National Assembly for Wales

I call Members to order.

The first item on our agenda this afternoon is the questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Finance. The first question, which has been grouped with question 6, is to be asked by Julie Morgan.

Thank you, Llywydd, and thank you for confirming that you've given your permission for questions 1 and 6 to be grouped.

The UK Government is yet to share any details of its proposals for a shared prosperity fund. I have raised the issue of replacement funds for structural funding with the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, and our position, including autonomy of funding, is clearly set out in our paper 'Regional Investment in Wales after Brexit'.

I thank the Cabinet Secretary for that response. It's generally accepted that women have suffered disproportionately under austerity in the UK, and we all know how important European structural funds have been in tackling inequalities. How can we ensure that any replacement for the EU structural funds post Brexit will concentrate on the inequalities in society?

Well, Llywydd, can I thank Julie Morgan for that question, and to thank her for the work that she does in chairing the programme monitoring committee for the current round of European funding? And she will know, as a result of the careful attention that that committee pays to inequalities, that the current social fund programmes, for example, include specific targets to provide skills and training to more than 95,000 women in the workplace, and a particularly fine scheme to support 15,000 young women to participate in learning STEM subjects here in Wales. With the help of the programme monitoring committee, we formulated our proposals, set out in 'Regional Investment in Wales after Brexit', and one of the key principles in that paper is that we learn the lessons from current and previous funding rounds, and that we take the successes of it into the future. I can give the Member an assurance that inequality issues remain at the heart of the proposals that the Welsh Government has for developing regional investment the other side of the European Union.

It is a cause of concern that there are no comprehensive proposals that have been published by the UK Government as of yet, in terms of how exactly the shared prosperity fund will work. At the moment, the Welsh Government and councils in Wales, through the Welsh European Funding Office, decide on how the regional funds are spent in Wales. In the first place, it’s important that Wales doesn’t lose a single penny of the funding that we were receiving from Europe, which will mean that the funding will have to be allocated on the basis of need rather than being Barnettised. My concern also is that, if the system does change, where organisations in Wales will have to bid for grants from a pot of money held by the UK Government, then that will be another example of the Conservatives in Westminster undertaking a power grab, in economic development on this occasion. Will you stand up for Wales on this particular issue, or are we going to see you ceding once again, under the banner of your unionist ideology?

I thank Siân Gwenllian for the questions, and I agreed with nearly everything she said, until the end there. I just want to be clear that I do agree with her; it is more than time for the UK Government to bring forward the suggestions that they have. And, when we see those suggestions, it’s important that the people of Wales hear from the people who tried to persuade them to leave the European Union, back during the referendum—to clarify, every penny that was received during our membership of the EU—that the money  must come to Wales in future, because the needs that we had continue to exist. It would be entirely unreasonable if the United Kingdom Government were to try to come forward with a new system where we would have to bid into a new fund. The best way, I am certain, is just to look at the funding that comes to Wales currently and then put that into the baseline that we have in our budget, and to give us the responsibility, as we already have, to administer the system in the future. I have already said this to the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, and I will continue to say this when opportunities arise in future. 

I agree with both you, Cabinet Secretary, and Siân Gwenllian. I disagree with both of you at the same time, so, take that as you will. The development of the shared prosperity fund is clearly of immense importance to the Welsh economy and our goal here is that Wales should be no worse off after Brexit in relation to the structural fund allowance. I agree with what you said that we don't want a new system where we would be worse off by, in some way, having to bid for this funding, but, at the same time, I think you'd agree with me, Cabinet Secretary, we want to avoid a Barnettisation of the money coming to Wales, because that would also squeeze the budget in a different, but still a very significant, way. 

What discussions have you had with the UK Government about avoiding that potential Barnettisation of the fund? And, also, in tandem with this, the Welsh Government should be developing its own regional policies so that we're in the best place possible to make use of those new funds when they do come to Wales. At what stage are you at in developing that new regional policy that will fit in with the UK Government strategy? 

Well, Llywydd, I agree that neither a bidding nor a Barnett-derived approach to a shared prosperity fund would be acceptable to us here in Wales, remembering that this fund has no origins here in Wales and that the party that proposed it certainly did not secure a majority for it here in Wales. Let me say that discussions continue both at ministerial and official levels. I hope that when the UK Government comes forward with more detailed proposals for the fund, there will be the possibility of organising funding for Wales along the lines that I set out in my answer to Siân Gwenllian.

In the meantime, I agree with Nick Ramsay that it's very important that we press ahead with the plans that we are developing for how funding would be used for regional investment purposes in Wales in the future. We've carried out a consultation exercise, as Nick Ramsay will know, on the paper that we published. That was a very engaged exercise. Officials are currently analysing all the responses that we have received and I hope to be in a position to publish those shortly. 

Cabinet Secretary, in full support of your 'Regional Investment in Wales after Brexit' paper, how can we ensure that future funding arrangements are aligned with other European funds we hope to draw on after Brexit, such as Horizon 2020 and the inter-territorial co-operation programme?  

Wel, Llywydd, Jane Hutt make a very important additional point, because our anxieties about the shared prosperity fund, if it were to be done in the wrong way, are not simply that Wales might lose out financially through a bidding or Barnett-based system, but if a shared prosperity fund was seriously to be attempted to be run out of Whitehall, then where are the troops on the ground that the UK Government could rely on to make effective use of that funding?

Twenty years into devolution, it is the Welsh Government and other Welsh bodies who have the experience of regional economic development and of making sure that funding streams that come to Wales can be properly aligned with one another so that we get the maximum impact from it. And one of the small advantages that some of us think we may gain from not being in the European Union is that we would have greater flexibility to make sure that funds that came directly to Wales could be used in greater alignment with other funding streams for the future. We are in the right position to do that. The UK Government simply does not have the wherewithal In Wales to do so, and the points that Jane Hutt made about aligning our funds with other programmes is very important. 

I thank the Member for that question. The process for allocating funding for homelessness services follows that for the budget as a whole. Priorities are identified in bilateral meetings, with the Cabinet agreeing final allocations. The increasing prevalence of homelessness, and this Government’s ambition to eradicate youth homelessness, underpinned the additional funding agreed by the Assembly for these purposes in January of this year.FootnoteLink

Thank you for that information, Cabinet Secretary. My fear is that now the worst of the winter weather has passed, the need to adequately fund the services required to meet the needs of homeless people will actually start to slip down the public agenda. However, as I'm sure you'll agree, this is probably the very time when we should be planning to ensure that adequate finance is provided for these demands, especially with the growing threat from universal credit, which is going to be rolled out in my constituency next month. Certainly, in communities like Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney, I believe we are seeing a greater demand for these services and, like others, I see that evidence every day. So, can you assure me that, as Cabinet Secretary for Finance, you remain in conversation with ministerial colleagues about how, overall, the whole of Welsh Government can best respond to these demands?

Llywydd, can I begin by agreeing with the opening point that the Member made? It is one of the genuine responsibilities of Government and, indeed, of the Assembly, to make sure that we remain alert to serious social needs whenever they take place. Inevitably, in the public domain, issues come and go, but I think I could say that, in the time that I've been a Member here, Members throughout this Assembly do make sure that they raise these issues right through the year, not just at the point when they happen to be under the public microscope, and that's a really important responsibility that the Assembly discharges.

The money that we have provided—the additional £20 million in the budget this year and again into next year—is there all year round. It's there to support the rough-sleeping plan that my colleague the Minister with responsibility for housing and regeneration published earlier this year. In the round of budget bilaterals that I'm just concluding with all my Cabinet colleagues, housing has been discussed in every single one of those bilaterals because it is the foundation of a successful life, and everybody in Wales deserves to have a base from which they can plan for the future and create a future for themselves and their families.

Cabinet Secretary, you will be aware of the recommendations by the Equality, Local Government and Communities Committee that rough-sleepers be considered as a priority need for housing. However, before this can be implemented, enough resources and support will be needed in place to cope with this change. What discussion have you had with your Cabinet colleagues about increasing the amount of funding allocated to tackling the problem of homeless people rough-sleeping in Wales, please? Thank you.

I thank the Member for the question. As I said just a moment ago, housing issues have featured in every single one of the budget bilaterals that I have had with Cabinet colleagues. Every Cabinet colleague has an interest in housing and homelessness matters, whether it be the mental health and physical health issues that homeless people face or the pressure on local government services that homelessness creates. So, I can give the Member an assurance that it is a matter that interests all members of the Cabinet. I know that the extra investment we were able to find for homelessness services was supported right across the Chamber.

I have to say to the Member that any time someone here asks me to find extra money for any service at a time when the resources available to the Welsh Government as a whole are going down, the only way more money for one thing can be found is by taking it away from something else. He'll understand, I know, that that is a very challenging calculation to carry out.

I understand that there are Housing First pilots that have been and are going to be developed in parts of Wales, which I welcome, as part of the commitment to tackle homelessness, but the involvement of other services, including justice and healthcare are key in relation to this. So, what are you doing to look at pooling budgets? I've spoken to the sector on many occasions and they've said to me that there's not enough conversation between housing and healthcare. Crisis, the charity, funded in the Liverpool city region—. They looked at the analysis of how Housing First worked there, and they found that access, for example, to second-tier mental health support and that learning and coaching were needed to make Housing First work. So, if we're going to make Housing First work here in Wales, which is something I support, how can we ensure that the budgets reflect that ambition?

Well, Llywydd, the Member makes a series of important points. Of course, the difficulties faced by homeless people are complex, and they often involve other issues in their lives. It's why, of the £10 million directly found for homelessness services in this year's budget, £6 million of that has gone into providing extra places for people to stay, and £4 million has gone into the support services that need to be provided, if people are to be able to use the opportunity that the new start of a new place to live might provide to them.

I'll think about the point that she has made about pooled budgets. They have pluses to them; they have downsides as well. Everybody who puts money into a pool needs to understand that that money can be used for purposes beyond those that they are responsible for themselves. Understandably, in tough times, organisations often look very jealously at the money they themselves have put in, and Members here often ask questions to make sure that the money is still being used for the purpose it was already provided for. So, shared budgets can be a solution, but they don't come without their downsides either. Certainly, it's a possibility we will keep in mind.

We now move to questions from the party spokespeople. The Conservative spokesperson, Nick Ramsay.

Diolch, Llywydd. Cabinet Secretary, yesterday, in your statement on the vacant land tax, I described you as a jack of all trades when it came to developing new taxes; you've got a lot of different taxes on the go at the moment. In yesterday's statement, you spoke about testing the machinery in terms of the vacant land tax. If I can widen that question out into other potential new taxes that the Welsh Government might be considering in future, clearly one of those potential taxes would be one to deal with the social care time-bomb problem, and a potential social care levy, as other Members have discussed in this Chamber. Could you tell us: have you given any thought, as of yet, to a potential social care levy, and have you had any discussions with your colleagues about that?

Llywydd, yes, we've been very actively engaged in this topic—particularly recently, following the ideas published by Professor Gerry Holtham. Professor Holtham has provided the Welsh Government with a near-final draft of an updated report, in which he looks in more detail at the way in which a dedicated social care fund, based on the model of the original national insurance fund, might be developed for Wales. The First Minister has set up a cross-ministerial group, chaired by my colleague Huw Irranca-Davies, and that will begin its work by looking at three dimensions. It will look in detail at Professor Holtham's work to make sure that there is a workable economic model there, but it will look, as well, at what the social care services of the future need to look like. If we ever were to be in a position of trying to persuade people in Wales to dig deeper into their pockets to make provision for the future, then they will quite rightly expect us to be able to describe what it is they are going to get for the investment that they are making. And the third strand in the work that that group will do will be to look at the interface with the UK, because a social care solution for Wales has to interface with the benefits system, with the wider tax system, with the work of the Department of Health and so on.

Thank you, Cabinet Secretary. This is clearly a horrendously complicated area. It's an enormous problem that's gone on for a long time, and which will need to be dealt with in some form or other in the not-too-distant future. You mentioned Professor Holtham's research, and Professor Holtham suggested that an age-related, graduated tax might be best, at least in the short term. In her question to you earlier, Julie Morgan mentioned some of the problems that she identified that women could experience in the post-structural-funds world. 

The Commissioner for Older People in Wales has pointed out that there could be potential disadvantages in Professor Holtham's proposals for certain groups of people in the social care levy—particularly women and those on low pay, as well as those older people that you may be asking to pay more under this model. Specifically, the older people's commissioner notes—. She says, and I paraphrase, that you're essentially saying, 'Thanks for everything you've paid in. We told you that when your time came it would be free. Sorry, it's not.' Are you confident that the concerns of the older people's commissioner and others are being taken into account when working out potential proposals for a social care levy?

Well, Llywydd, even in a paraphrase we would not have said to anybody, 'We told you it would be free', because it's one of the defining characteristics of the social care system that it is means-tested. We have many debates here, in this Chamber, about trying to join up the health and social care system and the barriers that exist to that. Personally, I've always believed that one of the real fault lines that makes it difficult to do that is that healthcare is free at the point of use and social care is means-tested. That always makes it difficult to bring those two systems close together.

Now, Professor Holtham, in his paper, talks about inter-generational fairness, and he deals with some other things that Members here will be very familiar with—the arguments that people born after 1980 have, at comparable points in their lives, a less-advantageous financial outlook than people who were born 30 or 40 years earlier than them. He draws on work in Japan, where there is indeed a graduated tax, where the older you are you pay a bit more towards social care. In your twenties, you never believe you'll need social care. By the time you're 50, you begin to realise that this could be you. Therefore, social acceptability, in terms of paying towards things, is calibrated in that way, but it is only one of the factors that Professor Holtham proposes, and he models a series of different ways in which payments could be made into a fund, and a graduated tax rising by age is only one of the models that he investigates.

Well, Cabinet Secretary, the Holtham model potentially doubles the social care levy from £172 to £344 for those aged between 57 and 59 within the space of 12 months, just at the point when income starts to reduce. In 2017, 71 per cent of retirees in Wales took early retirement, and the average age of retirement was 58 years and six months—right in the middle of this age range. I'm not seeking to make any party political points on this issue because I think, actually, it's too big for that—it's bigger than any individual party and any individual Government. This is an issue that's developed under many different parties and Governments over the years.

Cabinet Secretary, I think there is massive potential here for Wales to do something that is groundbreaking if we get it right, but also there are some enormous pitfalls, which the older people's commissioner has alluded to—and others have as well. So, can you give us an assurance that, in dealing with all these issues and giving guidance to the Assembly Members who are looking at this, you will ensure that, at the end of this, we will have a system that is equal and fair, that doesn't lead to some people feeling that they have been hard done by—to paraphrase—and also, of course, a system that means that a fund will be built up over time, and that some way down the line, future Governments won't say, 'Well, actually, that money isn't all there now for us to provide to you, as we said 20 or 30 years ago'? Because I think, and you would agree with me, that ultimately, we want to get this right and we want to make sure that, in the future, people don't feel that they have been cheated out of money that they otherwise would have had.

Llywydd, well, I think the contribution that Nick Ramsay has made does point exactly to both the potential of this idea, but also the pitfalls that get in the way of it, and demonstrates why it has been so difficult for Governments of all political persuasions to make a real inroad into this policy problem. I was due to give evidence to the Finance Committee in your inquiry into this earlier this month, and will do—I hope, now—next year. For that reason, I re-read the Dilnot review that, in 2012, said that this matter was absolutely urgent and couldn't be left any longer, and I re-read Gwenda Thomas's Green Paper of a decade ago, which reflects many of the debates that are still here today. That just shows what a difficult problem it is to address.

However, Professor Holtham does very directly address the final point that Nick Ramsay made. The national insurance fund, Llywydd, began as a funded system. It remained so until 1957, when the Macmillan Government decided that it would dip into it in order to meet current expenditure, and as a result, we now have a pay-as-you-go system. Holtham says clearly if you're going to persuade people to pay into a fund, it has to be organised in a way that people can have confidence that Governments cannot dip their hands in it in tough times, and the money that you pay in really is there for this purpose.

UKIP spokesperson, Neil Hamilton.

Diolch, Llywydd. Well, I applaud the sober and serious work that the finance Secretary is doing on the possibility of a social care levy—a subject to which we'll return in due course. I'm sure that the finance Secretary will agree with me that it's important that dog-whistle politics doesn't intrude upon these potential new taxes and that we don't create unnecessary anxiety amongst groups of people who might potentially be affected by any of them. One of the things that concerned me about the possibility of a vacant land tax, which we discussed in part yesterday, was that a lot of people may not ultimately be affected by it, and may, in the interim period, be worried by such a proposal. So, I wonder if the Cabinet Secretary will do a bit more to allay potential fears in this respect.

I referred yesterday to the work the Welsh Government has already done on this in relation to stalled sites and section 106 agreements. They identified just about 400 sites between 2000 and 2014 where land had not been developed for one reason or another. But the number of cases that might be regarded as true land banking, that were capable of economic development and were viable but weren't proceeded with, is actually very small. It's worth, I think, summarising the figures that are in the document. Where the reasons for stalling were related to land ownership or site sale, that is, those that related only to real land banking as opposed to variations in conditions or other planning matters, there were only 17 cases out of this 400 over a period of 14 years. So, the problem of land banking may not be as great as is feared, and I appreciate the point that was made yesterday, that this is a tax that has been proposed in order to test the system, and is not likely to affect a great many people. So, could the finance Secretary just say a little more on that one point? 

Thank you, Llywydd. Well, I take very seriously the points that the leader of UKIP here made about avoiding dog-whistle politics. I quite certainly agree with him in what he said today on that matter.

Yesterday he made the points that he's made today, that when we come to look at the detail of a land value tax, the potential for one in Wales, we may find that it would apply in a relatively small number of occasions. As the detailed work gets done, I'm sure we will have the actual evidence as to whether or not that is the case. I tried yesterday to offer two reassurances to people in the sector who might have anxieties about this: first of all, that we will do the detailed work, and the policy that we bring forward, if we do, will be thoroughly based upon the evidence; and secondly, that we will take the time necessary to do that properly and thoroughly, and that if the power is drawn down to the Assembly, it will not be a matter of simply jumping to use the power because it's here. If the power comes here, we will make sure that, if we do use it, it's because the case for doing so has been thoroughly tested.

