, Plenary
Questions to the First Minister
Llywydd, it was a great pleasure to be out on the streets of Caerphilly County Borough Council with Hefin David yesterday. It's a cruel thrust that he makes at Plaid Cymru Members. But what I would say to him, from the conversations that I was having and I…
, Plenary
Questions to the First Minister
Llywydd, the Welsh Government's policy is that set out in the co-operation agreement between my party and Plaid Cymru, and that is to make sure that, during the period of that agreement, we are able to provide a free school meal for every child in…
, Plenary
Questions to the First Minister
Well, Llywydd, there are a series of reasons why councils hold cash in reserve. A great deal of that money will be earmarked reserves. In other words, it's not money available to the council just to spend. It's there because they have a twenty-first century…
, Plenary
Questions to the First Minister
I thank the Member for that question, Llywydd. We do so by prioritising local government services in the Welsh Government budget. Local authorities will receive £5.1 billion from the Welsh Government in core revenue funding and non-domestic rates for…
, Plenary
Questions to the First Minister
Llywydd, I agree entirely with what the Member said. This was a fund announced in 2017, in a Conservative Party manifesto. It took until the start of this month—April 2022—before we've had any substantive discussions with UK Ministers about the way in which…
, Plenary
Questions to the First Minister
—absolute guarantee that Wales would not be a penny worse off. Well, £1 billion is not the whole of it, Llywydd; it's just part of the way that we will be losing out.
, Plenary
Questions to the First Minister
Well, of course, Llywydd, we are happy to explain how we've got to those figures, and we are happy to publish the figures too, because they are clear—they are clear—and there is no doubt whatsoever about these figures. We will lose £0.75 billion because of…
, Plenary
Questions to the First Minister
Well, Llywydd, Vikki Howells makes an important supplementary point about the way in which the reduced amounts that will come to Wales are, in any case, being top-sliced by the UK Government for its own projects, which it will seek to run here in Wales. So…
, Plenary
Questions to the First Minister
Llywydd, the fund fails to address economic inequality because of a series of fundamental flaws. It breaks a key Conservative promise that Wales would not be a penny worse off. It allocates its reduced amounts through a formula that deliberately…
, Committee for the Scrutiny of the First Minister
Ministerial scrutiny session—Topical matters
Thank you all very much. Diolch yn fawr.
, Committee for the Scrutiny of the First Minister
Ministerial scrutiny session—Topical matters
Well, I think it's a really good question. Here's the tension, as it seems to me, Sam: what I have said to the people who are working on this in the Welsh Government is that I don't want us to approach all of this on the basis that anybody who has offered…
, Committee for the Scrutiny of the First Minister
Ministerial scrutiny session—Topical matters
Well, certainly, in the conversations I've had with them there is no scheme at all. People get a visa, and it's up to them.
, Committee for the Scrutiny of the First Minister
Ministerial scrutiny session—Topical matters
Well, again, you have to focus your efforts where you have the most capacity to make a difference, and our efforts so far have been focused on trying to make sure that, when people arrive in the United Kingdom—not in Wales, in the United Kingdom—we are able…
, Committee for the Scrutiny of the First Minister
Ministerial scrutiny session—Topical matters
The provision of visas to people who have been matched with potential host families in Wales, as in other parts of the United Kingdom, and people who have now registered with the Welsh Government platform, remains very slow indeed. I was given an assurance…
, Committee for the Scrutiny of the First Minister
Ministerial scrutiny session—Topical matters
Sure. Well, the lead health board for Wales in relation to the inquiries at Shrewsbury and Telford is the Powys local health board, and there are indeed, as you anticipated, Chair, families who live in Wales who received a service from that trust, so there…
, Committee for the Scrutiny of the First Minister
Ministerial scrutiny session—Topical matters
I would certainly expect myself, Chair, that local authorities with greater powers now, through franchising, to be able to align the investment in bus services with all the other things that they are doing—for example, in developing a new housing estate, or…
, Committee for the Scrutiny of the First Minister
Ministerial scrutiny session—Topical matters
Well, Chair, the purpose of the reforms has always been to make the public pound go further. Because at the moment we have wasteful competition in bus services in Wales and a lack of capacity and legal authority by local authorities to plan the way in which…
, Committee for the Scrutiny of the First Minister
Ministerial scrutiny session—Topical matters
Yes. But there are a lot of—. It's a long journey from a White Paper to a Bill, but it's currently scheduled as a two-year Bill.
, Committee for the Scrutiny of the First Minister
Ministerial scrutiny session—Topical matters
So, year one ends at the summer break—
, Committee for the Scrutiny of the First Minister
Ministerial scrutiny session—Topical matters
I'm forever on a tightrope here, but it's currently scheduled as a year 2 Bill.
, Committee for the Scrutiny of the First Minister
Ministerial scrutiny session—Topical matters
I'm not sure if I'm meant to tell you these things, Chair.
, Committee for the Scrutiny of the First Minister
Ministerial scrutiny session—Topical matters
Well, to an extent, Chair, it will be a matter for Lord Burns to—. When you ask somebody to do the work, you've got to allow them to do it in the way that they do. But I think Members can have confidence, because, when he undertook the work in south-east…
, Committee for the Scrutiny of the First Minister
Ministerial scrutiny session—Topical matters
Yes, absolutely. I certainly expect it to operate in that way. The Mersey Dee Alliance is something that we're very familiar with and work very constructively with. The union connectivity review means that we've got to be able to look at how anything that we…
, Committee for the Scrutiny of the First Minister
Ministerial scrutiny session—Topical matters
I don't think there's a preconceived quantum that we will expect Lord Burns to come up with. What we're looking for him to do is to look across both the geography of north Wales but the different modes of transport that are available, so to take that more…
, Committee for the Scrutiny of the First Minister
Cost of living
Well, what I'm saying is that the erosion of—. Our budgets stood still or reduced in real terms, but they weren't being eroded by inflation. Year on year, inflation was at an historic low, and now, suddenly, inflation is back to a 40-year high, and that's a…
