Plenary

The next item will be questions to the Counsel General and Minister for Delivery, and the first question is from James Evans.

Thank you. Llywydd, I understand you've given permission for questions 1 and 6 to be grouped. Thank you.

The Welsh Government provided £450,000 for the two-year Wales family drug and alcohol court pilot, which concluded in November 2023. Following publication of the independent evaluation of the pilot in July 2024, a working group with representation from key partners has been established to advise on next steps.

Thank you, Counsel General, for your answer. As you just highlighted, £450,000 was provided to family drug and alcohol courts across Wales. The evaluation that was conducted by CASCADE at Cardiff University indicated positive outcomes, suggesting that FDACs are feasible and beneficial alternatives to standard care proceedings, and I know I heard first-hand, when I was on the Children, Young People and Education Committee, about the good work that FDACs do in those care proceedings. So, given those findings, could you provide some update to the Senedd on what the Welsh Government's financial future is for funding and sustaining FDACs across Wales, and, potentially, could we roll them out across the rest of the country other than the pilot that was held in Cardiff and the Vale? And I'm just wondering how the CASCADE evaluation has helped to inform future policy decisions around the family drug and alcohol court model.

Thank you very much, James. I'll just start by saying how pleased we are that we did manage to pilot the family drug and alcohol court programme to test and report in Wales, and I just wanted to pay tribute once again to the families who took the brave step of engaging in the programme and the hard work and professionalism of all of those involved in the pilot. And then, as you rightly say, we discussed the evaluation of the pilot by CASCADE with the local family justice board. We discussed that last autumn and at the family justice network in December, alongside meetings with representatives of Welsh heads of children's services in local authorities.

As a result of all of those things, including the evaluation, it was recommended that we set up a working group with representation from across key partners. The group will provide a lead in helping shape next steps in a sustainable and cost-effective way, underpinned by a shared commitment to achieve the best outcomes. The first meeting of that group, which is being set up as a result of a series of things that have happened since the CASCADE report came out, is due to take place this month and will report back by the end of the summer. So, by the end of the summer we will know about scalability options for the FDAC in Wales, we will consider future funding, how the problem-solving approach adopted in the pilot could be applied more widely in family courts in Wales, and how the FDAC fits with wider services that provide integrated support for families around drug and alcohol misuse issues, for example.

So, I'm very pleased that we have that process in place. We are very concerned as well to look at scalability. So, this is about having a number of families who are able to take part in that and to be able to put the support services around them to enable that. And I don't think that's a small thing; that's not something that people can do without that support. So, a process needs to be gone through to be able to do that, but I'm pleased that that process is in place. It's done in a very consensual way with a fundamental understanding that we would like to do it if it's possible to do it in a way that's helpful, and I'll report back to the Senedd as we get more information.

I'm slightly disappointed by your answer, Cwnsler Cyffredinol, because you told me on 1 October that you would respond to the evaluation of CASCADE by Christmas or earlier. Now it seems to have been pushed over to the summer. You'll be aware of the Senedd's Children, Young People and Education Committee's report, published in May 2023, and it recommended the implementation of a family, drug and alcohol court. Julie Morgan, who was then Deputy Minister, said that she was absolutely convinced of the value of the problem-solving family court model. That was Welsh Government back in May 2023. The CASCADE evaluation was published in January 2024, a year ago. The analysis concludes that the court costs £18,000 but produces an average direct benefit of over £74,000 per case.

Now, you heard me on the last occasion quoting a family circuit judge at the problem-solving court saying how beneficial the court was to families and to children. Keeping children out of care is so important and we're not doing enough at the moment here in Wales. So, when do you hope we will re-establish the family, drug and alcohol court here in Wales and open others in other areas in Wales? Diolch yn fawr.

Diolch, Rhys, and just to be really clear what we're doing here, the CASCADE evaluation was very good but we have a series of things to go through afterwards. So, I did say that I would come back to you, and it's only just after Christmas at the moment, and I'm very pleased that, as a result of all of those conversations, we have set up—. The consensus was with the stakeholders that we set up this working group and that that group will report back by the summer. So, we've done that. So, it's moving forward. The result is that they wanted to have this working group to look into how we might scale it up and what the issues are that I just discussed in answering James. I'm really very keen to make sure that we let the working group do its work now and it considers the impact of the pilot.

You're right about the impact of the pilot. I like the idea of the problem-solving courts. I had the real privilege of meeting with the Lady Chief Justice last week in London in the Royal Courts of Justice, and we discussed problem-solving courts more generally. So, it's a good opportunity to do that. But we do know that we have to make sure that we have a system in place that supports the families that are in that system, and I'm very specifically concerned that we have scalability right. So, there will not be the critical mass of families necessary to be able to sustain that court system the way the courts are configured at the moment.

So, there is a piece of work to do to make sure that it will work, that it is cost-effective and it does free-up resources to support earlier preventative work with families, because that's the idea. The idea is to make sure that this feeds backwards into the system and, as you rightly say, supports families to stay together in a much more constructive way. So, we're strongly committed to supporting families in that way, specifically experiencing substance misuse issues. We're very much recognising the increasing demand in support for those families, so we have invested further in those services, but it needs to be seen as a single piece.

So, I don't regard it as a step back, actually; I regard it as a step forward. I think there was a real consensus that the group needed to do its work, and they are committed to reporting back to us by the summer.

Good afternoon, Minister. I think part of our role here is to bring pressure on you as Ministers, and also to share our experiences before we came to this wonderful place. So, I would like to thank James, and Rhys as well, for continuing to raise this. And all I can talk about are my experiences as a child protection social worker, working with FDACs in England, where there is a proven track record of how they keep children out of care and keep families together. I am slightly stunned that we are not learning from England, and we are not looking at the outcomes there and accelerating this really quickly, because we have families right now who are desperate to be kept together, through a system that I myself have seen working.

So, I wonder if I could really pin you down. The summer could start in March, if we’re lucky, or the summer could go on until October. Could you really be a bit more specific, or perhaps write to us and give us some really clear timescales of when we might be able to see a very clear implementation plan for the FDAC going forward, which has a month at least, rather than 'the summer'? Diolch yn fawr iawn.

Thank you very much, Jane. Just to shed light on where we are, the initial roll-out of FDACs in England was taken forward around the same time—which was between 2010 and 2014—as we rolled out the integrated family support services early intervention programme for families in Wales. So, there were parallel streams there. At the moment, the FDAC indicates that, around the UK, there are 13 FDAC specialist teams, working in 19 courts and serving families in 35 local authorities. So, it isn’t widespread in England either yet. So, there is an element of piloting.

One of the issues absolutely is about what sort of critical mass of population you need to sustain this service, and what happens in rural areas where there isn’t that critical mass. Is there some way of making sure that the FDAC can work in areas where you wouldn’t be able to sustain that because of the way that the finances work, because this is an intensive intervention programme? So, we do need to do this piece of work.

I understand your point about 'the summer'. Government seasons are quite flexible, I’ve discovered since I’ve been in Government, but I very much hope that that will take place before the summer recess. I’d very much want to be in a position to report back to the Senedd before the summer recess.

Diolch, Mick. The UK Government has responsibility, of course, for legal aid provision in Wales, but to address gaps in advice for immigration and asylum in Wales, in the short term, the Welsh Government has recently provided funding for training and accreditation, along with almost £150,000-worth of grant funding, to strengthen the Welsh immigration legal advice sector.

Thank you for those comments. Counsel General, I cannot believe that there will be anyone in Wales who does not believe that a cornerstone of our justice system is the availability of proper legal advice and representation. In fact, without that, our justice system cannot work properly.

The justice system has been run into the ground over the past 14 years. There is a report that’s out from the Bevan Foundation that specifically looks at the immigration and asylum advice that is available, and, basically, what it is saying is that 40 per cent of the people they approached who had a current legal case had been unable to find legal advice or representation. This impacts on our society, and it impacts on the whole system.

I know this is a matter that the Law Society have raised, and will continue to raise. I’m just wondering what contribution you think the Welsh Government can make to not only highlight this important gap that is there, but also how we can assist in ensuring that legal advice and representation are available.

Thank you very much for the question, Mick. I really do continue to be concerned about the sustainability of legal aid practices throughout Wales on a number of points, not just on immigration and asylum cases. But we do know that for immigration and asylum cases, the demand far outweighs the provision. And that’s why the Welsh Government has taken a number of steps to try and address the immediate issues in this sector, including developing the legal aid stakeholder network for immigration and asylum, as well as funding the Office of the Immigration Services Commissioner accreditation programme. And we’ve got a number of recently funded projects that are looking at increasing longer term provision as well, to try and shore up the sector.

I know you're familiar with the Bevan Foundation report regarding access to justice for migrants and asylum seekers in Wales. We absolutely regret the acute capacity issues facing legal providers in Wales. The absolute decimation of the legal aid system under the previous Conservative Government really takes away the ability to insist on the rule of law. You cannot have the rule of law unless you have access to justice—that's the truth of it. So, I was delighted to see what I hope is a first step along the road of restoring legal aid provision. There's a long way to go, but it was really nice to see that first step. We are hopeful the new UK Government can reverse some of the loss of immigration legal advice capacity in Wales, because we need to have equal access to representation and support.

My colleague Jane Hutt, as I know you are aware, Mick, has been doing a lot of work around the advice services, and trying to shore up advice services more generally. There's also the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants, who have recently published a report in relation to legal aid—I don't know if you're aware of it—which talks about some of the demand issues. So, we're very keen to work with the UK Government. I had very productive conversations only last week with a number of law officers, and indeed the Lady Chief Justice, about legal aid more generally and access to law issues. And so, I am very hopeful that the current UK Government understands the issue and is now taking the first steps to try to restore the system.

Questions now from party spokespeople. Conservative spokesperson, Paul Davies.

Diolch, Llywydd. Minister, you were appointed Minister for Delivery by the First Minister on 11 September last year, a position that many people across Wales feel is unnecessary, given that the First Minister and Cabinet Secretaries are clearly holding the levers of power when it comes to policy and legislation. So, therefore, can you explain to the Chamber, and indeed to the people of Wales, what exactly do you do in your role as Minister for Delivery?

Yes, certainly, Paul. I've explained before, I'm very happy to do so again. I provide oversight of the programme for government programme. I have a bilateral with each of the Cabinet Secretaries on a rolling programme, in which we discuss their progress on the programme for government and what the across-Government process for that is—what support can be provided via the Cabinet office system to enable them to accelerate any of the programme for government commitments that require such an acceleration. I work with them to identify any obstacles and barriers to that, and I have a role in bringing together, across Government, a coalition of people who can come together to address those barriers.

I don't have overarching responsibility for the individual aspects of the programme for government—they, of course, remain with the Cabinet Secretaries and Ministers as appropriate. My role is rather to bring together the mechanisms of Government, to ensure that we can, where at all possible, overcome barriers that exist.

Well, I put it to you, Minister, that your job just shows that the First Minister doesn't have any confidence in her own Cabinet to deliver. But I'm not surprised; there are plenty of people across Wales who don't have confidence in this Government either.

And let me remind you that, under this Government, Wales has the highest NHS waiting lists, the worst educational performance, and the highest unemployment rate in the United Kingdom. So, given your new role is to spearhead delivery for the Welsh Government, can you tell us what exactly you have achieved in your new role so far, and what policies or outcomes have been achieved because of your role as Minister for Delivery?

Well, Paul, I just fundamentally reject the basic premise of that question. I really do not think that that's what it shows at all. Most Governments, across the world, have delivery arms or delivery offices inside them, including many of the previous Conservative Governments—I have to say, with little or no effect. So, it's a commonplace mechanism, to bring together people from outside the various silos, if you will, to make sure that we have cross-Government buy-in for particularly difficult problems. As I have repeatedly said, if you want to look at particular metrics, you need to ask the specific Cabinet Secretary.

Well, you didn't answer my question, Minister. It's clear to me that nothing has actually been gained by this Government having a Minister for Delivery, and yet here you are. Minister, there are record-breaking waiting times in Wales, one in five of our children are leaving school functionally illiterate, and we have the highest economic inactivity in the United Kingdom. If the role of Minister for Delivery is going to actually mean something, then there needs to be transparency over that role, and we need to understand how it's delivering value for money for the Welsh taxpayer.

Now, the idea of a delivery unit was pushed by a previous First Minister, who then scrapped it when it proved to be ineffective. So, what assurances can you give that things will be different this time? Can you tell us what targets you have set for yourself as Minister for Delivery, and what exactly are you doing to show the people of Wales that the Minister for Delivery is a meaningful appointment that is actually delivering on their behalf?

Well, certainly, Paul, it bears repeating, of course. We have a very comprehensive programme for government, which is accessible to the public. We report annually on our progress on that. One of the reasons that Welsh Labour has always been elected by the people of Wales is because they trust us to deliver the promises we put out in our manifesto. I have to say, that cannot be said for your party on your benches. The people of Wales very recently, of course, threw out every single Tory MP in Wales, as a result of the trust they were able to put in your Government.

So, I would say once more to you that we have a comprehensive programme for government, that my role is to ensure that that programme for government is delivered to the maximum of our ability, that I bring together people from across the Government to do so, and that in this, the final year of the Senedd term, Welsh Labour will deliver as it always does on its promises to the people of Wales.

Plaid Cymru spokesperson, Adam Price.

Diolch, Llywydd. Counsel General, next week marks the fifth anniversary of Wales leaving the European Union, which has been a disaster for our economy. Your predecessor, sat behind you, when asked about the extent to which we should align Welsh law within devolved competence with new EU law, if I paraphrase, said that we should avoid divergence where possible unless it allows us to improve our standards. So, new EU law could be a common foundation, but it shouldn’t be a ceiling on our ambitions. Do you generally share that view?

And as part of your role as Counsel General, do you or does someone else in Government monitor new EU regulations to assess if they could be enacted in Welsh law? And based on that assessment, how does Wales compare with the other devolved legislatures in terms of a degree of alignment with new EU law five years on? Do you think if we had retained rather than repealed the Law Derived from the European Union (Wales) Act 2018, it would have been easier to achieve the goal of positive alignment in the way that I’ve described?

I mean, I’m tempted to answer your question by saying, ‘Yes, yes, no’, but I’ll elaborate a little bit. So, yes, I do agree that we should try and align as much as is humanly possible, for three very good reasons. First off, because the European Union remains a very important trading partner for Wales, and we know, particularly in the food and drink sector, that if you are not compliant with the rules you simply cannot export into the market. So, it’s very important for us to be able to demonstrate that we’re still at the same standard. We had some really sad cases, where people who had been able to export into the European market were not able to do so immediately after our exit from the European Union, so it’s a case that proves the point, really. So, I do agree with that.

The incoming UK Government also agrees with that and they are in conversations about how we can realign in some places where alignment has drifted detrimentally. I do of course agree that that should be a floor and not a ceiling, so we should try, of course, to improve on that. And there are things about the European Union common agricultural policy and so on that I think large numbers of people think could have been improved on, and we have worked very hard over a number of iterations to see whether that’s possible, so I do agree with that as well.

We do monitor European Union directives and various other initiatives. We don’t have a central unit for doing it, but we have a number of teams of lawyers who work with the various Cabinet Secretaries, who monitor on their behalf various advances and so on. And we work with the UK Government to do that as well, we monitor the legislative programme there. There are some interesting things happening in Europe, some of which are not devolved. Some of them are on the ragged edge of devolution, and we do discuss those with the UK Government.

So, as I say, I was tempted to say, ‘Yes, yes, no’. We don’t have a central unit that does that, but there is a mechanism to do it across the Government.

I'm very grateful to the Counsel General for her answer. The Scottish Government, of course, did retain its UK Withdrawal from the European Union (Continuity) (Scotland) Act 2021, which does apply in devolved areas for Scotland. It does two useful things, I think: it places a duty on Scottish Ministers to produce a published annual report for Parliament, which sets out new EU legislation and the extent to which it’s proposed that it’s implemented in Scottish law, and it also gives Scottish Ministers the ability to implement new EU regulations or decisions through secondary legislation—a so-called ‘keeping pace’ power. Can you confirm, Counsel General, that it would be within our legislative competence to pass a law now that would give Welsh Ministers a similar general power to keep pace with EU standards within areas of devolved competence, and do you see some merits, potentially, in such a proposal?

The honest truth is I don’t know—I would have to take advice. My instinct is that it probably is within our competence, but I wouldn’t want to be 100 per cent until I took some advice on it. Instinctively, though, it sounds like something that would be within competence. I think, for us, though, it is about the way that we marshal our resources and what we want to use those resources to do. We haven’t chosen, as a Government, to do exactly what you’re describing, because we aren’t structured in quite that way. What we do do instead is we maintain a portfolio view across the piece, and then each portfolio Minister alongside their legal advisers is able to take a view about the best way to take that forward, whether it’s through a statutory instrument or otherwise, or whether it’s through a discussion with the UK Government about, perhaps, what they’re doing in primary legislative terms. So, we’ve chosen a different route, but, I think, with a similar sort of destination in mind.

I think the point about that power, of course, is it makes it much easier to implement those changes much more quickly and without such a call on resources. As part of your responsibility for overseeing the UK legislation impact on Wales, you’ve supported a similar provision, Counsel General, in the Product Regulation and Metrology Bill. Clause 1 of that Bill grants the business Secretary powers to make provision that corresponds to or is similar to a provision of relevant EU law within the context of product regulation. So, it’s a 'keeping pace' power, similar to the general one that exists in Scotland, and, because of the LCM, UK Ministers will have the power, therefore, to keep pace with EU law, even in certain devolved areas for Wales. So, we’re giving that kind of power, to keep pace with new EU law to UK Ministers. Why don’t we, actually, take that power for ourselves, give it to Welsh Ministers, so we can keep up to pace with the best of EU-wide new legislation?

That was a very good example. Actually, the Cabinet Secretary for economy is still in discussion about the exact way that that is structured, and I know there’s an ongoing conversation. I’ve been part of the ongoing conversation about how that’s structured, because it doesn't quite accord with where we’d like it to be just yet, but we’re in good, productive conversation with the UK Government about that. The answer is, Adam, that we just didn’t choose to do it that way; we chose to do it in a way that suits the current structure that we had and the way that we deploy our resources. Government is about choices, and we’ve chosen a slightly different route, but I think the destination, as I say, is the same.

Thank you very much for that question, Delyth. The Welsh Government remains committed to addressing the potential pollution issues, including from chemicals that persist in the environment, in sites associated with former industrial use. We continue to work closely with local authorities, Natural Resources Wales and others to address the potential environmental impacts of these chemicals in Wales.

That's really useful. Thank you so much for that. Not all of our industrial legacy, of course, in the Valleys is visible. There are many of these contaminated sites of land, where companies, decades ago, dumped chemical waste. Now, Ty Llwyd quarry in Caerphilly is one of those sites. Local residents and councillors know too well what can happen in times of heavy rain, when dirty, potentially dangerous, contaminated material is carried in flood water towards the village. There are calls across the UK for Zane's law, in memory of a young boy who died from contaminated flood water that had passed through a historic landfill site. The law calls for more stringent registering of contaminated land for fuller inspections and for the original polluters to pay. Now, a number of councils in England have passed motions in support of that law. I understand that a motion will shortly come before Caerphilly council to consider, as well. Would you meet me and campaigners, please, to discuss whether Wales could adopt the principles of this law to help ensure that communities now aren't the ones that have to pay for the damage that was done to their landscapes all those decades ago?

Yes, Delyth, I'm very happy to meet with you and the campaigners. Just to point out, though, we do do a number of things in Wales already. I'm more than happy to discuss more that can be done. So, we work with UK REACH to have a series of regulations in place, and we have a contaminated land strategy in Wales, which has been extant for many years. And so, just for example, we have a specific fund to assist somebody who wants to bring forward land for development to clean the land in accordance with the regulations to assist land being brought back into beneficial use. And I can't pass by the opportunity to applaud the work of Swansea University in developing plants that are able to take up various chemicals—not all of them, of course. I'm showing my age now, Llywydd, I'm afraid, but, in my lifetime, Kilvey hill in Swansea looked like a moonscape but is now completely covered in vegetation, and that vegetation was partly developed by Swansea University in order to be able to have natural ways, if you like, to assist in the cleansing of the environment. But, I'm more than happy to meet with you and campaigners to discuss anything else that we can do.

Question 4 [OQ62139] has been withdrawn. Question 5, Delyth Jewell.

Thank you again, Llywydd.

You're on a roll. [Laughter.]

State pension matters are non-devolved and are the responsibility of the Department for Work and Pensions in the UK, so I've had no discussions of that sort.

Okay. Thank you for that. I declare an interest, Llywydd, because my mother was born in the 1950s.

I would like to pay tribute to those campaigners who fought for justice and fairness for women born in the 1950s, some of whom are in the public gallery this afternoon. These women have suffered a double injustice, firstly by having their state pensions denied them, and secondly by having a Westminster Government that used to acknowledge that fact now refuse to give them what they're owed. Now, Plaid Cymru supports a vote on this issue in the House of Commons. Would the Counsel General agree that there is a need for mediation in order to discuss levels of compensation, redress and, of course, the question of embedding the rights of CEDAW in domestic law? Now, whilst we don't have powers over pensions here, would the Welsh Government consider playing a role in any mediation that would come about, because there is a lot of anger, a feeling of betrayal about this decision? These women are tired of waiting for the UK Government to do what is right. So, would you support me in that call and for seeing whether there could be a need for mediation so that, at last, what is right can be given to these women?

I ought to say, Llywydd, that I should declare an interest as I am one of the women in question. I was born in the 1950s and my pension age was delayed very considerably. So, I ought to say that I'm in the same category. I am, however, very fortunate to be still working and not so dependent on a pension. I have two very, very good friends who have died without having a resolution to this, both of whom suffered very much from the change in the pension age that they were not able to plan for because of the way in which it was communicated.

It's a really serious, complicated issue, and we know that the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions has responded in full to the ombudsman's report. The ombudsman only investigated how the state pension age change was communicated; they didn't investigate the policy itself. That was agreed by Parliament back in 1995 and was considered lawful by the court at the time. So, this is about the communication, I think. The UK Government has apologised for the 28-month delay in writing to women and have said that they will learn the lessons on that, and they will ensure that they take forward lessons on future communications as well. So, it's a small step forward.

I think that the Welsh Government would very much like to assist people who are in income deficit as a result of a number of things, and this being one of them. My colleague Jane Hutt has been working very hard in this area. It isn't devolved to Wales. So, with my Counsel General hat on, I can't in all conscience say that the Welsh Government can play a role in that formally because it is just not a devolved issue. It is very much a reserved issue. But, of course, we do work very hard to ensure that people in Wales get justice in a number of areas and we work very hard to make sure that they're supported with the right advice, and we're very happy to help in any campaign that maximises income to people in Wales. So, I guess it's a qualified 'yes'. I mean, my heart absolutely goes out to people caught up in this, many of whom have suffered severe consequences to their lifestyle and ability to survive, really. But, I think, with my Counsel General hat on, I have to say this is reserved and so I can't have a formal role in it. But, I think, Delyth, Jane Hutt and I would be very happy to discuss with you anything that can be taken forward in a campaign sense.

Diolch, Rhys. Sentencing is not a devolved matter, but, as a law officer, I do take a keen interest in sentencing guidelines and their application to offences in devolved areas.

Diolch yn fawr, Cwnsler Cyffredinol. Now, section 124 of the Coroners and Justice Act 2009 gives power to the Lord Chancellor to propose that sentencing guidelines are amended. In light of the change to the devolution settlement and primary law-making power coming into force, since that legislation was passed, I would expect that a proposal from the Counsel General involving Welsh law—a law only to do with Wales—would carry equal weight. Now, following the Government's response to Carolyn Thomas's Member debate, that they will not be introducing a pet abduction Act during this Senedd, will you write to the Sentencing Council requesting that the theft guidelines are amended to reflect that pets are far more than mere property and the terrible emotional distress it has on owners when pets are taken, to be reflected in the sentencing guidelines for theft? Diolch yn fawr.