I wonder if the finance Secretary would agree with me also that there ought to be some kind of de minimis element in this, in as much as I referred to the case yesterday of Harry Hyams and the Centre Point building that was empty, right in the centre of London, a prime space, for many, many years in the 1970s. The problem that we're trying to address, if there is such a problem, relates to large potential development sites that have significant numbers of homes that could be built upon the land. There's little point in going after individual plots here or there that might or might not be developed for one reason or another. David Melding yesterday referred also to the need for flexibility in the way in which such a tax might be implemented.

In the review that is currently going on by Oliver Letwin, he's going to be looking at large sites, and he recognises that there are many reasons for even large developments not being proceeded with—limited availability of skilled labour, for example, limited supplies of building materials, limited availability of capital, et cetera. He gives a whole host of potential reasons that are nothing actually to do with the perceived ill of land banking itself. Even in the case of large sites, we will have to hedge around the potential tax with all sorts of reliefs in order to avoid creating injustice, even for significant property development companies.

Llywydd, there are indeed many reasons why vacant sites with planning permissions and so on do not come into productive use, and a vacant land tax would only ever be one tool in a much wider set of tools that policy makers can use to bear down on that. From memory, but I am relying on memory, I believe the Republic of Ireland scheme does have a de minimis part to it, but anybody who had heard Vikki Howells's short debate and had seen the examples that she brought forward would know that sometimes even very small sites that are allowed to go into dereliction spread the misery of that on a much wider scale amongst people who have to live nearby. So, scale is an issue, but it's not, by itself, a complete definition of the problem.

I fully accept what the Cabinet Secretary and, indeed, Vikki Howells have said on this, although dereliction is a separate issue in itself, which could be dealt with in other ways other than by a tax. But I'm also concerned about the potential impact of such a tax upon small house builders in rural areas. It's easy to demonise big companies, but there may be a variety of reasons why even small house builders, who can't afford to bank land for long period of time anyway, might feel that they would be affected by this and which would therefore dissuade them from applying for speculative planning permissions. And, given that economic circumstances can sometimes change quite rapidly, this would be an unfortunate development, because if it indeed resulted in fewer speculative proposals at the local development plan preparation stage, the onus would then be on local planning authorities to approach land owners proactively to identify land that is capable of development and which they would like to see developed. Given that local authorities have enough on their plate anyway, this would be another unfortunate consequence. So, I hope that that's another point that the finance Secretary will bear carefully in mind.

Well, Llywydd, I thank the Member for that point. I've seen the figures myself that do demonstrate that it does take longer in rural parts of Wales to bring land that has got the necessary permissions into development. We talked yesterday in the discussion here about a vacant land tax, about the length of time a piece of land would have to be vacant before it started to become liable for a tax, and, when we come to do the detailed work on all of this, which—. As I keep reminding Members, we're at the very earliest stages of doing that detailed work, but if those figures were borne out then they would lead, I think, to a discussion of whether or not you would need to have a longer period of time available in rural parts of Wales before a tax began to apply, because of the nature of development in those areas. But that is a point we would need to return to when the evidence was clearer. In the meantime, it is a perfectly fair point for the Member to have put into the debate. 

Plaid Cymru spokesperson, Adam Price.

Thank you, Llywydd. A fortnight ago, Cabinet Secretary, you published the mid-term review in terms of the Wales infrastructure investment plan, which originally included a pipeline of projects worth £42 billion in total. Now, of course, in next year’s budget there’s only around £1.5 million—£1.6 million—which is capital investment, and I think we recognise, having done the maths, that it would take many, many years for us to deliver all of the investment needs in terms of infrastructure. You have to contrast this, of course, with the situation in the south-east of England and London, which is the corner of the UK that receives the largest slice of the cake in terms of infrastructure investment, and they are now about to receive an additional £550 million to save the Crossrail project, which, apparently, is overspending. To put this in context, that is a little less than half of what the UK Government intends to invest in the rail network in Wales over this next investment period of five years. So, can you confirm that Wales will not receive any additional funding as a consequence of that additional investment in Crossrail, because, under the financial settlement as it stands, there is a comparison factor of 0 per cent that is used in terms of the formula? And, along the same lines, if railways were to be devolved entirely, as is the situation in Scotland and Northern Ireland, wouldn’t Wales benefit to the tune of some additional £700 million, which could be invested in our network in order to make up for the underspending that has been the case over the past few years, and that could be done over the next five years between 2019 and 2024?

I thank Adam Price for that question, and I can see the point that he is making.

Investment across the United Kingdom is tipped towards London and the south-east in the way that he described. Because this is a relatively very recent development, I will write to him if I've got anything further to say. But my officials have been in contact with the Treasury today. They say, in relation to Crossrail, as I understand it, these things: first of all, that no additional funding has yet been committed to the Department for Transport as a result of the Crossrail developments, and at the moment the Treasury regard that simply as a pressure that the Department for Transport's budget has to manage. We then checked with them, if a further investment from the Treasury to the Department for Transport were to be made for Crossrail, would there be a Barnett consequential for that, and they said to us, 'Yes, there would be', because this is a local rail development, and, if there are to be new funds found for Crossrail and given to the Department for Transport, we would get our Barnett consequential for that through the fiscal framework, which I'll remind Members here of course means we would get 105 per cent of that consequential. 

Now, I have seen too often the way in which the UK Government looks to find Barnett workarounds, so that things that at first glance you would imagine would attract a Barnett consequential, turn out not to. So, you can be sure that our officials will be very closely monitoring the situation, and, if money does become available for Crossrail and if that money does go to the Department for Transport, that we would get our proper share of that here in Wales.

Well, I welcome that news very warmly, and perhaps this is an opportunity to test the dispute resolution agreement within the fiscal framework. We will see in due course. Securing Barnettised funding, not only in terms of this overspend, but across the rail network, would mean that there would be £2 billion per annum rather than £1.3 billion, and £700 million would be a means for us to do a great many things. We could build the new rail line between Carmarthen and Aberystwyth; we could look at putting right the failure or the u-turn of the UK Government on electrification to Swansea; we could look at doing two thirds of the work in terms of building the proposed metro for the western Valleys and Swansea. If truth to be told, all of these projects could be considered. That is, £2 billion or £3 billion in a transport bond would be a means for us to transform our transport system across Wales—the kind of ambitious proposal I would expect from a candidate for the First Ministership of Wales.

Now, you mentioned recently in a statement that you do want to proceed now to create Welsh Government bonds. Isn’t this an opportunity to create an innovative programme of investment that we have been waiting for for decades and to create a Welsh bond? Even I, as a Member of the opposition, would be willing to buy those bonds.

Thank you very much for that.

Of course, Adam Price is right to point to the fact that we are now drawing down the power for the Welsh Government to issue bonds. The reason for doing so is the one that Mike Hedges outlined in the Chamber a week or so ago—it's to keep the UK Government honest in the interest rates that it charges through the Public Works Loan Board, because, if it seeks to increase the interest charges to us in making loans from that source, then we would have another way in which we could raise money in this place, and that tends to encourage the UK Government not to raise interest in the loans that it makes.

The difficulty in the proposition that Adam Price puts—and he puts it persuasively, as he does—is that the ability to issue bonds does not increase the capital limit that the Welsh Government faces. It doesn't bring us an extra £1 in investment. So, we could create a fund of the sort that he has suggested, but it wouldn't be new money—it wouldn't be extra money available to Wales. So, if you did create a fund for that purpose, you would have to decide not to go ahead with various other important investments across other parts of the Welsh public sector.

Of course, that's a proper public debate about where priorities lie, but it wouldn't be right to suggest to people that you could create a bond-filled fund and that that, somehow, would be new money over and above everything we have—it wouldn't be.

I understand the Cabinet Secretary's argument. I wonder, though, if a purpose-specific bond was put together on the lines that I've suggested that, actually, you would be able to convince the UK Treasury, for that specific purpose, to raise the borrowing limit. Indeed, this is something that has been suggested by Professor Holtham, that you mentioned in another context earlier. So, I was wondering whether you would be prepared, at least, to look at this.

There is an alternative mechanism as well, which, actually, to some extent overcomes some of these problems, which is to look at Transport for Wales, which is modelled on Transport for London. Transport for London, of course, has separate borrowing powers, and it has them in particular because, of course, it has revenue-generating capacity; it also has capital-uplift capacity, in terms of regeneration schemes. So, that could be a mechanism. Indeed, the Labour Party in England is strongly advocating that the new body, Transport for the North, is given parallel borrowing powers. So, is the Welsh Government prepared to explore a case for Transport for Wales being given the kind of borrowing powers that have allowed Transport for London to invest extensively in its own network?

Well, Llywydd, this is a very good moment for raising these possibilities, because I have only recently written to the Chief Secretary to the Treasury putting her on alert to the fact that, as part of the forthcoming comprehensive spending review, I will be seeking an extension to the borrowing limit currently available to the Welsh Government. So, it's a moment where there are some new possibilities in play.

The ones that Adam Price has raised are certainly of interest, because this Government has a solid track record, begun by my predecessor, Jane Hutt, of looking for new and innovative ways of extending the pool of capital investment available to Wales. If it would be helpful, I would be very interested to meet the Member and talk with him in more detail than we're able to in these exchanges about how those ideas might be taken forward.

Let's see whether we can pick up some speed on questions and answers. We're on question 3 and we're almost out of time for the session, so that's a challenge for you. Dai Lloyd, question 3.

Amongst the strategic investments made in South Wales West, the additional £266 million announced alongside the Wales infrastructure investment plan mid–point review will bring fresh funding in active travel, national health service capital schemes and waste recycling.

Thank you very much for that answer. The Welsh Government has spent over £11 million trying to develop a strategic business park in Felindre, Swansea. Since the demolition of the steelworks in that area, we have seen many marketing strategies aimed at bringing companies to that business park, but it is still vacant. There’s clear local frustration about the speed of development of the site, which has the potential to create hundreds of jobs. Do you share this frustration with the lack of progress and what do you intend to do jointly with Swansea council to move things forward? 

Well, I thank Dai Lloyd for that question. Of course, I recognise what he has said about the time that has passed and that things haven't been developed in Parc Felindre. What I understand from people working in that area is that we have been trying to attract people in to help us develop the site. My notes state that

we have been encouraged by the standard of developers and occupiers who have now expressed an interest in the site, and my colleague Ken Skates is anxious to move ahead so that we overcome the difficulties that Dr Lloyd has identified. 

Cabinet Secretary, part of your budget statement obviously included investment of over £30 million in the Tata steelworks in Port Talbot. Could you tell us what progress has been made on that investment and will we have it actually done in this financial year?

Well, Llywydd, the Government is anxious to invest in Port Talbot in partnership with Tata, where we can be sure that our investment is part of a long-term plan to ensure the sustainability of steel making in Wales. There is more that we are prepared to do with the company, provided those plans demonstrate that they are going to be using public investment alongside their own investment in a way that will create the steel-making capacity of the future. My colleague Ken Skates, and, indeed, the First Minister, have been in discussions with the most senior people in Tata to make sure that we come forward with plans that allow us to spend the money in a timely fashion and to secure the future of steel making. 

I'm just going back to Dai Lloyd's question. Cabinet Secretary, we are talking 20 years here and I think we need some reassurance, particularly in my region, that this isn't another Kancoat or indeed another technium. Following the regeneration investment fund for Wales, I think we need some assurance that the investment is recoverable and that sales that are significantly under value won't be forthcoming. Firstly, can you tell me what security Welsh Government has on that land and secondly what conversations you've had with the city deal board, your Cabinet colleagues and indeed the UK Government in order to make sure we exploit to the maximum that quite useful asset?  

Well, Llywydd, I think these are questions really for my colleague Ken Skates, who is directly responsible for the policy and the practical implementation of it. I'm quite sure that the points the Member makes will be shared by him in wanting to make sure there is a proper return for the public on the investment that has been made at the site. 

Credit unions play a vital role in strengthening the financial resilience in our communities. As part of the Wales infrastructure investment plan mid-point review, I announced an additional £1 million over two years to support credit unions across Wales.

This week, I'm joining Michael Sheen as a new patron for Credit Unions Wales and I'm delighted to see this positive outcome of Welsh Government collaboration with credit unions in Wales as part of the financial inclusion strategy, which you've now endorsed with the allocation of financial transaction capital. Would you agree that this is precisely the way we should be using financial transaction capital, to meet Welsh Government goals of promoting social justice by supporting our credit unions? This allocation will help meet the challenging capital asset ratio requirements, which have changed in the last couple of years—particularly challenging for large credit unions—to ensure that we can help the growth and viability of credit unions in Wales. 

Can I begin, Llywydd, by congratulating Jane Hutt on her new role as patron of Credit Unions Wales? She's right to say that the reason we are able to provide financial transaction capital is because there are new challenging capital asset ratio requirements set out by the Prudential Regulation Authority, and those capital-to-asset ratios are mandatory. Some credit unions in Wales have struggled to make sure that they are able to match those ratios, but they are able to produce plans that show how they can meet them in the future. An injection of financial transaction capital allows them to shore up their balance sheets while those plans are carried out. That's why, in discussion with the sector, we've been able to put forward the assistance that we are able to. 

Can I just add our support to efforts to increase the capacity of credit unions? At the moment, according to the Money Charity, we spend £139 million per day on repayments and personal debt. It's absolutely incredible. And credit unions are a key part, I think, certainly for people in limited financial circumstances, but more generally as well, potentially. So, it's organisations like Dragonsavers in RCT that need to have their role expanded, and, you know, we can look at many countries—the United States and, much closer to us, the Republic of Ireland—that have a much more extensive financial services sector that embraces credit unions.

I agree with the Member entirely. Credit unions provide affordable credit and responsible lending and they are a lifeline for many people who, if they were obliged to borrow in more expensive parts of the market, would be part of that astonishing sum that the Member set out in his supplementary question that is being paid back all the time. In addition to the £1 million that I was able to make available through the Wales infrastructure investment plan, colleagues have recently announced £844,000 of Welsh Government funding to support credit unions over the next two years. There are 19 different projects that will be supported by that money, and they are all designed to do what David Melding suggested: to find ways of drawing more people into credit union membership in Wales.

The first round of innovate-to-save attracted 50 bids extending from the effectiveness of social prescribing to new ways of assisting communities threatened by coastal flooding. A second funding round was launched earlier this year.  

Can I thank the Cabinet Secretary for that response? I very much welcome the innovate-to-save scheme. It's something I've been asking for for some time. But, of course, not all innovations will work or provide long-term solutions, but those that do can produce improved services and/or savings to the Welsh public sector, which can be quite substantial. Are there any successful schemes that can be rolled out to other parts of the Welsh public sector?

Well, Llywydd, it is very early days in the innovate-to-save area, and I don't think we could yet be completely confident that these first schemes have yet demonstrated their success to the point where we could be confident of rolling them out everywhere. But to give you just one example, the Leonard Cheshire Disability charity, as they are one of the schemes we are taking forward under innovate-to-save, have been working with Anglesey council to pilot a project that brings people with profound physical disabilities together, because one of the effects of having a profound physical disability is you're often very isolated—you get services in your own home, you see the carer, you may not see anybody else. On Ynys Môn they've been bringing people together so that they can share in activities, and they have found it to be very successful. In that example, they are already talking to other local authorities in Wales as to whether or not they could roll that pilot scheme out further.

Cabinet Secretary, it's crucial that funding schemes like the innovate-to-save fund reach projects right across Wales and as such it's important that all parts of the Welsh public and third sectors are actually aware of the scheme. Therefore, can you tell us how the Welsh Government is promoting the scheme in all parts of Wales so that everyone is aware of it? Whilst I appreciate that the second round has only recently been launched, can you also tell us how you intend to monitor the fund to ensure its effectiveness?

Well, first of all, can I agree with Paul Davies that we are very keen that visibility of the fund and understanding of it is spread right across Wales? That's why we are working with the Wales Council for Voluntary Action and with Nesta, as organisations that already have reach out in all parts of the third sector, to make sure that the scheme is well known and understood. We've extended the period of the second round in order to be able to hold events in different parts of Wales, again, to be able to explain the fund to people who may not have heard about it otherwise and to encourage bids from wherever they may come. And, of course, we will use our invest-to-save model to make sure that investments that we make through innovate-to-save provide a proper return for the investment that we are making.

And finally, question 7—Andrew R.T Davies. 

I thank Andrew Davies for that question. Our conventional capital budget will be 20 per cent lower in 2019-20 than at the start of this decade. Nevertheless, through innovation and determination, the Welsh Government intends to deploy £6.5 billion in capital investment over the next three years, supporting homes, schools and hospitals right across the whole of Wales.

I'm glad you gave such a long answer, First Minister. I wasn't expecting to be called, and I'd just put a Polo in my mouth, which isn't a good thing to do just before you ask a question, Presiding Officer—

I could tell that you were busy reading something, so I decided to try and catch you out.

What I'd like to ask the finance Secretary, if possible, please, is: the Government have just concluded the public inquiry into the M4 relief road, and cost pressures, obviously, have increased dramatically over the anticipated costs of the relief road. The Welsh Government's own figures are now £1.4 billion—that was the figure that was submitted to the public inquiry. How confident is the Cabinet Secretary that the £1.4 million that the Welsh Government supplied to the inquiry—if the inquiry finds in favour of this capital project—will be the final amount that he as finance Secretary will have to find? And if that increased amount of money does have to be found, how confident is he that other capital projects in other parts of Wales won't suffer as a consequence?

Well, Llywydd, that is the sum of money that I'm being asked to identify at present, and those funds are held in reserves for the M4 project, awaiting the outcome of the ongoing inquiry. Because this is a project that will extend into the future, it is part of the reason that I have written to the Chief Secretary to the Treasury telling her that I will be looking for an extension to our borrowing powers for those future years, in order that we can ensure, in the way that Andrew R.T. Davies has suggested, that if the M4 project goes ahead, and we make that investment, it does not take place at the expense of other necessary investments in other parts of Wales.

