since 1999, arguably propped up in the past also by Plaid Cymru. But, what progress has been made? A recent report from the Joseph Rowntree Foundation shows that, of the four countries of the UK, Wales has consistently had the highest poverty rate for the past 20 years. Even before the financial crash, figures show that Wales had the highest child-poverty levels in the UK: 29 per cent in 2007 and 32 per cent in 2008. Meanwhile, End Child Poverty show that Wales was the only nation in the UK to see a rise in the level of child poverty, with 29.3 per cent of children living in poverty in 2017-18.

Almost £500 million was spent on Communities First, yet the Bevan Foundation found that it did not reduce the headline rates of poverty in the vast majority of communities, still less in Wales as a whole. The October 2018 Bevan Foundation briefing on poverty in Wales reported that Wales had the highest population of individuals in poverty before housing costs in the UK. Between 2014 and 2017, the proportion of working-age adults in poverty in Wales was higher than in any other UK nation, and the pensioner-poverty rate in Wales was far higher than in the other UK nations. This, of course, has been compounded by Wales having the lowest wages and highest level of non-permanent employment contracts across Great Britain.

Will you taken an intervention, Janet? 

Go on, yes. 

I'm very grateful. Thank you. I don't disagree with what you said, but would you also acknowledge the impact of the benefit changes, as Adam Price outlined in his speech? And can I ask you, as a person who I know is a principled Conservative, to go back to your fellow Conservative Members in London and ask them to get rid of the two-child rule, what we call the 'rape clause'? It's appallingly cruel. Whatever we think about the parents' behaviour, that third child is not responsible for the fact that it was born into a poor family. Can I please ask you to do that? Because I actually believe you do care about this, but I think many of your colleagues in London do not understand the impact of that terrible rule. For a woman to have to claim that she was raped by her husband to be able to get money for her third child is surely something with which you, personally, cannot agree? 

Thank you, Helen Mary Jones.

Whilst Plaid Cymru's motion adds a more constructive tone to this debate, it is difficult to scrutinise the proposals, its costings and the evidence base used. However, simply providing more money does not always provide actual long-term benefits to people's lives. Whilst income plays an important role in preventing poverty, the Policy Exchange think tank suggests that, by focusing on welfare and income transfers, we are treating the symptoms of the issue rather than addressing the deeper causes of low income and poverty, including: unemployment, poor standards of education, a lack of skills and social issues such as substance misuse. Tackling these issues requires a more community-focused response from Government. 

The Welsh Conservatives have consistently called for the co-production of local services to empower local communities and to create an enabling state. This was argued passionately by Mark Isherwood in the previous debate and there are some positive examples of this in Wales. Oxfam's sustainable livelihoods approach aims to improve the lives of those experiencing poverty and disadvantage, focusing on a participatory approach based on the recognition that all people have assets that can be developed to help them improve their lives. Oxfam have worked in partnership with the Department for Work and Pensions to embed the SLA within the DWP in Wales by providing training for staff, with 50 per cent of trained staff sampled having increased levels of user satisfaction or reporting better service user outcomes.

The Welsh Conservatives recognise the importance of investing in the people of Wales to help tackle the injustices facing communities. We would establish a seaside town fund and market town fund to tackle deprivation within our towns, enabling communities to better fund the services local people need. We would focus on investing in people's skills to enable them to access more skilled, well-paid jobs—putting an extra £20 million into further education—and we would also fund more high-quality childcare to enable parents to take up employment opportunities to support their family.

Meanwhile, the UK Conservative Government is protecting the incomes of hard-working families and will raise the national insurance threshold to £9,500 and increase the living wage by 6.2 per cent from April 2020. It is a Conservative Government that is putting more money into people's pockets. This debate has provided a welcome opportunity to discuss some of the issues facing families across Wales, such as low incomes and poverty. 

Are you winding up, please?  

Yes. However, if we are to tackle these issues then we must focus on long-term outcomes, rather than short-term inputs, and empowering individuals and communities to co-design local services that meet their needs. Thanks to Plaid Cymru for your debate today. 

Obviously, poverty and child poverty in Wales are very significant issues for us and for those concerned with social justice at the very heart of the progress that we need to make in Wales. So, I welcome this debate today and the focus that it allows here in the Chamber. We should be discussing these matters and we should be looking at the most effective ways forward and possible new ways of addressing these matters. It is difficult, which I think we've recognised all along, given that many of the levers that would enable poverty to be more effectively tackled in Wales are in the hands of the UK Government. And when that UK Government is a Tory Government, then we see the results. We've seen the results through all the years of austerity, and I fear that we will see the results over the years to come of Boris Johnson's UK Government.