Yes. Thank you, Rhys. I mean, I know you know how this works. So, the Sentencing Council is an independent non-departmental body, and it operates at arm's length from the Government. It's accountable to the UK Parliament for delivering its statutory obligations. I have, though, had the opportunity to discuss sentencing issues on a much wider basis than your question—which I'll come to in a moment—with a number of law officers only last week, where I brought up a number of issues that we're concerned about. I'm particularly concerned, and my colleague Jane Hutt has been working in this area for many years, about the number of short sentences, for example. I have Swansea prison in my constituency, right in the centre. There's a large number of young men in that prison who have sentences that appear to me to be designed perfectly to make sure they have no further life chances, but nothing to recommend it. So, if you're imprisoned for nine months, it's just enough to make sure that you have a record, that you have family problems, that you lose your home, and that you lose any job that you had, and nothing like enough to get you any kind of substance abuse support—well, any support, really, that you want. So, I have made the point repeatedly that those sentences are very poorly designed and likely to have a detrimental impact on pretty much everyone. It's a view shared by virtually every governor of Swansea prison I've spoken to, and I've spoken to a lot of them over the years. So, I've had that wider discussion.

Theft and pet theft, I agree, is very traumatic. I'm happy to make the views of the Welsh Government known about that, but, I mean, it is not a devolved matter. But I'm very happy to do that—very happy to do that cross-party, if people are happy to do that. But it would be just making our views known; we don't have any actual agency in that area.

I did try to bring the pet abduction Bill forward, recognising that, very often, theft is just heard in the magistrates' court and sentencing is not high enough. But pets are actually priceless. Even when heard in the magistrates' court, sentencing is not strict enough; they usually have suspended sentences. I'd like to just read this out to you: 'Losing Angel was like losing my life. Angel was my best friend. I spent more than £13,000 trying to get her back. I remortgaged our house, took unpaid leave, I didn't work for a long time. I couldn't concentrate. I started smoking again, lost weight, and ended up in divorce.' Five years on, Dawn still has no closure on this. I thank Rhys for raising this, and I do hope that a line could be actually made. I believe that Professor John Cooper KC asked if a tweak to the existing theft Act could be made. Apparently, mushrooms and wild animals are already detailed, so why not pets? The word 'property' makes pet owners uncomfortable, because pets are more than just property. So, if you could take that forward for me and for everybody here that spoke on it, that would be really appreciated. Thank you.

Thank you, Carolyn. I absolutely understand what you're saying. I've had pets all my life; I understand that they're part of your household and very much not a piece of property, so I do absolutely understand that. I'm very happy, Llywydd, to discuss with you how we might do something cross-party, perhaps. As I say, it's not something that I can do with my Counsel General hat on, but I have every sympathy with the sentiment expressed.

That's a very positive note to end that question session on.

Item 3 is next, the business statement and announcement. I call on the Trefnydd to make that statement—Jane Hutt.

Thank you very much, Llywydd. There is one change to today's agenda. Later this afternoon, the Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Secretary for Climate Change and Rural Affairs will make a statement on the water interruption in Conwy. Draft business for the next three weeks is set out on the business statement and announcement, which is available to Members electronically.

Trefnydd, I'd be grateful if we could have a statement from the Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Secretary for Climate Change and Rural Affairs on recycling efforts across Wales. Wales is currently second in the world for its recycling rates, and it's vital that we continue to be a global leader in this area. Pembrokeshire County Council is currently reviewing its kerbside collection management as part of a consultation on its draft environmental strategy, and there are concerns about what that may look like in the future. I can't emphasise enough the importance of waste collection and recycling to our environment, and indeed to our health. Regular kerbside collections must continue to take place, or else it may undo some of the good progress made by Pembrokeshire County Council in recent years. Therefore, I'd be grateful if we could have a statement from the Welsh Government on recycling rates that includes up-to-date guidance being issued to local authorities around kerbside collections and that also explains how the Welsh Government is protecting waste and recycling centres across the country.

Diolch yn fawr, Paul Davies. As you say, we are a global leader in our recycling efforts, which are recycling efforts from our communities, our people, our businesses, our households. We're proud that we're a global leader and we thank everyone for playing their part. It is a strong community effort, but very much supported by local authorities. It's good to hear that Pembrokeshire County Council is undertaking this review, mindful of the particular issues and challenges in terms of kerbside collection. There is clearly best practice. The Welsh Local Government Association are very involved, as well as the Welsh Government. Obviously, the Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Secretary for Climate Change and Rural Affairs has heard the point in terms of the status of that in terms of not just being up to date, but also showing the best practice across Wales, which I think many of us benefit from.

I'd like a statement, please, on quarry planning legislation. The Bryn quarry at Gelligaer has reportedly continued blasting operations despite their planning consent running out at the end of last year. They've applied for an extension, but that hasn't been approved. This quarry has been controversial for years. Residents living near the quarry have long complained about noise pollution from blasts, dust, vibrations in their houses, and unpleasant smells. I've been sent photographs of structural damage to properties that residents say was caused by the works at the quarry. A Plaid proposal last year in the Senedd to introduce a mandatory buffer zone between quarries like this and residential properties wasn't supported in the Senedd, and look at what's happening now. This has echoes of what has happened at Ffos-y-fran in Merthyr. We surely can't allow companies to continue works like this so near people's homes when their planning consent has run out. Surely that Plaid proposal for a mandatory buffer zone must be looked at again. So, could we have a statement, please, responding to that need?

Thank you very much, Delyth Jewell. These issues have been debated in this Chamber, and we've focused on particular sites as well. And, as you say, this is about planning consent powers and responsibility—what lies with local authorities, the Welsh Government and, indeed, site providers themselves? So, thank you for drawing attention to this again today, and I will ask the Cabinet Secretary to clarify if there is anything that we need to respond to in terms of that particular site that you mention.

Can I raise a statement from the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care regarding screening for abdominal aortic aneurysms or AAAs in Wales? Currently, screening for abdominal aortic aneurysms are routinely offered to men over the age of 65, but are not routinely offered to women. Only one in 70 men scanned have an abdominal aortic aneurysm, which is a deadly condition, and rupture leads to immediate death. So, screening and early capture is essential.

Risk factors for this condition include smoking, high blood pressure, or close family history, and men are six times more likely to have an aortic aneurysm than women, but aortic aneurysms still do occur in women. Currently, although screening is not routinely offered to women, GPs wish to refer women with significant risk factors to a hospital vascular unit for imaging rather than the screening programme.

One of my constituents is campaigning to include women with risk factors in routine AAA screening, and I'd be interested to know if the Welsh Government has investigated whether there is a case for doing this that makes sense health wise and economically. So, can we hear from the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care as to whether the Welsh Government has looked into the case for routine AAA screening for women? Thank you.

Thank you very much, Gareth, and thank you for raising this important issue. It is about early capture, as you say. That's what screening's purpose and objective is. And you've drawn attention to the screening for aneurysm with abdominal aneurysms in terms of screening for men, and now address the issue for women as well. I'm not sure what the situation, the status of that screening is in terms of national guidelines, but I will draw this to the attention of the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care.

I'd like to ask for a statement from the Government, please, following the ceasefire that came into force in Gaza on Sunday, which could perhaps contain a response to the following points. Oxfam Cymru has written to every Member of the Senedd asking us to urge the Welsh Government to call on the UK Government to play their role in achieving a permanent ceasefire that leads to a lasting peace and justice and to end permanently the blockade, occupation and oppression of the Palestinian people in Gaza and the occupied territories.

Also, I'd like to know how Wales has taken and is taking every measure possible, within its competence, to ensure it doesn't contribute to potential war crimes through direct or indirect connections, partnerships or funding. And also, will the Government be increasing its current £100,000 donation to the Disasters Emergency Committee’s middle east appeal in light of the terrible conditions faced by hundreds of thousands of people whose homes, businesses and services have been obliterated, given that the Government donated £4 million to the DEC Ukraine appeal?

And finally, will the Government pay tribute to all those Welsh citizens who have protested against the war in Gaza, in every part of Wales, and here at the Senedd, imploring that we all raise our voices to call for peace, humanitarian support and justice? Diolch.

Thank you very much indeed, Sioned Williams. I'm very grateful that you've asked this question this afternoon. In fact, I will be issuing a statement tomorrow and I hope to be able to announce good news about ways in which we can contribute to the Disasters Emergency Committee fund. It is a humanitarian response, as you say, that we now need to make.

After months of devastating bloodshed and countless lives lost, it was such long overdue news that Israeli and Palestinian people have been desperately waiting for. I will respond in my statement to the issues and responsibilities in terms of what we can do and our relations with communities here in Wales, and that includes many communities that I've been meeting and many people have been meeting since that terrible day on 7 October.

I think we've got to also remember all those who have been affected. We do join the international community in hoping that all hostages, including the hostage whose family lives here in Wales, are released quickly and unharmed. But for the innocent Palestinians whose homes turned into a war zone overnight and the many who have lost their lives, this ceasefire must allow for that response in humanitarian aid, which is so desperately needed and which I will be announcing tomorrow.

Good afternoon, Trefnydd. I just wanted to raise an issue, if I may, with you around the Heart of Wales line and request a further statement, please, from the Cabinet Secretary for Transport and North Wales. The Heart of Wales line has just had a fifth train taken from the timetable. That's four trains a day in each direction going from Craven Arms and Shrewsbury down to Llanelli, going through such wonderful places as Llandrindod Wells, Llanwrtyd Wells, Llandeilo, Llandovery et cetera—26 stations in total. It provides a real transport option for those communities living on the Heart of Wales line, but also an opportunity to boost tourism and visitors to the area. So, I would like a further statement, if I may, from the Minister, and I wondered if you could pass on an invitation to the Minister to join me and perhaps others who are within that region on a journey through the 26 stations, just to pick up exactly how beloved that line is and how much further investment we need in it. Diolch yn fawr iawn.

Diolch yn fawr, Jane Dodds. I'm sure you will have volunteers to go on that journey on that wonderful Heart of Wales line. There are issues in terms of timetable changes for mainline services that are taking place, with more consistency for passengers, but of course we've heard already this afternoon and we've been reminded of the £800 million investment in our brand-new fleet of modern trains. I think what's important is that passengers on the Heart of Wales line will benefit from the conversion of the class 153 active travel units, which will provide additional seating and cycle capacity. It is important that, overall in 2024, Transport for Wales services were the most punctual and reliable of all train operators in Wales, but there is still more to do, quite clearly—huge improvements as a direct result of public ownership and investment. But it is important that you've drawn attention today to the Heart of Wales line route capacity and the service itself. This is something where I'm sure colleagues, in terms of our Cabinet Secretary, will be interested in the question, but also see that this is a partnership with Powys County Council as well, in terms of integrated public transport services, on which I know discussions are taking place.

Good afternoon, Trefnydd. I would like to ask for a statement from the Cabinet Secretary for Education on the impact of Labour's VAT hike on private schools. Despite a retention and recruitment crisis for teachers, the Westminster Government has placed a 20 per cent VAT hike on private schools, alongside national insurance increases, resulting in job losses across Wales, including at the Haberdashers' school in Monmouth in my own region. Their costs have risen by 25 per cent, and this will be the case with many private schools across Wales. As a result, many teachers will be overworked and many students will be forced to leave, including additional learning needs students, putting further pressure on our state schools, who are already at capacity and are already struggling to look after our ALN learners. I'm hoping that a statement on the floor of this Senedd will give us an explanation from the Welsh Government on how the Welsh Government will accommodate these extra students in the state school system and support those students being forced to leave who have ALN whose needs have been served very well in private schools.

Thank you very much for that question, Laura Anne Jones. This is obviously a manifesto commitment that was made by the Labour Party, and, indeed, as we know all too well, the election in July resulted in Labour MPs being elected, including in your constituency and across Wales as well. So, I think now it is a matter for implementation, and obviously that’s a matter of discussion and engagement, in terms of impacts on not just the independent schools—with families and with local authorities—in terms of capacity in our state system, which, of course, we are so proud of and which can provide all that education for our young people, including young people with additional learning needs.

So, we are, as a Welsh Labour Government, supporting the way forward, supporting the change that is coming about as a result of Labour winning that election so overwhelmingly in July. But also the principle of this is important in terms of ensuring that we have got the funding to support our public services, particularly, of course, our education system here in Wales, and as a result of your party’s former Government’s mismanagement of the economy, of course, also we needed to look for those sources of income that will be really important in terms of backing our public services.

Could I ask for a statement from the Cabinet Secretary for Climate Change and Rural Affairs about the Welsh Government’s plans to support the two geoparks that have UNESCO status here in Wales: Fforest Fawr geopark in Bannau Brycheiniog and, of course, GeoMôn in Anglesey. I went to Amlwch port some months ago to meet some of the volunteers in GeoMôn, and I was reminded once again of the importance of that UNESCO status, not only as recognition of the very special geological history of Ynys Môn, but also as a means to attract investment and tourism as well.

The Cabinet Secretary will be aware of a letter that I sent to him some months ago stating that the assessment to keep that status once again was on the horizon and that the criteria that had been set out by UNESCO are very thorough ones. So, could I ask, therefore, for a statement from the Cabinet Secretary confirming that the Welsh Government will be willing to help and support GeoMôn, whether through additional resources or financial support, in order to ensure that the site can retain its key status as a UNESCO geopark?

Thank you very much, Rhun ap Iorwerth, for your very important question.

We have the Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Secretary for Climate Change and Rural Affairs here with us today. Yes, obviously, this is really important in terms of GeoMôn and the UNESCO status, and you have written to the Cabinet Secretary, so we will respond to look at ways in which we can support and assist on this matter.

May I request a statement from the Deputy First Minister on progress that the Welsh Government has made on improving our food systems and food security? It’s an incredibly important issue and I would hate it to be kicked into the long grass. It’s been almost two years now since my food Bill was voted down in the Senedd, despite massive widespread support from stakeholders right across the country, including the future generations commissioner. And at the time, it was promised that the recommendations from the Economy, Trade and Rural Affairs Committee would be carried forward and more work would be done to improve food security across Wales, and the First Minister, in fairness, at the time, took some immediate steps. However, since then we’ve heard very little about what the Government is doing. For three years, we’ve been discussing a community food strategy, but we’ve never seen anything as yet. So, I would welcome an update from the Welsh Government on what progress is being made to shore up food security here in Wales and strengthen our food system accordingly.

Thank you very much indeed. This, in fact, is very much a cross-Government responsibility, led by the Deputy First Minister, in terms of developing a community food strategy, which we’re actively engaging with. But for myself, as social justice Minister, working alongside the Deputy First Minister, this is crucially important in terms of food security for our communities here in Wales. And I hope that you will consider supporting our draft budget, Peter Fox, because in it it includes a considerable amount of funding from my portfolio, and indeed from the Deputy First Minister's portfolio, to ensure that we can keep our food partnerships going in Wales. I'm sure that you are not only aware, but you will know of the importance of these food partnerships, which bring all stakeholders together on a county by county basis. I was very pleased to visit the food partnership in Carmarthenshire, the Bwyd Sir Gâr Food partnership, which includes every sector and, interestingly, enjoyed a meal in a very pioneering community facility in Carmarthen, supplied by food from the farm that is county council owned. That was an award-winning setting as well for those involved in it.

So, yes, it's on its way. We need to have backing for our budget to get the funding through, but I think Food Sense Wales, which you'll be aware of, led by Katie Palmer, all the work that's being done with the sustainable farming scheme—indeed, it does cross, as you said, every portfolio, virtually, in this Parliament and Government, including, of course, education as well as agriculture, rural affairs, social justice, and health, of course.

Can I ask for two statements, please? First of all, can I ask for a statement from the Counsel General on the Government's preparedness for the likely impact of Kim Leadbeater MP's private Member's Bill on terminally ill adults on Wales? The Bill, if passed into law, will have a profound impact on us here. Not only will it have an impact on our health service, but it'll also have a likely impact on the judicial capacity in Wales, because we're already being told that the High Court will have no capacity to deal with each case, and that they're likely to be pushed to tribunal. Therefore, it begs the question: what capacity is available in Wales? The final vote on the Bill is expected on 25 April, so it would be good to have a statement from the Counsel General, and the Government's assessment in advance of this.

Secondly, may I have a statement from the Minister for social partnerships regarding support provided to communities underserved by the Post Office? We heard earlier from Siân Gwenllian about the proposals to scrap the mobile service to over a dozen communities in my constituency, which will severely impact on the ability of many people, the most vulnerable in these communities, to access essential services, so any assistance from the Government would be gratefully received.

Diolch yn fawr, Mabon ap Gwynfor. Yes, I will ask the Counsel General to respond on the matter of the impact of the Bill. Obviously, there is some time yet before, as you say, the date that you've highlighted, 25 April. The assessment of impact on Wales, capacity in the High Court—indeed, we need to look at this carefully, and I will follow that up, as you've heard. This is about us also looking at our roles and responsibilities as well.

On the issue of underserved communities in terms of post offices, well, that does actually fall within my responsibility in terms of relationships with the Post Office and the reduction of essential services, which we heard about earlier on. I think this is something where, following not just the question from Siân Gwenllian, I'm working quite regularly with those who are involved as responsible lenders. But for the Post Office—I am going to meet with the Post Office chiefs for Wales and look at how they are axing services. They're carrying out reviews, I know, and it is reserved, but I think we have to now give that evidence from the Welsh Government and from the Welsh Parliament, from the Senedd, so I'm grateful that you've raised this.

Can I ask for a statement from the Cabinet Secretary for Housing and Local Government on the use of chauffeur-driven cars by Welsh councils? That comes after news reports that state that the former Labour leader and now mayor of Bridgend County Borough Council used a taxpayer-funded chauffeur-driven car to attend Welsh Labour Party events in Cardiff Bay. His attendance at the celebration dinner of 100 years of the Welsh Labour Party was clearly party political in nature, yet it has been defended in the media by Councillor Huw David. Clearly, it should not be permissible to use a taxpayer-funded mayoral car to attend party political events. So, will you either arrange a statement from the Cabinet Secretary clarifying that or, failing that, use this opportunity now to condemn it?

Well, this is a matter not just for local government, but, indeed, it is a matter for the local authority that you cited and it is a matter for those who have the privilege of serving in local government as well.

And finally, James Evans.

Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. Cabinet Secretary—. Trefnydd, I'd like to have a—. I can't get my words out. I'd like to have a statement from the Cabinet Secretary for economy over the President of the United States coming in, Donald Trump, and about our trading relationship with the United States. A lot of Welsh businesses rely on a strong relationship between Wales and the United States, so it'd be very good if we could have a statement from the economy Minister about how that relationship can be developed now that President Trump is in office.

I'd also like to have a statement from the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care over the findings that the group office in our party have found that the Welsh NHS have spent over £700 million on negligence claims over the last 10 years, with £100 million of that spent last year alone. That is a national scandal and I think it is only right and proper that we have a statement from the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care about what he's going to do to reduce those negligence claims, because if we're going to see those improvements in our NHS, we need to make sure that the money is being spent on the front line and not paying out people on negligence claims.

Thank you very much, James Evans. Obviously, it is in all our interests that good relations in terms of trade not only continue, but they obviously are going to be challenging as well in terms of the new President's policies and statements. But it is vital, and we do have not just the 40,000 mentioned earlier on by the First Minister, those American and business interests in Wales, but also those relationships across the United States, and I'm talking about the states as well, state by state—. There are really important relationships and we have our interests to not only protect but to progress as well. So, we anticipate that that will continue.

Yes, negligence claims are always regrettable in terms of adult social care, but we are proud of the delivery of our services in adult social care, but also very mindful, as you will know, of the work that's being undertaken and led by the Minister for children and adult social care in relation to our national care service. Now, it is good that we have also Baroness Louise Casey doing this work in Westminster, very much looking at this on a cross-party basis. And here in Wales there was a great deal of work, through the co-operation agreement, on developing that national care service stage by stage. But now, it is, I hope, a cross-party route that we take in terms of ensuring that we have the capacity and the excellence in adult social care that we know is so important to everybody, all those we serve in Wales.

Thank you, Trefnydd.

Item 4 today is a statement by the Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Secretary for Climate Change and Rural Affairs on restoring nature in Wales. I call on the Cabinet Secretary, Huw Irranca-Davies.

Diolch, Dirprwy Lywydd. Almost 75 years ago to the day, a Labour Government revolutionised people's access to nature by establishing the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act 1949. For the first time, this gave people public rights of way, national trails and areas of outstanding natural beauty. The Act flipped centuries-old rules about land access on their head and gave everyone—everyone—a right to enjoy nature, no matter how much money they had in their pockets.

It is no coincidence, of course, that this was the same transformative Labour Government that created the NHS. It's the same socialist principles at work. It’s about fairness and about people having the freedom to access the essentials we all need to live a healthy and a happy life. And those same principles are what underpins the proud environmental record of successive Welsh Labour Governments here in the Senedd over the last 25 years, from creating the Wales coast path, to establishing the national forest for Wales. And those same principles still drive us today. And with one in six species now at risk of extinction in Wales, it’s never been more important to restore and to strengthen people’s connection to nature. Restoring nature means restoring the places we live in and enjoy. It provides green jobs. It supports local and rural economies, and it underpins the economy in a whole range of sectors, including, of course, food production and tourism.

Deputy Presiding Officer, the people of Wales spoke very clearly during the First Minister's listening exercise, and today I'm here to show how we're turning their words into action. In this Senedd term alone, we have invested over £150 million to restore nature and to improve access to nature on people’s doorsteps. We’ve delivered more than 4,000 green spaces, 790 community food growing sites, 670 community orchards and 80 therapeutic sensory gardens through our Local Places for Nature. And this includes, by the way, delivering more green spaces in less well-off communities in our towns and cities across Wales, where access to green spaces can sometimes be harder to come by. And we’ve transformed our municipal grasslands into homes for pollinators and wildlife, working with the local nature partnerships. By changing the way we mow in places like Singleton Park in Swansea, and the roadside verges of Denbighshire, we have helped make them more friendly for pollinators.

We’ve invested £54 million in our Nature Networks programme to improve our protected sites and connect people with nature. And, in practice, this means funding places like the bug farm in St Davids that I visited recently. It was brilliant to hear first-hand about the work they’re doing to connect 200 hectares of wildlife habitat and to open their nature recovery centre, providing a wonderful resource for local children, and for tourists as well, to enjoy. And many Members here will have had the pleasure of meeting Jinx, the biosecurity dog, who has helped protect Wales’s globally important but endangered seabird population on islands such as Ramsey in Pembrokeshire. And I’ve already mentioned the national forest, which now has over 100 sites, creating a network of well-managed woodlands the length and breadth of Wales. These sites provide spaces for nature to thrive, and for communities to enjoy.

Our woodland investment grant and the Coetiroedd Bach schemes have created and improved woodlands across Wales, with over £8 million awarded to 56 projects. So, for example, in Dee Park in Flintshire, our support helped to employ two part-time rangers to manage the site and to lead community classes and events. Funding for Llandegfedd in south Wales has supported significant path improvements to create a more accessible green space for the public to enjoy.

And, of course, I recognise how strongly people feel about the importance of improving water quality and restoring our rivers, and rightly so. And that’s why we’ve provided Natural Resources Wales with an extra £40 million of funding to do just that. I recently visited a remarkable project on the Nant Dowlais, where a stretch of the river has been rewiggled. Over time, we hope that new stream will form pools and create natural habitat. It’s a really great example of how we can take action to bring a whole range of different benefits to both water quality and biodiversity.

Can I thank you, Cabinet Secretary, for your statement, and thank you for sharing your enthusiasm? I welcome some of the announcements, clearly, in your statement, including those 11 new projects. Indeed, listening to the statement, we would feel that everything is well. But we are not in a good place, are we? One in six species at risk of extinction, and wildlife in Wales has declined by 20 per cent since 1994. Welsh Government are failing to take this matter seriously enough. Now, can I commend the Climate Change, Environment and Infrastructure Committee for their work on their report, which was published yesterday, that shines a light on the worrying trend of decline in our country's wildlife? In 2021, the Welsh Government declared a nature emergency, being one of the first Parliaments in the world to declare such an emergency. However, it's clear from the evidence we have that this has not led to any sustainable action to improve our situation from Welsh Government.