Thank you, Cabinet Secretary. 

The next item, therefore, is questions to the leader of the house, and the first question is from Dawn Bowden.

Certainly. Through Digital Communities Wales, we are working in partnership with organisations and programmes across Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney who are well placed to reach the most digitally excluded. They provide the basic digital skills support needed to secure improved economic, learning and health outcomes.

Thank you very much. I'm very conscious, Cabinet Secretary, that you did have a major debate and statement on this yesterday. I have two questions for you today, and they're both on digital inclusion. So, please bear with me. My second question will be complementary to this one. But in the hope that you are shortly going to set out the track record of Welsh Government investment in broadband and digital services in Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney, do you agree that it's critical that we do also focus on implementing the Welsh Government's digital inclusion strategy of 2018? Because that strategy reinforces the concerns about the gap between disadvantaged people and the pace of change in digital services. So, while we can't hold back the progress, is there any further work we can do in our Valleys communities to support the strategy and to help people on the path towards acquiring those digital skills that are so vital to modern life and the wider well-being agenda?

Yes, absolutely. I think, Llywydd, I will have several opportunities in a moment to talk about broadband roll-out, so I won't indulge myself here. But once we have achieved roll-out, then it's obviously very important that people have the skills and confidence to make the most of the digital technologies. And there are some great examples, actually, in Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney at the moment. We provide the strategic leadership required to tackle digital exclusion, recognising that digital skills requirements to meet the current and future needs of a modern economy and society are always evolving. So, we need a concerted, collaborative effort across the third, private and public sectors, and throughout our communities, to achieve a truly digitally inclusive society. And so, we work very closely across a number of Cabinet portfolios, with our local government colleagues, with third sector colleagues as part of the Valleys taskforce, and we have a digital action plan for the Valleys taskforce, which is very exciting. I think I probably said yesterday that it has a number of elements in it. One is a geographical database that is designed to allow people to access a range of data that they can use both in their personal life, in accessing public services, and in developing apps for little SMEs. One is actually assistance to develop such apps and community Wi-Fi to enable them to be used in a widespread way. So, there are a number of very important projects, but it is important that people have the skills to access them, otherwise we will just be exacerbating social isolation.

Leader of the house, the Welsh Government's recently published digital inclusion progress report states that Merthyr was identified as an area with limited digital inclusion activity taking place. This led to the formation of the Get Merthyr Tydfil Online partnership. Given that the Barclays digital development index 2017 claimed that Welsh employees score among the lowest of all UK regions for their digital skills, and that employers are willing to pay a premium for workers with word processing, data analysis and social media capabilities, will the leader of the house update the Assembly on the work of the partnership in improving digital inclusion in Merthyr and surrounding valleys, please?

Yes. You make a very good point. There have been a number of surveys recently. Unfortunately, it's always a difficulty in Wales, for the size of the survey, so if you extrapolate it out across Wales, we're not absolutely certain how valid the data is, statistically. But, nevertheless, it draws attention to some of the serious problems we have with digital exclusion. And there is definitely a generational issue there. The Member makes a number of points simultaneously. We need people to have the basic digital skills, to be able to access public services, and to stay socially involved and so on, but we also need the higher level digital skills in our working-age workforce, and our youngsters, in order to develop the programmes that allow people to access those skills.

Part of the Tech Valleys initiative, and a number of other initiatives in Merthyr, as I said to Dawn Bowden, in partnership with a number of partners, are to do both of those things together. And we have some very exciting inter-generational projects, where we have young people with very high levels of digital skills assisting in both hospitals and in residential circumstances, to get people who are older, who don't have those skills, to get online, and that's been very successful, and actually very heartening in a number of ways, to see the inter-generational working. So, there are a number of innovative ways that we can assist with that, but I agree that the—well, the sample sizes are a serious problem, so we do need to look at ways of capturing the data more effectively.

I think, Llywydd, you've agreed to combine this with question 3.

Digital Communities Wales, and many other actions in our framework and delivery plan, support more people to gain maximum benefit from the life-changing opportunities digital technologies can offer.

Thank you. Only 51 per cent of pensioners living alone and 25 per cent of disabled people in Wales have internet access. A lack of skills and low confidence are often the key factors preventing people from getting online. Learning how to use technology and access the internet undoubtedly reduces loneliness and social isolation among older people, by helping them to stay in touch with family and friends. Gaining digital skills can be life changing, enabling people to rediscover old connections, and form new ones. Inter-generational projects have been shown to benefit in a variety of fields, and digital skills are now second nature to most young people, and they benefit from sharing their knowledge. There are some great examples around Wales where this has happened, but what more can the Welsh Government do to encourage and to support inter-generational digital projects?

Well, as I was saying, we have some very innovative projects going on. But just to use some of the stats that we have: 85 per cent of adults in Wales now regularly use the internet, compared to 66 per cent in 2010, and £1 million a year is invested in the dedicated digital inclusion programme, our Digital Communities Wales programme, and we've done that every year since 2015. Since then, we've supported over 117,300 individuals to engage with technology, and we've trained over 1,000 young digital heroes, which is the programme we're talking about, where young people from schools, colleges and youth organisations volunteer to support older people to engage in digital technology.

Most of the funding activities in this regard are aimed at addressing the basic digital skills that we were just talking about, allowing older people to become less socially isolated and to have access to basic services. But we're very much aware that we also want to increase the digital skills of the youngsters who are actually doing the volunteering and the teaching, and to include that in the curriculum work that we're doing, and with our digital heroes scheme. So, it's a really great programme, and we're actually developing both sides of that, and we're looking to roll that out as widely as possible through Wales. I've been discussing with the Cabinet Secretary for health what we can do in hospitals for some socially isolated people, who have lengthy stays in hospitals, where, in a sense, Llywydd, we have a captive audience.

Leader of the house, digital inclusion is dependent on adequate broadband speeds, and I know, over many months, you've shown a keen interest in my notspots in Monmouthshire, and visited a number of them. You'll be aware that, recently, the UK Government announced that they wanted to roll out a fifth generation pilot across my area in south-east Wales. Can you update us on any discussions you've had with the UK Government about that pilot, about the timescale for the pilot, the extent of it, and how the Welsh Government intends to build on that to learn the lessons from that pilot and then roll out the good practice across the rest of south Wales and the rest of Wales? 

Yes, we've asked Innovation Point to look into exactly how we can best exploit the 5G technologies and, actually, a large number of different pots of money that have come available in a number of different configurations, and Llywydd, yesterday, during my statement, I discussed some of those. I won't reiterate all of them, but we absolutely need to make sure that we are on top of the technology, that we assist small and medium-sized enterprises to exploit the technology, that we have the spectrum sales done in a way that allows us to access those technologies and doesn't cut them off, and that we also encourage the automotive industry in particular, but other digital-enabled industries, to come here to exploit the skills that we're producing.

So, we have a number of innovations going on at the same time, including things like the National Software Academy, which we fund over in Newport, which has a very innovative degree programme based on solving industry problems directly and which are then rolled out into the industries, and Innovation Point itself. There are a number of discussions that we have ongoing with our industries here already in Wales, because there's a big issue about upskilling the current workforce, as well as attracting in innovative, digital technologies. So, there are a large number of different ways that we're supporting those developments around the tech hubs, in the Valleys in particular. 

The leader of the house will excuse my lack of grasp of some of the issues with technology around them. I come from a generation where communication technology consisted of stretching a string across the road and having a tin can either end. [Laughter.] But I understand that the 96 per cent superfast broadband in the Pontypridd area is very good.

Can I raise with you the issue of estates—new developed estates that are being built? There is an example in my area of Dyffryn y Coed, a Persimmon development in Llantwit Fardre, where there were two phases. The first phase connected to superfast broadband through the fibre broadband, and that's fine. But phase 2 is not connected to that—it doesn't have that highest level, because it hasn't been asked for by the developers. Now, surely, there must be an issue where new developments, almost as part of their planning permission—that there should be a requirement that they actually do this, because I now have a large number of constituents who tell me that the best advice that they have is to set up a legal entity to apply for a grant of £4,800, and then there's a 17-step process, which will take 12 months, in order to actually get that sort of fibre connection.

I have written to you about this, but is this a problem that has been arising in places? What can we do about it? And should we not be ensuring that it's a mandatory obligation upon developers? 

Yes, it's been a continuing thorn in our side, actually, and this is the whole issue about whether this is an infrastructure technology or whether it's a luxury product. Unfortunately, the UK Government persist in thinking of it as a luxury product and not an infrastructure, and therefore we have less good powers in the area in terms of what we can do. But I have had extensive conversations, both with my Cabinet Secretary with planning responsibility and, actually, with the Minister for Housing and Regeneration, about what we can do, both in encouraging councils to put it in as part of 106 agreements, for example, and in encouraging the house builders to actually wire their properties.

There is an agreement with BT for house builders, where they build over 30 houses at the same time, to put the infrastructure in. But otherwise it's a negotiation between the developer and whatever technology company they're particularly negotiating with.

However, the scheme you're talking about is a BT community fibre scheme. We do have other schemes available in Wales and I think you have written to me, so I will be getting in touch with you about other solutions that may be possible for that particular community. It is an ongoing problem that we're aware of and that we're trying to work on. 

Leader of the house, Newport has been attracting investment into the digital sector and is keen to attract significantly more with support from Welsh Government. You mentioned the software academy and the potential of degree-level qualifications. Does there also need to be even more emphasis on training for people who are in, perhaps, lower paid jobs at the moment, and are part-time, so that they can upskill, increase their income and benefit from but also drive the development of the digital economy we want to see? 

 Yes, absolutely. There's a need for science, technology, engineering and mathematics-related skills right through the spectrum. So, we want to produce the graduates of the future but we also need the technicians and so on. So, we have a number of employability schemes. They're not in my portfolio, but we have a large number of employability schemes and flexible skills programmes, which are available to existing companies to do just that—to upskill their current workforce. We also have employability schemes for people not yet in the market to get their skills into that. So, both of those things are covered. The software academy is looking at doing outreach for people who want to perhaps do level 3 skills as well—so A-level equivalent and higher national diploma, with a route to going on to higher education or indeed with a route to going into employment at that point. So, we are exploring that. There definitely is a need for everybody at every level of the range of abilities.

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

Thank you, Llywydd. Equality means ensuring that people can live their lives to their full potential, and that they can live independently. I'm sure that you would agree with those words. That is why the social model in relation to disability has been a way of empowering the lives of disabled people, and making public services think about disability in a different manner. One of the greatest challenges that faces many disabled people is lack of finance or poverty, and, obviously, poverty can make the quality of life of a disabled person significantly worse. Do you agree that the Welsh Government has a responsibility to give financial support to disabled people and families with disabled children, so that they can overcome some of the barriers that society places upon them?

Yes, indeed. The Member, as always, raises a very important point. It's not actually directly in my portfolio. I have an overarching view of equalities that I work with all of the other Ministers and Cabinet Secretaries on. So, it's actually my colleague the Minister for children who actually deals with most of the funds available, but I have very regular meetings with him about the effect on disabled families and their communities. We work very closely with Disability Wales and a number of other groups in the sector to make sure that we do maximise the funding available. There is a limit to what we can do in terms of the universal credit roll-out, for example, which is causing some concern in the areas where it's been fully rolled out, but we are aware of some of those problems.

Thank you very much. You will be aware that Plaid Cymru has a motion later on this afternoon where we will be discussing child poverty, and that that motion calls for the devolution of the administration of parts of the welfare system. But, of course, there are some benefits that have already been fully devolved, or the administrative responsibility for them already lies in Wales—the Family Fund, the council tax benefit, elements of the social fund and, of course, the independent living fund.

Are you content with the way that your Government has been dealing with the responsibility for these particular funds? I accept that perhaps the other Minister would be able to answer in more detail, but, generally speaking, are you happy with the performance of your Government in dealing with these funds?

I think it's a very complex area, and it's not in my portfolio, so, forgive me, I won't have the level of detail necessary to answer it with perhaps the detail that you'd like. It is actually Huw Irranca-Davies, my colleague, who has control of the actual funds, but I have very regular meetings with, as I said, him and a number of voluntary groups in the sector to see what we can do. I am aware of the long-running and philosophical, almost, debate about whether you can administer a welfare system predicated on a set of values that you don't share, and we certainly do not share the values currently associated with the UK Government's running of that welfare system.

I'm sure it will come out in the debate this afternoon that there are a number of issues around whether you would actually get the money necessary to run it without cutting into other services and so on, but, in principle, of course, we'd like to see the welfare system run in the way it was intended, which is for the benefit of those people who need the helping hand to be able to live their lives to the full. I think we probably share the view that that's not how it's running at the moment.

My colleague the Minister with responsibility for this is conducting a number of reviews of the various funds, and he would be better placed to give you some of the detail of how those reviews are going at the moment.

Thank you very much, and we look forward to having that debate on the devolution of welfare later on this afternoon.

But it is clear that not everyone in your party is content with some aspects, certainly, of these funds—for example, abolishing the independent living fund. I understand that a proposal was passed to restore this fund by the Labour Party conference, which was in favour of adopting the Scottish model. So, could you explain how abolishing this essential support, along with cutting the funding to the Family Fund—? How can doing that be in accordance with my opening words and with the principles of equalities legislation, and your responsibility to remove barriers facing disabled people and children?

This is one of the difficulties of having one of the cross-cutting portfolios. So, I'm not going to give you an answer that's satisfactory, simply because I'm not the Minister with the detail of the fund in question, so it's not for me to answer that. But, in general terms, I've had a number of conversations with the Minister around what we're doing to review the fund, what the overarching aims of it are, what the amount of money contained within it is and what can be best done with that, alongside the various organisations with whom we liaise—the stakeholder groups and so on.

I am aware that there is a range of views on this, but, unfortunately, I'm not the Minister with overall responsibility for that. I do assure you that we have the conversation so that we can maximise the benefit to disabled families. But there's absolutely no doubt at all that we're struggling in an austerity agenda with which we do not agree and where we are really dealing with a rationing system, also with which we do not agree. So, it is a question of trying to find the best path through that and ameliorate, where at all possible, the difficulties that people living with disabilities and living with children with disabilities encounter in their lives.

The Conservative spokesperson, Russell George.

Diolch, Presiding Officer. Leader of the house, 18 months ago, you announced the intention to publish the mobile action plan. Can I ask, since that date, what concrete measures you have implemented to improve mobile coverage in Wales? And when was the last time you directly met with mobile operators?

I meet with mobile operators on a rolling programme of meeting the various different operators. I haven't had a group meeting with them for quite some time, since we launched the action plan, but I have a sort of series of meetings with them, if you like. We're also in regular correspondence with Ofcom. We've had many more discussions with Ofcom very recently around—it feels slightly like groundhog day here, Llywydd, because we had the debate yesterday—issues such as sharing infrastructure, planning your infrastructure more efficiently, what planning requirements are actually necessary, what the real need for a reduction in non-domestic rate charges are, and why they're so extremely opposed to roaming in areas where they've all agreed that only one operator is likely to give 98 per cent geographical coverage. I think I did rehearse some of that with you yesterday as well.

You did, and I did ask in my question what concrete measures you have implemented to improve mobile coverage in Wales. I didn't hear anything to tell me what actual measures you've undertaken. I would suggest that perhaps you do meet with the operators together, because they would be able to tell you what their barriers are. They tell me what the barriers are, and I think they need to explain some of these barriers to you. You said yesterday that you disagreed entirely with my analysis of the situation with mobile, but what I think is more important to the people of Wales is that the mobile industry seems to agree with my analysis.

Now, you did also say yesterday that the geographical problems in Wales are unlike anywhere else in the United Kingdom. Well, I entirely agree with you on that, but that is precisely why you need to foster the right conditions for the industry to roll out its infrastructure here in Wales, and the operators are saying that continued delays in the reform to the existing planning laws are delaying and adding additional costs for them. I think this is the issue, particularly in rural Wales, which is causing us issues. Now, with changes to the planning rules already in place in England and in Scotland, we're now playing catch-up in Wales. You talk about needing more evidence from the industry, but I would ask you what evidence you need on top of what they've already provided you. That's my specific question. 

Last year, the economy committee undertook an inquiry on this and we made some recommendations on mobile and you accepted them all, I'm pleased to say. One of those recommendations was that you should explore the feasibility of using the planning regime to encourage operators to share infrastructure. You agreed with that, so I'd like an update on that. You also accepted recommendation 9, which said that Welsh Government should consider offering non-domestic rate relief for new masts. Well, you accepted that, I'm pleased to say, as well. And you did say in your response at the time—nine months ago—that you were examining the scope for changes at that time and that research would be completed in November 2017. So, can you please also update us on progress in this area?

Yes. A large part of that is actually in the portfolio of my colleague, the Cabinet Secretary, who is also here to hear what you've got to say, but I think I did go through a lot of it yesterday. Just to be clear, one of the big problems we have in terms of giving you concrete things that I've done, is that it's not actually devolved. We have a fundamental disagreement with a Government of your colour in the UK about whether this is infrastructure or not. The mobile phone operators, I'm very well aware, will tell you that all they need is to be able to build bigger masts and everything will be fine. But I don't want to see, and nor do most of the people of Wales, a forest of masts right through the national park, because they can't be brought to share those masts and infrastructure, or indeed use the Home Office masts instead. So, there is a real balance here between the number of masts necessary in order to ensure there's competition in something that ought to be an infrastructure and ensuring the coverage for Wales, and actually people behaving sensibly in sensible areas.

As I said, this is a commercial imperative by them, so what they're basically saying to me is they want me to get my Cabinet colleague to allow them to build any size mast they like, anywhere they like, and take all of the tariffs away that they have to pay to go there, and then they'll build a whole network right across Wales. Well, I'm sorry, that doesn't stack up in business terms. We've asked them for the evidence to show why the current charging regime makes such a difference to their commercial case, and why they can't share, and why they won't allow roaming, and I'm afraid the evidence we've had back has not been good. So, we've gone out again to do that. At the same time, we're out to consultation on 'Planning Policy Wales'—that's about to come in—and we're about to consult on changes to the permitted development regime. But it will not be a free-for-all, because that's not what the people of Wales have indicated to us, in any consultation, they actually want.