So, I do think that we need to look at what we can do here in Wales with the powers that we currently have, but also what further devolution could take place to add tools to those that are currently available to us, to Welsh Government and to the Assembly. That's why the committee that I chair, the Equality, Local Government and Communities Committee, has done work on the benefits system. Because, as we've heard already, the benefits system is a very important part of the overall picture; because, yes, we do need to increase the income of families in poverty and we also need to reduce their outgoings. Organisations like the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and the Bevan Foundation have made those points quite clearly. So, one way of improving the income of poor families in Wales would be improvements to the welfare benefits system.

You know, some things are in our control at the moment, and we could introduce new requirements—for example, benefits take-up. I think there's still quite a lot of work to be done there. In our report, we look at perhaps introducing a duty on local authorities with necessary funding, so that they could play a greater role. We also look at how we could generally improve benefit take-up in Wales.

We look at universal credit. I think we do know that the shortcomings in universal credit are widely recognised by agencies and charities in Wales that are trying to address these issues and introduce improvements. You know, that wait for an initial payment, monthly payments rather than fortnightly, the lack of choice for benefit claimants in terms of flexibilities—for example, to get the housing benefit element paid direct to the landlord where they believe that would be advantageous to them—and, indeed, split payments between couples where there are problems in relationships and perhaps coercive behaviour. There are lots of flexibilities that could be introduced if Welsh Government had the power to do that rather than trying to negotiate something with the Department of Work and Pensions. 

Yes, there are possibilities around new benefits, around devolution of existing benefits. We know that the rules and regulations around sanctioning are problematic, and I believe we could have a much better approach if we had the power to change that here in Wales. The assessment process for sickness and disability benefits leaves a lot to be desired, and the percentage of successful appeals shows quite clearly the shortcomings to the initial process.

You know, there is very much that could be done. We explore all of that and much more in our report. Welsh Government is interested, we know that, because Welsh Government is taking forward its own work on some of these aspects, and I know Welsh Government is very interested in the report of the committee. In due course, we will of course have the Welsh Government's response when the further work—[Interruption.] Sorry? 

Will you take an intervention?

Yes, indeed.

Just briefly. I wonder if he's had time to reflect on one of the more radical proposals or discussions that came up, which was: if the union continues as the union is, then it seems that this swimming upstream against what the UK Government does is just not a parity of esteem, a respect of what's going on, isn't a fit with our policies. So, it would be interesting to see if, on the joint ministerial mechanisms and so on, there is a way of incorporating welfare and the benefits and social security system within that. So, if Ministers at the UK end were to put forward some radical proposals, we could say to them, 'Well, I'll tell you what it'll do in Wales, so we want some compensatory mechanism to actually deal with that'. Now, I'm not saying this would happen, but what does he think of it? 

Well, I thank my colleague Huw for that intervention. We do look at that in the report, as you know, Huw, and I know you were very keen on exploring that approach during the work of the committee. So, we do recognise the need to look at a stronger Welsh voice. I'm sure, when we come to debate the report, that you will take part and we'll hear perhaps various views on that. But, you know, along with a stronger Welsh voice in the system as it currently exists, we do need to look at devolution, as I've described—and, indeed, beyond. And as I say, all of that is set out in the report. We'll have the Welsh Government response and a debate in due course, but I do believe that these are matters that need to be very carefully considered and explored, given the importance of welfare benefit payments to some of the very poorest people and poorest families in our communities. If we didn't take a serious look at these matters, I don't believe we would be best serving those communities.

Reducing the rise of child poverty in Wales, and, indeed, aiming for the complete eradication of child poverty, deserves the full attention of our country's Government—its full attention, its highest priority and urgent action. Unfortunately, that is not the situation.

It was very disappointing to hear the Deputy Minister for Health and Social Services say at the Children, Young People and Education Committee this morning that she was not at all confident that it would be possible to improve a critical situation in which 29 per cent of children in Wales live in poverty. It's almost as though she has completely given up, and is putting the blame all on the Government's welfare changes in London. It's not the job of Government to give up. It is the Government's job to leave no stone unturned, to work tirelessly to find solutions and to provide clear leadership to drive change. I am therefore not convinced at all that the Government is really trying to get to the root of the problem. There is not even a cross-Government strategy on tackling poverty. To me, that says it all.