Prioritising the environment means far more than statements and plans. It requires action, and it requires appropriate resources and total commitment, and it would seem we haven't seen perhaps quite enough of that to date. There has to be meaningful engagement with stakeholders to understand the problems and the preventions, and then objectives with deliverable and measurable targets have to be put in place. It's only then can we hope to deal with the scale of the crisis that we are now facing. The few targets that the Welsh Government had set out, we read, have been moved from 2025 to 2029. I think we need to know why this is the case, Cabinet Secretary. This reflects a lack of urgency, or it would seem to reflect a lack of urgency. It would seem little has been achieved from the targets worked on since 2022, and we shouldn't be in a position of lagging behind England and Scotland once again. It's a sad state of affairs that we hear too often. The committee’s report exposes the scale of the failure of successive Welsh Governments. Failures at a legislative and strategic level have left us with outdated law and policy, leading to very little impact. Now, NRW, the body that is meant to be looking out for the environment, continues to be under-resourced, and I heard what was said in the statement about the additional money, yet we keep asking it to do more and more. I personally think there needs to be a fundamental rethink of what NRW should be responsible for. It then needs resourcing properly to do its work if we’re really serious about making progress on our rivers. I’m not sure if the £40 million extra will actually achieve that.

At the end of the day, Dirprwy Lywydd, the Government can’t keep asking more of people like farmers and rural communities to contribute more and more to tackle environmental issues when the Government itself is not pulling its own weight. Cabinet Secretary, we have a chance to reverse this disastrous trend and make meaningful reforms, delivering on targets and driving forward with a strategy that will actually make a difference. Cabinet Secretary, when will we see a measurable strategy that will be resourced appropriately? It’s not too late, but if we do not act soon it certainly will be.

Peter, look, first of all, thank you very much, because I think, broadly speaking, you’ve supported the additional announcement that we have today for the Nature Networks funding of an additional £2.7 million for 11 projects. I think you’ve supported as well the extra £40 million that we’ve put into NRW to tackle water quality. Then you challenge us to do more. I would simply say, reflecting on the points I made in my opening contribution, all the stuff that we’ve done over the last decade and more has been done in the face of austerity, in the face of cuts not only to NRW but to the Environment Agency in England as well. Across the piste, every Government within the UK has faced stretch. Now, we’re in a position where we have the opportunity to lever in additional funding into Wales to the tune of an additional £1.5 billion. Out of that we can make investment within nature and within NRW and within others, and we can go further, and I welcome the support for that.

But can I also ask that Members, when they speak for nature, also stand with us when we bring forward the policies that deliver for nature—those policies, including on water quality, those policies, including on soil quality, those policies right across the piste? We cannot say one thing here and then vote against it because we’re under pressure outside from stakeholders. We have to be consistent. That does mean, actually, working with developers, with farmers, with industrialists, with everybody, but it means us being consistent.

We are putting our money where our mouth is on this. The seagrass funding of £100,000 is really a very good example of where a contribution of our money enables then the levering in of additional volunteers and funding to take that even further, because we know—. The peat restoration piece, where, again, we’re actually working with partners to go further.

So, it shouldn’t all fall on the taxpayers of Wales, Dirprwy Lywydd. We’ve got a part to play, and Welsh Government does, so do public sector, so do private partners and many others, but so, I would say, Peter—and genuinely, Peter, I’m really looking forward to working with you in your new role as well there—we have to stick steadfastly by the policies that will also deliver this, even when sometimes we get pushback that says, ‘Oh, that’s a bit too tricky for this group of stakeholders, or that one.’ We’re all in this together. We restore nature by all being willing to lift the boat together.

I welcome this opportunity. I thank the Deputy First Minister for the statement. There are lots of good things that are in the offing, certainly. I do welcome many of the things that the Deputy First Minister mentioned in the statement. Of course, we must consider the context in terms of the very critical report that was published yesterday by the climate change committee. That's going to crystallise how we see many of these things. These points are raised so that we can ensure that the really good, important work that is in the offing is built upon. There are so many people who want to see more happening. The report warns about a massive decline in wildlife in Wales. You've mentioned that one in six species is currently endangered. Wildlife populations have reduced by 20 per cent over the last 30 years. And when we talk about biodiversity, of course, that is the foundation of our lives, and that's why it's so important.

The report does draw attention to the fact that we are years behind when it comes to the key policy documents of the Welsh Government on restoring nature. The nature recovery plan, as we have heard, has not been reviewed, for example. So, how will the Welsh Government be able to look at this? And what will be the justification that you will give to the sector and to people who are concerned about this on updating basic plans? Are you concerned that this might undermine the credibility of the Government on the international stage, because we’ve made commitments to reverse nature loss, which is so important? Is this perhaps undermining that?

We’ve heard already about the lack of resources and staff dedicated to Natural Resources Wales. I welcome what you’ve said about funding for Natural Resources Wales. What will you be doing to improve communication of the work that Natural Resources Wales is doing to the public, and to ensure that people are more aware of where to go and what things they will be able to prioritise? Because I’m concerned that people are very critical of the work that they are doing. Perhaps that’s added to a feeling of people being dispirited among that workforce. They do such important work. What can be done to communicate the challenges, but also to ensure that that communication from them does improve, please?

There are a number of other partners, beyond what the Government can do, who are doing very important work on restoring nature. What work do you foresee, please, or what’s already being done to attract funding from beyond what the Government is doing and to co-ordinate that very important work that a number of those partners—? You’ve talked about the private sector in this context. How can we co-ordinate that, because, again, there are a number of very exciting projects in the offing with that?

Thank you, Delyth. There were many important points there.

Just on the report, we will obviously respond in full and in due course to the report, but we really welcome the report and the challenge that's in it, because we agree with the challenge. I would simply say, looking to your left, as you're sitting there, to the Chair, on whose committee I used to serve as a member, the challenge is right, but I think the challenge is for all of us, not in Welsh Government, but you rightly touch on how we actually lever in additional funding. Well, that is a challenge for all of those big potential investor communities who want to invest in high-integrity, really strong ethically principled investment into nature restoration and recovery, but to do it on our terms, so that it meets what we want to do in Wales, in our local communities, and so that it fits within our objectives within the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015, the sustainable land management principles and all of that.

I think that we can devise schemes that can do that. There are some good innovations out there already that are doing that, including the work that we touched on with the peat restoration project, where Dŵr Cymru money was levered in there. Some of the work that we're doing in the Teifi project already does that, and that's an interesting piece of work in nature restoration as well as river quality, doing the whole piece, working on a catchment basis. But I do think that there is more that we can do, and I'm interested in this aspect of blended finance, how it works with us here in Wales. I think that this is not a discussion that we were having so easily, perhaps, five or 10 years ago because of having fingers burned with some of the lessons learned with carbon offsetting and so on. But I think that if we can frame it in our terms and then lever in money, then we could really add to the quantum of investment. And investment is important. It's not the only thing; we need the policy structure right as well.

Thank you, by the way, for bigging up the good work of NRW in this space. They do sometimes come in for a drubbing. They become the Aunt Sally for a lot of people, but actually the expertise that resides within NRW and the work on the ground that they're doing—that rewiggling project I talked about with the river is absolutely fascinating. We've gone through a century or more of straightening and canalising rivers and basically letting the river run straight through, flooding somebody else further downstream, ripping out the biodiversity from that. Now, we've learned to go back, with a modern engineering way, into the old ways of making that river work naturally and there are multiple benefits. But that's NRW, working with, by the way—talking about green jobs—highly paid engineers in local companies going in there to actually do the re-wiggling, but with NRW involved. And they do so much more in species and habitats across Wales and in water quality. We are pleased that we're putting more money into water quality, but we're also putting more money into the enforcement end as well, because we know that the public are very interested in that.

Could I just declare that I've been working on a project with Welsh Government called 'It's for Them', regarding managing verges and amenity grass for nature, because we've lost 97 per cent of our wildflower meadows over the last 50 years?

I'd just like to start by saying that connecting people to nature not only helps physical and mental health and well-being, it also helps people to understand about the importance of nature and biodiversity as well, connecting them, then, and hopefully leading them into jobs as well. I know that with the Local Places for Nature funding, we've developed, is it, 4,000 sites, amazingly, with orchards, pollinator sites, allotments, therapeutic gardens, and with 20,000 volunteers, which is amazing, connecting to nature and learning about nature. The Local Places for Nature funding has also helped to sustain biodiversity officers in local authorities, which otherwise would have been cut, and they've helped with these volunteers. So, I'd like to ask you, Cabinet Secretary: many sectors of the economy, including green jobs, are needed, so what assessment do you have of the potential for green jobs, not only in supporting nature, but for growing the economy as well through nature?

I think the potential is huge and it is growing, not only in those aspects such as Local Places for Nature, the local nature networks fund and all of the work that flows from that, because all of that—as well as the incredible contribution by volunteers—is driven by a small army of people on the ground who've got real knowledge, either on ecology or on volunteer management, project management and so on—they're incredible people. But also, as we bring forward the sustainable farming scheme, as we bring forward the timber strategy and as we drive forward the national forest, all of that creates opportunities for many young people coming out of our further education colleges and higher education colleges, but also for on-the-job continual learning and improvement as well. So, the potential here is huge.

We often get very, very excited, understandably, and I know that the Dirprwy Lywydd will, about the potential with, for example, the Celtic seas and those jobs in those new technologies of floating wind, for example, that you can create in the harbours in servicing those rigs and so on. They are really exciting, but equally exciting is the potential within that green space of nature restoration. Who are going to be the ones who advise on the hedgerow creation? Who are going to be the ones who advise on the ponds and scrapes? Who are going to be the ones to talk about the way you manage ditches, not only for flow of water, but to restore nature within them and so on? All of these are very exciting, and we know that many—. Not all of our pupils are going to go on to be politicians, thank goodness, because it's competitive enough already, or, necessarily, to be nurses or cardiac surgeons, or this, that or the other. Some of them will, but some of them will want to work in the outdoors in the environmental sphere, and we need to bring forward those skills and training opportunities for them as well, alongside, as you say, the thousands upon thousands of volunteers that drive this for us as well.

Despite various policies, soundbites and statements from here, it's fair to say that the strategies and legislation delays have caused insufficient actions, and these are now hindering Wales's biodiversity restoration commitments. The Environment (Wales) Act 2016, once hailed as groundbreaking, has failed to drive meaningful change. Weak drafting and really poor implementation have left the sustainable management of natural resources objective misaligned with biodiversity goals. Similarly, the outdated natural resources policy has seen non-reviews and non-collection of important data, and this just renders it all ineffective.

One in six species is now threatened. Professor Steve Ormerod of Cardiff University highlighted in our Climate Change, Environment and Infrastructure Committee that the current legislation we have has failed to make a difference in stemming biodiversity loss. Colleagues, we do have a nature crisis, and despite a call by this Government—

You need to ask a question now, please, Janet.

—to declare a nature emergency, we continue to see our species in decline. What steps are you really taking, Cabinet Secretary, to ensure—[Interruption.]—in terms of statistics and in terms of numbers, that real action is taken to stop the decline of our species and the reduction of them? It's not good enough, and we need change.

Thank you, Janet, and I'm assuming you were here for my opening statement, when I actually listed the funding, the projects, the volunteers, the expertise, the additional investment, or you may have missed that, in which case I will send you a copy of the speech again. But I would say to you, Janet: join with us on this mission and stand by us when we bring forward the policies that are needed to make this happen. Don't turn your back when it's difficult. Stand by us. Stand by us on the investment, after 14 years of squeezed austerity, which hit the environmental sector more than anybody else. We saw it in the Environment Agency in England, and across the piece, thanks to that former Conservative Government. At least now we have the opportunity to bring forward an additional £1.5 billion into the Welsh budget. I really hope you'll support it, because a lot of the additional funding that I've announced recently is predicated upon what we've just said. So, I really hope you don't vote against nature. Vote for it in funding, and vote for the policies as well.

There's a tendency here from the Conservative benches, Dirprwy Lywydd, to say that we've done nothing. Well, on the downs down by Ogmore Vale, where I was walking last weekend with a group of volunteers, and the First Minister joined us as well, in the mist, freezing cold, there was a 20, 30-year long project to save the high brown fritillary butterfly. It's one of only three sites in the United Kingdom. It's the only one where that high brown fritillary is now in recovery, and it's there because of the work of the volunteers, committed over decades, and it's because of sustained investment as well, and expertise from NRW, and all those people who want to see a species saved, and, by doing it, that special downland habitat also protected as well. We can do this. We absolutely can do this. And I will not be a Jeremiah. I will not be somebody who says, 'It is all gloom, and it is all despair', because in that way, the young people of this country also turn off and say, 'Well, we can't do anything anyway.' If you listen to the Conservative benches, we're absolutely doomed.

That one in six species is not simply a threat and a challenge to Wales alone. It is the same across the whole of these islands; it is the same globally as well. We all need to up our game, and rather than point the finger of blame, say, 'What's the role of Government? What's the role of others within this space? What's the role of us as elected representatives, to stand by our principles, and not only will the funding, but will the policies to make this happen.' This will happen, and it'll provide challenges, Janet, in terms of development, agriculture, land use, community planning, what we do in urban spaces as well. When these happen, based on what you've just said, I want you to stand by us and stick with your principles that you've just espoused, and don't vote down nature.

I ask Members to be succinct and to keep to their time limits. Can I also ask Cabinet Secretaries to be succinct in their responses?

I welcome the Government's statement. We are affected by two external factors. Climate change, warmer temperatures and changing weather patterns are disrupting the usual balance of nature, posing risks to all forms of life. It makes some areas unsuitable for native species by being either too wet or too warm. We've got pollution and eutrophication, where high concentrates of nutrients, such as nitrogen, stimulate blooms of algae in rivers, such as the Wye, which, in turn, can cause fish kills and loss of plants and animals. It is well known that toxic pollutants in the air, or deposits on soil or surface water, can impact wildlife in a number of ways. Animals experience health problems if they are exposed to sufficient concentrations of air toxics over time. Studies show that air toxics are contributing to defects, reproductive failure and disease in many animals. To restore nature, we have to deal with climate change and pollution. What is the Welsh Government doing to reduce pollution, including river pollution? We also need top-end predators, or animals such as rats will continue to increase their numbers. What proposals have the Welsh Government got to increase the number of high-end predators, such as owls?

Thank you very much, Mike. On pollution—to keep it very short—there's a range of things we can do on this. It's the pesticides we use, and the work that we're doing to reduce the pesticides, not only in terms of agriculture, but also in terms of the way we use them with our municipal authorities as well. There's some good work going on in that. We need to make the good practice common practice and standard. It's what we do in water quality—and I mentioned in my statement the additional £40 million we're putting into NRW—but it's also the work that we do with people like Afonydd Cymru and others, working with partners, with the Tywi river trust and others, to clean up our rivers, remove barriers, make them more friendly for different species returning to those areas.

And just very briefly, you mentioned predators as well; we do recognise the importance of top-end predators and their role within biodiversity and ecosystem functions, so we welcome the work and the research being done across Wales on things like species reintroductions in a managed way, recognising the importance of following the best international guidelines, and also of course engagement with stakeholders, engagement locally, and undertaking local evidence gathering as well. There's a role for these reintroductions in a managed way, in an evidence-led way, but also based on good engagement with the communities affected as well.

Thank you for all the wonderful work you described, going across the whole of Wales. I particularly want to thank you for sticking to your guns on ensuring that anybody entering the sustainable farming scheme will have to have 10 per cent of their farm for habitat restoration. That's incredibly important. I look forward to the legislation, which will enable us to have robust and stretching targets, because this is one that we absolutely have to take forward collectively, otherwise future generations simply won't have any nature.

Last week I visited the Howardian nature reserve, which is sandwiched between a housing estate, a much-loved allotment site and a major four-lane highway. It was previously a rubbish dump, and it's now home to over 500 species of flora and fauna, which just shows what can be done with any space. Given the extent of the nature crisis caused by the war on weeds and insects over 60 years, how can we use every pocket handkerchief of land for nurturing nature, galvanising people to use their own garden or public spaces to grow food and other plants that are going to nurture nature?

Thank you so much for that question. And by the way, agreeing on the 10 per cent habitat as part of the SFS was not a difficult ask. The farmers really wanted to come with us on this, and this is great, so I’m really excited by that and the collaborative approach that says we all need to do this and contribute to it.

The Local Places for Nature funding that goes into things such as the Howardian nature reserve and others—I know you champion this and you visit a lot of these sites—really has those multiple benefits, because it is restoring green spaces in those pockets of urban environments that previously you'd have ignored or left as it was, in some sort of state of dereliction, now enriching them for biodiversity, but also those wider community benefits, including, in the midst of cost-of-living issues and so on, enabling people to feed themselves as well, either through planting of orchards or through growing food and produce or foraging products as well. It's really brilliant.

We will continue working with communities by putting the funding in place so that they can access those to do that detailed stuff in little bits of their own local community where they can see improvements can be made. You'd think, ‘Well, why on earth would these people step up to do it? Who would go accessing this in order to do it?’ But actually, I think every Member of the Senedd here now is seeing not just one or two of these, but scores of these within their own constituencies. People want to make these improvements. They viscerally get it, why this is important. So yes, Jenny, we will keep on providing support for these initiatives and encouraging communities to be part of this great mission that we're on. Once again, we're all in this together.

Thank you very much, Cabinet Secretary, for your statement, for the announcements that you've made today, and for your enthusiasm for this vital area of work. I'm particularly supportive of the Welsh Government's commitment to planting trees and the creation of a national forest. In Cardiff, the Coed Caerdydd project intends to create an urban forest. Just yesterday, volunteers started to plant the 50 rare species of Gabalfa apple tree in Gabalfa park and Maitland park in my constituency. It's 100 years since this species of apple tree was seen in Cardiff, so it's absolutely fantastic that it's being reintroduced. I'd also like to emphasise the importance of getting people out and about into nature, especially in urban built-up areas like Jenny has referred to. Global Gardens is a community growing project, again in the Gabalfa area, a built-up area of Cardiff, and I've been so impressed with the work that they're doing with an organic kitchen garden, celebrating crops from around the world, they run a forest school, sensory therapeutic sessions, community-based learning and specialist sessions—

You need to ask your question now.

—with asylum seekers and refugees. Would the Cabinet Secretary agree that it's these types of initiatives that are absolutely crucial? We should be celebrating them here in the Senedd today and seeking for them to be replicated all over Wales.

Absolutely, Julie, and thanks for championing this in your own area in these many initiatives we're now seeing. This is the exciting part of this, because it is not somebody coming in from outside to say, 'This is what you do'. It's the community themselves grabbing this and saying, 'We can see an opportunity here'. I'm so looking forward to literally tasting the fruits of the Gabalfa apple tree, because this, again, going into these heritage lines that we'd otherwise lose, is absolutely phenomenal.

The community gardens approach, as part of the Global Gardens project, is quite incredible, because we're looking at tackling overgrown fly-tipped areas that were previously somewhat derelict, new hedgerow creations, new meadows, protection of species—bladder campion, sorrel, bird's-foot trefoil, which I've got in my garden as well, by the way, just out of interest—new apple trees, large beds of native pollinator plants being planted, and all of this with community right at the heart of it, people and nature together.

But on top of this, Dirprwy Lywydd, we've got things like Coetiroedd Bach. I visited recently a project in Monmouthshire on this, and saw young children doing a deeply biodiverse planting scheme, way beyond what you'd see occur naturally, in a small area of land where a landowner had given them the access to it and had created the paths with our funding as well. And it was just such a great experiment in biodiversity. So, in all of these things, our funding can go a long way. What it releases is the potential of people then to get really involved and bring much more to it.

Cabinet Secretary, it was good to accompany you on your recent visit to the Gwent levels, which I'm sure you will agree is a very good example of how land has been developed for nature and people. We have the shrill carder bee, the water vole, hopefully the curlew—a whole host of biodiversity coming back to that area of land. We have the Living Levels partnership driving community involvement, and the decision not to proceed with the M4 relief road providing the potential of land set aside for that project now being used for nature and access for communities. And, of course, there's the RSPB wetlands reserve. It's just a unique and fantastic area and community support and buy-in has developed so markedly over recent years. I'm sure you would agree with me, Cabinet Secretary, that this is a very important example of how we can take forward policy for nature and people here in Wales.

John, I entirely agree with you. It was a delightful visit, and I can honestly say it is the first time—. Is it today or is it tomorrow? Is it the twenty-second today? It's tomorrow. I'm 62 tomorrow, and that was the first time I had ever seen a starling murmuration happening. I've seen it on television; I'd never been standing in a field along the levels there seeing that happening, and it was quite magical. But in addition to that, just meeting there with some of the experts on the ground, but also seeing the number of local people who were coming there that evening as well, who were doing a session there to learn about it and then coming out to see, and then would be the volunteers that would do work around there as well.

This is the note of hope and optimism that we can give. It is absolutely right that we need to do more, far more, together, and we've got a role to play in it, but what we can actually say is that, with the work that's been done there, the work that's been done on the Ogmore downs with the high brown fritillary and others, we can save species. We can turn this round and we can save habitats as well. They go together as one piece and that's exactly what's going on in the Gwent levels. So, thank you and everybody who came out with me on that day. It was genuinely inspiring and quite a moment after 62 years to see that murmuration going on as well, because of the habitat that is being preserved.

Finally, Joyce Watson.

Diolch. There are some wonderful things happening, not least in some of the schools that are also funded, and if we're going to do anything positive going forward, we'll be relying on the next generation. So, Ysgol y Bedol, which is in my area in Carmarthenshire, was the very first community school in Wales. They have a wonderful programme of growing, tending to and cooking the produce. The children are so engaged, so enthusiastic. They have a bug farm there and they have a bee hive that's coming along. So, that is a real example of investment and enthusiasm by all the staff within that school, and the gardener who is teaching them, really engaging the next generation to preserve nature, going forward.

Joyce, thank you so much, and my congratulations to those at Ysgol y Bedol. And I have to say, to all those schools now right across Wales, the massive impact that Eco-Schools—it's Wales leading again—has made in this area. Children are coming out of schools now, Joyce—all Members will know—they write letters to all of us, to say, 'What more are you going to do? We're doing this, we're doing our small part; what now are you going to do?' And that is great, that is the push that we need. But, yes, bugs, bees, a bit of dirt on the hand, dirt under the fingernails—this is what touching and feeling nature is inspiring our young people to do, and then what we want, then, is to take that through into their older years, as older teenagers, into secondary school, and as adults, and never give up on actually challenging us to do more. But that's the note of optimism as well: it's our young people.

Thank you, Cabinet Secretary. And happy birthday for tomorrow.

Item 5 is the statement by the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care on access to primary and community care services. I call on the Cabinet Secretary, Jeremy Miles.

Thank you, Dirprwy Lywydd. Primary care is the foundation of our NHS. This is the main point of contact with healthcare services for the majority of us. If we need more specialist care, it acts as the gateway to those services. Today, primary care professionals are seeing more people than ever. They are providing a wider range of services, which means that more care is available for people closer to their homes, more quickly. We are investing in the skills of healthcare professionals and broadening the scope of practice in primary care. We are funding qualifications to support the delivery of new clinical pathways in optometry. We are making legislative changes to enable pharmacy technicians to deliver clinical services. We have also resolved the regulatory issue that prevented dental therapists and hygienists from providing treatment independently. These changes not only make these professions more attractive, but they also enable the workforce to deliver more services.

Dirprwy Lywydd, we have made important changes to primary care in Wales, in optometry, in pharmacy, in NHS dentistry and in GP services. Our intention is to continue to make such changes. I want to use this opportunity to update Members about the progress in each of these areas.

Optometry has undergone significant reform. Changes to the contract have expanded the scope of services available in the community. Optometrists on the high street can now manage, monitor and treat an increased number of eye conditions, providing timely care closer to home. This has reduced the demands on GPs and hospitals. More than 2,000 consultations a month are being delivered by independent prescribing optometrists in the community.

Contractual reforms are also transforming community pharmacy. I started the day today at a high-street pharmacy in Barry, and I'd like to thank Gwawr Elis Jones and the team for their welcome. An extra £9.9 million has been made available as part of the community pharmacy contractual framework this year. This represents a 24 per cent increase in the funding since 2016-17. Now 99 per cent of pharmacies provide free treatment for 28 common ailments through the common ailments service: back pain, sore throat—look online for the list.