Well, you keep saying that these issues aren't devolved. The two specific issues that I asked you about are absolutely devolved. I asked you about offering non-domestic rate relief for new masts, which you didn't address. I also asked you about changes to the planning regime. You talk about how this isn't in your portfolio, but you should be answering—you've already discussed this with the Cabinet Secretary—and giving us an update in that regard. So, I think it is frustrating that so little progress has been made. 

New research from O2 reveals that the UK could benefit from £6 billion of productivity savings to essential services from 5G. Can I ask you how you're going to work with the industry to ensure that Wales is at the forefront of this next generation of mobile technology and does not lose investment to other parts of the UK?

Right, well, I'll reiterate it, because I thought I had answered it very clearly. I have not seen any concrete evidence of why the business case is that they can't share masts, that they need to build their own separate infrastructure, and that that infrastructure is not viable without non-domestic rate relief. So, I have not yet seen that evidence, although we've asked for it many times. We are out to consultation. We've had the research; we are out to consultation on the back of that research. That consultation finishes in June, and we're about to start the permitted development rights. So, I think that is the answer that you've asked for. It might not be the one you like, but that is the answer.

And the next answer on 5G—and I've said this many times in this Chamber—is that if we have the same situation as we have with 4G, where we have, effectively, landbanking, where you have one operator that owns 4G for Wales and if it doesn't think it's commercially viable, it simply doesn't roll it out, it is not acceptable. So, if they buy it and they haven't used it within a certain amount of time, we've asked the UK Government many times to put an axe on that to say, 'If you haven't used it in this specific area by then, give it back and let the public sector do it as a market intervention'. Now, that will reduce the amount of money that the spectrum is sold for, and that is a big issue because we don't think it should be used as a cash cow, and I'm afraid that's not what the UK Government thinks. So, we're having a big argument with them about that, which is a fundamental issue, because this is not a luxury product; it is an infrastructure. As long as we have that argument, we've got a real problem.

The UKIP spokesperson, David Rowlands.

Diolch, Llywydd, and I promise you, leader of the house, I will not mention digital infrastructure at all. In October 2017, Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary produced a report entitled 'Stolen freedom: the policing response to modern slavery and human trafficking'. In that report, it says that today and every day, thousands of men, women and children are being degraded and dehumanised. Whilst this is a UK-wide report, can the leader of the house give us an update on efforts in Wales to combat modern slavery?

Yes, indeed. We have the first anti-slavery co-ordinator in Wales, and he's been working very hard on a system, alongside all of our partners, to make sure that we have the multi-agency hubs working together to ensure that, when people do come forward, we're able to swiftly process them, take them to places of safety, and get the prosecutions in place as swiftly as possible. There have not been many so far, but we're very confident that more are coming. There are three problems, however, the first of which is the issue around the hostile—now called 'compliance'—environment. We do not want people who come forward and who have been the victims of modern slavery to find themselves without any status and, in the worst of cases, faced with deportation. We particularly don't want women who are trafficked to be in that position, often fleeing domestic violence as well. So, we have had liaison with the Home Office to discuss unintended consequences of the several regimes coming together, which we fear are stopping people coming forward because they fear that they'll be put into a worse position. But we have been very much praised in Wales for our anti-slavery co-ordinator and his efforts to bring the services together, and we're very pleased with that.

Well, I thank the leader of the house for those comments, and I fully endorse exactly what she has just said about those complexities, and that anybody who comes forward should have the necessary help and should not be punished for the situation they're in. But the Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner, Kevin Hyland, highlighted that those in modern slavery are hidden in plain sight, housed in squalid conditions and working in high-risk industries, including building sites, car washes and nail salons. Given that all of these industries are prevalent in Wales, is it not incumbent on the Welsh Government to ensure that Wales will not tolerate the abuses that come with these practices?

Yes, indeed, and we make very sure—. We've been running a number of publicity campaigns—the 'Don't be a bystander' one, which was launched last week, for example—highlighting to people what they should look for, both in domestic and sexual violence cases, but also in slavery cases, and putting studies out across network television and so on, so that if people recognise themselves, they can come forward and they can understand where to get that help. A large part of this is actually people not understanding that that's what happening to them because they don't understand the system into which they've been trafficked or moved. My colleague Joyce Watson has done an enormous amount of work in getting this sort of publicity out as well.

You're absolutely right that we have to make sure that people are aware of their circumstances and know what to do in order to come forward, and can escape, if you like, from those circumstances, with some degree of safety in order for that to happen. For that to happen, we have to make sure that all of the citizens of Wales are aware and actually recognise it when they see it, so that they can come forward and report. I would say at this point, Llywydd, that we always encourage anyone who has any suspicions of that sort to contact their local police immediately.

Well, again, I thank the leader of the house for her answer, and I fully endorse the fact that Joyce Watson has done a great deal of work with regard to this, and I acknowledge that, of course.

But there have been numerous observations on the inadequacy of the agencies concerned in obtaining convictions of those engaged in the various aspects of exploitation, particularly with regard to immigrant workers, and can I make it known here that we really do have to have a definition of what slavery is? It's all right to say that people should come forward if they recognise it and they see it, but unless we have a true description of what slavery is, then that's not going to happen. So, could the Minister update us on the number of convictions, not referrals—convictions—there have been in Wales involving slavery or quasi-slavery?

Yes, I don't have the statistics to hand, so I'll write to you with the specific statistics. But there aren't enough of them, and that's why we've continued to develop the multi-agency service hubs, in order to bring together the data necessary to make the prosecutions much more likely to happen. There are a large number of reasons for why the prosecutions haven't happened, largely to do with the reliability and availability of data for evidence. This is about getting the agencies together so that we have the data necessary and we don't expose people to further threats and difficulties in coming forward. We're very hopeful that the number of prosecutions will accelerate as we go forward, now that we've got the multi-agency hubs being rolled out right across Wales. But I will write to the Member with the specifics, which I don't have in my brief at the moment.

Yes. Work to implement recommendations from the report is under way across the Government, business, education and academia, and good progress is being made in a number of areas.

Thank you. You may be aware that the Equality, Local Government and Communities Committee is undertaking an inquiry into pregnancy and maternity and returning women back to work in Wales. It is fair to say—if any committee members are here—that we're having some very startling findings, really, about the lack of support for women and getting back in the workplace. The 'Talented Women for a Successful Wales' report makes a number of recommendations for the STEM sector, including the development of keeping-in-touch strategies for those away from work or research while on maternity or parental leave. We found too many examples where people were not kept in the loop whilst they were off looking after baby, and then it was a long time afterwards that they were expected to go back to work and pick up where they left off. That is not a good way to operate in any business.

The Welsh Government has responsibility to encourage and facilitate the recommendations and actions, and I wonder if you could update the Chamber on progression as regards this 'Talented Women for a Successful Wales' report, and advise us as to how your Government is facilitating improving the conditions for pregnancy, maternity and paternity in STEM workplaces across Wales. Because one thing that did come out of the evidence we took: men have a part, fathers have a part to play in the bringing up of their children too. They want to, but the mechanisms there are not as easy for them. So, it's not just about a women's issue.

No, I couldn't agree more with that. This is about parents, not mothers, as we keep saying. I chair the board that implements the report, the women in STEM board, and there've been two meetings so far. At the last meeting we broadened the membership of the board, particularly with a view to bringing in more than academia and public services, and to include a range of other people as well. As you rightly said, I accepted all the recommendations from the report and did a written statement to the Assembly to that effect.

The Cabinet Secretary for Education provided a progress update to the board at its last meeting on actions taken within the education sector to implement the recommendations. We recently wrote to all Welsh universities requesting a further update from the one that they gave us in September, at the first meeting of the board. We've also written to all anchor companies and key business networks to request feedback on their progress with the 12 recommendations from the report. We're following that up at the moment. And we have a cross-departmental working group of officials leading the co-ordination and implementation of the recommendations directed at the Welsh Government itself—although there weren't that many for the Welsh Government itself—to support and facilitate those by outside organisations.

My colleague the Cabinet Secretary for Economy and Transport has written this into the new economic contract as well, and we're also working on the fair work criteria, which will also have that. One last thing to mention to you is that we also have our Sêr Cymru programme, which we're very proud of indeed, one of which is specifically aimed at returners to STEM—returners into the academic world, but for STEM. And you'll be amazed to discover that, of course, about 98 per cent of those have been women going back into it. So, that's particularly aimed at returners, and we're looking to see how we can roll that successful programme out in other areas of economic activity, such as our big anchor companies.

Yes, certainly. There are several domestic abuse services across Mid and West Wales, supporting both male and female victims. The region’s first joint strategy, 'Safer Lives, Healthier Families', will be published by the end of July this year.

I thank the leader of the house for that reply. I was very pleased to hear her say that domestic violence and abuse can apply to men as well as women. Welsh Women's Aid and other organisations do wonderful work to provide refuges and helpline services, and of course we commend their work, but there is a hidden—again, in plain sight—problem with men who are victims of domestic violence and abuse. In 2016-17 there were 713,000 such cases that were reported in England and Wales. One of the problems here is that—and it especially applies to men—there is a reticence in coming forward to reveal what has actually happened so that it can lead to some sort of remedial action. This is particularly the case, perhaps, in rural areas where there is a greater sense of isolation, and people feel as though they're beyond the reach of essential domestic abuse services, which are very often provided in urban areas. So, can the leader of the house perhaps tell us what steps the Welsh Government are taking to remove the stigma that is falsely felt by many male victims of domestic abuse, and therefore enable a greater number of men to report such incidents, and also that these services will be provided confidentially, especially in rural areas?

Yes, absolutely. We run several campaigns, which I've already mentioned, but I'm more than happy to highlight them again. We run the This is Me campaign, which is deliberately done to challenge gender stereotypes of the sort that you're describing, and to highlight gender inequality as a cause and consequence of violence against women, domestic abuse and sexual violence, which I launched in Gower College in January, and that is specifically done to ensure that men don't feel that they have to live up to a particular brand of masculinity and can come forward in those circumstances.

I was very pleased to launch the Don't be a Bystander campaign at the Pierhead in April. A large number of you were present during that launch and we've run a number of photo opportunities here, and so on. We would be very happy to assist any AMs who want to publicise that further in any area of Wales to do so, because the whole point of it is to allow people to recognise themselves and to come forward and to report anything that they see. But we specifically also fund the Live Fear Free helpline for both men and women, which is a confidential service that runs in all parts of Wales. And we also specifically fund the Dyn project, which is for male victims of domestic abuse, which also runs those helplines right across Wales.

My aim has always been to bring people together digitally by providing access to fast reliable broadband to all properties across Wales. We aim to continue to achieve this through the Superfast Cymru successor scheme, our voucher schemes and a new community-focused scheme.  

Thank you very much, leader of the house. Obviously, it's very important that we have as full an access to broadband as possible in Wales, given its importance in terms of full citizenship today, accessing goods and services and educational aspects, for example. So, obviously that's why the Welsh Government is, I hope, as keen as I am to reach all communities in Wales. And in that context, on the difficulties in Newport East at the moment, reaching some of the outlying areas such as Llanvaches, Bishton and Goldcliff, I held a recent meeting with representatives of those communities, Openreach and others. Leader of the house, I just wonder what you are able to say at this stage in terms of phase 2 of Superfast Cymru and any other developments that might give some comfort to those communities.

As you know, John, without specific addresses, it's very difficult to comment. But we do know that many of the properties in the three communities that you mentioned can already access superfast broadband and, as I've said to you before, I encourage you to give me actual addresses and then we can address specific problems. Some of the premises that can't currently access superfast broadband have been included on the list of premises that might, potentially, be served by the successor scheme, I'm delighted to say. And for others, through the open market review process, we're trying to identify individual properties that may be in the 'almost completed' category, if I can call it that. That's not very accurate, technically, but you know what I mean, and we'd be pleased to help you identify those. And we can also, as I said earlier in response to another question, help with some community solutions that might be available for some of those villages where the actual fibre programme might not get to them. But, there are other suitable programmes, and we've deliberately kept a very large part of the successor scheme money back to get such community solutions in place. So, I'd welcome the opportunity to have the details off you, so that we can look into that further.

Yes. Discussions between Openreach and the station at St Davids are ongoing to identify suitable solutions for this essential connection. My officials continue to work closely with station representatives to explore the provision of a dedicated fibre optic line, which will ensure greater levels of security, network resilience and guaranteed speeds.   

I thank you for that answer and also yesterday's update on digital connectivity in Wales. Overall, it has been a successful programme. Some have been harder to reach than others and St Davids RNLI station is one example of that. I wonder, Cabinet Secretary, if you'd be prepared to join me at a meeting in St Davids to speak to the RNLI, so that we can at least discuss the way forward.

Yes, I'd be very delighted to do that. There have been a number a conversations already, but I'm more than happy to join you in them. We have looked at why the superfast connection wasn't possible in the first place and what current the connectivity is, and there are some technical issues. It will be well-worth coming to see for myself. So, I'd be very happy to take you up on that invitation.

Yes. I announced a suite of measures in my oral statement on 30 January to further extend fast broadband coverage across Wales. And the mobile action plan I published last October set out how we will work with others to improve mobile connectivity as well.

Thank you, Cabinet Secretary. I know that you agree that it's vital we continue making sure that all our communities can benefit from broadband and digital roll-out. So, can I ask you what further benefits you feel will arise for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney in particular from the recent Tech Valleys announcement, which is clearly going to be based in the Ebbw Vale area, but is hoped will have a benefit across the whole of the Heads of the Valleys?

Yes, that's £25 million over three years to look at digital innovation, particularly in the automotive field, and my colleague the Cabinet Secretary for Economy and Transport is also very involved in this. We're also looking at the exploitation of the 5G possibilities, especially on fleet, and in Blaenau Gwent they've been successful in securing a UK Government grant for exploiting 5G technology and data collection. I believe they are about to attach it to their fleet so that they get better data on the state of all of their roads and refuse collections and so on. So, we will be looking with interest to see how that innovative technology works. We've appointed, as I said earlier to Russell George, I think it was, Innovation Point to advise, stimulate and co-ordinate activity on 5G in Wales.

As I said earlier, Merthyr and Rhymney will be particularly benefiting from the Valleys taskforce's three ways forward. The three pilots that we're looking at, if I didn't say earlier, are: an Uber-style operation, run by the public sector, for NHS non-urgent patients to get to hospital appointments and so on, which we're very excited about; rolling out the Lle Government geographical database to allow SMEs access to that open data to see what they can come up with by way of innovative use of it; and rolling community Wi-Fi out in various points, small shopping centres, villages and so on, to see what we can do by way of data collection.

And there are some really innovative things there around allowing people to put digital vouchers online, for example, for sale offers and so on. It allows the traders to see which of those have been successful and which have not, because you get direct feedback from whether somebody uses it or not because they bring it into the shop. So, there's some really good stuff.

There's a really good example of a community Wi-Fi system in Llandrindod Wells, if Members are interested in visiting. When you go there you can log onto it and it tells you all kinds of information about what's available in the shops and what vouchers are available and so on—very, very useful indeed. So, there's some really good innovations coming; all based, of course, on our massive investment into the broadband infrastructure that underpins all of this.

Thank you very much, leader of the house. 

Item 3 on the agenda is questions to the Assembly Commission. The first question this afternoon is to be answered by Commissioner Joyce Watson. Question 1, Neil Hamilton.

We have made good progress in this area by embedding diversity and inclusion considerations into service and project planning, policy development, procurement and any changes to the Assembly estate. We've also increased the number of equality impact assessments that have been undertaken, including, for example, one reviewing the Commission's recruitment process and one for the youth parliament.

I thank the Commissioner for that response. It's clear from the statement of objective 4 that it applies to integrating diversity and inclusion into all our work and the work of the Commission. Does the Commissioner therefore agree with me that it's very important that Commissioners themselves should lead by example in this area? Although everybody thinks immediately in terms of racial equality, gender equality, sexual orientation equality, et cetera, et cetera, that also the question of political orientation is equally important. Therefore, describing other Members—

No, I'm sorry. No, I'm sorry that's not for the Commission. That is not for the Commission to answer. Mr Hamilton, sorry, that question was not for the Commission to answer. Therefore, we will move on. Question 2, Jenny Rathbone, to be answered by the Llywydd.

After a consultation held during the review of events on the estate, some Assembly Members suggested that there should be a cap on the number of events. A cap would help them to manage their time more effectively, encourage more diverse use of the estate and avoid block bookings. Based on Members’ use of the estate in the past, only four Assembly Members would be affected by a limit of 10 events. It doesn’t affect bookings already made, and neither does it effect cross-party groups.

Thank you, Llywydd, I'm grateful for the clarification. I'm obviously concerned to know whether I might be affected by this. My position as the Assembly Member for Cardiff Central does make it possible for me to host an event, for example, on a Friday, which I appreciate would not be possible for most Assembly Members, whose constituencies are too far away for that. I absolutely agree that we need to keep the Assembly estate for policy-related issues—things that we think are important to enhance the work we do on behalf of the people of Wales. So, I just wondered if you could clarify—. I believe I'm not one of the people who've had more than 10 bookings, but, obviously, I'm a bit anxious that I might have to say 'no' to constituents, who—. For example, I've sponsored the Armenian exhibition that's upstairs at the moment, which is not directly relevant, but it's a lovely way of celebrating the fact that the Armenian diaspora is made to feel welcome in Wales. So, I just wondered who is going to be affected by this, and whether this is genuinely an attempt to ensure that we're not having the estate used inappropriately.

It's most genuinely an attempt to try and ensure that the use of the estate is in line with our parliamentary working, our need to have public and policy discussions happening within our estate. The upside of allowing more than 10 events is that there is more happening on the Assembly estate, which is a good thing. Historically, there have been—as I mentioned in my earlier response, there are some Members, as you've hinted, quite local to Cardiff Bay, who are high users of the booking of events. Whilst that's a good thing in itself, it can also then stop others who are more occasional users of the booking for events from having space. So, making sure that we ensure that we have equality of access to all Members is particularly important.