An opportunity was lost, in my opinion, to make a difference with the 30-hour childcare scheme. This is a very flawed scheme, which excludes children from some of the poorest families in Wales and, indeed, puts those children at a disadvantage compared with their peers. Because children from families where the parents are not working are not eligible for it. Why in the world would a Government seeking to eradicate child poverty prioritise children from families where parents are in work above children whose parents are not working? Why would a Government that wants to eradicate child poverty discriminate against student parents and parents on zero-hours contracts?

The childcare offer has faced significant turmoil already. It was criticised by the Children, Young People and Education Committee and the children's commissioner for not being available to everyone. A further twist came when the plan to administer it through Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs had to be abandoned, and £1 million was wasted in the process. And by now, local authorities are taking over the scheme's administration, although that arrangement is temporary and there are no assurances over the long term.

Then, an evaluation of the scheme showed that further confusion had arisen because parents had to pay for care during the holidays, when they were under the impression that it was available for free. One parent was hugely shocked to receive a bill for over £800 for childcare in one month during the summer, having not realised that her entitlement had expired. There is also confusion about how the proposal affects tax credits and issues relating to self-employed parents proving their eligibility for the scheme.

This is what I call a proper dog's dinner. A Plaid Cymru Government would ensure that childcare was available to every child. Access to early-years care and education of high quality is key to the task of eradicating child poverty. It's also key to closing the attainment gap.

So, as well as introducing the weekly child payment, a Plaid Cymru Government would have other appropriate policies, including a childcare and early years policy, which would be ambitious and far-reaching. And we would demand the devolution of the welfare system to Wales, and Plaid Cymru would have the will, the energy and the fire in our bellies to tackle child poverty, giving it the highest possible priority. We will not just accept—we cannot just accept a situation where it's foreseen that 39 per cent of children in Wales will be living in poverty by 2022. We will be tackling this issue and giving it the priority it deserves.

It's been an interesting debate, but we are 20 years into this century and, since the turn of the millennium, 2020 has been on the horizon, and it's been in most people's minds a beacon and a destination for all sorts of policies and aspirations. And we're here, so it's worth reflecting on what has been achieved, and, perhaps, what is yet to be done.

So, 20 years ago, there were 223,000 workless households in Wales; today, it's 182,000—a decline of nearly 20 per cent. That doesn't make it a good figure; it makes it a better figure. But the big trend in that time has been the rise in in-work poverty, so much so that there are now more children in poverty in working households than in workless ones. And what's the reason for that? The reason is, in the past decade, the Tory UK Government have imposed punitive welfare and tax changes that mean not only does not working not pay, but, often, working isn't paying either. Single working parent households are particularly susceptible to poverty, and now we have a Prime Minister who once argued, and I quote,

'surefire destitution on a Victorian scale'

should be imposed on 'young girls' to make them

'think twice about having a baby.'

That from the mouth of a man who can't even say, or refuses to say, how many children he has. But he's got what he wanted, because single parents now do account for nearly a quarter of food bank users, nearly all of whom are considered destitute. Until 2012, the word 'destitution' previously had only appeared in Victorian times. [Interruption.] You can look up the quote; I'll send you the link.

So, unfortunately, the reality is that Welsh Government will need to continue to mitigate the impact of Tory-fuelled poverty in the coming years. That means carrying on the good work on the things like the social wage, the free childcare—whatever its problems, we won't abandon it—as well as structural policies on skills, education and economic development. And keeping more money in people's pockets will be an essential part of that. We should look to expand on the many policies that support people, and we've heard colleagues here talk today about ideas and policies that do support people; that do help them keep the money in their pockets.

What I particularly wanted to pick up today is the importance of strong communities as a buffer against society. Before Christmas, the Trussell Trust charity published its 'State of Hunger' report. Unsurprisingly, it found clear evidence, and I quote, that 

'the extent and timing of five key benefit changes'—

and here they are—

'(sanctions, Universal Credit, "bedroom tax", benefit levels, Personal Independent Payment assessments) had sizeable and significant effects'

on food bank use. So, what did the Tories do about that? They gave the architect of that, Iain Duncan Smith, a knighthood in the new year's honours. So, they clearly have changed, haven't they? 

Challenging life experiences and ill health were the other reasons for those changes, but so too was lack of informal support, and this is where we can make some changes. As the report explains, the vast majority of people referred to food banks had either exhausted the support from family or friends, had a resource-poor social network, or could not access support due to social isolation. We can certainly step into that gap. So, in terms of giving that support, it will be down to us, because there's one thing for certain in my mind: it is very unlikely that the UK Government—and they're in denial over there—is going to help to change anything. They're not suddenly going to have a change of hearts and minds by a man who I have just quoted. Those words are his words not mine. So, frankly, we would be rather foolish if we thought, in Wales, that the Tories in Westminster, led by a man who thinks that we ought to punish women to deter them from having a baby, are going to be somehow compassionate—I'm going to send you the link—about the future of those same people.