Dirprwy Lywydd, more than 400,000 people were seen and treated last year by the service. Eight out of 10 people said that they would have gone elsewhere for help if this service wasn't available. Wales is the first part of the UK to provide a nationally commissioned community pharmacy prescribing service.

Trained pharmacists can treat a broader range of conditions, such as ear, nose and throat infections, without the need for a GP visit. Since its launch in 2020, around one third of pharmacies have adopted this independent prescriber service. There have been more than 0.25 million consultations. Both of these pharmacy services provide fast and convenient access to care for a wide range of minor illnesses without the need for a GP appointment, supporting GP services to see people with more complex health needs.

Dirprwy Lywydd, I turn now to NHS dentistry. The variation we made to the current contract, which focuses on prevention and treating people on a risk and needs basis, means that, since April 2022, more than 420,000 new patients have received a full course of treatment. More than 142,000 more people have also received urgent care. These arrangements are not perfect, but they have made a difference for people who have struggled to access NHS dentistry since the start of the pandemic.

Our focus is on a new dental contract, which will make NHS dentistry attractive for the profession and fairer for patients. We expect to consult on the new dental contract in the spring. In the meantime, we are implementing a 6 per cent increase to the contract. We have been working with the British Dental Association to develop this, and I'm aiming to have the contract in place in early 2026.

The final part of the primary care picture, and perhaps the most familiar part, is general practice. GP practices provide a staggering 1.6 million appointments every month. That's equivalent to seeing half the population of Wales. We have negotiated extensive reforms to general practice to improve access over the last few years. We have just resumed negotiations with the General Practitioners Committee Wales in relation to the current financial year. Practices are required to implement appropriate call-handling systems to manage high call volumes and prevent multiple call-backs. They're required to offer a digital way for people to request non-urgent consultations and ensure there is physical access between 8.30 in the morning and 6 p.m. every working day.

Despite these changes and continued efforts of hard-working practice teams, I know people can get frustrated when they feel they can't get through to their practice or struggle to get an appointment, but there are other primary care services that can help, such as pharmacies, so that those seeking a GP appointment are only those who need a GP appointment. We all have a part to play in that. The GP practice doesn't have to be the only option, and isn't always the most appropriate option.

I want to use the rest of the statement, Dirprwy Lywydd, to talk about the changes we've made to improve access to community services, which play an important role in helping people live independently at home.

I would like to thank the Cabinet Secretary for his statement today, and I'd also like to add my thanks to all those people working in community and primary care, right the way across Wales.

Just to pick up, Cabinet Secretary, on the £5 million of recurring funding for community allied health professional services, it would be interesting to know from you how that money is allocated across health boards across Wales, and how the Welsh Government tracks that to measure on deliverability across the service. The statement indicated that primary care professionals are managing increased patient load and offering a broader range of services closer to home. Yet the data from the British Medical Association's Save our Surgeries campaign reveals concerning trends. As of 31 March last year, the number of GP practices in Wales decreased from 474 down to 374—a reduction of 100 surgeries—and the full-time-equivalent number of GPs has declined by 25 per cent since 2012, with a further 3.8 per cent decrease since the campaign's inception in 2023. So, given these statistics, Cabinet Secretary, how does the Welsh Government plan to address the diminishing number of GP practices to the escalating patient/GP ratio, to make sure that people can have that efficient care right the way across Wales? Because we've heard examples, haven't we, from Members? I'm thinking of Alun Davies, up in Blaenau Gwent, about the eHarleyStreet practice, about the number of people there seeing the number of GPs available.

The Government's commitment to upskilling healthcare professionals is very commendable. However, the Royal College of General Practitioners has highlighted some significant challenges and that, in 2024, nearly 20 per cent of GPs reported feeling stressed and unable to cope with most days, and over 40 per cent experiencing such feelings at least once or twice a week, and more than 40 per cent of GPs are considering leaving the profession within five years, citing work-life balances and the stresses as primary factors. Given these statistics, Cabinet Secretary, what measures is the Welsh Government implementing to improve the retention of GPs and their well-being, to ensure that we invest in training, and that it does translate into sustained patient care across Wales?

You mentioned optometry and pharmacy services, and the expansion of those services is a positive development. It's something that we on these benches welcomed. However, the effectiveness of these services depends on public awareness and accessibility, doesn't it? Public Health Wales introduced the new primary care clusters dashboard in September last year to aid in the planning and address inequality. So, how is the Welsh Government utilising this dashboard to promote and monitor the effectiveness of expanded optometry and pharmacy services to make sure there's equitable access for all communities? And as I said, we need to ensure that people know that these services are out there. A lot of people who I speak to don't know about the common ailments service, and that actually they can go to their pharmacies to actually get these conditions seen—as I say, sore throats and different things, chest infections, for example—so it's good to know what the Welsh Government is doing to promote that across the system.

The Member asked a range of questions; I'll do my best to answer at least the key ones. In relation to the £5 million, those were allocated to expand the workforce right across Wales in terms of allied health professionals. I think what we are seeing is actually the highest level of funding ever allocated to support a record number of training opportunities for the AHP workforce, and that's right across Wales. I touched on the developments in the Cwm Taf Morgannwg and in the Swansea bay health boards, but I could have pointed to the frailty practitioners in Powys Teaching Health Board, which I'm sure he will have an interest in, or the work that Cardiff and Vale are doing in relation to the orthopaedic programme; I mentioned that in my statement. But also Hywel Dda have launched an integrated community stroke service, which reduces hospital waiting times. So, there is a range of ways, right across Wales, in each of the health boards, in which that funding is being put to very good and productive use, and having demonstrable outcomes, demonstrable impacts on patient outcomes, which is obviously the measure of success in relation to that investment.

He makes an important point in relation to the pressure on GP practices. I think the thrust of my statement was really about highlighting the range of other ways in which people can access primary care services, which have two impacts: one is to reduce the demand on GP services, and also to make sure that patients get access to the treatment they need in the most convenient way possible. So, it has those two benefits, and I think, actually, it's important that people do continue to make those choices. We see increasing demand on GP services. Where that demand is capable of being better met elsewhere, frankly we should be seeking those alternatives. So, it should be more convenient for us, but we should also be doing that proactively. He makes an important point about how one can ensure that the public understand the range of those services, and, in a sense, what we're trying to do is to bring about generational change in people's access to healthcare. This will take, I think, many years to embed, as a way of understanding how the health service can provide the support that we need.

I was at a pharmacy, as I mentioned in my statement this morning, and discussing very much with the pharmacist there the strategies that they had used to work with local GP practices to highlight the range of alternatives. So, if someone calls up and asks for a GP, there’s a conversation that says, ‘Well, have you tried your local pharmacist? It's a prescribing pharmacy, so you’ll be able to get the support that you need there.’ So, it’s ensuring that that’s part of the discussion through GP practices, but also in terms of public information campaigns and also the work that pharmacies themselves do to promote the increasing range of services that they can provide. It’s also information that is available through NHS 111, both on the phone and online, so I encourage Members to point their constituents to those services, and we can all play a part, I think, to encourage people to take up those services.

Primary care is responsible for over 90 per cent of patient contacts with the health system, yet it continues to be underfunded, and the percentage of funding that goes to primary care has shrunk significantly over the past 20 years. As I’ve mentioned several times, this is highlighted in the fact that we are over 600 GPs short of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development average here in Wales, without any indication that this is about to be rectified. Indeed, NHS Wales lost 51 GPs between September 2023 and March 2024 alone.

Now, remedying these issues is not going to be easy, and it will not happen overnight, but here are some short-term measures, informed by our discussions with health professionals, that could ease some of the most immediate pressures. First, it was noted that the persistent inability to book an appointment online in practices in Wales is a particular barrier to having a more efficient appointments system. Could the Cabinet Secretary therefore confirm whether the Welsh Government is considered setting aside specific funding to support the cost of introducing online appointment systems on a wider scale? Video consultation systems, such as the Babylon system, have significant potential to foster greater flexibility in staff and patient contact, but it's clearly underused here, particularly compared with GP practices in England. Why? What measures is the Government taking to promote the use of such technologies?

Consultant nurses have a role to play, but since the Government withdrew funding for this role back in 2008 their numbers have fallen. Is there any intention to reintroduce a budget in order to employ more, or at least to create a career path for nurses to develop into consultant nurses and to develop these skills in Wales?

Finally, the Royal College of General Practitioners has called for the roles of care navigators to be upgraded to improve patients' understanding of the triage process, to ensure that time is not wasted in redirecting patients to the appropriate level of care. Is this something that is being considered in the Government's plan for primary care?

Turning now to the issue of community care, the regional partnership boards are clearly an important element of delivery in the context of the regional integration fund and the Further, Faster programme. But professionals say that the remits of the regional partnership boards are too unclear and that they don't succeed in fostering collaboration across health boards and local authorities. Now, in response to a question from me last week, the Cabinet Secretary mentioned that there is no need for legislation to place the boards on a statutory basis, because a ministerial directive can compel more systematic regional collaboration anyway. So, could the Cabinet Secretary explain why the ministerial directive is not working, at least not so far?

I thank the Member for those questions. In terms of the impact of payments, that work is ongoing. Of course, I can't talk about specific financial support for GPs at the moment. We're in the middle of further negotiations with them on the contract, as I mentioned in my statement. But these things are regularly discussed by us and the GPs, as the Member would expect.

He made an important point on online services and enabling people to have equal access to appointments through the appropriate standards. I think that when we do see the launch of the NHS app, this will strengthen the offer, if you like, and the opportunity for people to operate online in terms of getting appointments. We have provided a budget in order to expand equal access, and that's around £12 million, if memory serves me correctly, and that is being delivered by health boards, working along with GPs.

As I mentioned in my statement, we have prioritised investment in community nursing, and that has been successful in terms of an increase in the numbers available. Of course, we need more of that, but the objective we have is to ensure that nursing provision can, on the weekend, provide some 80 per cent of what's available during the week. We haven't reached that target as of yet, but that is the work currently ongoing, and numbers have been increased.

The Member made the same point, I think, that he raised last week on Further, Faster, and I think the Member's challenge is that we need to put the RPBs on a statutory basis so that they can collaborate, but that's not the function of the RPBs; they are not boards for delivery, they are boards to co-ordinate the work of two bodies that are already on a statutory basis and already have primary responsibilities in statute and elsewhere. So, I myself don't believe that creating another statutory structure, once again, in terms of our overly complex nation, is the solution to this; I think better collaboration and co-operation is the solution.

The Member posed another challenge to me, where there is an example of activity in terms of a ministerial directive and whether that's worked. Well, the First Minister, when she was health Minister, gave a directive to Hywel Dda and Swansea bay health boards to create a joint board to work together on providing services jointly, and that has worked; we have seen that bear fruit already in terms of orthopaedics, but in other areas too. So, our system is structured in order to devolve executive powers, as the Member knows, to the health boards, and that, generally speaking, is the right way of doing things. It's a specific challenge, I think, to generate regional co-operation; we haven't done as much of that as we should have done, so that is the message I've given to the sector more generally: if we don't see more of that happening, then I will be willing to continue to use those ministerial directive powers to ensure that that happens on the ground. I myself don't believe that creating a statutory body will be more effective than the ability to direct bodies that already exist to take particular actions.

Thank you for the update, Cabinet Secretary.

I welcome the statement's emphasis on primary care as a main point of contact that most people have with healthcare services, and that's why, obviously, supporting it and investing in it and building on it is so important. I've raised here previously with you the findings of my recent health survey in my constituency, and many of the points raised there were around access to GP services or getting through or not being able to get an appointment. I recognise what you say and I'm pleased that, whilst you rightly referred to the changes to help people access GPs, you recognise that there are still frustrations out there, and there's probably still some work to do to build on what has already come before.

So, can I ask today what assurance you can give that strengthening access to GPs and primary care remains a key focus of the Welsh Government's work? And touching on the broader services that may be available in the community now through other means, whether that's through pharmacies or elsewhere, is there a way in which we can have a mapping exercise that educates people and makes people aware of where these services can be found, so that we can increase people's ability to access those services, not just through their GP, in the future?

I thank the Member for that. I think she makes an important point, and others have touched on this as well, about the challenge of demand in the system and providing access to GP services specifically. I think it's quite a complex landscape, because it is a changing landscape. So, clearly, the level of demand is increasing and the question is whether the profile of that demand is changing as well. So, people may want to see a GP immediately, but there are two questions in that, aren't there: whether the GP is the right person to provide the care and whether there is, if I can put it in these terms, a well-founded need for urgency, or whether that is a preference of the patient. And it will vary, clearly, from case to case. It isn't clear to me that there's an obvious pattern in there; GPs will report different things.

I think there's also a sense that, when so many other aspects of our modern life are available with a real sense of immediacy, then there is a level of impatience when people can't see a GP immediately, and that may well be fair enough, but there'll be other circumstances in which, maybe, that urgency isn't there. So, I think it's quite a complex picture. What is absolutely the case is that, where we know that there are other alternatives, as I've been talking about in the statement, we need to make sure that people understand where they can access those. I think people's understanding of how you access NHS services is generally, from a patient point of view, either at your GP practice or A&E, and there's a challenge for us there, because both those parts of the NHS are under very significant pressure. So, I think there is a case for looking at what we can do to help people navigate the NHS better. NHS 111 has been very effective at doing that, but as we bring about such a level of reform in the system, there's a constant challenge to us, I think, about how we can make sure that people are able to navigate the service in that way.

Cabinet Secretary, of course, the majority of my constituents receive their treatment from providers in England. When I speak to opticians, pharmacists, dentists and GPs, they often tell me about the complexities of dealing with providers in England when it comes to information technology systems in particular; there's a lot of inefficiency in the process as well. I wonder, in terms of what you've outlined today, what considerations you've given to this issue, and what work has gone on in sharing digital platforms.

The other issue, of course, you spoke about is improving access to primary care providers. One of the big issues we have across Wales, particularly in rural Wales, is attracting primary care professionals to come and work in Wales, particularly in rural Wales. Often, the issue raised—it's a historic issue for some time—is the issue with the all-Wales medical performers list, so, one list for Wales. I wonder, since you've been in post, whether you've considered this. Many staff shortages arise from the issue of having GPs, perhaps, being trained somewhere else in England, but not prepared to come to Wales because of the complexities of having to sign up to a different performers list. So, can I ask, also, whether you've considered this, and considered the possibility of working with the UK Government to have one performers list for England and Wales?

I thank the Member for that. He makes an important point for those parts of Wales that are on the border. It's a more challenging landscape even than the one he describes, I think, in practice, because there isn't one NHS England approach to IT, any more than there is in many parts of the Welsh NHS. So, what you are effectively looking at is the IT arrangements that exist on a trust or a board level, so it's actually a more complex picture than even the one he paints.

What we are very keen to do from a digital perspective in Wales is twofold. The critical element to this, and I touched on this in the committee the other day, is to have in place a national digital architecture for Wales, so that, then, initiatives, either at a health board level or at a national level in Wales, can all conform to the journey that we want the system to be moving on. We aren't in that place yet, but it is an absolute priority to get that architecture in place. That will then allow a once-for-Wales approach for a certain number of interventions, which will help with the challenge that he's describing. It won't solve it, because there isn't a 'once for England' approach over the border, but it will contribute to solving that, at least.

But then there will be some things that I think—. You know, we don't need to reinvent the wheel constantly, do we? There are things that are existing—commercial applications—that are available for health boards or practices to purchase themselves, and the critical thing is that they all form part of that larger picture together, so I think that's important on the digital front.

I had the opportunity of talking to somebody recently at a dinner that I attended, and I'd had a day when I had been reminded throughout the day of the challenges in the NHS in Wales, and I was feeling, at the end of the day, a little bit low. I sat next to a woman at dinner and she explained to me that she was a nurse practitioner in a practice in Powys. She described how successful the model was, the morale and the things about that practice that had drawn her to work there, and I thought that that was a salutary reminder to us all, actually, that every day there are people choosing to work in the Welsh NHS who are committed, driven and have very, very high levels of motivation. So, for all of the challenges, and he's mentioned some of them today, I think it's really, really important that most people's experience is that they're going into work driven to help people and able to do that in a way that we're all grateful for.

The Cabinet Secretary will be aware of the difficulties that a lot of patients in the Rhymney valley and throughout the south-east are having in getting doctors' appointments in those surgeries that are being run by eHarley Street. This private company is running surgeries in Bargoed, Gelligaer, Brynmawr, Tredegar and many others, and patients are finding it almost impossible to get those appointments, but when they do get to the doctors' surgery, waiting rooms are almost empty. Now, we know, and it has been raised in the Chamber a number of times, that doctors haven't been paid by eHarley Street; they are owed thousands of pounds, and, as a result, many doctors are refusing to work more shifts in those surgeries, and that means that patients aren't getting the care that they deserve.

I've raised concerns in the Chamber for many weeks about this, and about clinical governance as well, doctors’ pay, and the pressure that's being put on nurses in those surgeries. Everyone seems to be agreeing that something is very badly wrong here, but nobody yet seems to be promising exactly what is needed in order to ensure that this improves in those surgeries and that it doesn't get repeated. Could you tell us, please, what conversations you've had with the health board about this, and could you assure the Chamber that you will do everything in your power to ensure that patients start getting the care again that they deserve to get?

I think I mentioned in the questions last week, when Alun Davies and the Member raised these very, very important points in the Chamber, that, clearly, staff should be paid, suppliers should be paid, not least because we know what the implications of the alternative are. It's obviously right in its own terms, but it clearly has ongoing consequences if people aren't paid. I made it clear—and I'll repeat that—that I'd spoken to the health board chair, and expressed my concerns, to make sure that practices should be complying with the general medical services contract, making sure that people were paid, and that the level of clinical governance and the availability of appointments was as they needed to be.

In my most recent conversations with the board, their understanding of the availability of appointments was that it was broadly consistent with the arrangements that had been in place previously, in terms of the volume of appointments that had been in place, when the health board was directly managing those practices, but I have asked for a further account from the health board this week, after the further discussions they've been having. There clearly needs to be a plan to make sure that services are sustainable and providing the level of access that we want people to see. So, as I mentioned last week, I'll be happy to report back to the Senedd when I have that further account.

Primary care sees more people with health needs than any other part of the system. The share of the health budget being spent on primary and community care services has reduced. The health and care system must be radically refocused to put primary and community care at its core if it is to be effective and sustainable. The decision that has had the biggest adverse effect on primary and community care was the merging of primary and secondary care, which resulted in the proportion of spend on secondary care going up at the expense of primary care. The community health service and general practice face multiple challenges, with insufficient staff and capacity to meet the rising patient needs and complexity.

Most primary care providers provide an excellent service in difficult circumstances. When people cannot get primary care, they go to A&E, thus further clogging up an under-pressure system. In some practices, if someone says they need an urgent GP appointment, they then get sent to A&E, also clogging the system. It's easy to say how important primary care is and how dependent we are on it. I have two requests: that the share of the health budget spent by health boards on primary and community care is protected next year, and to increase the proportion of minor surgical interventions carried out in primary care.

I thank Mike Hedges for those questions. The way he put his question, I think, shows the complexity of it. He made the point about separating secondary and primary care, but then the example he gave was one that reminds us of the interdependency, if you like, between people's access to primary care and what that can mean for access for secondary care. So, the relationship, obviously, is very interdependent in that way.

I do agree with him that what we should see, as far as we possibly can, is the provision of more and more services in the primary care setting, whether that's diagnostics, but in the way that he said also, minor surgical interventions and a range of others. Some of them I touched on today, but he makes a point, I think, about a larger volume of activity in primary care. I have no doubt whatsoever that that is the right way forward, and I hope that we will be able to see progressively an increase in that. Whether it's at a practice level, or at a cluster level, I absolutely think that that is part of the solution to being able to provide more funding to primary care settings and the sustainability of the model into the future.

We've done some great work on getting better use out of the community pharmacists, because they're highly skilled individuals, and them dealing with the common ailments scheme seems to me just a much better use of their skills than simply dishing out somebody else's prescriptions.

I'm a little bit confused about the way in which GP practices work, because I've yet to come across a GP practice with the skill mix that I would expect. For example, which GP practice employs a diabetes nurse, given the prevalence of diabetes in our community? You would expect that there was plenty of work for such a person. Instead, we seem to have four or five highly skilled GPs all acting as consultants in primary care, with maybe one practice nurse. That just doesn't feel like the right balance. And then we have a separate service called community nursing, or community allied health professionals, and I just wondered if we don't need to think a little bit more creatively in the way we're delivering primary care services.

I was very interested at lunchtime to hear from Nia Boughton, who's a consultant nurse for primary care at Betsi Cadwaladr. She's done some fantastic work on getting somebody with endometriosis back into work—

You need to ask a question now, please.

The key there is the fact that Nia is working in a practice that is being directly managed by the health board, rather than one that's being managed by a GP practice. Clearly, there are different ways in which we need to look at the GP contract to have a more holistic service for what people need in primary care.

I thank Jenny for that question, and for the discussions we've had over recent weeks in particular about funding for GP practices. I think it is clear in the way that she puts the question today that one of the threads through those discussions we've had recently has been what the mix of services is that can be provided by GPs, which is a way of strengthening the model, but also, more importantly, providing the kind of service that patients want and will be able to benefit from. There are a variety of different models. The example I gave to Russell George earlier was an example where the nurse practitioner in that practice was a very significant, visible part of the offer to local residents. I think there is a range of models, but I think we need to keep the level of ambition about moving services into primary care settings high, and also that relationship between primary care settings and community services, to keep that creative and keep that evolving so that we make sure that we have the level of flexibility in service delivery that best meets the needs of patients.

And finally, John Griffiths.

Diolch, Dirprwy Lywydd. Cabinet Secretary, the newly opened 19 Hills health centre in Ringland in Newport East will provide a range of primary and community services delivered by general practitioners and a range of healthcare professionals, physical and mental health services. It serves a number of relatively disadvantaged communities where the inverse care law strongly applies, with those most in need of healthcare least likely to receive it. I wonder how the Welsh Government will work with Aneurin Bevan University Health Board and the 19 Hills health centre to make sure that we see a real improvement in access to healthcare by those in the community badly needing those services but currently not receiving them, to make sure that the potential of pulling these services from the acute sector into primary care and into a community setting is fully realised.

I agree with what the Member has said is the ambition and the direction of travel. I think I'm right in saying that I had a conversation with one of the practitioners in that practice over the course of the last few weeks, and he echoed the point that the Member has just made again today about the persistent and pernicious existence of Julian Tudor Hart’s inverse care law, even 50 years on from the point at which he first declared that as a concept, which motivates us, doesn’t it?

I think there are absolutely challenges. The question is how best to make sure that we are able to make sure that those practices serving patients in disadvantaged communities, which we know are likely to have a wider range of more complex needs and to need to deliver the services in different ways, with more outreach work in particular, with a community work element—those imaginative solutions—that we can do that in a way that is sustainable into the future.

There have been discussions in the Chamber and elsewhere about the formula for allocating that funding. That appears to be a complex area, but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't seek other ways of making sure, in particular at a cluster level, where you can have the resilience of a number of practices serving that larger footprint—. I think that is part of the answer to the challenge that the Member has set out today.

I thank the Cabinet Secretary.

The next item is the statement from the Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Secretary for Climate Change and Rural Affairs on growing the timber industry: jobs and green growth. I call on the Cabinet Secretary, Huw Irranca-Davies.

Thank you very much, Llywydd. I'm delighted to address Members ahead of our consultation on proposals for Wales’s first timber industrial strategy.

Growing the forestry sector will offer a wide range of green jobs in Wales. It'll help us build more sustainable housing and it will boost our progress towards decarbonisation. Managing forests sustainably for timber production is a prime example of green and sustainable economic growth. When trees are harvested, carbon sequestered when they were growing remains stored in the timber. When that timber is then put to long-term use, like in making furniture or in building houses, then that carbon stays locked away, not released into the atmosphere. Meanwhile, the harvested crop of trees is replanted, sequestering more carbon, and the cycle continues.

Not only this, but the wood economy offers real opportunities for foresters, timber processors and manufacturers. There is a whole range of jobs and skills that flow right along the supply chain, from forest nurseries through planting, harvesting and milling, to, indeed, designing and constructing the end products that sustain people’s livelihoods. And I've got to say, this is especially true for people living in rural Wales.

