, Committee for the Scrutiny of the First Minister
Ministerial scrutiny session - the co-operation agreement
Well, in a way, that covers anything that's in here. That isn't a specific thing in the way that many other things in the agreement are. That is a general shared commitment to go on working together to sustain the public services on which people rely. So…
, Committee for the Scrutiny of the First Minister
Ministerial scrutiny session - the co-operation agreement
Let me give you the Unnos update, and then you can tell me which of the others we need to help fill in. Good progress is now being made with Unnos. As I said, in my mind, it's in that middle category of somewhere where the policy thinking is now more or less…
, Committee for the Scrutiny of the First Minister
Ministerial scrutiny session - the co-operation agreement
No, I don't think I can. I don't think I'm close enough to the detail to be able to give you an accurate account of where that discussion is happening. But we remain open to the evidence from the sector, and where there is evidence that they can produce—and…
, Committee for the Scrutiny of the First Minister
Ministerial scrutiny session - the co-operation agreement
We continue to be in discussions with the industry, of course. I think we are seeing more providers meeting the threshold than we were told in the beginning might be the case, and the threshold has in that way acted as an incentive to make sure that…
, Committee for the Scrutiny of the First Minister
Ministerial scrutiny session - the co-operation agreement
When we are setting the budget, the sums of money set aside for the co-operation agreement are regarded as ring-fenced for the co-operation agreement. Where there are underspends, which occasionally occur, then it is a matter of discussion between the…
, Committee for the Scrutiny of the First Minister
Ministerial scrutiny session - the co-operation agreement
The agreement was a three-year agreement and its fundamentals remain intact. In terms of the 46 items, it was never our intention to add to or subtract from them, unless there were very compelling reasons for doing so. So, the 46 items that we agreed remain…
, Committee for the Scrutiny of the First Minister
Ministerial scrutiny session - the co-operation agreement
Thank you very much, Chair. For the second part of the meeting, I'm joined by Des Clifford, director of the office of the First Minister, and Rachel Garside-Jones, director of the co-operation agreement.
, Committee for the Scrutiny of the First Minister
Warm and fed this winter
I can tell you that it is a constant dilemma in trying to set the budget. It is the point exactly that Mark Isherwood raised with me earlier, about us not being able to go on providing funding to small voluntary organisations who do things that prevent costs…
, Committee for the Scrutiny of the First Minister
Warm and fed this winter
Well, it's a demand-led budget, as we were discussing earlier, and what the Welsh Government did was to set our budget at the top end of what we thought the take-up would be. We were assuming a take-up rate of about 85 per cent; the actual take-up rate so far…
, Committee for the Scrutiny of the First Minister
Warm and fed this winter
Well, Chair, there's no shortage of ideas. There are very many things out there that we are aware of, and we have ambition. The problem we have is a lack of funding. And as I say every week in Plenary, we simply don't have enough money to pursue everything…
, Committee for the Scrutiny of the First Minister
Warm and fed this winter
Well, it'd be great if we could, Chair. So, for colleagues who don't know, this was a scheme that added £1 to the sum of money that children had, in year 7, to take account of the fact that in primary school they would've been eligible for a free breakfast…
, Committee for the Scrutiny of the First Minister
Warm and fed this winter
Well, two points, I guess, Chair. First of all, one of the major investments during this Senedd term will be to achieve universal free school meals in primary schools. So, we didn't have that at the start of this term, and as a result of the co-operation…
, Committee for the Scrutiny of the First Minister
Warm and fed this winter
Well, the community food strategy will certainly be looking at those issues. It will be a co-ordinating strategy. It will look at, as a result of the mapping exercise, all the fantastic work that does go on already, but is often not as co-ordinated as it…
, Committee for the Scrutiny of the First Minister
Warm and fed this winter
So, Chair, I want to agree with almost everything, and I'm going to put one cautionary note in my answer. So, on the community food strategy, part of the work that's been done on that in this calendar year has been a survey to find out where the gaps are and…
, Committee for the Scrutiny of the First Minister
Warm and fed this winter
Hopefully before Christmas. If we can't do it before Christmas, then early in the new year. We're about to do that.
, Committee for the Scrutiny of the First Minister
Warm and fed this winter
Well, Chair, I do think that the discretionary assistance fund is the most practical demonstration of the commitment that the Welsh Government has to helping those who are the very least well-off. You will remember that this used to be known as the social…
, Committee for the Scrutiny of the First Minister
Warm and fed this winter
Well, first of all, Chair, I think the single advice fund has been a significant success story. You will remember—I know that John Griffiths will remember—that it was controversial at the time because it meant that, instead of spreading the money we had…
, Committee for the Scrutiny of the First Minister
Warm and fed this winter
Well, I think, Chair, we’ve done the big things already here through the Renting Homes (Wales) Act 2016, which is now in operation in Wales. So, in terms of evictions, the minimum notice period for no-fault evictions is six months in Wales. Obviously…
, Committee for the Scrutiny of the First Minister
Warm and fed this winter
I don't see any immediate prospect, Chair, of us being able to do that. The expert group said it would cost £28 million more than the schemes we have currently in place, and we do not have more money; we have less money. What I think we are keen to do is to…
, Committee for the Scrutiny of the First Minister
Warm and fed this winter
Well, we debated this on the floor of the Senedd, I think only last week, didn’t we, when there was a motion in this area. The Welsh Government has not turned our back on setting those targets. We’re not in a position yet where we think we’re sensibly able to…
, Committee for the Scrutiny of the First Minister
Warm and fed this winter
I'm not sure I'm completely following the question. Apologies. If maybe I could hear it one more time and then I'll—.
, Committee for the Scrutiny of the First Minister
Warm and fed this winter
The new scheme doesn't support those people in that direct way, because it will be focused on those households that are currently within the ambit of the scheme. I should just be clear, Chair, that the new post-April scheme will continue to offer some help…
, Committee for the Scrutiny of the First Minister
Warm and fed this winter
I'll give you one sentence and then John will know the detail more. There is slippage; it didn't happen by the end of November. It is because of these final stages of issuing the contract and making sure that everything is as watertight as it needs to be. The…
, Committee for the Scrutiny of the First Minister
Warm and fed this winter
We're in the very final stages. I'll probably ask John to give you the detail of it. I've seen advice in the last couple of weeks about the very final stages of letting the contract. It is a very big contract, it's somewhere between £225 million and £250…
, Committee for the Scrutiny of the First Minister
Warm and fed this winter
Thanks to Mark Isherwood for that question. Take-up was slower in the beginning than what it became, but that is because at the very outset there were only six referral partners to the Fuel Bank Foundation, and a lot of their effort in the very beginning was…