Thank you. Can I now call the Deputy Minister for Housing and Local Government, Hannah Blythyn?

Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer, and I welcome the opportunity to respond to this debate today in place of the Minister for Housing and Local Government. 

We know that analysis undertaken for the Equality and Human Rights Commission estimates that relative child poverty in Wales will increase substantially over the coming years, potentially pushing an extra 50,000 children into poverty by 2021-22. As we heard today, it is only right that this should concern each and every one of us regardless of party or position. One child in poverty should always be one too many.

And whilst the Welsh Conservatives don't want to hear it, as we've heard time and time again, the devastating impact of austerity and welfare reform is not fake news; it's an unfortunate and stark and horrific reality for far too many people. The catalogue of cruel welfare cuts have drastically changed what should be a safety net into a system that penalises people who need it and rely on it at their greatest time of need. And as we've heard today, during today's debate, these welfare reforms have seen the withdrawal of child support for the third child, cuts to disability benefits and the creation of a pernicious sanctions regime. 

The motion put forward by Plaid Cymru calls on the Welsh Government to introduce a £35-a-week payment for every child in a low-income family in Wales. It's an interesting policy, but it's somewhat presented as a panacea that would wholly mitigate fundamental and systemic inequality. As Adam Price points out, clearly it needs to have more detail around it and there are legitimate questions to be asked around the detail.

We've heard that it's modelled on the scheme the Scottish Government is planning to implement, where £10 per week will be paid for each child in a low-income family, due to be rolled out to eligible families by the end 2022. The Scottish Government is able to implement their policy as they have the necessary legislative competence to amend benefits that are not national-insurance dependent. The Welsh Government does not have this competence, so should we do this, we would need an alternative approach.

That approach could potentially have ramifications for benefit entitlements in Wales, as it would be treated as extra income by the DWP, and we wouldn't want a situation that would actually take money away from low-income families. Of course, we could seek the competence to amend benefits, but this needs to be done with our eyes wide open to any unintended and unwanted consequences. As we've heard Members say today, if funding did not follow the responsibility, the resources would need to come from elsewhere and doing so, we would not want to place that burden on those least able to bear it the hardest.

We've heard today about the estimate of the cost of the policy. Initial estimates have been given that such a policy would reach around 240,000 to 300,000 children, looking at initial approximate calculations of £525 million—up to £25.25 million a year. That's money that would have to be found from elsewhere.

I think John Griffiths made some very important points in terms of the work that's been done by the committee and also the work that Welsh Government has done on actually how we look at the potential devolution of the administration of welfare, and also at the same time how we make the best possible use of the powers and the resources currently available to us too.

That's why our amended motion notes that this Government is investing nearly £1 billion in a wide range of measures that contribute to tackling poverty. This includes £244 million each year in the council tax reduction scheme, with one in five households benefiting from a reduction in council tax; more than £125 million in the housing support grant; and ongoing early years support for children and families through the children and communities grant, which includes funding for Families First and Flying Start. In addition, we've allocated more than £19 million in 2020-21 for a package of measures specifically targeted to help some of the most vulnerable in our communities, which includes people living in poverty. The evidence does show us that where Government has taken direct action to influence the lives of families and children throughout Wales, the policies are having a positive impact on the root causes of poverty and inequality. There are now 300,000 more people in work in Wales since 1999 and the proportion of working-age people without any qualifications has more than halved. 

Since devolution, the number of workless households in Wales has fallen, as we've heard, from 223,000 to 173,000, and our economic action plan has been designed specifically to support the delivery of a strong, resilient and dynamic economy. Alongside these policies and plans, we've developed cross-Government support for individuals and families for the delivery of a more generous social wage. This is made up of a cash equivalent that results in leaving more money in the pockets of Welsh citizens; support that leaves some Welsh families more than £2,000 a year better off than would otherwise be the case.

We're also carrying out a review of all Welsh Government-funded programmes and services to ensure that they have maximum impact on the lives of children living in poverty. This will help inform how we prioritise our funding to support programmes going forward, and we will make a further announcement once the review is complete in the spring. But let's be clear, Deputy Presiding Officer, we are by no means complacent and we will continue to use all the levers and options available to enable and empower individuals, households and communities the length and breadth of the country. I urge Members to support our amended motion. Diolch yn fawr.