The Welsh forestry sector includes family-owned businesses with a predominantly rural base, and they provide valuable employment opportunities for local communities. Last year, as I've mentioned, I visited Teifi Timber Products. Their sawmill and timber merchants in Llanllwni in Carmarthenshire source timber as locally as possible, and they offer skilled jobs to local people in their rural community. Apprenticeships in the forestry and low-carbon construction sector are crucial in supporting this transition to a sustainable economy, providing real opportunities for talented people to prosper.

As we transition to a stronger, fairer and greener Wales, the forestry, timber and construction sectors offer varied careers, including highly paid jobs. The consultation sets out proposals to improve recruitment and retention of an appropriately skilled, diverse and flexible workforce that can adapt to change. In fact, businesses like Teifi Timber Products show what the wood economy can achieve and why it’s so important that we support its growth in a strategic way.

By working together, we can support those local supply chains that will boost the potential value that we gain from our timber, all the way from forest to product. By working in partnership with industry, Wales can make the most of the opportunities for making and selling forest products from renewable, sustainable and responsibly managed forests. We will support the development and the adoption of new products, processes, technologies and promote geographical co-operation and shared resources, where appropriate.

As well as the obvious contribution timber can make towards this Government’s priority of boosting jobs and green growth, it contributes directly to our commitment to building sustainable and affordable homes. Timber allows us to build high performance, durable, healthy and sustainable homes, including social housing. I’m really looking forward to visiting a social housing development built with Welsh timber in Penrhyndeudraeth with the Cabinet Secretary for Housing and Local Government later this very week.

Building homes with timber offers huge opportunities for people but also for the planet. As the world looks to achieve net zero, timber, a low embodied carbon building material, can replace high embodied carbon materials like concrete. Timber and wood fibre offer opportunities for alternative methods of construction, panelised solutions and off-site manufacture. These approaches reduce the carbon footprint compared with traditional on-site construction methods and they can be built quicker, which will help us provide more social housing for those who need it now.

To expand the production of quality Welsh timber to fulfil the growing demand for low-carbon timber-framed social homes, we need to take action, and that’s why I’m so very pleased to be launching this consultation. Let's be clear—Wales already has established companies leading the way, such as SO Modular in Neath and Kronospan at their base in Chirk. As this consultation document shows, we can drive more growth by promoting innovation, designing and manufacturing wood-based products with increased value, extending the durability and climate resilience. Looking to the future, in a world that urgently needs to decarbonise, it is clear that timber will have a crucial role to play.

The UK currently imports much of our timber, and global demand is expected to quadruple by 2050. This means there is a huge potential for growth. It also means that, in order for us to have a reliable and sustainable future timber supply, we'll have to grow more Welsh timber, increase our circular approaches, reuse and recycle, balanced with importing in a globally responsible way. Wales is primed to make the most of this opportunity. Wales offers favourable growing conditions for many productive species, both softwood and hardwood. We need to capitalise on this, and improve understanding, through the supply chain, of all the potential ways that homegrown timber can be used.

As we consider the future and the role that timber will have to play, we must also consider what that the future growing climate will look like. The productivity of forests may be affected itself by the impacts of climate change. And let’s be clear: Wales is already experiencing changing climatic conditions and those more frequent extreme weather events, just as we saw with storm Darragh, which brought down countless trees right across the country. That’s why the timber industrial strategy sets out specific proposals to futureproof our forests. We need to choose species that will remain productive in the future, ensuring access to genetically diverse and climate-appropriate stock. We need a reliable supply of forest genetic materials, including seed orchards, and we need sufficient capacity in out forest nurseries. This way, we can ensure that our timber forests and all the jobs that rely on them are secure and resilient.

It is also very important for us to note that the timber industrial strategy is not taking place in a vacuum. At the end of November last year, the UK-level tree planting taskforce was launched, to oversee the planting of millions of trees across the UK to meet our net zero targets. The taskforce, chaired by the forestry ministers from the four nations, recognises trees as essential for providing sustainable timber and a whole range of other benefits to nature and to people. But of course, timber security is not solely reliant on virgin timber. There is already a healthy market for recycled wood fibre and potential to reclaim more timber than we currently retrieve, for example, from demolished buildings.

Growing forests takes time, but there are significant short-term gains to be had. I am really encouraged by the delivery of joined-up initiatives across Government portfolios, such as Home-Grown Homes 2. The Tai ar y Cyd pattern book for social homes, launched only last week, shows housing and forestry working together towards more sustainable homes. Expansion of the Welsh Government’s flexible skills programme to include the forestry and timber sectors means businesses can access grant support to upskill their workforce. We have to continue this close collaboration as we move from development of the strategy into making it a reality on the ground.

I would really encourage wide engagement with this consultation. The resulting timber industrial strategy will be published later in the year, setting out a very clear road map for how Government and industry will work together to achieve a thriving wood-based economy in Wales, supporting growth and green jobs in both the forestry and timber sectors, helping build more sustainable social homes, and contributing to tackling the climate emergency.

Our forests should be in active, sustainable and diverse use, providing economic, environmental, social and cultural benefits to the people of Wales for many centuries to come. Thank you very much, Llywydd.

I welcome the opportunity to respond to this statement on the development of Wales's first timber industrial strategy. While the ambitions outlined in the statement are commendable, Deputy First Minister, there are several areas that require greater clarity and decisive action to ensure their success.

The statement highlights Wales's favourable growing conditions for timber, and acknowledges the global demand for timber projected to quadruple by 2050. Despite this, the reliance on imports remains high, with 80 per cent of timber used in the UK sourced from abroad, and only 4 per cent of harvested Welsh timber processed for construction. This represents a significant underutilisation of Welsh resources. To address this, the Welsh Government must ensure that home-grown timber plays a central role in meeting the demand for sustainable housing, as you've outlined. But can you outline further and specific measures to prioritise Welsh timber in construction and reduce reliance on imports through the procurement process, for example?

There is potential for timber to replace high-carbon materials like concrete in construction, particularly in building sustainable housing, but how cost-effective is this? Also, the production and use of engineered timber products, such as glulam and wood fibre insulation must be expanded. The statement references the need for innovation and new technologies, which I welcome, but progress in this area has been slow. So, could the Cabinet Secretary provide an update on plans to support the development of value added timber products and their integration into the construction sector?

The statement also acknowledges the importance of skills and workforce development in supporting the transition to a sustainable economy. While the investment in forestry-related training is welcome, the scale of the skills gap in the sector requires a more comprehensive approach. With an ageing workforce and limited specialised training opportunities, collaboration with education providers is essential to expand training across the supply chain, from forest nurseries to advanced timber processing and low-carbon construction. So, what steps are being taken to engage with educational institutions and address the sector's workforce needs?

Going hand in glove with skills is the importance of local supply chains and partnerships, which has rightly been emphasised. However, tangible progress in this area remains limited. Strengthening the supply chain is critical to ensuring the economic benefits of the timber industry remain within Wales. So, what specific measures will be taken to foster stronger partnerships between forestry producers, processors and manufacturers, and to invest in local processing facilities?

Sam, thank you very much for that. Can I welcome what I think was your welcome for the consultation on the strategy? In fact, many of your questions anticipate not only the points that are made within the strategy but also the bringing forward of the strategy itself. So, local supply chains—I mentioned them in my opening remarks—the skills pipeline that we'll need to do as well. Procurement, by the way, is within the consultation as well, so we're looking forward to people bringing forward their views. But it's definitely the case that within the Social Partnership and Public Procurement (Wales) Act 2023, there is potential within that now to strengthen it, because it does deal with not simply the lowest cost of procurement, but the wider goods environmentally, local economies, local communities et cetera as well. So, we're looking forward for those views being brought forward.

You touched on a lot of points that are actually outlined within the consultation itself. So, with your support, I would encourage everybody to feed in their views on the best way forward on those. There are ideas within the consultation, but let's hear what people have to say. Do I think we have enough time, then, to turn in the strategy? Yes. There's been a lot of work with stakeholders even leading up to this point, so going out to consultation allows that piece of work to be done that tests the ideas, tests their views—are we in the right place? And then we can refine and nuance it before we bring it forward. But recognising where we are with the carbon budget-setting process, as well as our ambitions on the timber strategy and woodland creation, we need to get on with this, we really do. So, we do have enough time, but let's urge people, actually, to come forward. There will, by the way, be a series of public stakeholder engagement events throughout the consultation. There will be independent analysis, then, of the consultation feedback. So, it won't be me making a gut-feeling reaction as a Minister in some short order. We'll do a proper analysis.

You mentioned skills and training, which I touched on in my opening remarks. Just to say as well, we'll also be undertaking a review of post-16 education to make sure that we've got that post-16 piece, in terms of forestry also in the right place. But there's a wider piece here about the development of skills out from people who are already working in the industry as well, but further education colleges and other training support providers will be able to help us in that.

There was a range of things you mentioned there about woodland creation and making sure that we make sure that whatever funding and support we are putting into it benefits the local community. Just to make clear, the woodland creation grants, for example, with us go directly to Welsh landowners in Wales to create woodland within Wales. One of the things we can't do, even though there aren't many examples, I've got to be clear, but there have been a couple of examples previously cited in this Senedd Chamber—what we can't do is stand in the way of individual Welsh landowners or farmers who then make a decision to do something on their land that you and I might say, 'That's wrong. That feels wrong in terms of what we're trying to do.' Sometimes they make their own commercial private decisions. But what we are making sure is that any public money that goes into this space is benefiting local communities and our woodland creation strategy as well.

May I thank the Cabinet Secretary for his statement? It's certainly one I welcome. This is a key issue, of course, for our economy, for the environment too, and is an issue where the Welsh Government, in my view, does need to show ambition and clarity of purpose if we are to meet our environmental objectives, and also, of course, to deliver sustainable economic growth. So, I do look forward to looking through the consultation—something that we haven’t had an opportunity to do to the extent we would have liked to to date—and I thank you for an early copy of that.

There is a dilemma here, though, of course, isn't there, because we know that the Government are falling short of tree planting targets? So, clearly, it would be interesting to hear how you feel that this strategy will continue towards ramping up the achievement of those targets, but at the same time doing so in a way that doesn't leave us open, as we've heard, to some outside commercial interests that may well see an opportunity to take advantage of that. So, I'm just wondering whether you grapple with that in your consultation, or whether you have any thoughts, particularly on that issue. Incremental changes to payment rates and improving application processes are all positive, but maybe there are systemic barriers that need to be addressed as well within that equation, and much of it is identifying appropriate land et cetera.

Another one, of course, is, again—we come back to this—the capacity of Natural Resources Wales. Concerns from Confor and others about—. We know that the Welsh Government woodland estate holds a vital economic asset, yet timber volumes brought to market have consistently fallen below sustainable production levels. So, how will the Welsh Government and how will this strategy address the underutilisation of timber from the Government's woodland estate? And how will you ensure that Natural Resources Wales have the resources that they need to fulfil their role properly in this space?

Now, I appreciate that the statement is all about adding value, or very much about adding value to the produce, and I'd very much support efforts in that respect, but what does that look like in terms of a Government strategy? Will there be a route-map, or where are we going, in terms of an outcome following this? I know there will be a strategy, but are you looking at staging posts on that journey as part of an action plan, or anything that will come as a consequence?

Now, I would agree that there's a pressing need to reduce Wales’s dependency on timber imports, of course, because we know that they tend to increase carbon emissions, and they raise ethical concerns over habitat destruction and poor environmental standards abroad. So, what measures are being taken to reduce that dependency, particularly maybe in the shorter term, because longer term we hope that we will be more self-sustaining in that space? But we do need to promote ethical and sustainable production, both at home but also in terms of our imports.

And finally from me, I just want to ask about the national forest. Obviously, you mentioned earlier today that 100 sites have now achieved national forest status, but how do you plan to ensure that that initiative delivers tangible economic as well as environmental benefits? Is the national forest simply a symbolic environmental project, or do you foresee that meaningfully contribute to timber production, as well as biodiversity enhancement? Diolch, Llywydd.

Llyr, thank you very much indeed. Let me touch on the tree planting rates in response to you, first of all. The tree planting targets that are recommended by the Climate Change Committee were very challenging, but we're committed to working with them to ensure that those targets have that ambition but that they're also realistic for Wales, recognising that we have competing land pressures within our rural landscape as well. We acknowledge those multiple benefits, and we need to balance those as we strive to reach net zero by 2050. But what we do want to do, in this consultation and in the strategy that flows from it, is to encourage landowners to engage in a wide range of projects and collaborate with each other to deliver a diverse range of tree planting and woodland creation projects. Now, some of those will indeed fall within that value-added approach of the timber strategy, which can be used not only in sequestration as you plant them and so on, but actually into long-lasting products as well. Others will be different types of planting, and we're keen to see more use of tree planting for different reasons as well.

Statistics, the most recent we have, show that in the 2023-24 planting season, 640 hectares of woodland was created in Wales. It's similar to the average yearly rate of planting we have achieved over the last decade, but it is notably the third-highest rate in that period of time. But we know we've got to do more and go further, and that's part of what this is about. But this is about, as the consultation described, not only generating that quantum of home-grown product, of the right and diverse sort—softwoods and hardwoods that can go into deeply embedded carbon products, such as housing, such as furniture and so on—but it is also about having different types of planting that can give community benefits, nature benefits and biodiversity benefits as well. So, on a Wales basis, that is very much the approach that we are taking.

And just to say as well, we often kick ourselves and beat ourselves up in Wales about tree planting rates and what more we can do to increase them. We're not facing this challenge alone, I've got to say, across the UK, and that's why the UK trees taskforce has been established, to share good practice, see what the barriers are and see if we can work together to tear down those barriers to good, proper woodland creation in the right place. So, we're confident that Wales will benefit from that opportunity.

I touched on the point about not having some of those unintended consequences of people coming in from outside Wales and what have you. We need to be wary of that, without a doubt, there.

One of the things that the Welsh Government woodland estate, the forestry estate, that we have needs is not only to find those areas where we can plant and to get the business model right for that as well, but also to backfill this, actually, with a reliable supply of young trees to do this. So, again, part of this strategy is making sure that we have those restocking trees coming through. So, Natural Resources Wales had a competitive tender process back in 2022-23, and Maelor Forest Nurseries were awarded the contract for restocking. So, there are real benefits here if we get the supply chain right.

[Interruption.] Don't worry, it was a certain Member who was seeking distraction from your timber statement, so I'm sure she'll be listening to the rest of the statement now. Carolyn Thomas, finally.

Just listening to the conversations, you reminded me I visited Denbighshire County Council’s nursery. They’ve started growing trees from seedlings themselves, and also wildflowers, which is amazing, to have that local stock ready for planting on the public estate.

I want to mention continuous cover forestry as opposed to clear felling. It’s so important for biodiversity and to also prevent flooding as well. We’ve seen that on our public estates managed by NRW, so would that be part of the strategy, going forward? I think that’s really important.

I’m really concerned about diseases such as ash dieback, and larch disease as well, so a variety of species is really important going forward.

So, my question to you, really, is: how would the Welsh Government ensure that Welsh forestry is climate resilient, and will this be kept under review, and will we see and learn more about climate change in Wales and adapt?

Thank you, Carolyn, for that question. It's good to hear about the work going on with the Denbighshire nurseries as well. We need lots of this work going on in all parts of Wales, and this consultation goes from the beginning of the nursery side, through the planting, the harvesting, the embedding, the construction, and the value added all the way through it. Just to make that clear: this isn't simply to do with planting of trees or one type of tree, this is the whole match here, because we see real potential in economic growth and jobs within this.

But you quite rightly mentioned the aspect of continuous cover and resilience, building resilience in. That's definitely part of the consultation and will need to be part of the strategy. So, the second priority discussed in the consultation addresses the need to increase resilience, promote diversity and to adapt our silvicultural systems, and we've got some specific proposals within the consultation that we want people to comment on, on how we futureproof our woodland and our forests. There are different types of silvicultural approaches to achieve different objectives over different timescales—it's not that there's one perfect one—so we need to make sure that we have that diversity in this, so that we can get the carbon sequestration, we can get the timber supplies coming on stream, but also have real diversity, real resilience, including species resilience, biodiversity and carbon sequestration.

We held a knowledge exchange event on 12 December last year. It was specifically focused on future productive species selection, timber properties, and, at that, we had the leading experts and a wide range of stakeholders to share best practice, but also the latest research—so, we had Forest Research, NRW, Bangor University were there, Woodknowledge Wales, Confor and other leading stakeholders. This, by the way, is part of a series of events we're running now of knowledge exchange events that we're going to be running, but it was fascinating to see this in the timber sector, talking about that resilience and diversity and future climate resilience as well.

Thank you to the Cabinet Secretary. I did get a bit worried during that statement on timber and forestry, because I could smell burning, but I've been reassured that it's a couple of toasted teacakes that have caught fire in the kitchen—[Laughter.]—and that all is resolved.

The next item, therefore, will be a statement by the Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice on Holocaust Memorial Day 2025, and I call on the Cabinet Secretary to make the statement—Jane Hutt.

Thank you, Llywydd. Next Monday is Holocaust Memorial Day, the annual day of commemoration where we remember the more than 6 million Jews and Roma murdered during the Holocaust, and the millions more killed because of Nazi persecution. We also remember those killed in the genocides that have followed, such as Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur.

This year’s Holocaust Memorial Day marks the eightieth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest Nazi concentration camp. To commemorate this significant anniversary, we've provided funding to the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust to undertake work and employ a support worker in Wales. For the past few months, they have been working with communities and organisations to plan and support commemorative activities across Wales, because we must never forget. A Conwy school is hosting a talk by a Holocaust survivor. The Art Central Gallery in Barry will host a Holocaust Memorial Day art exhibition, which will present a series of creations that consider trauma and loss. Swansea central library has organised a talk on the ‘Oral Histories of the Kindertransport in Wales’. Blaenau Gwent County Borough Council is hosting a live webinar for pupils across west Gwent, where they can hear the testimony of a Holocaust survivor, with an opportunity to ask questions.

Our funding enabled the trust to engage with Welsh communities and organisations as part of its arts and education project, ‘80 Candles for 80 Years’. Eighty communities and organisations from across the UK have each designed and created a bespoke candleholder to highlight the life of an individual or a community persecuted by the Nazis. The 80 candleholders are being showcased in a digital exhibition, bringing together a diverse range of stories. Three contributions from Wales will feature in the exhibition. Oriel Môn and Anglesey archives have looked at the life stories of Hendrik and Karel Lek, who fled Belgium and settled on Anglesey. HMP Berwyn’s Gypsy, Roma, Traveller group chose to focus on the Romani victims of Auschwitz-Birkenau, and organised workshops around the impact of Nazi persecution on the Gypsy, Roma, Traveller community. HMP Parc has focused on the life story of Helene Melaine Lebel, who was killed by the Nazi euthanasia programme. This contribution sought to raise awareness of the different communities that were persecuted, including disabled people.

2025 is also the thirtieth anniversary of the genocide in Bosnia. The massacre at Srebrenica was the largest incidence of mass murder in Europe since the second world war. We will remember the 8,000 Bosnian Muslims killed during the atrocities, as well as those who survived such inhumane treatment during the conflict.

Alongside the First Minister, I will be attending the Wales Holocaust Memorial Day ceremony. It is always a deeply moving ceremony, with invaluable contributions from survivors of genocide. This year, both the Holocaust survivor Eva Clarke and Safet Vukalić, a survivor of the Bosnian genocide, will speak at the ceremony. Representatives from the Jewish and Roma communities will participate in the national ceremony, as well as disabled people and LGBTQ+ people, who were also targeted through the Holocaust.

The First Minister will also attend the Holocaust Memorial Day event at the Senedd tomorrow afternoon. The event has cross-party sponsorship, once again reflecting the continued commitment and support of this Siambr for marking the day.

At 8 p.m. on Holocaust Memorial Day, the ‘light the darkness’ national moment will take place. People are invited to light candles and put them safely in their windows to remember those who were murdered during the Holocaust and subsequent genocides. Candles will also represent opposition to the prejudice and hatred that continue to exist today. Iconic buildings across Wales, including the Senedd and the National Library of Wales, will be lit up in purple.

This year, the theme for Holocaust Memorial Day is ‘for a better future’. The Holocaust Memorial Day Trust states on its website that

‘we all have an opportunity to take action for a better future. A better future where people are not suffering prejudice or persecution because of their faith, ethnicity or other characteristic.’

The trust highlights some important actions we can all take to tackle antisemitism and other forms of hate to create a better future: call out Holocaust or genocide denial and trivialisation when you see or hear it; use reputable, authoritative sources both to learn more about the Holocaust and genocides, and to share with others; report all hate crimes to the police or via support services. The Welsh Government fully endorses this call to action. It's vital that children and young people understand the reasons behind the Holocaust and the consequences of dehumanising sections of society. We continue to fund the Holocaust Education Trust to run the Lessons from Auschwitz project in Wales, which provides post-16 students with the opportunity to visit Poland and to hear directly from a Holocaust survivor. Students end the programme by outlining how they will share what they have learnt and experienced with their school and wider community.

Like the trust, we strongly encourage the reporting of hate crimes. These can be reported by contacting the police or via the Welsh Government-funded Wales Hate Support Centre run by Victim Support. The service offers free, confidential support and advocacy to all victims of hate crime, including a bespoke service for children and young people. The Welsh Government proudly maintains our strong stance: hate has no home in Wales. These principles are at the forefront of our 'Anti-racist Wales Action Plan' and LGBTQ+ action plan and forthcoming disability rights plan.

I will close this statement by thanking the many people across the UK who devote their time and effort towards raising awareness of Holocaust. Honouring the memories of those lost and keeping their stories alive is an important way to ensure that our social fabric remains strong. I would like to thank both the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust and the Holocaust Educational Trust for their vital work to help educate and commemorate. The Holocaust is still a living memory, and we're hugely grateful to the many survivors, including Eva and Safet, who travel around Wales sharing their warnings from their childhood and visions for an anti-racist and cohesive future.

I hope all Members will join with me today and on Monday to encourage Welsh communities to demonstrate their commitment by lighting up the darkness for a better future. Thank you.

Thank you, Cabinet Secretary, for your statement. As we prepare to mark the eightieth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest of the Nazi death camps, it's more important than ever that we learn the lessons of the Holocaust. In the aftermath of world war two, we learned that two thirds of all the Jewish people living in Europe and over a million people whom the Nazis disapproved of had been systematically murdered in vast death camps. The world said 'never again', and we mark the day the largest death camp was liberated on Holocaust Memorial Day so that we never forget. But far too many have forgotten, some going as far as denying the murder of 6 million Jews, 0.5 million Roma and Sinti people, as well as hundreds of thousands of gays, black people, disabled and the different.

We have to constantly remind people that not only did the Holocaust happen, but that it was not the end of genocide. In the years following the defeat of Nazi Germany, the world adopted the United Nations genocide convention, drawn up by Polish lawyer, Raphäel Lemkin. Lemkin was the first to coin the phrase 'genocide' and he repeatedly stated that early exposure to newspaper stories about Ottoman crimes against Armenians was key to his beliefs about the need for the legal protection of groups. While many nations still refuse to call the murder of hundreds of thousands of Armenian Christian people living in the Ottoman empire in 1915 and 1916 genocide, I believe this was the first genocide of the twentieth century.

On Holocaust Memorial Day, we remember those who died in the Holocaust, as well as the genocides in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia, Darfur and the Yazidi genocide. We said 'never again', yet genocides are still happening today. In Sudan, we see ever increasing instances of ethnic cleansing in the battle for Khartoum. In the middle east, we see a conflict that could become a genocide. Iranian-backed Hamas and Hezbollah have vowed to wipe Israel off the map and rid the region of Jews. On the other side, Israeli settlers are seeking to rid the land of Palestinians. At home, we see the rise of the far right and witness the failure of the flagship Prevent programme to stop Islamist terrorists like Axel Rudakubana.

Cabinet Secretary, I welcome the actions the Welsh Government are taking to keep the memory of the Holocaust alive so we never forget the atrocities, but if we are to secure a better future, do you agree that we have to tackle disinformation? What is the Welsh Government doing to ensure that hate is not amplified online, especially through artificial intelligence? Do you agree that teaching younger generations critical thinking skills is just as important as teaching them about the horror of the Holocaust?