But if there are negative effects of the policy that we are putting in place then we need to look at those. We're already putting an early review into place to see how the new system of booking space on the Assembly estate has had any negative impact on the work that Assembly Members do. So, we'd be very keen to hear from Assembly Members as to whether there has been a negative impact on their work as they see it, and how we can learn from that experience and put things right if need be.

Well, I know I'm certainly one of the ones who books more than 10 events a year, and I certainly don't want to stop anybody else being able to book an event, but I certainly wouldn't want the place not to be used and left empty. Because this is the heart of our democracy, we want people to be here all the time, as much as we possibly can. And I just have a fear that this policy may turn out to be a bit too rigid. I'm not thinking necessarily of the numbers of events that you're able to have, but in terms of what type of event is appropriate. Would the Llywydd be able to say who actually decides whether an event is appropriate or not? And wouldn't that be best left to the decision of the Assembly Members?

Well, just to say, to reiterate the point I've already made, if there have been negative impacts on the work and the priorities that Assembly Members feel from changing the policy of booking space on the estate, then as we undertake this review we'll let Assembly Members know of that review and we would like your feedback formally into that so that we can learn. There was consultation with Assembly Members in designing the policy to start with. Not everybody engages at that point, of course, because we—and I'm as guilty as anybody else on this; I engage when I meet a problem. Therefore, hopefully, people will engage with the review that we are putting in place.

As a result of that review, the Commissioners will discuss with their political parties what the priorities of the political parties and Assembly Members are before we take a final view on a long-term solution for this. The point that you make about whether it's an individual AM that decides what the priorities are and who gets to decide is an important point. We've tried to put some priorities in place. They relate around policy-focused activity, they relate to work that's linked to Parliament's democratic work, and the role of cross-party groups in particular is important in that, and also to minimise an issue that's been raised quite often by Members in this place: to minimise the likelihood of similar events being scheduled at the same time demanding the presence of the same AM at one or two or three events, and then the organisers of those events being disappointed that not enough Members are staying for long enough for their events. So, it's a complicated issue, on a limited estate, to get right. We may not have it right at this point but we're keen to review that with Assembly Members' engagement into the future. 

Diolch, Llywydd.

Item 4 is topical questions. The first topical question this afternoon is from Dai Lloyd, to be answered by the Cabinet Secretary for Economy and Transport. Dai Lloyd. 

The second Severn bridge is a UK Government asset. The UK Government wrote to inform the First Minister of the name change in 2017; the First Minister did not object to the proposal. 

When the Secretary of State declared his intention to rename the second Severn crossing, a few months ago, the Prince of Wales bridge, I don’t think that either he, you or the royal family had expected such opposition to the proposal. Now, over 40,000 people have signed a petition opposing this proposal, and a recent opinion poll shows that only 17 per cent of the people of Wales support this idea. That, of course, entirely contradicts your claim, Cabinet Secretary, when you said that very many of the people of Wales supported these proposals. But, following the original statement, when the Welsh Government’s response was requested, your response was that the Welsh Government didn’t raise any objection, and I am quoting there. But freedom of information requests recently submitted reveal a letter from the First Minister to the Secretary of State welcoming the decision enthusiastically, and even asking for an invitation to the official opening. The First Minister’s response in this letter is a long way from the Government’s initial response, so I have just one question: has the Government misled the public? 

No. Do you know what—it's not just myself, it's people out there—find really depressing sometimes about this place is the lack of relevance to their lives? The Member could have asked a question about hundreds of jobs that have been lost in the region he claims to represent recently. A question could have been tabled on unemployed people. No, it was about the naming of a bridge. Not just once, but twice—[Interruption.] Not just once, but twice. 

Thank you. I've turned your mike off because I can't hear what you're—[Interruption.] Excuse me. [Interruption.] Excuse me. I do not need any help from any Member in this Chamber to keep order in this Chamber. However, some of you are starting to behave like children, and if you want to be treated like children then I will treat you like children. I don't want to do it. I will now put the microphone back on to hear what the Cabinet Secretary was saying, and I want to hear his answer. 

Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. The people of Wales look to this Chamber for relevance—relevance to their lives, relevance to their jobs, relevance to their communities—and instead we have people in self-indulgent debate on the naming of infrastructure. The answer to the question, I repeat, is 'no'. 

I put in a written question yesterday about the second Severn crossing and all you said in reply was—the First Minister—the second Severn crossing is a UK asset. But, as we've heard, you knew about it a year ago, you welcomed it, you wanted to be involved in the celebrations. If you're a royalist, why don't you come clean? Why aren't you open and transparent with the people of Wales about this issue? You supported it: stand up and say so. Stand up and say so.

The Member knows that I'm not a royalist. The Member knows I'm a republican, but what this naming does is recognise the contribution that the Prince of Wales has made to Wales and the global profile that the Prince of Wales has. I think the Member's behaviour, once again, is pretty disgraceful: casting around aspersions, throwing around claims, without any evidence whatsoever. And, insofar as 40,000 or so names on a petition is concerned, there was another topical question submitted today regarding an issue that affects 27 million passenger journeys per year, and I'm delighted to say that the next rail franchise will commence as planned in October this year.

Thank you very much. [Interruption.] Thank you. The second topical question this afternoon—Vikki Howells, to be answered by the Health and Social Services Cabinet Secretary. Vikki Howells.

Thank you for the question. A state-backed scheme will be introduced to provide clinical negligence indemnity insurance for GPs in Wales. The scheme, which is planned to come into force from April 2019, will cover all contracted GPs and other health professionals working in NHS general practice.

Thank you, Cabinet Secretary. Both the British Medical Association and the Royal College of General Practitioners have responded positively to this move from the Welsh Government, and, indeed, I had a personal e-mail from the BMA just this morning saying how delighted they were with the move, which I know will also be warmly welcomed by GPs in my constituency too. When will you be in a position to provide AMs with a further update on the working of any future scheme?

Thank you for that follow-up question. I'm delighted for the acknowledgement of the support and the welcome that GPs have provided both through the Royal College of General Practitioners and in particular through the British Medical Association. We've worked alongside the BMA, as the trade union for general practitioners, to work through not just the challenges of indemnity, but how we actually provide an answer. We've got two particular potential choices: one is to potentially have a Wales-only scheme. The second is to work alongside a scheme across England and Wales. What we need to make sure is that a scheme is affordable, that a scheme is in the best interests of GPs and their patients here in Wales, and that scheme, as I say, will cover all healthcare professionals, including locums and other health professionals working in general practice. So, over the coming months, my officials will work with GPC Wales, the General Practitioners Committee of the BMA, medical defence organisations, the Welsh Risk Pool, and the UK department of health and social services, and I will be in a position to provide a further update to Members in September of this year.

Further to the question, can I thank the Cabinet Secretary for health for responding? I mean, these are huge costs borne personally by GPs. You may recall I did raise this matter under business statements last week, and I'm grateful that some of my questions in this Chamber have elicited a positive response from a Cabinet Secretary. So, I'm grateful for that, but, more importantly, I'm grateful for medical colleagues everywhere in Wales who responded in a very positive fashion to this, raising the huge cost burdens and putting people off going part-time working as locums and, in fact, positively encouraging early retirement unless there was an indemnity solution to this whole personal cost situation. So, I'm very grateful for a positive response from a Cabinet Secretary.

Well, this has been work that has been ongoing over many months through direct engagement with the ministerial taskforce that I set up to look at primary care, not just about recruitment issues, but a wider range of issues, and I look forward to the BMA coming back to present matters in the coming months for that meeting. And there's something here about the time that Ministers engage in in trying to lead and deliver answers, and I've spoken, of course, to the Member for Cynon Valley about local healthcare challenges in her own constituency where she's been elected, as well as this broader challenge across the whole country, and it should lead to GPs being able to remain in general practice, in full-time, in part-time, or doing out-of-hours or as a locum. It should be positive, not only for them, but ultimately for the people of Wales who rely on the national health service.

Cabinet Secretary, as you know, I've raised this issue with you several times in the past and I'm delighted that you've introduced this scheme in Wales. It helps address one of the big concerns of many of our hard-working GPs. Cabinet Secretary, you said in your written statement that the Welsh scheme will be aligned as far as possible to the English scheme so as not to affect cross-border activity or recruitment. What consideration have you given to offering an enhanced scheme in Wales in order to attract more GPs to work in Wales? 

We'll be looking for the best scheme possible, bearing in mind the interests of the service, the staff who work in it and, of course, the people who rely upon it. I want to make sure that GPs in Wales are certainly not disadvantaged compared to their counterparts in England. Any of these questions, though, must rely on us doing the due diligence to look at the potential liabilities that may be transferred from medical defence organisations, who themselves have welcomed our announcement here in Wales. But we also need to think about some of the wider changes as well, for example the change to the personal injury discount rate, announced by the Lord Chancellor in February, which provides real challenges in a range of these different areas, in particular about the significant increases that led to in premium costs as well. So, I remain true to my commitment that I've made both today and previously, and in the written statement: GPs in Wales will not be disadvantaged compared to counterparts in England. This is about having a good deal for them and, of course, as I said, on more than one occasion, for the people who rely on local healthcare services here in Wales. 

Thank you very much, Cabinet Secretary. 

Item 5 on the agenda is the 90-second statements, and the first this afternoon is Jane Hutt. 

Last week, I helped launch the toward-fiftieth anniversary celebration of the Vale of Glamorgan music festival, founded and sustained by its inspiring artistic director, Welsh composer John Metcalf. I want to thank the festival for featuring the music of David Roche from Tredegar with his world premiere of Leading by Example at a concert I attended last Saturday. In his programme notes, David said:

'This is a celebration of the power of education and an expression of gratitude to the people that acted as role models and gifted the means to pursue the path I am on today.'

With composers and musicians from China, Denmark, Holland and the US featured at the festival, David’s piece was played by Cuban flautist Javier Zalba and Dutch pianist Jan Willem Nelleke, at Penarth pier pavilion. Javier Zalba also played a new piece by Cardiff composer Helen Woods. Welsh composers Huw Watkins and the late Peter Reynolds were featured in this year’s festival at Ewenny priory. 

Steph Power, a composer featured at the festival and chair of Tŷ Cerdd, backs my message about the importance of the festival, not just to the Vale of Glamorgan, but to Wales and the world. But the festival also has strong roots in our community and plays an important role in inspiring children and young people, with musicians and composers involving pupils at Ysgol Sant Curig and Gladstone and Jenner primary schools in Barry this year. Steph Power says—and I agree—that

'the festival’s engagement with the dialogue about the future of music, together with its commitment to presenting a cultural profile of our country that is international and forward looking, mark it out as one of the great success stories of the arts in Wales.' 

This week is Coeliac Awareness Week. The focus is on getting early diagnosis for more people, because research shows that delayed diagnosis can lead to irreversible neurological problems affecting speech, balance and co-ordination. Coeliac disease is a serious lifelong autoimmune condition caused by a reaction to gluten—a protein found in wheat, barley, rye and some oats. People diagnosed with the condition must stay gluten free for the rest of their lives if they are to avoid very serious complications such as osteoporosis, infertility and a rare small bowel cancer. 

One in every 100 people in Wales has coeliac disease, but less than a quarter of these have been diagnosed. Indeed, Wales has the lowest diagnosis rates—at 22 per cent—for the condition in the whole of the UK. On top of this, it takes an astonishing 13 years on average for a person to be diagnosed. 

Coeliac UK is 50-years-old this year. It carries out sterling work on behalf of coeliac sufferers, but there is an urgent need for more money and research. In March this year, Coeliac UK launched a £5 million research fund appeal and with public support hope to deliver more research into the disease. I am proud to chair the cross-party group on coeliac disease and have seen up close the impact the condition can have.

As a GP, I know the importance of early diagnosis and the difference it makes to patients' lives. We can all do our bit by raising awareness of coeliac disease and I'd encourage you all to support the work of Coeliac UK and its local groups across Wales. 

Item 6 on the agenda this afternoon is a debate on the Assembly's dignity and respect policy. I call on the Chair of the Standards of Conduct Committee to move the motion—Jayne Bryant. 

Diolch, Deputy Llywydd. I am pleased to bring before the Assembly today this dignity and respect policy. It brings clarity to the provisions already in the code of conduct around the high standards of dignity and respect everyone can and should expect from contact with AMs and those associated with the Assembly. 

This is being put forward today as part of the standards committee’s ongoing work to create a culture free from harassment of any kind, a culture where everybody feels empowered to call out inappropriate behaviour if it happens to them or if they see it happening to somebody else. The committee has concluded this policy to be necessary as a result of evidence gathering and reports in the media. It's a positive step in the right direction on the path to meaningful change.

The policy and associated guidance make it clear the type of institution we are and must be. It sets out steps to ensure that everyone feels safe, respected and comfortable when they engage with the National Assembly for Wales, and it makes the options for raising concerns or making complaints clear. It has been drafted with input from across the Assembly Commission, Assembly Member support staff and the standards commissioner, in addition to external consultation with people and organisations outside of the Assembly.

Today, we're asking Members to sign up to the standards set out in this policy. As representatives of the National Assembly for Wales, we need to show leadership and take responsibility for tackling the issues around inappropriate behaviour. Signing up to this policy today is an important step in doing so. This policy is part of an ongoing process. The Standards of Conduct Committee are determined to ensure it's explicitly clear that inappropriate behaviour has no place in the Assembly and that people are empowered to come forward to raise concerns or make complaints. 

Would you give way?

Are you giving way?

Yes. 

Thank you. I hear this phrase all the time—'inappropriate behaviour'. [Interruption.] Could you define what it is? Probably the most inappropriate behaviour is making false allegations, for example. This seems really nice on paper, but if you look at the lack of respect in this Chamber, as I uttered a few words then—the complete lack of respect from across the way—it doesn't seem to be worth the paper it's written on. So, what is 'inappropriate'?

[Inaudible.]

I think you'll find that if you have a read of the policy—

You give respect, Minister, and you give it back.

Thank you. You've made your contribution. I don't need you to end it from a sedentary position. 

I'm talking to the Minister, sorry. 

No, I don't need sedentary contributions, thank you. Chair. 

As I say, I'd like to stress that this work is ongoing. I do not want to predict the outcome of the committee's deliberations, but will briefly outline the broad intentions of the committee. We are convinced of the need to ensure that individuals feel able and willing to come forward and discuss their concerns. To do this, the committee is seeking input into the inquiry from a wide range of expertise around cultural change, diversity and respect. It's important that the committee makes robust evidence-based conclusions and recommendations that can shape the enabling culture we expect the Assembly to foster.

Currently, our focus is on ensuring that we have the right structures and facilities in place for the longer term. This includes considering the provisions in the code of conduct and the complaints procedure to make sure they're clear. We hope Members will agree to incorporate this policy into the code later this year once the committee draws its conclusions on the wider changes to the code of conduct. We're also considering the support provided to the standards commissioner’s office and the need to ensure that this is sufficient and appropriate to deal with the sensitive nature of complaints.

Following the November statement, the standards commissioner was asked by the Llywydd to work with each of the political parties represented in the Assembly. It was encouraging to hear at a recent Standards of Conduct Committee meeting that the commissioner had met with each of the parties and that progress was being made. Processes must be clarified, whilst not absolving any group of their responsibilities.

We're confident that the provisions put in place to date in the Assembly are moving in the right direction. All of us are required to act with dignity and respect towards everybody in all aspects of our lives. This attitude must underline all future discussions. I believe that this dignity and respect policy sets clear standards and robust expectations. It has come before you today as the starting point in a process that ensures greater clarity for everyone. I hope everybody in this Assembly Chamber will support the policy when we vote on this later today. 

I call the Llywydd, Elin Jones. 

I welcome the opportunity to contribute to this debate today as Chair of the Assembly Commission and also as Llywydd. Though neither the Deputy Presiding Officer nor I are able to vote in today’s debate, I want to put on record our absolute commitment to this important area of work. I am grateful that the Business Committee has agreed that this isn't a policy that should simply be adopted by going through on the nod in the Chamber. So, a recorded vote will be required on this motion later this afternoon to demonstrate and underline Members’ commitment to this policy.

The policy before us today signifies a milestone in the journey upon which we have embarked since last October to improve the way we deal with complaints about inappropriate behaviour. We have listened, consulted upon, and adapted our plans. We have also benchmarked our action against best practice elsewhere to give us assurance that we have a policy in place that is fit for purpose as we move forward.  

I would like to thank the staff and trade unions at the Assembly for engaging in the constructive dialogue that has enabled us to reach this point today. We are now in a position where a Commission policy has been agreed through the trade union partnership. The remuneration board that is responsible for terms and conditions of the staff that we employ as Assembly Members has also agreed the policy. Again, Members' support staff, through the reference group and their trade unions, have participated constructively and effectively to get us to this point. 

As Llywydd, I undertake that this policy and the Commission staff policy will remain aligned. Despite there being different approval processes, the policy content remains the same, and importantly, we are now in a position where each group of staff—Commission staff, Members’ support staff, our contractors and Assembly Members—will be held to the same high standards of conduct. I was pleased to hear from Jayne Bryant that we will adhere to the original intention of aligning the dignity and respect policy in relation to Assembly Members with to the code of conduct for Assembly Members once the standards committee has completed its work.

The dignity and respect policy is just one of the pillars that will help build greater trust in the system and in the institution. But this is not just about the policy and complaints procedures that we have in place; it is the culture of the organisation and how we respond to allegations that will make the difference. That responsibility falls upon all of us as Assembly Members, Commissioners, the standards commissioner and our political organisations. Political parties must never brush these issues under the carpet, and I look forward to hearing from the standards commissioner in due course about the review I asked him to undertake to align our party complaint procedures and our own complaint procedures in the Assembly. It's clear to me that we are moving in the right direction, but I fully accept that there is much more to be done. We will therefore need to review our position on an ongoing basis from now on.