Thank you. Can I call on Adam Price to reply to the debate?

The debate started with Rhianon Passmore focusing on the question of whether we have the power. I mean, when Rhodri Morgan decided that the Welsh Government was going to top up the child trust fund, I didn't see much discussion or soul searching then; it was the right thing to do and if you didn't have the power, you went and asked for it. And that's the Calman attitude now. And I think that you're behind the curve here a little bit, Rhianon, even within your own party, because I think John Griffiths reflected the evolution of thinking on the Labour Party side of this question. The fact that the Government has decided to hold back its response to the recommendations of the committee reports that relate to the devolution of welfare, because they want to actually get the response of the Wales Centre for Public Policy, I think reflects the fact that there is a change of thinking.

My time is very, very limited, I'm afraid. 

Leanne, I think, pointed to the wealth of evidence that there is internationally on the value of cash transfer versus in-kind payments. There's a debate going on, of course, between the benefit of universal basic services versus universal basic income, the social wage that Joyce Watson referred to, but the evidence is pretty overwhelming that, actually, transfer payments from the state to low-income families are at the core of the creation of a welfare state. It actually makes a huge material difference to people's lives in all kinds of ways: it reduces post-natal depression; it reduces smoking during pregnancy; it actually keeps children alive because poverty is one of the key factors in the early deaths of children under one as well. So, it has huge positive consequences right across the piece.

I think that Siân Gwenllian reminded us that the failure that I referred to—the UK Government's failure to reach that 20-year target—is also a failure here in Wales, because, of course, that target was adopted in around 2003, it was dropped in 2016. I understand the context for that, but we have the opportunity now to grasp the nettle and accept that solutions are not going to come from Westminster, and we can actually, yes, take lessons from the model that the Scottish Government are developing, look at the lessons there and go even further than them in terms of the level of the benefit that we're talking about.

Of course it's right, as the Minister said, that the Welsh child payment cannot be a panacea. Yes, of course you have to take a comprehensive approach to poverty reduction, but all the evidence increasingly says that transfer payments have to be a central approach from any Government. And when we have a Government at Westminster that is not living up to its responsibilities, then we have to fill that vacuum, don't we? I mean, that's why we were created: for this very circumstance.

It was interesting, in the report, the arguments against devolution of welfare, some of them focused on the so-called 'social union'. Well, this is no longer a social union, increasingly; it's an anti-social union—yes? I mean, the kind of changes in terms of the benefit policies, et cetera, are taking us to the position, as we've heard, where we could see up to 40 per cent of our children living in poverty. So, this idea is actually part of the toolbox that is necessary for us now to defend our children. Because these children can't afford to wait five years for the election of a Labour Government in Westminster, or 10 years, in the worst case scenario that some in the Labour Party are pointing to, depending on the outcome of the leadership election, presumably. Look, those children can't afford to wait, they will have to live with the consequences of that for generations. We can make a difference. Let's look at the powers over welfare, but particularly this idea of creating a Welsh child payment, which will prove the value of creating this institution in the first place.

Thank you. The proposal is to agree the motion without amendment. Does any Member object? [Objection.] Therefore we defer voting under this item until voting time.

We have reached voting time. Unless three Members wish for the bell to be rung, I intend to proceed to the first vote. The first vote this afternoon, then, is on the Welsh Conservative debate on community regeneration. I now call for a vote on the motion, tabled in the name of Darren Millar. If the proposal is not agreed to, we vote on the amendment tabled to the motion. Open the vote. Close the vote. For the motion 11, one abstention, 37 against. Therefore, the motion is not agreed and we move to vote on the amendments.

If amendment 1 is agreed, amendment 2 will be deselected. I call for a vote on amendment 1, tabled in the name of Rebecca Evans. Open the vote. Close the vote. For amendment 1, 27, no abstentions, 22 against. Therefore, amendment 1 is agreed and amendment 2 is deselected.

I now call for a vote on the motion as amended.

Open the vote. Close the vote. For the amended motion 27, no abstentions, 22 against. Therefore the amended motion is agreed.

We now move to vote on the Plaid Cymru debate on low-income families. Again, I call for a vote on the motion, tabled in the name of Rhun ap Iorwerth. Again, if the proposal is not agreed to, we will vote on the amendment tabled to the motion. Open the vote. Close the vote. For the motion, eight, no abstentions, 41 against. Therefore, the motion is not agreed and we move to vote on the amendment. 