I agree with your statement about genocide denial. Cabinet Secretary, what discussions have you had with UK Government Ministers about recognising the Armenian genocide and the Holodomor as genocides? Finally, Cabinet Secretary, how are you working with Muslim communities across Wales to raise awareness of the Bosnian genocide and their involvement in Holocaust Memorial Day? I look forward to marking Holocaust Memorial Day on Monday and working with you in lighting up the darkness for a better future. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Altaf Hussain; thank you so much for making such a strong statement this evening. As you said, it's more important than ever that we learn the lessons of the Holocaust. We know that commemorating the Holocaust is vital to ensure that we never forget how dangerous hateful and divisive narratives can be. It does remind us what can happen when people and communities are targeted and dehumanised simply because of who they are. Of course, the Holocaust didn't happen overnight; it began with a gradual erosion of human rights and divisive rhetoric against people who were different, or perceived to be different to others, and you've identified what that has meant, as I did in my statement.

I'm glad you raised the point about challenging misinformation. It is our duty and responsibility, I believe—for all of us here—to challenge misinformation and build community cohesion. Those are the safeguards to try to prevent this erosion of human rights ever happening here across Wales, and isn't it good, I've outlined how, across Wales, local authorities are engaging community groups, delivering a range of events for Holocaust Memorial Day.

Just on the point of the risk and impact of online hate and misinformation, of course, unfortunately—as you say, never more important than today that we're discussing this—it does continue to increase. It's vital that social media and technology companies do everything that they can to protect their users from online harms, such as hateful and misleading content. We are committed to working with the Office of Communications in their new capacity as regulators of online safety in the UK.

Educating young people plays a crucial role in creating a more informed and inclusive society, so I wanted to draw your attention to the 'Keeping safe online' area on Hwb for our schools. It's available as a source of support for schools and the wider community, and I urge people to access Hwb. It's designed to support online safety and education, hosting a suite of resources to address online hate, radicalisation and extremism. These resources can support educating young people to apply critical thinking skills, as you've identified—the need for this—and I think that this is happening through our new curriculum, but it will help those young people when engaging with online content.

Clearly, I am liaising with the UK Government on these issues as well, and, indeed, I'm looking forward to welcoming Lord Khan within the next two weeks, who has responsibility for community cohesion. He wants to see what we're doing in Wales—the Minister—and I look forward to discussing these issues with him. But, also, this is about what we do here in Wales, isn't it, working with our Muslim community, and the Muslim Council of Wales, who spoke up last week about the need for us to listen to each other and gain consensus. It was really very moving, when I went to the event on 30 December in the synagogue in Cardiff, that we actually were joined by interfaith representation at that event. I think it's really important that we recognise that we, in Wales, with our interfaith council and our community faith forum, have got a way of communicating and recognising what is happening to all communities across Wales, and what the awful events in the middle east have meant to those communities, as we said earlier on, and I'll be making a statement tomorrow on this.

'For a better future', a hopeful theme, but it's difficult to muster hope as we observe Holocaust Memorial Day in January 2025. It's 80 years since the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau. Hope in the face of Auschwitz can seem little more than an unfounded faith that the future will be an improvement on the past. The Nazi concentration camps have come to symbolise how antisemitism and prejudice led to an abyss that is hard to comprehend. Hard, yes, but perhaps not impossible, as we witness the dehumanisation of hundreds of thousands in Gaza and the sycophantic reporting on the rise of a white supremacist in the United States. There are undoubtedly grounds for pessimism, as we see hate, hostility and othering being instigated and inflamed in our politics and on social media, but it is at a time like this that we need hope, a faith in the future, more than ever. ‘For a better future’ is a necessary theme this year as we try and energise and organise our better selves.

One of the most influential of Welsh intellectuals, Raymond Williams, was himself a tank commander in the Normandy campaign in the second world war, and went on to Germany, and, as he pointed out, there were the millions who perished in the Nazi camps, and there were also those who gave their lives to rid the world of those who built those camps.

This year, as you said, marks the thirtieth anniversary of the genocide in Bosnia. Last summer, I visited Mostar, where the scars of the atrocities committed against people, not because of anything they had done, but because of who they were, are still visible in the landscape, and the wounds are still open in the community. It was a reminder that genocides can happen in every country, in every age, to every people, if the stages that lead to genocide are not addressed by the enforcement of international human rights and the rule of international law. It was also a reminder that Christians, Muslims and Jews, whose communities are all visible in Mostar, have also co-existed in states of peace and mutual respect.

When we remember the images of Auschwitz, of Srebrenica, we understand immediately that dehumanisation is an integral stage of genocide. It is when one life is deemed to have less worth than others by those who hold power and can command influence that genocide begins. And over the last year, we must add to those images the line after line of tiny shrouds, the patients burning alive in hospitals, families buried under buildings, the bombing of refugee camps and hospitals. We have witnessed nightly on our tv screens how the dehumanisation of the people of Gaza has led to atrocity on a scale that makes a better future feel like a distant hope, and the mantra 'never again' feel futile.

Human Rights Watch have highlighted how we heard Israeli politicians and military commanders say that the people of Gaza should have no future. There must be no food, no water, because they were fighting human animals. The whole Palestinian people were equated to Hamas, an entire population dehumanised, but the UK Government continued to arm Israel anyway. You talked about the importance of calling out genocide. I would like to pay tribute to all those Welsh citizens who have protested against that dehumanisation week after week, in every part of Wales, and here at the Senedd. They acted.

Thank you very much.

Thank you very much, Sioned Williams, for your very important statement.

A very powerful statement, again, and thank you for your questions. As you say, we have got to have faith in the future, 'for a better future'. Just responding to your questions, it is very important that our anti-hate crime communications campaign, Hate Hurts Wales, highlights to perpetrators or potential perpetrators the hugely negative impact of their actions on both the victim, the survivor, and their own lives, as well as highlighting the importance of bystanders in securing a positive outcome.

I think it's important to say that the power of victims' voices—we had a conference in November for people working in the public sector and public service practitioners—actually provides an insight into identity-based hate crime, and that's been informed by research by the Wales Hate Support Centre and also the awareness of lived experience advocacy forum. It is difficult to interpret hate crime statistics, but they show the fact that there is a 21 per cent increase in religious hate crime in Wales, the most recent, in comparison to the previous year. The increase may be related to the conflict in the middle east, but whatever happens in other parts of the world, of course, we will continue to promote work to bring all our communities together, and we acknowledge the work of faith leaders, and Jewish and Muslim communities in Wales, who've worked peacefully together over the past year. Many of us have interactions with them at different forums, but it's also obviously the right of people to show their voices in the way that they need to in Wales, and we respect that in terms of the engagement that we have.

It is vital that the UK and its allies continue to be at the forefront of crucial efforts to break the cycle of violence and secure long-term peace in the middle east, and I will say more in my statement tomorrow about ways in which we are particularly helping to support the humanitarian aid that must reach those innocent people, so many children in Palestine whose homes have turned into a war zone overnight, and so many have lost their lives.

And it is important—. I have made a very strong statement about recognition in terms of antisemitism. Our stance and our commitment are very clear here, and it is a clear understanding in our inter-faith communities, but also we stand firmly against any form of Islamaphobia and antisemitism. They're both forms of prejudice-related bullying. They've no place in any part of our society in Wales, and bullying and harassment in any form is unacceptable. We expect allegations and incidents of racism and racial harassment to be fully investigated by education settings, and appropriate action taken to address these. This, of course, all links, and you've mentioned our 'Anti-racist Wales Action Plan' and, indeed, the commitment to not only implementation of that but we have a goal in the plan to tackle Islamaphobia in all its forms, but also in our LGBTQ+ action plan. Again, those who suffered and were targeted by the Nazis included not only LGBTQ+ people but also Gypsy Roma communities.

Thank you, Cabinet Secretary, for bringing forward this very important statement today, 80 years on from the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau. I've visited Auschwitz with students from Wales, as I'm sure many other Members have done, and that was a deeply moving occasion, so I'm very pleased that the Government is continuing its support for the education programme. I've also visited Rwanda and saw first-hand the lasting effects of the genocide in that country.

And I do think it's important, as the Cabinet Secretary was just saying, that we remember every single person that was affected by the Holocaust, the 6 million Jews, the 500,000 Gypsies and Roma, the 300,000 disabled people, and so many thousands more people that were targeted because of their sexual orientation, or because of their religion, their political beliefs, their ethnicity.

And the theme, as has been said repeatedly today, of this year's Holocaust Memorial Day is 'for a better future', and if we're going to have a better future, we've got to be bold, we've got to challenge prejudice in all its forms, and we've got to call out injustice. So, I think the message is that we must do better, all of us individually and all of us collectively. So, what can the Welsh Government do to ensure that all our future generations learn from the past so that we can try to prevent the Holocaust and genocides happening in the way that they have done in the past?

Diolch yn fawr, Julie Morgan, and thank you for sharing with us your extensive experience, knowledge, understanding and awareness of the impact of genocide and what it means to every person, every individual. As I mentioned, those targeted were those who were deemed to be different. They are humanity. This is about humanity in all its wonderful diversity being affected. And also, from your experience of visiting countries like Rwanda, it's to understand and to learn those lessons for a better future.

It is important that we are continuing to fund the Holocaust Educational Trust, and you'll be aware of this, but many will have met the young people who come back. The Lessons from Auschwitz project offers 156 places every year to learners from sixth forms and further education colleges across Wales. I do remember Sam Kurtz previously reflected on the value he found in a visit as a schoolchild to Auschwitz, and, of course, learning about pre-war Jewish life, the former Nazi death and concentration camp, and then thinking what's important—back to the critical thinking—considering the contemporary relevance of the Holocaust. All student participants will become Holocaust Educational Trust ambassadors, and that influences their whole life choices and life experiences, and they do share, as ambassadors, their knowledge in Welsh communities. So, this is an investment in our young people, and also, as we've mentioned, in the curriculum as well, because I think this is something where tackling discrimination and racism means school leadership teams, teachers, other staff, learners and the wider school community play a critical role in delivering our vision for an anti-racist Wales education sector.

With this curriculum, let's remind ourselves, we're the first nation in the UK to make it mandatory to teach black, Asian and minority ethnic histories and experiences. It's a cross-cutting theme, diversity, for the new Curriculum for Wales, so that young people can learn to be ethically informed citizens. And I think many of you—if you haven't already—have visited schools where the diversity and anti-racist professional learning has helped the schools to learn how they can use those tools to carry out anti-racist practice, and I think it's very inspiring. I went to one just very recently in Cardiff where primary school children were so well informed, so educated, so questioning and so proud of their diversity in that school—you know, we can learn from them as well. But this is the context about 'for a better future'.

Can I thank you, Cabinet Secretary, for your statement today? It is really important that we make the most of these opportunities here in the Senedd and across Wales to remind people where hate and discrimination can eventually lead. And, given that it's the eightieth anniversary this year of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, I think it is appropriate that we have an annual statement in this Senedd and we are marking the events here tomorrow on a cross-party basis too. In fact, we have Paul Sved, a Holocaust survivor from Hungary, with us tomorrow, and I'm sure his remarkable story will be an inspiration to each and every one of us and will motivate us all to do everything that we can to prevent similar acts—horrific acts—from taking place in the future.

I think it is, obviously, the notable anniversary of the events in Srebrenica as well, 30 years ago. I want to put on record my interest as a friend of Srebrenica and the Remembering Srebrenica Wales organisation, and that too should cause us to reflect on those Muslim communities in Wales who are affected by hate and discrimination and racism around our country. These are things that we should never tolerate and that we should always call out whenever we see it.

But I did want to also take this opportunity just to put on record the relief that I have experienced as a result of the announcement of the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in the middle east, because we all know the toll that that was taking on everybody in the middle east—the Palestinian community, the Israeli community, and their loved ones around the world. I had the privilege of being able to visit Israel last April with two other Members of this Senedd, Sam Rowlands and Russell George, where we had the opportunity to learn more about the conflict, but also to meet some remarkable people who were family members of some of the hostages who are now in the process of being released. One of those individuals was Mandy Damari, whose daughter Emily was amongst the three that were released over recent days. She was a remarkably resilient woman. She had no idea whether her daughter was dead or alive, but she had an inner witness that she was still alive, and that kept hope alive in her. And to see her reunited with her daughter was something very, very special, but it reminds us also that there are Welsh families that are affected by this terrible situation—as I say, those who have family members on both the Palestinian and the Israeli side. The Brisley family, who came and shared their story in this Senedd last year, told us about Eli Sharabi, of course, whose wife and daughters were killed on 7 October. He remains in captivity. We don't know whether he's going to be part of this hostage deal, because the names are being agreed one by one as part of the release deal. His parents in law, Gill and Pete Brisley, of course, live in Pencoed, near Bridgend. They don't know if he's dead or alive. But, we have to give them hope that we in this Senedd are united in standing against the sorts of horrors that eventually lead to genocide, and eventually led to the Holocaust.

Thank you very much, Darren Millar. As you say, the eightieth anniversary, the 6 million killed—murdered—by the Nazis, this is what we will be reflecting on tomorrow. Importantly, it's a cross-party event tomorrow, and I have to say 'thank you' for, every year, bringing these events to the Senedd, and, of course, there will be the ceremony that we will be attending next Monday as well. But it is important that we can all express and share, as you have today, and we have today, relief, as we say, particularly on the ceasefire. I just wanted to say that that's something where I was very pleased, actually, to meet a cross-party group of Senedd Members—so Labour, Plaid Cymru and the Welsh Conservatives. We met to consider and reflect—it was Huw, Luke and Tim Giffard—and we reflected on the situation of Eli Sharabi, whose family lives in Wales, as you said. We join the international community in hoping that all hostages are released quickly and unharmed. It is important also that we recognise and that you'll see that we must do everything we can to support all the efforts to secure long-term peace in the middle east. Our attention must turn to how we can secure a permanently better future for the Israeli and Palestinian people, grounded in a two-state solution that will guarantee security and stability for Israel alongside a sovereign and viable Palestine state. It's not for us; we can reflect, but we need to acknowledge those goals and aims.

The genocide in Srebrenica, which so many here are involved in—I can see Jane, Mike, and others across this Chamber have spoken about it—we continue to not only remember the victims, survivors and the families, but also commending the work of Remembering Srebrenica Wales and the vital role they're playing, because they also, as you say, raise awareness of the consequences of hate and promote educational understanding to combat hatred and prejudice. So, as a result of you raising that issue, I will meet with them again to see how that work is being undertaken.

Finally, Delyth Jewell.

Diolch, Llywydd. We owe it to Jewish people everywhere never to forget the horrors of what happened during the Holocaust, and, of course, all those other communities affected so horrifically during that time. We owe it to them too to ensure that antisemitism today is called out and condemned. Jewish people living in our communities should not be made to answer for the actions of a Government thousands of miles away. I've spoken to Jewish people who have been afraid to wear the kippah or the star of David or who have been nervous when leaving the synagogue. This cannot be who we are. Whilst we welcome the fragile ceasefire in the middle east, whilst we feel relief that it has happened and anger that it has taken too long to come, do you agree that the need to guard against the rise of hatred in our communities has not become any less urgent, and that we owe it to our Jewish and Muslim brothers and sisters to show our solidarity with them now more than ever?

Diolch yn fawr, Delyth Jewell. We've been so concerned about reports of hate crime targeted towards Jewish people in communities in Wales. You know that we encourage people to report hate incidents, but also engaging with the communities, attending the synagogues and meeting with Jewish people, condemn vile hatred expressed by individuals. This is about creating a climate of fear, divisiveness, fragmenting our communities. And yet again, it is about us recognising that hate crime is also targeted at many of our Muslim friends and citizens as well. So, it is through education, again, that we believe that our children and young people will be growing up with that understanding of what we mean by a peaceful community—indeed, a nation of sanctuary.

I just want to finish, Llywydd, by saying that I'm looking forward to making a statement shortly on nation of sanctuary. I think we need to rethink and revisit this. It's a vision of Wales as a nation of sanctuary, because we believe that is what brings out the best in us, in terms of what we believe and what we hope for, for not just the people of Wales, but understanding all their relations, where they’ve come from, conflict, and that international perspective, which we've touched on today, thinking about and hoping for that peace to remain and to continue for our friends in the middle east.

I thank the Cabinet Secretary.

Item 8 is next, a statement by the Cabinet Secretary for Climate Change and Rural Affairs on water interruption in Conwy. I call on the Cabinet Secretary to make the statement—Huw Irranca-Davies.

Thank you, Llywydd. On Wednesday 15 January, Dŵr Cymru Welsh Water notified the Welsh Government of a mains water pipe burst near the Bryn Cowlyd water treatment works, Dolgarrog, Conwy. This was a substantial burst, presenting a complex fix in a very challenging location underneath Afon Ddu, and a major incident was declared.

The Welsh Government incident response was stood up on Wednesday 15 January to support Dŵr Cymru and the multi-agency north Wales strategic co-ordination group, led by north Wales fire and rescue. The response structure remained in place until today, and Welsh Government officials have been closely engaged throughout. By Sunday evening, almost everybody's water was back on, and the incident is now fully resolved. The incident affected many people in the Conwy valley, Llandudno and Colwyn Bay areas. Supplies for up to 40,000 properties were lost at the height of the incident, and some communities were affected for several days. This was a very serious incident. The loss of water supply for any extended period can have a very significant impact. It is distressing and it's concerning for all residents, and especially for those who are vulnerable or receiving health or care support.

I want to recognise the resilience of those communities who were affected, and to extend my sympathy for the difficult situation they have faced. But I also want to recognise the incredible way that people have pulled together to support each other in the face of these difficult circumstances. With the disruption to mains water supply, Dŵr Cymru provided emergency supplies focusing on health and care settings and those people on Dŵr Cymru's priority service list. Tankers were connected to two hospitals and two mental health units, enabling them to operate as normal throughout. The multi-agency response was critical in ensuring that vulnerable people and settings received water. I know that Conwy council and its councillors, Members in this Siambr and MPs have played a key role in guiding support to where it is most needed. Diolch yn fawr iawn.

On 17 January, bottled water stations were opened in Dolgarrog and Colwyn Bay, and later on in Conwy and Llandudno for members of the public. These have remained open until today. Supplies were also dropped at key locations in more remote communities, and as we moved into the weekend a small army of volunteers from public service partners and community groups helped to distribute water directly to those who needed it. Provision was also made to ensure farmers had access to water, which is critical at this time of year when cattle are likely to be indoors. My thanks go to the National Farmers Union and the Farmers Union of Wales, because they played a key role in communicating the location of those filling points. The incident has had a widespread impact on businesses and schools, which are now able to return to normal operations.

Given the scale of the incident, I met with the chief executive of Dŵr Cymru to be briefed on progress with the repair and the provision of water to people who had lost supply. In that meeting, I stressed the importance of clear messaging to the public and ensuring that emergency supplies are provided and accessible to all, and of ensuring that vulnerable customers are particularly supported. My colleague the Cabinet Secretary for Transport and North Wales visited the area and was briefed by Conwy council. I held a follow-up meeting with the chief executive of Dŵr Cymru yesterday to review progress on returning to normal operations, and to reflect on emerging learning. I also plan to visit affected communities in the coming days.

I want to put on record my thanks to the many organisations and volunteers who played a critical role in supporting communities throughout this incident. It has been a large-scale, multi-agency response. Dŵr Cymru, our blue-light services, our local authority colleagues, and community groups and volunteers have all played a key role, helping to distribute water and ensuring people were safe. It was a real team effort. I also want to thank those engineers who worked tirelessly for several days to get this fixed. Let me be very clear: this was really difficult work. To complete the job at one point, they were lying on their backs in freezing cold water, in the middle of the night, in a 12 ft hole under the Afon Ddu. It took a huge team of people, and some incredible logistical and engineering work, to get this fixed.

Dŵr Cymru have, quite rightly, announced arrangements for compensation available to residential and business customers, and the information can be found on their website. Now, as always in situations such as this, there will be lessons to learn. So, as we move into the recovery phase, Dŵr Cymru will be reflecting on the incident, identifying what worked well, and things we need to do better. I also intend to host a meeting with Dŵr Cymru and all the partners involved—as we did, indeed, following storm Bert and storm Darragh—to reflect on what could have been done differently, and how we can improve our preparedness and response for situations such as this in the future.

In response to the scale of the challenge that we face, we have jointly established, with the UK Government, an independent commission, chaired by Sir Jon Cunliffe, to undertake a wide-ranging review of the sector. I look forward to Sir Jon’s recommendations later this year. Once again I would like extend my thanks to all those in the local community and the many organisations and individuals who went to such great efforts to support those affected by this incident. Thank you.

Thank you for bringing your statement here today. I have to say that I genuinely believe that you mean well by reading out that statement, but you have to understand the severity of what happened. I know that we were all shocked by COVID, and that progressed over an amount of time, but suddenly we had an emergency situation where people didn't have water on Wednesday evening. You've just said that everybody's all back on now. Well, I can tell you that I'm still receiving concerns now.

It was disorganised chaos. We were assured that there was this gold command programme in place. As someone who used to be the cabinet member in Conwy for public protection, I've attended events with the Ministry of Defence on resilience and emergency planning, and I've got to be honest, I was shocked to see that it was all an afterthought. The reason that I ended up getting a pallet of water—. There was nowhere in Llandudno for people—our care homes, our GP surgeries, our shops and businesses, our elderly, our mothers with babies to make formula milk. It was horrendous. It's probably the most heartbreaking experience that I've ever witnessed—not as a politician, but as an individual. I can't emphasise enough just how upsetting it was, and how people have been left traumatised by it, because some of them were off not just Wednesday, or Thursday, or Friday, but Saturday, Sunday—all that time, wondering where they were going to get water from. It was a humanitarian crisis. Darren Millar said that to Peter Perry, the chief executive of Dŵr Cymru, when we spoke with him.

I've had a four-page letter identifying their own concerns about, I suppose, their own handling of it. But when they say that these organisations get together—. I'd like, in some ways, Cabinet Secretary, to speak to you again on this, because it was just horrendous. Let's all be clear, it was not a disruption or interruption, as it says in the item on the agenda today; these were people who were unable to access any clean water, unable to wash themselves or bathe, unable to make up baby milk. You said about our farmers, and you made it sound as though our farmers were well looked after. A lady previously, the previous week, when she'd been without water, lost her horse through dehydration. I had farmers contacting me, and they were told, 'Go out and buy bottles of water and give us the receipts.' Do you have any idea how much one cow drinks? It was just unbelievable. Residents unable to get out of their homes were told over the phone by Welsh Water to go out and procure their own. All of the stores had sold out.

There was the dangerous decision to provide only two water stations for 40,000 people, until Darren Millar and I said, 'It's not enough.' Residents were queueing in cars for hours on end, causing road blocks, North Wales Police were issuing warnings on social media. Major towns such as Llandudno, Llanrwst, Conwy and more were contacting us, 'Where's the water for our community?' It was horrendous. When the station in Conwy town was opened, it had to be suspended because of the volume of demand. The biggest issue was a lack of information from Dŵr Cymru or, in some respects, contradictory information. There was not a well-organised emergency resilience plan in place at all.

You need to ask the question now, Janet.

—can get £345,000 and other packages making £0.5 million, it is an insult to offer my businesses £75 for 12 hours. We're still seeing—

Janet, you need to ask your question, please.

Yes. We've now got pollution incidents, Darren, as of today, in your constituency and mine—there's all this overspill now causing lots of pollution. This was an unmitigated disaster. It cannot be allowed to happen again. Minister, I'll just say this: I was disgusted—no message from the First Minister, just a message of support to my residents. Saturday was rather late. This started on Wednesday, so what you did behind the scenes certainly wasn't translated to people in my community.

Janet, I've been generous. You need to stop now.

Well, you can understand I'm very, very upset.

I can understand, but you also had time to do that.

Yes, okay. But, very, very disappointed. We now know that the north-south divide exists.

Well, that I deeply regret in a closing comment, and I think I could see the way that was heading all the way through it. And it is disappointing, because I did point out in my opening remarks my thanks to those colleagues on the ground who were able to assist the response on the ground by directing where water could go, bottled water and so on. But what I also regret is the tone in which there’s a direct attack on the lack of planning, lack of foresight, lack of awareness. I agree with you in that this has had a devastating impact on the communities affected. But let me be crystal clear, the response was set up from the moment this emerged as a problem. The strategic response group on the ground—. You’re shaking your head.