We have heard in the media about women who have been subject to inappropriate behaviour but who hadn’t come forward through our complaints procedures.  There have been concerns expressed about processes not being clear, the support not being sufficient and a perception that very little could be done if allegations were reported. This has concerned me greatly and they have informed the work that we have undertaken to date. As an institution, we want to ensure that people feel empowered to come forward and, should they choose to report the matter formally, feel confident that their complaint will be investigated and dealt with properly. We have also introduced trained contact officers in recognition of the fact that people may need confidential advice and support before deciding whether to make a formal complaint. 

I am also pleased to report that awareness training is being rolled out across the political groups. I want to reiterate today what we said in our statements in November and February, namely that inappropriate behaviour by Members, their staff or our Commission staff will not be tolerated. Collectively, we all have a responsibility to ensure that the National Assembly for Wales is a safe environment for those who work here, for those who visit the estate and for anyone who has dealings with us. Those principles apply wherever we undertake our work.

To conclude my contribution, it is worth acknowledging that we are a culturally diverse organisation and that we have received many awards for being an inclusive Parliament. I am proud of this, but we cannot rest on our laurels—we must keep striving to do better. To establish public confidence and trust, we must build a culture that is inclusive and free from harassment and we must have the right procedures to respond effectively and appropriately when incidents occur. That does not mean just having a policy in place, as important as that is; it means changing the way that we, the 60 Members in this Senedd, conduct ourselves, every day, in every way and on every platform, with dignity and respect. That's what the people of Wales expect from us.

I'd like to thank the Assembly Member and anybody else, actually, who is working on moving forward with this dignity and respect. I know it's mentioned as a debate—I don't think there's any debate, any argument, about this whatsoever. In speaking to you today, I do so on behalf of the Welsh Conservative group, of which I am the chair.

We fully support this motion—in fact, we welcome it. I'm sure that this will not, as I say, constitute much of a debate, although I will—. He's gone, he's left the Chamber, but I was going to raise an issue with my colleague Mr McEvoy. I would expect all Members here present to support the policy, the aims and the objectives that it presents. I'm extremely pleased to see that it's going to link in very closely with the standards commissioner.

I think, at all times, wherever we are, as Assembly Members, we should be mindful of our own code of conduct and the Nolan principles, because I think integrity in life, in any professional role, especially in a public role, is key. Ensuring that inappropriate behaviour has no place at the National Assembly for Wales, and ensuring freedom from harassment of any kind for all those associated with the Assembly, must be a fundamental principle from which we continue to build. But I think this also applies to us when we are working or—. As my own chief whip here has mentioned on occasions, we are Assembly Members 24/7, 365, and we must never ever forget that. We must be proud and honoured to represent our constituents. If bad behaviour is allowed, then I would want to question the institution itself. We have to set about creating the right culture. We have to have a culture that, if inappropriate behaviour has taken place, or even if there's the perception of inappropriate behaviour, we have the right mechanisms in place here, and the support, so that nobody feels that they cannot come forward.

The Welsh Conservatives welcome the aims of the dignity and respect policy, breaking down barriers for those who would wish to raise a concern. It is vital that anyone who feels that they have faced inappropriate behaviour or harassment feels empowered. Empowerment is key. Confidence in the system is also important in encouraging people to speak out when something is not right, whether perceived or in real terms. This policy provides clear and confidential procedure and outlines systems that I believe people should be confident in.

I will say this, though: I have been extremely disappointed, and I will be writing to the BBC, and I have been approached by members of my own staff—. I believe a survey has gone out by the BBC to all staff of Assembly Members, and the questions on there are routine, and some of them, actually, I find are obtrusive. I've found that, really, it's caused offence and upset to some members of staff, and I feel that the BBC themselves need to look inwards at their own organisation, because if we're going to have a culture of trust and honesty and appropriate behaviour, I'm very, very disappointed at the nature and tone of the actual survey that has gone out, and I will be writing to the BBC. There are no support mechanisms in place with regard to that particular survey, and some of the questions, I think, go beyond the pale. So, I just wanted to put that on record, because I will be writing on behalf of the group. Thank you.

I support this motion to agree the Assembly's dignity and respect policy. It is an important contribution to providing greater clarity on a number of aspects of important issues, that is what the expectations of the National Assembly for Wales are of anyone who is involved with the institution, what constitutes inappropriate behaviour, what you should do if you want to make a complaint about a particular case, and what the procedures are, and also, of course, how complainants, witnesses and those who are complained against are safeguarded within these processes. It’s all an important contribution, in my view, to an important issue for us as an institution. But I also think that we need to strike a note of caution here. This policy is one small step on a far longer journey, and nobody should think that one policy document like this one can be sufficient, and that the Assembly can simply move on. There is a broader process at play here, and as the Chair of the standards committee mentioned, that committee is currently doing much of that work as we speak.

Now, the evidence that we as a standards committee have gathered has been sobering, and has made us realise just how much work there is to be done in this area. We saw this week, of course, reports about the frightening figures from Cardiff University, which stated a very different story to the perception that many people have about the extent of this terrible issue of abuse and harassment. It’s raised the curtain on a problem that is far more common than many of us had imagined, and we need to recognise, in my view, that Cardiff University has been proactive in providing this online platform in order to record cases of harassment and abuse. 

This was highlighted in our evidence as a standards committee, and I certainly believe that it is something that we should be considering as a possible option for us here in the Assembly, to develop such as a medium, because, like the dignity and respect policy before us today, it would possibly be one other approach of tackling this problem, because the more opportunities there are to raise and to record these issues, then the more likely it is that victims and witnesses will come forward. And in light of that, of course, it is more likely that they, in turn, will be given the support that they need, and then, of course, in light of that, it is more likely that we will be able to tackle this problem and to create a real culture of dignity and respect, not just on paper in policy form, not just within the Assembly as an institution, but, of course, across broader society too.  

I've no difficulty with signing up to the first three paragraphs of the aims of this dignity and respect policy. Of course everybody should feel safe, respected and comfortable when they engage with the National Assembly, and people who work here should feel safe, respected and comfortable in their working environment. I also agree that the culture of the Assembly is diverse and inclusive.

But I do want to sound a cautionary note about the vagueness of some of the wording of this policy, and also the purported reach to us all as Assembly Members acting as private individuals, even, for example on holiday, or in any private situation, actually. I think we should be very careful about what we're doing here. If we are going to put ourselves in a position where, outsiders, as Janet Finch-Saunders has pointed out so far, can engage in purported acts of surveillance—this can be done clandestinely as well, not just openly, as she described, and we are, therefore, in all our doings in private life, whether it's after a few drinks in the pub or in a restaurant, or whether it's even in one's own private home, which might be bugged, telling a joke that might potentially give offence to somebody who can then make a complaint—this is potentially an instrument of oppression.

Now, I'll give one very topical example. Professor Richard Lebow, who is a professor of international political theory at King's College London, is currently being investigated by the International Studies Association because he made the mistake, at one of their conferences last week, I think it was, of getting into a crowded lift, and when he was asked, 'What floor do you want?', he said, 'Ladies' lingerie'. Now, this was then made the subject of a complaint by a professor of gender studies at some mid-western—I think—American university. He, now, is at risk of having his professional career undermined, perhaps even destroyed, because somebody has a grudge against him, or his purported or assumed political orientation.

Now, if we interpret the terms of this dignity and respect policy proportionately and sensibly, of course we're not going to put ourselves at risk, but I am troubled by recent decisions. And I won't go into the individual case, but I spoke about it in the debate on the standards committee report the week before last, or two or three weeks ago. I do think that we have to refine this statement so that we impose some test of reasonableness into the offence that we are creating. Of course, I don't want to adversely affect the dignity of others by anything that I do or say, but I'm not in control of how other people are going to be affected by what I say. Somebody might unreasonably take offence at something that I've said, and that could give rise to a disciplinary complaint, and that could apply to every single person, not only somebody who is a Member of this Assembly, but everybody who works here or comes into contact with us in an official capacity. And in that respect, I do believe that there are serious issues here, of freedom of speech, of privacy—which are both protected by the European convention on human rights, and other human rights legislation—and I do believe that we've not given sufficient care and attention to this issue by drafting these broad general statements of principle without any limitation, and applying them to us in our daily lives, 24/7, as Paul Davies has pointed out previously. Therefore, I would just add a note of caution, without wishing to oppose the policy document, that we should introduce some test of reasonableness and proportionality into what we're doing.

I speak this afternoon on behalf of the Labour group, and I just want to place on record our thanks to the Standards of Conduct Committee for producing the dignity and respect policy before us. The Labour group strongly supports the strengthened measures, which set out to protect everyone who works in our National Assembly or, indeed, engages with Members and with their staff. 

We believe that the strengthened support mechanisms and procedures are clear, comprehensive and appropriate for all concerned. We also very much welcome the way in which this policy has been developed in close partnership with staff, with Members and, indeed, with those with expertise in this field. Their views and experience have been invaluable in shaping this new policy. However, as other contributors have noted, this debate is about more than a vote on a document this afternoon. Crucially, it is about how we, as Members, staff and as an institution embed the principles of dignity and respect in everything that we do.

As a group, we will soon be taking up dignity and respect training to help further embed this policy into our work, and I know that other groups will also be engaging in a similar way. We look forward to working together with others across the Assembly, as the policy is rolled out and developed, to ensure that it continues to meet the important objectives that have been set out today.

Dirprwy Lywydd, we want to see everyone treated with dignity and respect, and that is why we will be supporting this policy today.

Thank you very much. I have a number of speakers in this. I'm not going to be able to get many more of you in, but I will take two more speakers. So, I'll take Siân Gwenllian.

Thank you very much. The definition of inappropriate behaviour is included in the dignity and respect policy, and it includes harassment, sexual harassment, bullying, threatening behaviour, and illegal discrimination. In looking at inappropriate sexual behaviour, the definition is:

'unwanted behaviour of a sexual nature towards another person…Behaviour "of a sexual nature" can cover…for example, unwelcome sexual advances…sexual jokes, displaying pornographic photographs or drawings, asking for sexual favours',

and so on and so forth. That is, it’s a broad description, and broader than simply physical behaviour alone. Now, I welcome this definition very warmly, and I welcome the policy in general terms, but I must say, as others have said, that this today is a first step in the right direction.

It is entirely clear that we need a radical change of culture across society in Wales, and I call, once again, on the Welsh Government to hold a national survey and a national conversation on sexual harassment and sexual violence. That would raise the profile of the issue, would be a means to allow victims to know that the Welsh Government and the National Assembly are on their side, and would be a means of explaining what the nature of harassment is, what the different elements are, and why it's not acceptable. The conversation should also include the means that victims should use to actually counteract this behaviour, that is, how to respond on the spot, as well as making an official complaint once that behaviour has taken place.

Sexual harassment happens everywhere, and perhaps the focus, to date, has been on harassment in the workplace, but it's time that we recognised that it happens on our streets, in our pubs, in our social areas too. Sexual harassment is symptomatic of how women are treated as second-class citizens within this society, and we must acknowledge that the continuum of violence and harassment of women relates to broader cultural patterns of gender inequality. At the centre of this is having and recreating an unequal power relationship. Resolving the problem will be a huge task, and it has to include a cultural, social solution in broad terms, and that, in my view, starts with a national conversation. It includes looking at education to change behaviour. We have to start from the early years, teaching children and young people about healthy relationships, providing comprehensive sex education, and committing to providing compulsory comprehensive education about sex and healthy relationships in our schools as soon as possible.

We also need to create a space where it's possible for individuals to discuss these issues openly and confidently. The proactive approach taken by Cardiff University in creating a platform to report cases of harassment is an example that other institutions should follow. The more opportunities there are to report such cases, then the more likely it is that victims will come forward and will receive the support that they need. That, in turn, makes it more likely that we can create a culture of dignity and respect, in the real sense of those words, and not just in the National Assembly, but across society.

I think that Jane Hutt, in a few moments, will mention a new development, and I look forward to collaborating with other female Members in this Chamber, not only to discuss this policy in broader terms, but also in discussing issues related to gender more generally—

Do you mind me taking an intervention? It's just a little one.

Sorry, I was just finishing.

Just a small intervention. Thank you for taking it. You keep saying 'women'. I would like to think that—and I'm sure it does—any male employee, member of staff or—. This has to be across the gender divide, because we have to be completely open. I just wanted to put that on record.

Of course. I agree with you entirely, but the statistics tell a very clear story: that women are far more likely to be affected by harassment and violence. For example, one in four women in England and Wales suffer domestic abuse. With men, it's 13 per cent. So, there is a disparity there, and that's not to say that it doesn't happen to men too. I will finish on that note. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you. And seeing as Jane Hutt has been mentioned, Jane Hutt. [Laughter.]

Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. Can I welcome this debate today on dignity and respect, recognising the role of the Standards of Conduct Committee bringing us to this point where the whole Assembly has the opportunity to endorse the dignity and respect statement? I'm glad that you recognise this, Jayne Bryant, as Chair of the committee, as open for review and development, and learning from this debate and ongoing evidence to the committee. And as you said, it's a step in the right direction as a path towards meaningful change and our shared learning, of course, in this Assembly. I'm glad that the Llywydd has mentioned the training available, which I understand some of you have undertaken—awareness raising on dignity and respect. I hope we can secure cross-party agreement from all Assembly Members to take this up. That would be a real demonstration of commitment.

It's appropriate that we're debating this statement this week, following the statement made by Julie James yesterday on the International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia, and also the attention drawn by Jack Sargeant to Mental Health Awareness Week, when he said we must all work together to find solutions to help people suffering with mental health issues. All this is part of us learning and living the dignity and respect agenda here in this Assembly.

We know how much more we need to do on all fronts, as Vikki Howells has said—as individuals, as elected Members, as employers, we must make this a priority. I also think we can learn from other institutions like Cardiff University. It was good to hear from Gwyneth Sweatman from NUS Wales about how effective this new online system has been to enable students to report incidents of assault and violence—it has seen 101 student-reported incidents since last October. We can learn from those others, where we can see that this new online system has inspired confidence, confidence to enable people to report complaints, and that's what we need here.

I'm particularly concerned to support the statement in light of our need as an Assembly to be at the forefront of promoting equality of opportunity for all, with a kinder politics, free from discrimination, inappropriate behaviour and harassment. Mary Beard, in her 'Women and Power' manifesto, reminds us of opportunities that I believe we have here in the Assembly to change our political culture, so that we can be more proactive about the kind of Assembly we have here. She suggests that means thinking about power differently. It means decoupling it from public prestige. It means thinking collaboratively about the power of followers, not just leaders. What I have in mind is the ability to make a difference to the world, and the right to be taken seriously, together and as individuals.

Siân Gwenllian has helpfully suggested a national conversation on sexual harassment. Welsh Government is undertaking a gender review. We know from the #MeToo campaign that brave women have been speaking up around the world. As Catherine Fookes has said, the #MeToo campaign is empowering this. This is a time to move forward towards a society that is equal, and where women can be free of gratuitous sexism, or worse.

I thank the Member for giving way, and I regret this debate is only for half an hour, because there's so much to say on this issue. But I wondered if she was aware of the cross-party working group in Westminster that's recommended that the role of an independent sexual violence adviser should be set up, bearing in mind that sexual harassment and sexual violence should be dealt with by a trained sexual violence adviser in a procedure that's separate from complaints about other forms of inappropriate behaviour. I wondered if the Member was taking that recommendation into account when she was talking about those campaigns.

I think that's something as well that the Standards of Conduct Committee can take forward. But, as Siân Gwenllian helpfully previewed an announcement that I'm making today, we are seeking to establish a new cross-party group on women's equality to help move this agenda forward, and obviously taking on board that kind of evidence, of a very powerful Women and Equalities Committee in Westminster, chaired by Maria Miller. We want to support the work on the Standards of Conduct Committee on dignity and respect, and make sure that this Assembly and Government are once more leading the way on equality of opportunities and equality of outcome in Wales.

The key message, I think, is that we need to ensure that our policy and procedures are in place, that people are confident about it across the whole of the Assembly and those we represent and serve. Those must be in place, and then we must all be held to account.

Thank you very much. I now call on Jayne Bryant to reply to the debate.

Diolch, Deputy Llywydd. Thank you very much to everybody who's spoken today. I really do appreciate all of your contributions, and I encourage all Members of this Chamber to engage with the committee's work over the coming months to ensure that no inappropriate behaviour has any place in this Assembly. Again, as I've said, and a number of you have picked up on, it is really a positive step in the right direction, but again, I must underline this is really a starting point, and there is still much to be done. The committee's work is ongoing, and Members will be kept updated. The next step will be to publish the Standards of Conduct Committee's report, which we aim to do, hopefully before the summer recess.

I'd like to, firstly, thank the Llywydd for her comments and her strong support to get this right throughout the whole process. It's really important that she's on board and very keen to do this. As the Llywydd said in her contribution, it's not just about the policy and complaints procedure that we have in place; it's about the culture of the organisation and how we respond to allegations that will make the difference, and those issues will be an ongoing challenge. And the Standards of Conduct Committee, as I said, will continue to look at that and those issues.

Janet Finch-Saunders, I'm very grateful for your comments and strong support, and your strong commitment to stamping out any question of inappropriate behaviour. It's crucial that people have confidence in that procedure. So, thank you. Llyr, there's an opportunity to thank you and other committee members for all your support, because we are a cross-party committee, and I appreciate you underlining how this is important work and part of our ongoing work, because it's certainly part of a wider piece of work that we will be doing.

Neil Hamilton, thank you for your comments and your support on this policy. I'd just like to say that the standards commissioner is independent and he investigates any complaints as a first port of call. Vikki Howells, thank you again for your support, and you mentioned in that the dignity and respect training that I and the Llywydd and the Deputy Llywydd have undertaken and, I think, other Members. I would like to see as many Members, if not all Members, really, doing this really, really important training. So, I think that's something that we should, importantly, make time for.