I call for a vote on amendment 1, tabled in the name of Rebecca Evans. Open the vote. Close the vote. For the amendment 26, no abstentions, 23 against. Therefore, amendment 1 is agreed. 

I now call for a vote on the motion as amended.

Open the vote. Close the vote. For the amended motion 27, no abstentions, 22 against. Therefore, the amended motion is agreed.

We now move to the short debate. I call on Suzy Davies to speak on the topic she has chosen. Suzy.

Diolch yn fawr, Dirprwy Lywydd. In 2012, with the permission of Angela Burns, who was our shadow education Minister at the time, I did something which I now wonder whether it was actually allowed, because I launched our trilingual Wales policy on the maes at the National Eisteddfod, and I did it in French, which is why I'm not sure whether what I did was within the rules. I did switch to Welsh pretty quickly, I have to say, partly because the media in attendance looked so utterly shocked. Now, I'm not sure that the local press in other small countries would've been so shocked in such a similar situation. Familiarity with, even if not the understanding of other languages just isn't the stuff of shock in other parts of the world; it just doesn't happen.

However you look at it—culturally, economical or simply in terms of better mutual understanding between fellow human beings—we are at a disadvantage. We are less than we might be, and in Wales we can't afford to be less than we might be. And, in fact, we have an advantage that we don't promote and value highly enough. In theory at least, we are the linguistically agile nation in this United Kingdom. An increasing number of us are laying aside the English-only comfort blanket and are becoming less freaked out about having two national languages at our disposal. The rest of the world probably wonders why having two national languages freaks us out anyway, but I think I'm running ahead of myself a little bit.

The reason I've brought this to the Chamber today is because I think we do share, for a range of reasons, a real worry about the decline in our capacity at population level to communicate in languages other than our own. There also seems to be some considerable consensus between ourselves as Welsh Conservatives, and indeed the Government, and in that I include previous education Ministers, on the introduction of a third language into children's lives in primary school. Of course, for some of our luckier children, it won't be their third language, it could be their fourth or even their fifth.

And yes, there will still be people who blame the decline in modern foreign language skills on the inclusion of compulsory Welsh in our curriculum, but that overlooks the fact that other parts of the UK are also committed to giving children three languages and are facing not dissimilar problems in the uptake of the study of three languages.

The guidance on the teaching of modern foreign languages has barely changed since 2008. Estyn thematic reviews at the time, and again in 2016, didn't paint the prettiest of pictures, effectively saying that enthusiasm and good intentions in year 7, maybe year 8, dissipated pretty quickly due to any number of factors from a menu of reasons given: variable teaching quality; too few lessons; too few teachers with the language as their main discipline; the standards perhaps more generally in a school; problems with the options timetable at key stage 4—I think we're all familiar with that one; the Welsh bac; insufficient collaboration with other schools; the socioeconomic profile of pupils; whether the school is English or Welsh medium; inconsistent support from local authorities; the attitude of school leaders and careers advisors to studying modern foreign languages—just 17 per cent are giving positive messages on the value of modern foreign languages; and of course the perception, and it is just a perception, that languages are just too hard.

For those pupils who do decide to continue with language study at key stage 4 and key stage 5 onwards, their standards of achievement are pretty high. Teachers for those cohorts may feel themselves lucky, as they are getting the children with the greatest aptitude for the subject and the greatest desire to study it, and so we should expect achievement there to be high. But, 'This language is elite'—and I do use that word in the most positive sense—brings its own negative consequences. If demand drops because modern languages are not seen as universally accessible in the way that successive Governments have tried to make sciences, then the number of bright people wanting to teach modern foreign languages also drops.

Minister, we've discussed the targets you've given the Education Workforce Council to try and bring in new students to train as modern foreign language teachers. They're not hugely ambitious, but they're not being met either. It's not a sort of unvirtuous circle, it's more of an unvirtuous downward spiral, and it's something we all want to stop. So, I'm sure in your response, Minister, you'll refer to this being a problem outside Wales, which I completely accept, that Global Futures has achieved something, but I hope you don't mind if we take that as read, because this is a short debate where I'm not on the attack but I'm hoping to share observations and to learn what's been gleaned from your experience to date of trying to reverse that slide in modern foreign language uptake and how it's informed the new curriculum, which is where you hope and we hope that the new language literacy and communication area of learning and experience will bring some real change.