We didn't hear of it.

Janet, you're shaking your head. I'm telling you to your face that the strategic response group was in place from the start of this incident. What changed, Janet, if you will just listen rather than shake your head and contradict me, is that initially—

[Inaudible.]

Let's have an end to this conversation across the Chamber. You've had a chance to ask your questions and you now need to respond to those questions.

Dirprwy Lywydd, what I'll try and do is speak to the Chamber, rather than to Janet directly, and to the constituents out there who were affected. This escalated from 8,000 at the initial assessment of who were affected very rapidly to 30,000, and at the height of it became 40,000. Throughout the whole of that, the strategic response group was in place, and that includes the blue light authorities, the local authorities, as well as Dŵr Cymru. I noticed a lot of the contribution focused entirely on Dŵr Cymru and on individuals within Dŵr Cymru, but actually there’s a wider response there. And that was not only in place in advance but was escalated as the situation escalated as well.

Just to remind people as well, it was extremely challenging given the location of the burst pipe in a high pressure main. The size of the network impacted was nearly 900 km when the full scale of this emerged, which was not the original anticipated scale of the problem. Welsh Government activated its civil contingencies response on Wednesday evening in support of the multi-agency north Wales strategic co-ordination group, Janet, being led by the North Wales Fire and Rescue Service, Janet. It was right that DC/WW, Dŵr Cymru, initially prioritised alternative supply to vulnerable groups and locations such as hospitals given the sector-wide issues with alternative water supply.

A couple of other things in response. During the incident, I mentioned that I met the chief executive of Dŵr Cymru—one of the things that was clear from the moment go was that this was progressively worsening, the scale of the impact and the number of people involved, and that's why it was then ramped up. And some of the problems with the initial communication, from what I've heard back from the responders, as opposed to just Dŵr Cymru alone, was that, as this grew, the communication had to be adjusted to reflect that it was now in a much wider geographical area, there were more people affected, and also the response had to be adjusted to that—as to where the distribution centres were, how many care centres were impacted, which, at one point, was around 60 care homes as well.

I note your points, Janet, in terms of compensation and so on, but just to be clear as well, it isn't simply the normal compensation. Dŵr Cymru have made very clear that, if there are businesses that are more significantly affected, and have had their trade really affected, they need to make that aware to Dŵr Cymru, who will look at it on a case-by-case basis. They may have informed you of that, and you didn't reflect it in your comments, so I'm just putting that clarity here as well.

We are keen, by the way, Dirprwy Lywydd, always, as I said in my opening remarks, to learn the lessons from any incident like this. Having said that, I think we do need to be very clear that this was not an incident that the responders on the ground knew, from the moment it started, was going to affect 40,000 and more people and businesses. It grew into that and they had to adjust their plans in going on. But the criticism that there was no plan in place, and that there was no multi-agency joined-up response, is a complete fallacy.

It's just under a year, actually, it's 11 months, since the Climate Change, Environment and Infrastructure Committee reported on Dŵr Cymru's performance. The report followed what was then the latest performance report from NRW and Ofwat, and they showed, of course, a worrying decline in Dŵr Cymru's performance in terms of its environmental performance. The company fell to a two-star rating, having previously been rated four star, and its overall performance was categorised as lagging by Ofwat, for the second year in a row, and since our report, of course, the picture hasn't improved.

Now, water supply interruptions is one of the key problem areas when it comes to Dŵr Cymru's performance. Ofwat's latest performance report shows Dŵr Cymru is one of the worst-performing companies across England and Wales when it comes to supply interruptions. The chief executive of Dŵr Cymru told the committee that supply interruptions is one of its real challenges. Water mains in some parts of Wales are, of course, at the end of their life, and they need replacing, which will be a costly process and it'll take time to do that, and that is, of course, of little comfort, I suppose, to those who are left without water because of the recent incident in Conwy. Dŵr Cymru is planning record levels of investment over the next five years. In agreeing its investment plans, Ofwat has set a challenging target for the company to deliver a 79 per cent reduction to water supply interruptions from its current performance, and I have to say that the committee expects Dŵr Cymru to rise to that challenge and, indeed, the committee will revisit Dŵr Cymru's performance as we go along in the coming months.

Now, I want to put on record as well my thanks to everyone who was part of the response, from the engineers, as you mentioned, Cabinet Secretary, to the blue light services, the local authority, community groups and all those volunteers who stepped up and stepped forward to help. But three points—or three questions, maybe—from me. First of all, on system resilience. It's alarming, isn't it, that a single solitary burst pipe could cause such widespread disruption. You mentioned the 900 km of network that was knocked out by that one single burst pipe—13 underground storage tanks, 40,000 homes, 40 schools closing, hundreds and hundreds of businesses impacted. So, do you agree with me that this again, doesn't it, raises serious questions about the resilience of our water infrastructure, and what, therefore, is your expectation, when it comes to Dŵr Cymru's action, to try and improve that clearly fragile infrastructure that they're grappling with?

Secondly, I will raise contingency planning. Now, I think what we've seen has highlighted significant shortfalls. You're right to say that people stepped up, and those who responded did so to the best of their abilities, but I question whether the contingency planning before was sufficiently effective. Securing and distributing bottled water, of course, has been an issue. The logistics in terms of the distribution points, and communication as well around all of that, I think, was an issue. So, what's your message to Dŵr Cymru regarding its contingency planning, and what would you expect of it in terms of its readiness for similar incidents in future? And, thirdly, I'll come to the compensation as well for those affected—£30 for every 12 hours without water for eligible households and £75 for business customers, with, of course, an option to claim for additional losses, although that didn't initially land in terms of public awareness of what was available. So, what discussions have you had, or maybe other Ministers and Cabinet Secretaries within the Government have had, with Dŵr Cymru regarding that level of proposed compensation, and what is your expectation, particularly for those businesses who have lost thousands and thousands of pounds, many of them? How can we make sure that there's clarity and accessibility around procedures and processes to make sure that they get the compensation that they deserve? Because the people of Conwy deserve answers, they deserve assurances that this won't happen again. Certainly the committee will play our part in scrutinising Dŵr Cymru and raising many of these questions.

Llyr, thank you very much, and I welcome the oversight of this and also of wider matters to do with the water industry that the Climate Change, Environment and Infrastructure Committee can do under your stewardship. That is very welcome. I've said already that there will be review points as well of this incident, including one that we're quite keen to do ourselves, in the same way that we did after storm Bert and storm Darragh, because of the benefit of being in it at a relatively early time where it's fresh in people's minds to see what were the takeaways, what worked, what didn't work and so on.

On the issue of compensation, I am pleased that Dŵr Cymru have acknowledged the scale of the impact of this on businesses. I'll take the message back to them on how they work to get that message out there even more widespread, and I think we probably collectively have a role to help in doing that.

On the contingency planning, I've mentioned the plans and the standing up immediately when we knew the scale of this, and the role of Welsh Government in that, but also, on the ground, the local response, the multi-agency response. We shouldn't get our minds away from the fact that this at one point was, in the scale purely of water delivery—put aside the tankers for a moment that were delivering to hospitals and to a few care homes as well—we were talking about 450,000 bottles a day. Now, part of the contingency planning is actually the mutual aid principle between different water companies. Only in a few days, literally the days and weeks before, there'd been an impact in another area of the country, where Dŵr Cymru and others had all stepped in to give their supplies to another company, and then found that they were without. So, I can understand from the public's point of view that they go, ‘Why can't they just—? Where is this?’ Well, because everybody had emptied down to another area, including Dŵr Cymru, and then they had to backfill. But those are things that we need to learn going forward as well.

Just on the issue of it being the condition of the network, this massive network—it went at such a critical point under a river, making it difficult, but also that then led to an escalation around the wider network up to those hundreds of kilometres. One of the things that Dŵr Cymru have said is they've done the initial repair, which has held, and everybody now is back on. There were some air locks in the system as well, which meant some smaller areas blew, but they've been repaired as well. And bearing in mind that this is a relatively recent pipe—1990s; this is not a Victorian-era pipe—this was to do with, actually, movement under the ground, and a boulder hitting against the pipe after the recent weather we've had. So, we're going to need to be more climate resilient. But what they are planning to do is not now rely on one crossing of the Afon Ddu, so they’re going to look at, now that this is settled, going back in at the right time and actually put in a second crossing, which will help. But this is not an old antiquated part of the system there.

I'd also like to thank the Cabinet Secretary for north Wales and Councillor Emily Owen, who kept me updated, and also all the wonderful people who rallied round helping the community and all the vulnerable people, and also all those who spent long hours remediating the situation. But lessons do need to be learned. I understood that Dŵr Cymru were good at getting their pipes fixed, but terrible in supplying water, which they're legally obliged to do within 12 hours. They originally said that there was none available where people—. Well, the deputy leader knew that Costco had 48 crates and more could be delivered quickly as well. There's a rumour as well that a leak was known and reported two weeks beforehand. Is this true and, if that's the case, why didn't they have water in place already?

There was a gap in communications and that does get filled then on social media with people worrying. So, the line of public communications was poor. They should have been communicating with the leader and chief exec of the council because they would have helped them as to where they should have set up the water stations. A water station was set up in the wrong place or inadequate place. So, they need to work their way through that.

And you need to conclude now, please.

Okay. I'll just ask one more question, please. Is it possible to have a shared list of vulnerable people, should the water go off? So, for example, there's a list with Scottish Power should there be a power cut. They know who are vulnerable. So, is it possible to have a shared list with utility companies? I'm not sure about data protection, but is that possible? Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, Carolyn. On that specific point, it's a lesson of storm Darragh as well in a very different context. Dŵr Cymru, of interest to the Chamber, had, at the start of this incident, roughly speaking, 3,500 people within the affected area who were on their priority 1 vulnerable customers list. By the end of this, when they opened up their phone lines to actually say to people, 'We're being told that you're not on it, let us know', it was over double that. It was over double that. Now, we've heard similar in other multi-agency responses on the ground; you have a social services list, you have other lists of vulnerable customers. They're all slightly different and, of course, you do have data protection rules.

But this is an area that we're quite interested in, about how can we ensure that these lists are at least as up to date as possible, can be co-ordinated where possible, respecting data protection of the individual as well, or at least that there can be rapid sharing of who's got what list at the time an incident like this happens, bearing in mind this escalated on the Wednesday evening rapidly to affect other areas.

You also mentioned there about the engagement with the local authority, and I think this will be part of understanding the lessons, going forward, because there was engagement. The question is, in a situation like this, where it escalates rapidly from 8,000 affected customers to 32,000, taking in greater geographic areas, taking in more individual elected representatives, council leaders and so on, it's a good thing to look at, to say, 'How in that situation did the communication work effectively, or is there more to be learnt as well?'

Just to say that, in terms of communication with customers, what we understand from Dŵr Cymru comms team is that they mobilised from the word 'go' to communicate the situation with customers. Between six and eight o'clock, all customers were sent messages, starting with vulnerable customers. Social media was updated, statements were issued to the media. At the early point, they were hopeful of actually doing a repair on that day and fixing it, and that would be the end of it, but it didn't—it enlarged. So, once they confirmed that the repair would take longer and the recharge would take at least 48 hours, they issued a further statement.

The challenge is, I think, if you've got an escalating problem like this, how do you make sure that the communication channels are clear and there's one source of truth, if you like? And I think there's the challenge. That will be one of the lessons to be learnt.

Thank you, Cabinet Secretary, for your statement, and I want to put on record my thanks to you and to the Cabinet Secretary for north Wales for getting in touch to try to understand better what was happening on the ground in my constituency, and, I have to say, it was chaos. We often take for granted, don’t we, the clean water that comes from our tap, that fills our baths, that operates our showers, that we wash our pots with and flush our loos with, but you can imagine the disruption that our constituents faced when they were offline from being able to flush a loo for up to five days; it was horrible. Many of those customers were indeed vulnerable and what we tried to do, as soon as we understood the growing nature of the problem in our constituency, was to, obviously, have conversations with Welsh Water—urgent talks—to find out what was going on and what we could do to help them get their messages out, but there were mixed messages, I’m afraid. We were told to encourage people to register on the priority register. We had constituents then phoning to register and being told, 'There’s no point, it’ll take a few days to get on, just go and help yourself to some bottled water.' We had housebound residents that were not able to get water for three days. I had one constituent, she phoned three times, and it wasn’t until Saturday morning, at 2 o’clock in the morning, that she had a knock on the door with bottles arriving. Now, clearly, that’s not good enough. There were care homes that didn’t get supply quickly enough of even bottled water, let alone being put back on the mains. And it was 100,000 people—. It may have been 40,000 customers, but it was 100,000 people, ultimately, that were affected by these problems.

Now, you made reference to the mutual aid between the different water companies. Clearly, that system doesn’t work. We’ve seen that it was clearly insufficient to be able to deal with the scale of this particular problem. We were told that there were sourcing issues, in terms of trying to get bottled water, and yet it seemed that local retailers were able to find it very, very easily in order to refill their shelves. So, there’s clearly a challenge there to Welsh Water about how they handle those supply chains.

I want to put on record my thanks to the emergency responders and to the teams that worked hard to fix things. But I’m afraid that the whole way that the emergency response kicked in was insufficient, Cabinet Secretary: schools didn’t get their supplies, that causes disruption then for parents not being able to go into work because they’ve got childcare issues to sort out—

Darren, I've been generous now.

I appreciate that. There are just two other points I want to make, and I’ll make them briefly, because I know lots of people have spoken. Park home sites, Cabinet Secretary—. So, park home sites are sites where the business owner is the only customer and then he supplies the park home residents on that site. They’re residential people, some of them with severe needs, but they didn’t get the priority response that they needed.

We also know that the chief executive didn’t get out to actually visit the community at all throughout the whole duration of this exercise. Now, forgive me for saying this, but someone who’s on a package of over £500,000 a year who can’t be bothered to get up and speak to the customers that are being affected by the shambles in terms of the response to the situation with the supply of water is completely unacceptable.

Darren.

So, I would ask you—I would ask you those two things—what are you going to do about the park homes in the future and the schools, making sure that they are priorities, and ensuring that the chief executive takes this situation seriously enough to engage directly with those customers on the ground in the middle of an emergency of this scale?

Darren, thank you very much, and, just to say two very brief things: one is, if you have got really specific examples, raise them directly with Dŵr Cymru. Thank you for the conversation, because I went back and said, ‘Look, we’ve got some concerns that an individual or some individual care homes didn’t get it, or didn’t get it until later than others and so on’, and the park home issues as well—. But I think what would be helpful is to get the specifics to Dŵr Cymru so they can deal with it, and I would say that to all Members as well. But thank you for the conversation we had, because it was helpful to try and raise some of these concerns.

On park home sites, I know that one of the things you raised with me is, ‘What about the payment?’, because if you’ve got £35 to residences and £75 to businesses, well, they’re not actually the metered individuals; it’s the owner of the site who is. So, I have raised that, and I know that Dŵr Cymru will be listening to this, so they can go back to you with greater clarity. But, essentially, there will be a payment to every individual park home resident, but it needs to go through the metered bill payer. But there will be an obligation on them to convey that to the individual residents on that site, I can assure you.

But, look, on any other aspect, I've been very clear today and honest: there will be lessons to learn from this—there will, undoubtedly—but let's do that in the proper process. And then, what I'm keen to do is to try and encourage those who are involved with the response, including the local authorities, but also Dŵr Cymru and others, to give a proper briefing on that, and the lessons learnt, because there will be things to improve; there should be things to improve whenever we see something like this. And I'd like them to do that face-to-face with Members and others who've been raising the concerns. Rather than me trying to explain, I think let's, now that they're moving into the recovery phase, which is good, give them a little time to do that, make sure everything is sorted, and then I would be keen to play my part in inviting them, then, to give a proper debrief to everybody. So, you can again raise these questions, the valid questions that have been raised, and say, 'Well, how do we avoid it happening again?' Whether it's to do with the quality of the infrastructure, the response, the number of bottles, how does the mutual aid principle work, can we improve it? Because, if we can improve it, it won't be a question just for Dŵr Cymru; it'll be the whole UK system of mutual aid and so on. But they're all valid questions; let's see if we can get the answers, going forward.

And finally, Sam Rowlands.

Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. I just want to echo the comments made by colleagues on the severity of the issue from last week with the burst mains water pipe. I think Darren Millar pointed out that, whilst it was 40,000 properties affected, it could well have been up to 100,000 people. I'm not sure that's been properly understood or appreciated, the actual scale of this issue, let alone the businesses and, in particular, farmers and suchlike, supporting their livestock when water wasn't available to them. I'd also like to add my thanks to the support given by those in the communities, volunteers in particular, who went out of their way to make sure their neighbours were looked after and they were doing their part to make people's lives that little bit better during this crisis.

We have touched on it already—

You need to ask a question, because I've given your colleagues ample time; you need to ask your question now, please.

I thought this was a 45-minute debate.

You know the time allocations per speaker, Janet. And therefore, you need to ask your question now, please.

It's not enough.

So, the brief question I have, then, Cabinet Secretary, is in relation to the vulnerable list and vulnerable people. There's clearly a deficit there of knowledge, of knowing who would be eligible for this support. I wonder whether you could reflect on how that will change in the future—and quickly as well. Lessons learned can often take far too long to come through. This showed a real weakness in knowing who's vulnerable in our communities and how we can get the support to them as quickly as possible when necessary.

Well said.

Yes, thank you, and that's a really helpful question. As I've mentioned before in response, it went up from just over 3,500 customers at the start of this event, to, when the phone lines were open to say, 'Please register if you also think you are vulnerable', more than double that. It went up from 8 per cent of customers to over 16 per cent of customers within a 24-hour period. So, there is a question there about why people had chosen not to identify themselves as priority 1 vulnerable. But the other related question is: is there something that can be done, whilst guarding properly data protection and the rights of an individual's privacy, to access those other lists that are available—social services, other utility companies and so on? Now, I'm not saying there's an easy fix, but I've seen this in two recent incidents now. So, I think there is a piece of work that I know that the responders are very keen to engage with, to see if there's a way that we could more rapidly identify not just Dŵr Cymru's vulnerable list, but who else would identify as vulnerable, and would it be relevant to use that information in a situation like this. It is a genuine question, because when you look at doubling the number of the people who rang and said, 'I want to be on that list', it raises interesting questions as to why they weren't on it to start with, and how we can make that easier.

Thank you, Cabinet Secretary.

Item 9 is the Council Tax Reduction Schemes (Prescribed Requirements and Default Scheme) (Miscellaneous Amendments) (Wales) Regulations 2025. I call on the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Welsh Language to move the motion—Mark Drakeford.

Diolch yn fawr, Dirprwy Lywydd. Well, every year, for more than a decade, the Welsh Government has placed regulations in front of the Senedd to ensure that the sums used in calculation of council tax benefit are routinely updated and to ensure that the support we provide to households keeps pace with changes in other welfare benefits. I hope that the Senedd will agree to do that again this year, given the scale and significance of the assistance offered to poorest households through the council tax benefit scheme.

Each year, as well, we take the opportunity to ensure that the regulations are amended to make sure that we keep pace with other changes being made in the UK benefit system, and, where we can, to make the scheme easier to access and simpler to administer. The regulations in front of the Senedd this year ensure that a person in receipt of universal credit can be recognised as such by a local authority as having made an application for a council tax reduction, consistent with the benefits charter work that my colleague Jane Hutt has been undertaking.

Can I thank the Legislation, Justice and Constitution Committee for its consideration of the regulations? No regulations, of course, have been signed until the Senedd comes to its determination. Should the regulations be approved by the Senedd, then corrections will be contained in the version that I will then sign, reflecting the advice of the committee, and of course, I will respond to the letter from the Chair of the committee to confirm the same. I ask Senedd Members to approve these regulations today.

I call on the Chair of the Legislation, Justice and Constitution Committee—Mike Hedges.

Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. The Legislation, Justice and Constitution Committee considered these draft regulations last week. I thank the Cabinet Secretary for the response the committee received to its report.

The committee's report contained a single technical reporting point, which highlights potentially defective drafting in relation to amendments being made to the Welsh language text of the council tax reduction scheme and the prescribed requirements of the regulations in 2013. As set out in the committee's report, the issue here is that, in the past, the bilingual 2013 regulations were amended by a UK statutory regulation, amended only in the English language text, and not the Welsh. The amendments that are now being made by these regulations assume that a Welsh language text has also been amended. As such, amendments to the Welsh text are not quite correct. The Welsh Government agrees with the committee, and is proposing to correct the errors prior to making the regulations, subject to the Senedd's decision this afternoon.

Now, while the committee acknowledges this response from the Government, in order to correct the issue, we identified a new subdivision of text is required to be added to the regulations after the draft has been approved by the Senedd. It may be that it was clear in the draft regulations that were laid that the intention was for the Welsh and English text to have the same meaning. Therefore, the corrections proposed are technically non-substantive, even if the textual changes required appear substantive. I'd welcome the Cabinet Secretary addressing this in his closing remarks, and stating whether this is indeed the Welsh Government's view.

Unfortunately, the committee is of the view that there's a problem with the Government's planned corrections. The Government plans to insert a new subparagraph (iii) into regulations 5(e), 8(e) and 17(b). Whilst this works in relation to the first two regulations, this doesn't work for the final regulation, as regulation 17 does not contain roman numeral subparagraphs. Instead, the committee believes that a new regulation 17(c) would need to be inserted. We wrote to the Cabinet Secretary yesterday afternoon to draw his attention to this matter.

In closing, amendment of the draft regulation after Senedd scrutiny and approval, and prior to making, is an important matter.

The Cabinet Secretary to reply to the debate.

Diolch yn fawr, Dirprwy Lywydd. I thank the Chair of the LJC committee for the detailed and technical work that they've carried out on the regulations. It's the Government's belief that the amendments we will make to the regulations to be signed will be sufficient to deal with the substance of the points that the committee has made for this year.

There are some wider considerations in the way that Mike Hedges has explained, and the Government will look to deal with those wider issues in regulations that will come before the Senedd this time next year. For the moment, the regulations will be effective next year; they will allow local authorities to administer the scheme efficiently and effectively, and most importantly, it will ensure that, for recipients of this benefit, its real value will be retained. I ask the Senedd to approve the regulations this afternoon.

The proposal is to agree the motion. Does any Member object? No. The motion is therefore agreed in accordance with Standing Order 12.36.

Item 10 is the Land Transaction Tax (Modification of Special Tax Sites Relief) (Wales) Regulations 2025. And I call on the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Welsh Language to move the motion—Mark Drakeford.

Diolch yn fawr, Dirprwy Lywydd. These regulations amend Schedule 21A to the Land Transaction Tax and Anti-avoidance of Devolved Taxes (Wales) Act 2017 to extend the LTT special tax sites relief to the special tax sites designated by the UK Government in relation to the Ynys Môn free port. Colleagues will remember that parallel regulations were brought in front of the Senedd before Christmas to extend that relief to the Celtic free port, while further work continued to place the Ynys Môn free port in the same position. That work has now been completed.

If the Senedd approves the regulations today, relief for transactions in the new Ynys Môn free port area will come into force on Thursday, 23 January. This will align with the UK Government's coming-into-force date of their special tax site designation regulations for the Ynys Môn free port, meaning that all tax incentives will be available on the same date, and the Ynys Môn free port will be able to benefit from those advantages in the way that the Celtic free port is already able to do.

Once again, I'm grateful to the LJC committee for their work, and I ask Members to approve these regulations.

I have no further speakers. Cabinet Secretary, would you like to add anything?

No, thank you.

The proposal is to agree the motion. Does any Member object? No. The motion is therefore agreed in accordance with Standing Order 12.36.

Item 11 is the Land Transaction Tax (Tax Bands and Tax Rates) (Wales) (Amendment) Regulations 2024. And I call on the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Welsh Language to move the motion—Mark Drakeford.

Diolch yn fawr, Dirprwy Lywydd. In the draft budget published in December, I set out details of the Welsh Government plans for expenditure in the coming financial year and also for how we will live up to our responsibilities in raising revenue to support those spending priorities.