Siân, as you've said, the definition is clear in the policy and your contribution highlighted the wider context that must be addressed and you've mentioned that national conversation, and I really look forward to working with you and seeing how the committee can take part in that as well. Jane Hutt, you mentioned that we all have to live with dignity and respect and we all have to lead with it as an agenda, and we do really need to be doing that in the Assembly. I welcome the setting up of the cross-party group, and I look forward to working with you, as I'm sure the standards committee will be as well. Thank you to Julie Morgan for her intervention, because I'm sure that the points that you've raised will be looked at in the wider context of the Assembly's work and the standards committee's work.

So, just thank you to everybody who's made a comment today and it is an important step forward. This is a responsibility on all of us and I urge all Members to support this today. Thank you.

Thank you very much. As was indicated by the Llywydd in her contribution, in accordance with Standing Order 11.15, the Business Committee have decided that a vote on this motion will be taken by a recorded method and therefore this vote will be taken at voting time.

Item 7 on our agenda this afternoon is a debate on a Member's legislative proposal, and I call on Rhun ap Iorwerth to move the motion on an electric vehicle charging planning Bill. Rhun.

Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. I thank the Business Committee for giving me the opportunity to make this legislative proposal today. I drove my first electric car back in 2009 in China. I was filming in the BYD company factory—a company that was established in 1995 that develops batteries, and that claims to be the biggest manufacturer of electric cars in the world. They sold 100,000 electric cars last year, and there is a chance that many people listening to this haven’t heard of BYD, and I think that is characteristic or symptomatic of the relationship between Wales and electric cars.

There are major developments happening in this area, but they’re not known by people in Wales. Yes, there are some electric cars around the place, but they’re still rare. There are some hybrid cars, but we’re not talking about those today—they still have engines burning petrol and diesel that pollute the environment. But in a matter of a few decades this will all change.

There are long-term pledges starting to emerge already to get rid of the diesel and petrol engines entirely. The UK and French Governments have mentioned 2040, for example, as a target to aim for. But the choice for us in Wales is now clear. We can wait for the electric car revolution to happen to us, or we can try and lead that change—prepare the way, and try to encourage the people of Wales to take a lead on this, which will be inevitable anyway, ultimately. What I’m proposing is legislation that would be a step forward towards ensuring the kind of infrastructure that we will need to charge these electric vehicles, in order to make it easier for people to choose this new technology.

Take your pick of estimates about the pace of change, but we know we are heading for an electric vehicle, or EV, future. As an aside, yes, we need to persuade more people out of cars altogether. Cleaner, greener public transport, alongside active travel, has to be the subject of heavy investment. But the car will be with us for some time yet. What won't be with us is the internal combustion engine. 

Now, UBS bank reckons 14 per cent of car sales will be EVs by 2025. That's growing from pretty much a standing start of not much more than 1 per cent now. In Wales, we count EV car sales in the few hundreds, but even here the growth has been large—35 per cent growth between 2016 and 2017. But, two decades from now, the job will be complete. The question is: when will Wales decide to genuinely get on board?

We need to overcome a number of barriers. Some are beyond our control: the development of battery technology, better range, faster charging, growth in the choices of models available—that's global. We can hope to cash in through research in our universities, through trying to ensure that our car components sector keeps up with or, better still, keeps ahead of changes. We've even got Aston Martin planning to build a flagship EV here, but what I'm talking about today is the application of that new technology for you and me—in other words, getting people to actually buy and drive the cars and to feel that to do so will be as convenient as their current petrol or diesel.

One of the biggest barriers is where to charge. This is very much in our own hands. What I'd like to investigate is using legislation to overcome this. I'm proposing that all new developments—housing, factories, public buildings, offices, tourist attractions, car parks, whatever it might be—must include charging infrastructure by law. The vast majority of EV users will charge at home overnight. If you're lucky enough to have somewhere to park your car with an EV point, that's what you'd be doing mostly. If we want more people to opt for EVs, though, we need new homes to have those EV charging points pre-installed. If you don't have a parking place, plentiful charge points everywhere and elsewhere will be important to you. We need to invest in retrofitting a wide range of parking areas, for example, but what I'm suggesting today is that, whenever there's a new development, there should, by law, be new charge points. [Interruption.] Yes.

Just to remind him we had a debate, or questions rather, on broadband access and infrastructure about an hour ago, when the Minister was very unhappy that new developments are not required to have broadband access as part of the development. That's precisely what we cannot allow to happen with this move to electric vehicles.

Yes, it's not that long ago since we had outside toilets built outside homes, but now it's a kind of expectation that you have a bathroom in the house. We need to move with the times. 

So, you need local-use charge points, but we have to have a proper national network as well. I'm looking forward to picking up a Renault ZOE from Renault UK in a few weeks' time, driving from my Ynys Môn constituency the 200 miles to my Cardiff workplace. It'll be interesting because, as far as I can see, there are no rapid-charge points between Anglesey and Cardiff. So, it'll be an interesting journey. But that has to change. So, we need to retrofit installations at strategic points, but installations at new developments for public use dotted around Wales can form part of a new national network. 

Now, on funding, I think there should be an element of public funding, perhaps public loans available for installation, certainly in the most strategic places. Plaid Cymru recently negotiated £2 million for this in the last budget deal. At least it's a start. If you look at the number of publicly funded charge points in the UK now, I think the north-east of England is top of the league with one charge point publicly funded per 4,000 inhabitants; Scotland one for every 7,000 people. Wales, according to HSBC figures recently, had one publicly funded charge point per 99,000 people. It's not good enough. But the focus today isn't on funding, it's on building charging networks into our environment. We'll hear from Welsh Government today, I'm sure, that they're already consulting on new planning guidelines, rather than legislation, but we need to be sure that this drive towards EVs is backed by whatever it takes to make it happen.

I don't need to rehearse the environmental arguments, I don't think—the issues of air pollution and climate change. Hopefully, I don't need to persuade you that, for many good reasons, EVs are coming. This isn't about just making sure Wales is ready when the inevitable happens, but about seeing if we can get Wales to embrace that future now, and I look forward to your contributions. Thank you.

I certainly welcome the initiative that we're debating today to introduce planning guidelines for new developments to ensure that new buildings must include charging points and to make it easier for people to use electric vehicles in order to reduce carbon emissions, although it should be noted that electric vehicles by themselves don't reduce carbon emissions—it's simply a different source of power. Unless the base source is renewable, it simply shifts the problem elsewhere, so I think we should be careful in the language we use there. It will certainly improve local air quality, and that's to be welcomed, but overall air quality and overall emissions will not be affected unless we're using renewable sources of energy to begin with, so I think we should add that very important caveat.

As I understand it, the Welsh Government are going out to consultation on electric vehicle charging points this summer, and they're already getting kick-back from some developers about the idea of having to provide ducting. I would urge the Government to be very robust about this and also to be imaginative about it—to explore with some of the power-generation companies the opportunity to pilot different approaches, where sources of charging points can be put in where the cost is borne by other people. As I understand it, there are some companies interested in discussing doing just this.

We also need to think about the type of charging that we prioritise. Do we prioritise the current technology of the Nissan Leaf, for example, which takes, I understand, some five or six hours to charge, or do we leap ahead to the next generation of rapid-charging technologies, which will be able to do it in a fraction of the time? Which of those do we choose to prioritise first?

We need to think about where they go as well. We should be moving to a cleaner form of transport, but that mustn't be at the expense of sustainable forms of transport. We must say, I think, at the outset that the charging points should not be allowed to be put in pavements, where they could be an impediment to walking and cycling and disabled people, but they must be on roads. 

We must also, I think, ask ourselves: should we be planning for a one-to-one replacement of petrol with electric vehicles, or shall we take this as an opportunity, as people are making a change, to try to promote a more intelligent approach, favouring, for example, public transport and active travel in urban areas and focusing the electric vehicle approach in rural areas instead? I think this is something that we should be considering.

Finally, Llywydd, electric vehicles are going to be expensive, and this could entrench existing levels of transport poverty, where people in low-income families are forced to invest in running a car to access key employment and services, getting themselves into debt. I think we should be looking at car-sharing opportunities for electric vehicles. There are some examples of co-operative shared electric vehicle schemes in St David's and in Powys currently. There was an experiment with standard car clubs in Cardiff, as part of the sustainable travel city some years ago, and that's something, I think, we need to pick up with alacrity, because these are going to be out of the reach of many families, and not every family needs a car—most cars stand idle for 23 hours of the day in their drives.

So, overall, as we are shifting to a different technology, we should seize the opportunity to get behaviour change as well.

I agree with a lot of what has just been said by Lee Waters, but I do thank Rhun for bringing this forward as a legislative proposal, and I certainly agree with the broad objective. Whether we need a legislative vehicle—sorry to use the pun—I'm unsure, but it's good that we are discussing these issues.

As Lee Waters said, we need to remember that the way we generate energy is key here, and moving to non-carbon sources is really essential. Also, it's essential to look at the issue of congestion in cities, which would not necessarily be achieved—or the reduction wouldn't necessarily occur—if we just replace current petrol and diesel vehicles with electric vehicles. However, electric vehicles are clearly very much part of the answer, indeed, not least in the public transport fleet. So, I think this is a really useful discussion and it's one where I want to see Wales moving ahead.

As Rhun said, at the moment, we do not compare particularly well with other parts of the UK. In 2012, there were just 53 electric cars in Wales; that had increased to 1,523 by 2016, which of course is a massive percentage increase but I think here the absolute number is really what we should be looking at. Other parts of the country have moved ahead quicker than us so far, so we need to look at this. It's all about where there are rapid-charging points. I think we'll need to look at public buildings first. We certainly need to look at the major road network because to travel between Anglesey and Cardiff and potentially not have a charging point is really problematic.

So, I think we need this to be part of a wide strategy, but it's definitely something where I think the public are going to push us even harder than we are prepared to go at the moment. There are a lot of issues here where Government needs to take the way in looking at it as an infrastructure issue, the huge stock of public buildings being an obvious place to start. You already see it in some developments—I've noticed it around the Vale of Glamorgan—that new housing does come with the charging points so that you don't have a long, clumsy lead to the back of your garage, but you actually see the charging point at the front of the house. 

So, that is where people will demand that the market goes, I think, but we need to facilitate that shift as well. So, I'm pleased this is being discussed and I've a very open mind as to whether it should be done by legislation or whether there are more traditional policy approaches that we can adopt.   

Thank you to Rhun for bringing this motion, because it's certainly a very interesting motion. I'd like to say a few brief comments about it, and I'm broadly in support of the motion.

Just as builders had to wire their new buildings for electricity and modern offices have to be wired for computers et cetera, it makes sense, as technology and society progresses, that planning guidance be adjusted to keep pace. So, I will be supporting this motion, as more people are using electric vehicles and it is the state's role to ensure that the necessary infrastructure is in place to facilitate people living their lives.

I do have a couple of concerns, the first one being when it comes to applying this rule to all new houses so that all new homes have to have the points installed. I can see where you're coming from with that but my concern is that the additional cost of having those charging points installed in all new homes will be inevitably passed on to the homebuyer. Homebuyers are already having to pay a premium for new builds. Some people are saying that that effectively cancels out the benefits of any help-to-buy scheme, and any premium that's paid will also be handed on to any tenant. So, burdening people with a forced increase could make it harder for people to find a home. I'm sure the last thing that anybody in this place wants to do is make it more expensive for people to buy a home by pushing up the price of new builds.

The other concern I have, which is a point alluded to by Lee, is that encouraging increased electric car usage at this point does seem to be putting the cart before the horse, since there's a danger of forgetting that most of our electricity is currently coming from polluting power stations, not from renewables. So, the extra electricity required to charge cars will at present do nothing but increase emissions from local power stations and effectively just moves the problem from one place to another.

As has already been said, maybe fewer cars should be used—but we've had 40 years or more of local authorities and Governments building their planning and economic strategy around widespread use of the car. So, saying that people need to drive less is, okay, logical, but it's a very, very difficult thing to achieve in modern society. 

Of course, an electricity supply sourced mainly from clean energy sources could be achieved with the right investment in research and development, but we're not at that stage, and we're nowhere near it yet, and we shouldn't be acting as if we were. I don't believe that the decisive factor in whether or not to buy an electric car is whether you've got a charging point at your house, although it's obviously going to be a factor. The key factors are going to be cost—how far a single charge will carry you—and, for the environmentally minded, how much pollution it will realistically create. For electric cars to become the norm, a revolution is going to have to take place in how far we can travel between charges and the recharge time, and we don't know what the next game-changing step will be for these cars. So, another concern for me is that we may end up bringing in rules that costs the taxpayer and the homeowner a significant sum of money in the long term for charging points that will just be outdated and obsolete before they've ever been used. Thank you.

Of course, I support the proposal by my colleague to bring this legislative proposal forward, but I do that for a number of reasons. First of all, it’s my aspiration and Plaid Cymru’s aspiration that we cease selling new cars that are reliant on fossil fuels by 2030, and I’m shocked that the Westminster Government hasn’t taken steps to hasten this process. We are still looking to 2042 for this, although we know the impact on air quality that emerges from these fossil fuel engines, and diesel engines particularly. I’m also doing this because we are of the view that although this growth is happening almost organically in terms of electric vehicles, it is true to say, as with broadband, as I mentioned, that vast parts of Wales would be missing out unless there were state intervention to ensure equality. The point that Lee Waters made was a fair one, but in order to assist with that equality then Government has to step in and ensure that this does happen. I think that that is something that we’re familiar with in a Welsh context.

After Plaid Cymru negotiated the £2 million for the public vehicle charging scheme, I have contacted every county council in Wales to ask them what they were doing to help with this process and, to date, I’ve received responses from half of them, including Anglesey—so, congratulations Anglesey. I’m not here to name the councils because each of them say that they’re doing their very best, but, clearly, what’s missing is that there are some councils without any public charging points at all. There are areas of Wales—. If you travel, Rhun, from Anglesey to Cardiff, it’s quite possible, like with the train, that you’d have to travel through England to ensure that you can take that journey safely. That’s the kind of framework we have in place at the moment.

A few things have arisen that suggest to me that we do need some legislation, or the force of legislation, in this area, and they are: the need to create a national network; the need for that network to be badged with a Welsh identity so that people know that the Welsh Government is part of this process; that we ensure through legislative commitments that these charging points are open source and available to all—what you have is that one company wants to keep it for their own vehicles, but we need this to be available to everybody—and that we can encourage and help local councils and other public bodies interested in this area not just to provide one point, but many charging points. We need significant investment here. Yes, we need to prepare for future growth rather than what we have at the moment, as David Melding mentioned, but we need to see that happening.

The final point in the context of Government intervention is that the grid in parts of Wales isn’t sufficiently robust to deal with the growth that we will see in vehicle charging. The capacity of the grid is restricted in parts of Wales, particularly in mid Wales, and the Government will need to collaborate with the Westminster Government to tackle that particular issue. As the grid have said it won’t be possible to have batteries larger than 1 MW in Wales for at least a decade—that’s the position of National Grid—then the concept of having small batteries scattered around the place mainly in electrical vehicles and using renewable energy is very attractive to me, but we need Government intervention, there is no doubt about that.

I call on the Cabinet Secretary for Energy, Planning and Rural Affairs, Lesley Griffiths. 

Diolch, Llywydd. I very much welcome the opportunity to respond to this debate, and I thank Members for their very thoughtful contributions. I wholeheartedly support the intent of the debate, and I'm determined to do all I can to increase the use of electric vehicles in Wales. We know the future of petrol and diesel vehicles is limited, with the UK Government announcing its intention to ban them by 2040. In the meantime, the automotive industry is already rising to the challenge. Volvo, for example, has announced that all new models it launches from 2019 will be partially or completely battery powered.

If we are to realise our ambitions for decarbonisation, we must ensure we make adequate provision for electric vehicle charging. However, I'm not convinced the proposals for legislation that we have heard today are the most appropriate way forward. My colleague the Cabinet Secretary for Economy and Transport has already embedded decarbonisation in the economic action plan and made a commitment of £2 million funding to help improve publicly accessible charging infrastructure, and my approach to changes to the planning system complements this. Clearly, the planning system must be an enabler rather than an obstacle in the take-up of electric vehicles, so we must address the issue now. We need a concerted and joined-up approach to ensure the adequate provision of charging facilities.

I'd just like to briefly outline what we're already doing. National planning policy needs to give a clear steer about the importance of charging facilities. The current 'Planning Policy Wales' consultation includes a requirement for a minimum of 10 per cent of new non-residential car parking spaces to have charging points, and we're the first in the UK to do this. Before the end of this month, I'll be publishing a consultation on new permitted development rights, and this will include the introduction of permitted development rights for the installation of electric vehicle charging points in homes and businesses. Finally, changes to the energy performance of buildings directive will set out charging point infrastructure requirements for all new residential and non-residential developments, and this directive must be transposed by 2020.

I want to assure Members that I will consider imposing more stringent standards through planning or building regulations if the directive does not meet our ambitions. Alongside these policy changes, I'm already having discussions with National Grid—I think Simon Thomas raised a very important point about the ability of the national grid to support our plans for electric vehicle charging points—and also having discussions with the UK Government. Several Members said we need to be more imaginative, we need to take the initiative, and I absolutely agree; we need to make sure that Wales is well placed to take advantage of electric vehicles. So, the changes I've outlined today are only the start of the process, and as the technology develops, we need to ensure Wales is at the forefront of these developments.

Will you take a—? Oh. [Laughter.]

I was just on three minutes.

Rhun ap Iorwerth to reply to the debate.

Thank you very much. Could I thank everyone who's taken part in this discussion this afternoon? I'm encouraged by the spirit of the debate. I'll come to the Minister last, possibly. In terms of the comments that have been raised already,

there are a number of points raised by Members that I'd perhaps like to comment on quickly. Lee Waters and David Melding raised the issue that you still have to generate electricity somehow, and that's no good if you're generating it by burning fossil fuels, for example. Actually, absolutely, we need to move to non-carbon electricity generation, but the electric vehicle itself is far more efficient than the internal combustion engine, so even if you're burning fossil fuels, which we don't want to do, you'll probably be three, four, five, six or seven times more efficient in having an electric vehicle transferring that power onto the road rather than a petrol or diesel car.