Now, communication. I think what has leapt out at me from all the research and reports that I've read—and I'm sure the Minister and her officials have had the opportunity to read far more—whether they're from Estyn, the Gertner Institute, British Council, Gorwel, the OECD, loads from the EU, medical articles, blogs, you name it, the message that comes through loud and clear is that languages are first and foremost means of communication. But that's not what it feels like when you study it at school. And yet, their purpose as a means of communication, which makes teaching them so valuable and especially valuable to Wales, is because we need to communicate with the world.

And I recognise in that AoLE much of what I read around this subject boiling down to the strength of multilingualism for communication. Without the ability to communicate and understand what others are trying to convey to us, how can we learn to become enterprising participants in our own lives, to become the ethical citizens of the world or to develop the positive relationships?

But, in looking at the aims of that AoLE and looking at the Scottish equivalent as well, the commitment to our children acquiring facility with other languages in any way that can be comparable to the language that they grow up with—it's still quite difficult to identify. I'm not saying it's not there, but I'm struggling to see it.

With more autonomy, of course, some schools will have space and freedom to raise the place of modern foreign languages in their schools as communication skills, as well as more formal, focused learning. But others will use it to let it slide to the minimum acceptable level, because let's remember only 17 per cent of school leaders give positive messages on learning modern foreign languages. If we're to save them, I think we need an additional step, which is a step of accountability. Minister, I do understand your motives for changing what accountability looks like, and yes, I agree with you, it needs to be meaningful. In looking at the new curriculum as a new opportunity for modern foreign languages, I hope that you'll be looking not just at how schools teach modern foreign languages and to how many people, but at how schools use modern foreign languages, and I'm wondering whether this might be built into the work of Estyn, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development and the programme of international student assessment, if that's relevant, and I don't know how how that works, to be honest, but certainly the internal accountability requirements. It's already my ask for raising our very youngest in two national languages, and I can't really see why the same principle of using language, not just learning about it, can't be applied to a third language as well.

So, I'll be looking again at the research on the best times in a child's development for language acquisition, but I'm hoping you can help me out here, Minister. For, while I recognise that all our children—and I mean all of them—are increasingly at risk of poorer oral language transfer in an era where all ages are glued to the screen, and that some children will have delayed speech and understanding development for a range of the reasons, we still seem to be missing that sweet spot of maximum absorption, of maximum acquisition of more than one language. So, I'm suggesting—at least, I think I am at the moment—that the modern foreign-language element of this languages, literacy and communication AoLE really needs to bite much earlier than perhaps we're seeing at the moment. So, I'd like to hear a bit more about why opportunities in the current foundation phase haven't really been picked up to date, because we'll all know of examples of individual schools where the school leaders really run with this, and the evidence there that, in those cases where there's collaboration between primary and secondary schools, the primary-age children carry that culture of languages with them into year 7. So, I think we really do need to get at the heart of why more primary schools haven't really grasped this opportunity, because that'll give us insight into how to raise the importance of this life skill in local curricula and help us hold schools to account in a meaningful way about the success or otherwise in helping young people be at least confident, and, even better, competent in three languages.

So, why does this matter for Wales? Well, I think there are reasons that we'll all embrace, regardless of our political priorities. We learn language in different ways at different times in our lives and use different parts of the brain. The cognitive effects of this and the honing of different types of learning skill are now well documented and confirmed over convincing periods of review and study, not just for schoolchildren, but for those at risk of dementia and other cognition loss as well. Now, of course, that's not to say that speaking a number of languages would have made me any better as a footballer at school—well, I don't think it would make me a better footballer at all. The reason I actually have a Latin O-level is because it was an alternative to doing hockey. [Laughter.] But it could have helped me with different thinking and learning skills, which would have helped me coach or manage a side, empathise with or motivate and discipline a team, strategise better, understand the finances of a club better, and, increasingly, it seems to me, communicate with the human beings in that team in their own languages, making them comfortable, connected with, included, part of something bigger and committed to participating in something that impacts on the success of others—exactly the type of result we want from a successful manifestation of the new curriculum, and there it is encapsulated in the learning of how to communicate in more than one language.

But I am a Conservative, and so I will finish on some points about the economy. More participants in a prosperous economy can help improve investment in public services whilst reducing dependence on them, so this really does matter, and everything we say about how multilingualism helps with the understanding of others, about enjoying and learning from different cultures, becoming citizens of the world as well as our own cynefin, yes, these are ends in themselves, but they're also completely applicable to helping Wales prosper economically.

I was listening yesterday, actually, to the session on international trade and your, as a multilingual person yourself, Minister, worries about the America first policy, leaving the single market and so forth. It is a big world out there; we have to use what we have to get the most out of it. And so that doesn't just mean exporting more manufactured goods that people want; it's about finding a way to make sure that it's our goods that people want in a highly competitive, increasingly standardised product market. And that's about relationships. It's about communication.