In respect of land transaction tax, I announced that the higher residential rate of LTT would be increasing by 1 percentage point across all bands, creating a 5 percentage point surcharge over the rates payable by other homebuyers. The regulations increase the rates that apply to the higher residential rates, and those are rates charged on additional residential properties bought by individuals who already own a dwelling, for example, second homes and buy-to-let properties, and also apply to companies buying dwellings.

These changes mean that the rates of LTT in Wales are once again broadly comparable to the rates of stamp duty land tax in England and Northern Ireland. That decision will raise an additional £7 million in the coming financial year for investment in Welsh public services, and protects the Welsh budget against the adverse impact of a block grant adjustment that would otherwise apply with a raise in the taxation rate in England and Northern Ireland, but no such rise here in Wales. The regulations make no changes to the LTT main residential rates.

The regulations came into effect on 11 December under the made-affirmative procedure, but for the changes to have permanent effect, Senedd approval is required for these amendment regulations. Just to provide Senedd Members with the knowledge that transitional rules were provided for those buyers who exchanged contracts before the rates changed, but who completed after the new rates took effect. Those taxpayers will be able, other than where that contract has been varied, to pay tax based on the rates in force when they exchanged contracts.

Again, Dirprwy Lywydd, I'm grateful to the Legislation, Justice and Constitution Committee for its report, and I ask Members to support these regulations.

I'll just speak briefly to the proposal in front of us here today. Our Welsh Conservative group will be opposing this amendment to the regulations. As the Cabinet Secretary has outlined, a further increase to the higher rates on residential property transactions is something that we do not support. We believe that people are already taxed to a sufficient, significant level across Wales, and whilst the Cabinet Secretary outlined some of the people who would be impacted by this, such as second home owners and buy-to-let property potential landlords, there are other people also caught up in this particular tax, such as a parent or grandparent, perhaps, seeking to support their child or grandchild with a purchase of a property if they themselves are already property owners.

And when we look at the amounts here, whilst this is a 1 per cent increase on each of those bands, when we’re looking at average house prices in Wales now creeping up to around £250,000, that particular bracket is now a 10 per cent bracket in terms of the impact of the land transaction tax for those higher rates.

So, we fundamentally do not believe that this is the right thing to do. The tax burden continues to increase on people in Wales, and we’ll object to this particular amendment here today. Diolch yn fawr iawn.

The Cabinet Secretary to reply.

Well, I understand the points that Sam Rowlands has made, Dirprwy Lywydd, because they are a difference of principle between the Welsh Conservative party and those on these benches. We believe in progressive taxation, and the Welsh Conservative party does not. The number of transactions that the higher rate affects is a small minority of transactions as a whole, and these are all transactions being undertaken by people who have the broadest shoulders.

Were the Welsh Government not to increase rates in line with increases in England and Northern Ireland, as I explained in opening, Dirprwy Lywydd, not only would we lose the £7 million that will now be available for investment in Welsh public services, but the block grant adjustment would assume that we were doing it and we would lose money in that way too. In fact, the £7 million we raise will only just about cover the adverse block grant adjustment. So, a decision to vote against the regulations today is not simply a decision to leave the £7 million without its impact on Welsh public services, but would double the adverse impact by leaving us vulnerable to that block grant adjustment.

Those who will pay are those most able to pay. There is no evidence from previous years that these rates have an adverse impact on people’s ability to operate in that part of the market, and, once again, I ask Members to support these progressive regulations.

The proposal is to agree the motion. Does any Member object? [Objection.] There are objections. I will therefore defer voting under this item until voting time.

Item 12 is next, the Greenhouse Gas Emissions Trading Scheme (Amendment) Order 2025. And I call on the Cabinet Secretary for Climate Change and Rural Affairs to move the motion—Huw Irranca-Davies.

Diolch, Dirprwy Lywydd. I’m pleased to be able to bring forward the Greenhouse Gas Emissions Trading Scheme (Amendment) Order 2025, which makes amendments to the Greenhouse Gas Emissions Trading Scheme Order 2020, and I move the motion.

The UK emissions trading scheme remains one of our most powerful tools to decarbonise industries in Wales and the UK and to tackle the climate emergency. So, making sure that it is operating in the most effective way is paramount. Now, the amendments made by this legislation help to ensure that the allocation of free allowances within the UK emissions trading scheme is more effectively targeted. This change also retains the flexibility to fully allocate free allowances when operators cease operations, to enable decarbonisation investments to be delivered, recognising and supporting the decarbonisation incentive of the UK ETS.

So, in short, Dirprwy Lywydd, the Order changes how free allowances are allocated in the final year of operation, if an installation or sub-installation permanently ceases operation, basing the entitlements on actual activity levels rather than historic activity levels. Operators ceasing operations to implement decarbonisation investments can still receive full allowances if they provide sufficient evidence that the closure was due to decarbonisation. It also updates the definition of 'permanent cessation' to capture scenarios where temporary cessation of an activity becomes permanent. And we sought advice from our statutory advisers, the Climate Change Committee, on the proposals covered in the Order.

And, just finally, as always in these matters, can I thank the Legislation, Justice and Constitution Committee for their scrutiny of this Order? And, saying that, I commend the motion to the Chamber.

I have no other speakers on this item. Cabinet Secretary, do you have anything else to add?

Do you want to say anything else?

Only to say that the free allocation of these allowances is the main policy instrument through which carbon leakage risk is mitigated in the UK, so if nobody else standing to speak means that these are going to go through with the support of the Siambr, I am delighted, because it helps us on our path to net zero.

Well, we'll find that out in a second. [Laughter.]

The proposal is to agree the motion. Does any Member object? No. The motion is, therefore, agreed in accordance with Standing Order 12.36.

Item 13, the legislative consent motion on the Water (Special Measures) Bill. I call on the Cabinet Secretary for Climate Change and Rural Affairs to move the motion—Huw Irranca-Davies.

I must apologise to Members here for me getting up on my feet once again, but I beg to move that the Senedd, in accordance with Standing Order 29.6, agrees that provisions in the Water (Special Measures) Bill, insofar as they fall within the legislative competence of the Senedd, should be considered by the UK Parliament, and I'll explain why. Improving water quality and restoring our rivers to health is a matter of intense public interest, and rightly so. That's why, since the new Government took office in Westminster, we've been working at pace to improve our collaboration on tackling pollution in our rivers, our lakes and our seas. And, as Members will know, some of our most iconic rivers, like the Severn, the Dee, the Wye, of course, they cross those national borders. So, what happens upstream in England impacts downstream in Wales, and vice versa. So, that means that, in order to make real and lasting change, we must work together. And in that context, the renewed partnership between the two Governments that we've seen since last July is very welcome indeed. And, as somebody who has served in both Parliaments and as a Minister in both Parliaments, it's very long overdue. It's the way we should be doing things. And in that spirit of collaborative, cross-border working, I've agreed that the UK Government's new Water (Special Measures) Bill be extended to Wales.

So, what will this do? The legislation will strengthen the powers of the regulator to address water pollution, it will grant a new power for Ofwat to limit the bonuses paid to water company executives, it will allow NRW to recover costs from water companies to support their enforcement activities, it will make enforcement action more efficient through automatic penalties for a defined list of offences, and it will allow more effective enforcement options by enabling regulators to apply civil sanction penalties more quickly, in a more timely way.

Now, of course, the water sector in Wales is different from that in England. I've consistently recognised that. And, as Members will know, Dŵr Cymru Welsh Water operates in a very different way. It's a not-for-dividend company. Welsh Government policy differs on a range of things as well, from the environment to competition and other areas. But the provisions in the Bill will enable us to develop solutions that actually meet our needs here in Wales. The Bill is about making improvements to a shared regulatory regime. So, for example, both the economic regulator, Ofwat, and the Drinking Water Inspectorate cover England and Wales. So, these improvements will, in turn, help to restore our rivers.

It's also important to recognise that this Bill is a first step. The joint independent water commission, which is reporting now to both the Welsh and UK Governments continues in parallel, and it's looking more fundamentally at the case for change. And all of this work is building on our existing ambitious programme designed to address water-quality challenges right here in Wales. We're providing over £40 million of funding for specific projects, including, for example, £1.5 million for supporting the work of our nutrient management boards in our special area of conservation river catchments; £5 million allocated for the remediation of the most polluting disused metal mines in Wales, recognising that history that we have in many parts, particularly of rural Wales, as well.

So, as we progress with putting some of these measures provided for in the Bill into action, we will also be championing the solutions that work for Wales and ensuring that implementation supports our high ambitions here in Wales. But this Bill is a very important opportunity for us to make real progress on improving water quality and restoring our rivers. So, I look forward to hearing Members' views this afternoon.

I call on the Chair of the Climate Change, Environment and Infrastructure Committee, Llyr Gruffydd.

Thank you very much, Dirprwy Lywydd, and before I turn to the substance of the motion before us today, I think it's important for us as a Senedd to reflect again, if I may say, on the adequacy of the legislative consent process and the reasonableness of what the Welsh Government is asking us to do.

Now, five legislative consent memorandums have been laid before the Senedd in relation to the Water (Special Measures) Bill—five memorandums that refer to the different clauses and amendments made by the House of Commons and the House of Lords as the Bill made its journey through the UK Parliament.

Now, the fourth memorandum refers to amendments that were put into the Bill, and the fifth sees the same amendments taken back out again. Members will see that the committee’s report does not refer to the fifth memorandum. That is because the Welsh Government is at the mercy of the UK Government’s timetable and there has not been enough time for it to be referred to a policy committee for scrutiny.

During this Senedd term, we have seen a huge increase in the use of the LCM process by the Welsh Government. The question of whether you agree with that or not, of course, is a matter for debate. I know that Ministers in the Welsh Government believe that it is appropriate in many cases. It might be possible to defend their position if the system worked, but it does not, which, in my opinion, undermines the position of the Government in terms of using this approach. If Welsh Ministers want Westminster to legislate on the Senedd’s behalf, it is incumbent on them to make sure that the process works. Only a month ago, the Counsel General issued a written statement on the Welsh Government’s principles on UK legislation in devolved areas. It talked about

'significantly more positive and welcome engagement that has developed over recent months'

with the UK Government. But here we are again, having the same debate.

I therefore ask the Deputy First Minister, who, as former chair of the Legislation, Justice and Constitution Committee, is well aware of the failings of the process that he is now using so enthusiastically, to give a commitment to look with his colleagues at how this process can be improved as a matter of urgency. It's a shame that I've had to use so much of my time to focus on process and not policy, but I will continue to make these points until the Welsh Government shows it is listening.

So, to move briefly, if I may, Dirprwy Lywydd, to the proposals in the Bill, our report as a committee includes several conclusions, but I will focus on three key aspects. First, Dŵr Cymru Welsh Water operates a completely different ownership model to water companies in England. We need to make sure that the governance proposals in the Bill take full account of the situation in Wales.

I call on the Chair of the Legislation, Justice and Constitution Committee, Mike Hedges.

Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. The committee reported on the Welsh Government's legislative consent memorandum on the Water (Special Measures) Bill yesterday. Last week, we wrote to the Cabinet Secretary to provide advance notice of two recommendations, and we are grateful for his letter in response. First, we sought to highlight a lack of clarity in memorandum No. 3. We note that the motion today refers to clause numbers, before the Senedd, which has been recent practice. It would be helpful if the Cabinet Secretary could just confirm which version of the UK Bill the clause numbers refer to, as some of the clause numbers have changed as a result of amendments made to the Bill during the amending stages. Furthermore, we note from his letter yesterday that the Cabinet Secretary will be laying a further supplementary memorandum in relation to Report Stage amendments. I would therefore welcome an explanation on what this means in terms of the consent the Senedd is being asked to provide today.

The second recommendation concerns the justification for using a UK Government Bill. In paragraph 14 of the first memorandum, the Cabinet Secretary states that water is an inherently cross-border issue. We believe this statement is at odds with the Welsh Government's policy set out in its 2015 water strategy, which states that the Welsh Government's objectives are the alignment of the regulatory boundaries for water and sewerage with the geographical border between Wales and England. The strategy goes on to state that this would better enable the Welsh Government to make the most of the opportunities that Wales's natural resources provide. We therefore recommended that the Cabinet Secretary provide a more accurate narrative of the Welsh Government's position as regards its 2015 water strategy in a further supplementary memorandum. We note the Cabinet Secretary's response.

Recognising that commencing section 48(1) of the Wales Act 2017 would help deliver the Welsh Government's objectives in its water strategy, our report recommended that the Cabinet Secretary should explain why section 48(1) has not been commenced and provide a timetable for commencing that section. The Cabinet Secretary also justifies using a UK Bill because the UK and Welsh Governments share aims and objectives, and because he considers that a co-ordinated approach is essential to ensure regulatory consistency. However, a co-ordinated approach between Wales and England does not, in our view, require the same UK legislative vehicle. The Cabinet Secretary effectively acknowledges this point by taking regulation-making powers for the Welsh Ministers. As such, there is a contradiction in the Welsh Government's approach. On the one hand, a UK Government Bill is required to achieve the same objectives and outcomes as the UK Government, yet that argument does not seem to apply to the use of subordinate legislation for the same purpose, where powers will be exercised by UK Ministers in England and Welsh Ministers in Wales. So, once again, this Senedd is being sidelined as a legislature. Elected Members of the Senedd are being prevented from having a full say on legislation affecting rivers that flow through their constituencies. While MPs in England will be able to table amendments to the Bill on matters that will affect Welsh rivers, Members of the Senedd are being denied that opportunity.

We will be supporting this legislative consent motion today. As is noted in the explanatory notes, the Bill seeks to ensure water companies are better held to account where they have failed to deliver for the environment and customers. More accountability is most certainly required, especially in light of what we've seen recently in north Wales and, indeed, in my own constituency—such a chaotic response to the Conwy water crisis, which saw up to 40,000 homes left without water for as long as four and a half days.

The Bill includes many provisions that I welcome, including to ban bonuses for persons holding senior roles where water companies fail to meet required standards relating to consumer matters, the environment, financial resilience, or criminal liability. Personally, I think questions need to be asked as to whether they should be allowed any bonuses at all when they are not providing this much-needed resource.

It will also introduce a fit-and-proper-person test for water company executives and ensure consumer representation on water company boards. It will also extend the sentencing power of the courts to include imprisonment in all cases where individuals have obstructed Environment Agency, NRW and Drinking Water Inspectorate investigations. It's intended to lower the standard of proof for Environment Agency and NRW civil sanctions to enable more rapid penalties to be issued for minor to moderate offences. That's just a flavour of the Bill. Personally, anything we can do to regulate the water industry more, I say, ‘Bring it on’. Diolch.

The Water (Special Measures) Bill does contain several provisions that could strengthen our collective efforts to reduce water pollution in Wales, particularly by enhancing the powers of regulators such as Ofwat. I'll focus first on the policies. The new framework, of course, for holding water companies to account in relation to governance and pay is a step forward, certainly in terms of improving performance and rebuilding trust in the sector.

However, I'd like to ask some questions of the Cabinet Secretary. If this passes, how does the Welsh Government envisage that this Bill will improve its ability to address ongoing concerns among the public and Senedd Members about illegal discharges of sewage by Welsh Water, particularly given the ongoing public anger about pollution in our rivers and our coastal waters? I'd also like to ask what plans are in place to ensure that the reporting requirements under clause 3, namely real-time release data, are effectively enforced. How will NRW and the Welsh Government use this data to hold companies to account?

How will the provisions of the Bill fit in with the upcoming legislation on Wales's new environmental governance body? Will there be a coherent framework to ensure robust supervision and avoid duplication or gaps in enforcement? And finally in terms of policy, does the Cabinet Secretary think that the financial penalties and enforcement measures in the Bill are sufficient to act as a genuine deterrent to environmental crimes?

There are a number of things that we agree on, Dirprwy Lywydd, in this Bill, yet we have a fundamental issue here in terms of the framing of how this has been presented here, that certain things can only be done by working with Westminster. That, we believe, is contrary to policy that has been put forward by the Government, and, as a result, we will not be supporting this, but will be abstaining in this vote.

I agree with the comments of Delyth Jewell. I think there are many things in the draft water Bill that we would agree with, but what has been presented in the legislative consent memorandum and has been echoed, Deputy First Minister, by your comments here is not acceptable. You've said that massive change is not possible unless we work in tandem with Westminster. You said in the legislative consent memorandum that

'Water is an inherently cross-border issue'.

There are 33 river systems in Wales, and 50 main tributaries. Three of those cross the border, and five of the tributaries—10 per cent. Name me a country in Europe that doesn't have rivers that cross borders, absolutely, but they respect the fact that the democratic decision making in relation to those watercourses lies within the nations. The statement that you've made in the legislative consent memorandum that water is inherently a cross-border issue is contrary, as Delyth Jewell said, and as the Legislation, Justice and Constitution Committee have said, to your own water policy as set out in 2015, when you said that:

'Aligning the regulation of water and sewerage services with the geographical border will better enable us to integrate water within our approach to natural resource management, ensuring that we make the most of the opportunities that Wales' natural resources provide.'

That contradicts the statement that it's inherently a cross-border issue, because what you're saying there is that, actually, by bringing the power to Wales and not having this mixed responsibility, that's the best way to achieve better outcomes in terms of water quality and everything else in relation to those river systems. So, which is it, Deputy First Minister? Is it your 2015 stated policy or is that now no longer in place? You have effectively, through a Westminster Bill, changed the policy by the back door.

You've also, as the LJC committee goes on to point out, seemingly given up on the urgency of bringing complete control of water within Wales that was afforded by the 2017 Act—remember the St David's Day agreement, where it was announced that power over water was coming home to Wales? Yet you haven't yet sought to commence the powers under section 48(1) of that Act, and you now say that, because Hafren Dyfrdwy has been split off as a subsidiary company of Severn Trent, it's no longer necessary and there isn’t any immediate need to do it.

And yet the point is that there are water companies operating in Wales that are not wholly based in Wales: Severn Trent, which runs the reservoirs of the Elan valleys and exports the water to Birmingham; United Utilities, an English-based company that runs the Lake Vyrnwy reservoir, exporting water to Merseyside and Chester—and not a little bit of water, Deputy First Minister, it's around about 200 billion litres of water a year that leaves Wales and Wales does not get proper recompense for that vital resource. If we did, that money could be reinvested in improving the infrastructure of our water industry. We've just heard of the problems that people have been having to face in the last week. That's because of underinvestment, and part of the reason is that Wales has not been given a proper price for that water. Could we introduce a water levy? No, we don't have the legal power, because you haven't asked for it. Why haven't you asked for it?

I call on the Cabinet Secretary to reply to the debate.

Diolch yn fawr iawn. I'll try and address the many points that have been raised here. First of all, it is interesting to note in this debate that there seems to be a shared agenda on what we're trying to achieve here, through the outcomes of what this Bill can do. But just to clarify, this is to do with the operation of, for example, Ofwat and the Drinking Water Inspectorate, which is a shared regulatory regime that we share across England and Wales. It's important to state that at the outset, because the discussions around rivers flowing across borders is one aspect, but you rightly point out, Adam, that there are many rivers that do not flow across the borders, but the regulatory regime to which we refer, and to which this Bill is very pertinent, actually does cover England and Wales. But I'll turn to it in some more detail now.

There is a shared appreciation here, I think, in the Chamber that tackling water quality in our rivers and our seas is a matter of great public concern, and the issue is a priority. The question is how we go about doing it. One of the things that materially has changed is actually having a UK Government that invites us to the table and says, 'Would you want to actually work together, where we have a shared regulatory regime, and work together on this, and be involved in this, and engage?' That's why I have indeed worked in partnership with the UK Government in developing the measures in the Bill, and why I've agreed to extend the application of the Bill's provision to Wales, with powers for Welsh Ministers equivalent to those of the Secretary of State. And just to be clear again, the Bill is to do with supporting the enforcement of regulatory requirements in the water sector and improving water company performance. This is linked to, of course, the longer term work of cleaning up rivers, lakes and seas.

It is absolutely true, and we acknowledge this, that the Bill has been developed at pace. We've continued to scrutinise the proposed measures and consider all the potential impacts for Wales throughout the whole progress of this Bill in Parliament. We're really very grateful to the work of the Climate Change, Environment and Infrastructure Committee and the Legislation, Justice and Constitution Committee for their consideration of this.

The timescale for the development of the Bill has been challenging. It has impacted the Senedd's timetable and the consideration of the Bill, and my office has indeed raised some of these matters with our opposite numbers in the UK Government. It is absolutely right to ensure that implementation is done in the best way for Wales. Some of the measures provided for in the Bill are likely to proceed differently between Wales and England, and we've always been very clear on that. Because while there are many commonalities, we will take the time to make sure that the implementation happens in a way that is appropriate for the different legislative and regulatory contexts in Wales and allows—the question that was asked—for the proper consultation of Welsh stakeholders.

But to be absolutely clear, this Bill offers positive changes, it supports our overall aim to reduce water pollution in Wales, it legislates on a range of issues and policy matters that the UK Government and the Welsh Government share—clear aims and objectives; that hasn't always been the situation. And yes, the devolution settlement in relation to water is complex, but the Senedd and Welsh Ministers have extensive functions within what is, in effect, a largely shared regulatory regime. I specifically mentioned that both the economic regulator, Ofwat, and the Drinking Water Inspectorate cover England and Wales. But this approach here, this opportunity here, with the Bill introduced in Parliament, is an effective solution to meet wider policy objectives that we share.

We have worked hard to maximise the Senedd consideration of the Bill despite the accelerated timescale that I mentioned. We've tried to ensure that the Senedd has the opportunity to consider and vote on the Bill before Report Stage in the House of Commons, to ensure that the views here can be considered substantively during those Commons procedures. I understand this is not an optimal situation. It's not optimal for Senedd committees to consider and scrutinise and report on the Bill. I'm happy to consider any comments and concerns committees may have, as we do, through correspondence, and so on.

But due to the operation of the water sector and the cross-border nature of these water bodies, a Bill introduced in the UK Parliament is an effective solution to meet our shared goals. We share those similar challenges when it comes to the health of some of our water bodies in Wales and England. So, working collaboratively in addressing these challenges is an effective and also a practical solution. Improving water quality is a key priority of this Government. Strengthening the powers of water sector regulators, which is the objective of this Bill, will contribute to that goal. We share the same policy objectives, we can work here collaboratively with the UK Government. It is an efficient and an effective way of utilising our resources. This Bill enables us to deliver benefits for Wales without negatively impacting issues we're looking to deliver elsewhere, or our own agenda within the water sphere.

No, sorry. There were lots of questions raised.

You've had more than your ample time.

Strengthening the powers of water sector regulators, which is the fundamental objective of this Bill, will contribute to achieving our goals. It'll bring positive changes. So, in putting this forward today, on balance, because of the way the water sector works, the cross-border nature of not just our water bodies, but the regulatory regime, a Bill introduced in the UK Parliament is an effective solution to meet wider and shared policy objectives. We share the same goals in improving water quality and the resilience of the water sector. So, Dirprwy Lywydd, the legislation is timely, the measures, as have been pointed out, are much needed, and therefore I recommend that the Senedd supports the proposals and gives its consent.

The proposal is to agree the motion. Does any Member object? [Objection.] I did hear an objection. I will therefore defer voting under this item until voting time.

Item 14 is the motion to vary the order of consideration of Stage 3 amendments to the Health and Social Care (Wales) Bill. I call on the Minister for Children and Social Care to move the motion. Dawn Bowden.

I formally move the motion, Dirprwy Lywydd. And I've nothing to say in moving the motion, but reserve my right of reply if there are any speakers. Thank you.

There are no speakers, so there is no need to reply.

The proposal is to agree the motion. Does any Member object? No. The motion is therefore agreed in accordance with Standing Order 12.36.

That brings us to voting time. Unless three Members wish for the bell to be rung, I will move immediately to voting time.

The first vote this evening will be on item 11, the land transaction tax regulations. I call for a vote on the motion, tabled in the name of Jane Hutt. Open the vote. Close the vote. In favour 37, no abstentions, 10 against. Therefore, the motion is agreed.

The final vote this evening is on item 13, the legislative consent motion on the Water (Special Measures) Bill. Open the vote. Close the vote. In favour 37, no abstentions, and none against. Therefore, the motion is agreed.

That brings today's proceedings to a close.