If we want our hospitality and visitor industry to grow, not just in terms of visitors, but also in terms of status, which will make the industry attractive to our brightest and most enterprising people, then making it clear that particular skills in more than one language are a massive asset is something that we've got to get across. Again, relationships build businesses, especially in our service industries, especially in the types of businesses that we already have in Wales. Because this isn't all about multinationals or the types of factory branches that Mike Hedges was talking about yesterday. Multilingualism has fostered trade and the exchange of ideas since ancient times and Britain's push for fresh markets outside the European Union is likely to lead to new language needs. Companies responding to this challenge will depend on a multilingual skills pool for cross-border trade.

Many British people claim that they are bad at speaking languages other than English. Current UK Government stats show that the UK already loses about 3.5 per cent of its GDP every year as a result of a lack of language skills in the workforce. An EU study found that, while businesses perceive the ability to speak English as indispensable, in truth English accounted for only 29 per cent of their future total demand for foreign language skills. It was the willingness to use languages that mattered to the trade contacts, which gave businesses the advantage in those product markets where really there wasn't really much to choose between one country's product and other. And that same report also showed that 945,000 SMEs in Europe were losing trade because of a lack of language competence. 

Wales is an SME economy. It's an economy that's becoming more familiar with the benefits of its linguistic agility, with its own official languages, and, even viewing this through the lens of the foundation and circular economies, the local economy doesn't benefit if the local plumber or the local butcher or the local cleaning firm can't offer services to the local hotel because that hotel is closed because it couldn't compete with chains with slick multilingual staff whose business and leisure clients felt more valued and comfortable as a result.

Just to finish, and I'm hoping, Deputy Llywydd, that you will give me time for a couple of other speakers—

Well, you'll have to name them.

Yes, I shall do, but right at the end.

Okay. Well, yes, but you're at 13:30, so you've got a minute and a half, basically.

Okay. Well, just to finish then, I just want to go back to that 2012 point, when I made that policy announcement in the Eisteddfod. The main reason that I switched to Welsh was actually because I'd forgotten most of my French. It's strange for me that my second language is now Welsh and not any of the ones that I learnt in school or elsewhere, not just because it mattered to my friends and my family, but because customers, clients and colleagues valued me speaking the language that mattered to them. If you make that true for the people's French or German or Spanish or Portuguese or whatever it is, then we have something really special to offer our schoolchildren.

On that, I'm hoping you'll be slightly generous, and give one minute to Mike Hedges, Dirprwy Lywydd, and one to Darren Millar as well.

That'll be interesting to see both of them do their contributions in one minute. We'll have a go. Huw Irranca-Davies.

Me.

Sorry. Mike Hedges. Sorry.

I'm pretty good.

I'll take it back, because Mike is very good. [Laughter.]

Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. Can I thank Suzy Davies for giving me a minute in this debate, but also for bringing it forward? I want to concentrate on GCSE options. Without a GCSE in a foreign language, pupils are unlikely to go on to an A-level or a degree in that foreign language. In a Welsh-medium school a pupil will study Welsh language and literature, English language and literature, mathematics, double science and the Welsh baccalaureate. They will be left with three or four other subjects to choose from the different groups available. Is it any surprise that the numbers studying GCSE French and German have reduced? Language Trends Wales states that only 2 per cent of Welsh pupils take a GCSE in a language other than English or Welsh.

I can put some possible solutions: allow pupils to do single science and double modern language; make a modern language compulsory at GCSE; or we can carry on as we are and assume everyone in the world will speak English, especially if we speak loudly.

I just wanted to congratulate Suzy on a tremendous opening speech and simply to say that, of course, school isn't the only opportunity to learn a second language. I'm using an app at the moment, Mango Languages, to try and brush up on a bit of Levantine Arabic in order that I can communicate with some of my friends out in the middle east, and I have to say I think that the technology that we have available to us makes learning a new language more accessible than ever before. One of the things that is being done in parts of the US at the moment and in some of the other European nations, including the Republic of Ireland, is that apps like Mango Languages are available publicly through the library network so that they can be accessible to members of the public free of charge, and I wonder, Minister, whether—it may not be your direct responsibility—this is something you could discuss with your Cabinet colleagues as a tool to bring us into the twenty-first century in terms of the way that we use these new technologies to learn new languages and give people who didn't have the opportunity in school a second chance. 

Can I call the Minister for Education to reply to the debate? Kirsty Williams.