I'm grateful to you for allowing me to make an intervention, because I think that, actually, this is a really important point. I was horrified to see the Dispatches programme last month that exposed the fact that the UK Government is using our precious levy on our electricity bills to substitute coal for wood pellets made from hardwood in the Drax power station, which is obviously one of the biggest power stations in the UK, and that this is actually generating more carbon than the coal. I mean, that is absolutely astonishing. So, I was hoping we might—. I failed to put in an amendment to your three points. I think it needs a fourth point, which is to say that we need to have a network of renewable charging points generated by renewable energy, and hopefully by locally produced renewable energy, so that we get around the network problems that Simon Thomas referred to.

I don't disagree with that at any level; I think that that will be shown on the record as being a pretty good idea. But I come back to that point about the efficiency of electric vehicles in this particular issue, anyway. So, whilst we have the delays in what we'd like in terms of moving towards non-carbon electricity generation, at least EVs is a way to be more efficient.

I don't have much time, actually, to comment on individual points, other than, yes, of course we need a culture change, and yes, we need to change our attitude towards how we travel from one place to the other. I don't worry about the cost, because you buy or lease an electric car and you get the charging point for free. I mean, the cost isn't great; it's about encouraging people by making sure that it's there, initially, when they buy that house, so it makes it a no-brainer, as they might say, to make a purchase of that car instead of petrol or diesel.

I recognise fully that work is going on in Welsh Government in looking at various ways of encouraging EVs. One thing I would say is that the Government hasn't got the best track record, over the years, of being innovative in this. It's great that things are happening now, but it could've happened earlier, and that makes me think that we need all the belts and braces that we can have to make sure that good intentions from Government, now, actually do turn into concrete action on the ground. I was talking, years ago, about the potential for Wales to be leaders in EV. That seems to be a bit of a distant dream, now, we're so far behind. But, if we are playing catch-up now, let's play catch-up really, really hard. Let's make it an ambition and be ready to legislate if necessary, in addition to the use of various planning guidelines and so on, to be able to confidently say, in future, that Wales is an EV-friendly and an EV-ready country.

The proposal is to note the proposal. Does any Member object? Therefore, the motion is agreed in accordance with Standing Order 12.36.

The next item, then, is the Member debate under Standing Order 11.21(iv), and I call on Hefin David to move the motion.

Diolch, Llywydd. Members in this Chamber may have noticed that I wear this signet ring. It was given to me by my father when I was 16 years old. It was actually my grandfather's ring. It's got tighter as I've got older, it's got to be said. My grandfather was diagnosed with bowel cancer in the 1970s, and survived into the 1980s. One of the things he said to me was, 'I just want to live long enough to see you go to university.' My grandfather died when I was 10 years old. I'm sure that many of us have been touched by stories of bowel cancer, and therefore I'm delighted to bring this debate to the Chamber today.

Screening for bowel cancer is now available nationally across the four nations of the UK, and in Wales it's provided for people aged between 60 and 75. We've witnessed major innovations in the treatment options available, which have seen death rates for the UK as a whole fall by 13 per cent. This is a tribute to the hard work of many healthcare professionals and researchers in both the national health service and the pharmaceutical industry. However, it's clear that we still have work to do, and the Bowel Cancer UK charity has helped us see where that work can be done. Around 41,000 people across the UK are diagnosed with bowel cancer every year. More than 2,200 of them are here in Wales. So, the heartbreaking and painful reality is that, of the 16,000 of these people UK wide, over 900 in Wales will lose their battle with this terrible disease. I'm sure that everyone in the Chamber today would agree that that is over 900 too many.

Put simply, the earlier diagnosed, the greater the likelihood you will survive five years or more. Early diagnosis is key and crucial to this is both raising awareness and screening, which I'm going to mention and raise with the Welsh Government in my speech today. People need to be aware of what the potential symptoms of bowel cancer are and I know that Members I've spoken to have plans to discuss that in detail. If you think you may have symptoms of bowel cancer, don't be embarrassed and don't ignore them, go and get them checked.

I recognise that five out of seven health boards in Wales are in breach of the Welsh Government mandated waiting times—over 1,800 patients in Wales are waiting more than eight weeks for a bowel cancer diagnosis. This is from a report published in February by Bowel Cancer UK, which we helped to launch. Mandy Jones and Andrew Davies AM helped to launch this in February here. The report also found that fewer than half the people eligible for bowel cancer screening tests in Wales took part, but screening is the most effective way of detecting bowel cancer. I wrote to the then Minister, Rebecca Evans, when she was Minister for public health in February 2017 on the issue of lowering the age of screening from 60 to 50, as is currently the case in Scotland. I was encouraged when she said, on 23 February 2017, 'the Welsh Government is committed to expanding the bowel screening programme in Wales to men and women aged 50 to 59 years, but our focus is on increasing the uptake in the current age range and reducing the inequities that we know exist before expanding the programme further.'

I think today is an opportune moment for the Cabinet Secretary for health to update us on what progress has been made since February 2017 and what progress the Welsh Government intend to make into 2019, which is part of our motion. The Minister in her letter also stressed the importance of raising awareness amongst lower income groups, because they're statistically less likely to present themselves for testing—

Will the Member give way?

Yes, of course.

It's interesting only half of eligible people are getting the screening, but I've also had a constituent who's regularly gone for the screening, or done the screening test, and then, at age 75, it just stops, and it really causes a great deal of anxiety. I wonder if there is any evidence emerging that, actually, continuing screening beyond 75 is also beneficial.

Such evidence needs to be presented by Public Health Wales, and I'd like to give the Cabinet Secretary a chance to answer that specific question.

At the Senedd on 6 February, though, I also—and perhaps in answer to David Melding—I spoke to an oncologist who raised some questions about changing the age range. He wasn't talking about over-75s, he was talking about lowering it to 50, and his professional view was that the net could risk being spread too widely and too thinly if the appropriate support mechanisms were not in place if you lowered the age range. So, if you're going to lower the age range, you've got to have professional public health advice to say that the system is ready to support that. I think, if the Welsh Government could, they would lower it straight away to 50, but you've got to have sufficient support mechanisms being placed that won't disadvantage those who are already being tested. I'm mindful that there are other public health professionals who would take a different view, and they all form a valuable contribution, but I think the key is to listen to Public Health Wales's advice and see that the age range is lowered, I would hope, as swiftly as the Government can do it.

Colleagues will also want to contribute to the debate today about their own experiences, and Dawn Bowden has given me this faecal immunochemical testing screening kit, courtesy of Bowel Cancer UK, and I understand this is in the process of being rolled out in Wales, following pilot schemes that suggested a boost in uptake of 5 to 10 per cent. I can see yours on your desk there as well, Dawn Bowden. By bringing in examples of these screening testing kits, we hope to break the taboo of testing. That's part of what we're trying to do today—break the taboo of testing.

But I just want to finish with my personal stories of friends with bowel cancer. In the 2016 election, my UKIP opponent was a hugely engaging person by the name of Sam Gould. Sam's personality, energy and lust and love for life shone through in everything he did. He was struck down last year with bowel cancer and he died at the age of 33. Sam became my friend, I visited him in hospital, and I miss him. I think that Sam's courage is something we can take many lessons from. I'll never forget the time Sam brought Nigel Farage to Gelligaer during the Assembly election of 2016, and he even took a picture of me shaking hands with Nigel Farage, which is floating about somewhere on the internet. I think Sam would laugh now if that was ever to come to light.

I also speak for our very valued and great friend Steffan Lewis. Steffan is a wonderful individual and has made a fantastic contribution to this Assembly. He's currently off sick. We're thinking of Steffan today, with his illness, and I want to make my speech in his name. We wait for him to come back and we wish him the very best with his treatment and, please God, recovery. As I'm sure Members are aware, Steffan's sister has arranged a sponsored walk on 14 July in order to raise funds for Velindre Cancer Centre, and I can think of no better way for us to support him and his cause.

Therefore, I recommend this motion to the Chamber today, and I hope that the debate will set out in more detail and more depth the issues that we face, so that we can then work together to deliver the very best services for patients with bowel cancer here in Wales and do what we all want to do, which is to beat bowel cancer.

Well, my only own experience is that one of my grandmothers died before I had a chance to know her, because she was taken by bowel cancer when I was two months old. 

Bowel cancer is the fourth most common cancer in the UK. Around 16,000 people die from the disease each year—900 in Wales—making it the second biggest cancer killer. The scale is growing, where it is estimated that between now and 2035, around 332,000 additional lives could be lost to the disease across the UK, and this shouldn’t be the case, because the disease is preventable, treatable and even curable. Nine in ten people will survive bowel cancer if diagnosed at the earliest stage.

Screening is the most effective method of detecting bowel cancer early and plays a key role in improving survival rates. Across the UK, bowel cancer screening programmes send everyone aged between 60 and 74 a home testing kit—and I note David Melding's comments earlier, in that context—every two years. In Scotland, they are also sent to people in their 50s. Referral by GP is still the route by which most people are diagnosed. Referral through primary care is a key route to diagnosis for those who experience symptoms that could be bowel cancer, and for those below the age covered by the screening programme. People who experience symptoms should be referred for the most reliable and accurate diagnostic tests for bowel cancer available: a colonoscopy and flexible sigmoidoscopy, which can detect cancer at the earliest stage of the disease. While effective public health awareness programmes can alert people to the symptoms of bowel cancer and encourage them to seek advice from their GP, it's also important that GPs are able to recognise these symptoms and refer appropriately and promptly.

However, as the symptoms of bowel cancer can be hard to diagnose accurately, and can also be symptoms of other less serious and more common bowel conditions, it can be difficult for GPs to know who to refer and when. This can result in delays to patients being able to access diagnostic services and, in some cases, patients having to see their GP more than five times before referral. NICE guidelines for suspected cancer, updated in July 2017, are in place to help GPs to make these decisions. These recommend that the faecal immunochemical test, or FIT, is adopted in primary care to guide referral for suspected bowel cancer in people without rectal bleeding, who have unexplained symptoms but do not meet the criteria for a suspected cancer referral pathway. Using FIT in this way could help GPs to better identify and refer the right patients quickly and detect bowel cancer early. We need to see this adopted in Wales before 2019, alongside England and Scotland, where it has already been piloted and used in some areas.

The annual cancer report recognises that a poor interface between primary and secondary care is a major cause of delays for cancer patients. In response to this, the Welsh Government included recognition and early referral of cancer as part of the Wales GP contract for 2017-18. This requires primary care teams to develop strategies to improve recognition and early diagnosis. These interventions should support earlier diagnosis of people with cancer who present in primary care, and may also potentially lead to a reduction in demand for colonoscopy services.

Jackie Hill from Wrexham was diagnosed with bowel cancer after repeated trips to see her GP. She said:

'my GP examined me but could not detect a lump. I was given laxative and told to go back in the New Year. I went back and told my GP that I was bleeding even more and felt very tired. My blood test came back normal. I went back again three months later as the bleeding was very heavy, but I was told there was nothing wrong. Eight months after my first visit, I returned and was referred for the camera to allay my fears, but never once was cancer considered as the blood tests had come back normal and I was told I was too young for cancer. At one time my GP even said to me: "And what do you want on this urgent appointment?" I was finally diagnosed with stage 2 cancer. I thought, very naively, when I was diagnosed that I would have the tumour removed and then back to normal. Because of the consequences of my treatment, I am constantly worried about going out of the house and many times when I am ready to leave the house I have to go to the toilet. My first thought when I go anywhere is where the toilets are and will they be clean.'

Wales must therefore optimise bowel cancer screening by using FIT at the optimal sensitivity threshold, expanding the age range and increasing uptake. Thank you.

I welcome this debate, and I thank Hefin David for opening the debate and placing bowel cancer under the microscope. Also, as this cancer is so common, I too have some family experience, as my father and grandfather suffered this condition over the years. As we have heard, there is a significant challenge in undertaking a proper diagnosis. The symptoms, such as stomach pains, diarrhoea, sometimes constipation, passing blood—all of those symptoms are very common symptoms. If GPs were to refer everyone who had those symptoms to our hospitals, then there would be no room to do any other work whatsoever.

Therefore, the patient history is crucially important. You need something in that history, the individual's story, to point the GP towards this dangerous diagnosis of bowel cancer. That's the art of the GP, of course, recognising as well, of course, that some bowel cancers have no symptoms at all. That’s the importance of a screening programme. Despite its imperfections at the moment—and I do support the innovative steps, as we've heard outlined by Mark Isherwood, that are being taken in this area to have a far more reliable test, and a far more detailed test in place. So, there is work to be done, and it needs to be done as a matter of urgency. That's why I am supporting this debate and supporting the motion this afternoon.

As we are also in coeliac awareness week, as I mentioned earlier, I will also say a few words about that. Coeliac disease is that condition where the body reacts unfavourably to protein in wheat, some sorts of oats, barley and rye. That protein is gluten, of course. People think that coeliac disease is slightly innocuous and insignificant, and in remaining on that gluten-free diet, then it can be innocuous, apart from all the difficulties involved with ensuring that individuals avoid gluten—gluten in bread, pasta, flour, pizza, cakes, biscuits, gravy, fish fingers even, sausages—the list can be endless—and anything where flour including gluten has been used.

But in not diagnosing coeliac disease, which is also a difficult diagnosis: again, the symptoms are common, such as tiredness, pains in the stomach, diarrhoea, particularly after eating bread, but not necessarily so—not necessarily at all—. We read about these symptoms in books, but everyone is different in the way they present to the GP, and that’s the art of the GP. But in not being on a gluten-free diet when you do have coeliac disease, there is a risk of developing anaemia, osteoporosis, neurological impacts such as ataxia, and also cancer of the small intestine, and a kind of lymphoma in the bowel. It is a risk factor in developing bowel cancer—that’s what coeliac disease is, and that’s why it’s important in this context. As I say, we all tend to look at it as something that's quite innocuous, but in neglecting the condition, coeliac disease can be very serious indeed, and it's a cause for concern that very often it can take many years to have that proper diagnosis. So, support the motion. Thank you.

I’d like to thank every Member involved in bringing about this debate today. As highlighted by the motion, bowel cancer is one of Wales’s biggest killers. It's the fourth most common cancer in the UK, with one in 14 men and one in every 19 women developing the cancer in their lifetime. Almost 16,000 people die from bowel cancer in the UK every year, and many of those deaths could be prevented if only we could diagnose the disease earlier. We have a bowel cancer screening programme for men and women aged between 60 and 74, but we should be screening everyone over the age of 50. Many people refuse to take the test because of embarrassment or because of the complexity of the home test. 

Thankfully there is a much more simple and accurate screening test, the faecal immunochemical test, or FIT test. I have spoken many times in this Chamber about FIT, about the need to introduce it earlier, about the need to lower the age for testing and, more importantly, the need to introduce a more scientifically robust sensitivity threshold. The FIT test has already been introduced in Scotland and will shortly become the standard test in England. In Wales we have to wait another year. The test is much simpler as it requires just a single sample and is much more accurate—or it would be if the Welsh Government hadn’t opted to lower the sensitivity threshold. Wales is having a testing threshold that is half that proposed in Scotland and lower than that proposed for England. We are told that this is because we don’t have the capacity in endoscopy services to perform follow-up tests. How many cancers will be missed as a result? How many people will die because we took the easy route?

I hope, when responding to this debate, the Cabinet Secretary will outline his plan for increasing colonoscopy capacity in Wales, outline the actions his Government will take to accelerate increasing the sensitivity of the FIT test, and outline a timetable for lowering the screening age to 50. Screening saves lives and it's estimated that around 6,000 people in their 50s are being diagnosed with bowel cancer each year. As other members have highlighted, when bowel cancer is diagnosed early, 90 per cent of patients survive, as opposed to only one in 10 when diagnosed at a later stage. It makes sense to lower the age of screening to 50, given that nearly 95 per cent of cases are in the over-50s.

Unfortunately, here in this Chamber, we are keenly aware that bowel cancer can strike at any age—it has no respect for age—with one of our own battling the disease, and having lost a staff member, Sam Gould. Therefore, we have to increase awareness of the symptoms because, as we know, if caught early, this terrible disease can be beaten.

We also know that there are genetic conditions such as Lynch syndrome that can increase the risk factor of developing bowel cancer. All bowel cancer patients should be screened for Lynch syndrome and screening should then be offered to family members.

I urge the Welsh Government to do all they can to improve screening, to stop people dying needlessly because the disease was discovered too late. I urge Members to support this motion. Thank you.

I'm pleased to add my support to this motion today, and hope that this debate will play some small part in the important task of raising awareness on the issues around bowel cancer—particularly awareness of the symptoms, and the vital importance of taking up screening, as so many others have already mentioned. 

When I first started looking at this issue I was particularly struck by the figures on the incidence of bowel cancer in many of the Valleys communities, including in Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney. For example, Bowel Cancer UK report that those living in the Cwm Taf health board area have a significantly greater chance of being diagnosed with bowel cancer than those in the neighbouring Cardiff and Vale health board area. Similar variations in pattern also show at local authority level.

So this is clearly a health issue that's of significant importance in my constituency, and I therefore wanted to take this opportunity to mention Chris Daniel from Merthyr, who set out his story on the Bowel Cancer UK website. Chris is currently undertaking a virtual cycle ride of 18,000 miles around the world in memory of his wife Rita. I believe that today is day 167 of his ride, and Chris has just passed through the Canadian Rockies. In reality, Chris has actually been cycling inside Companies House, as he moves his fundraising effort around locations, but remarkably, through technology, his virtual ride includes simulations of all the terrain conditions, including all the climbs on his journey as well, and his daily videos suggest that the Rockies has been the toughest section of his ride so far. But, in the process, Chris is raising money for Bowel Cancer UK, Velindre Cancer Centre, and Cancer Research Wales—an amazing response to the personal tragedy that Chris has had to deal with. So, I'd just like to take the chance in this debate to thank you, Chris, for your efforts in this regard.

Because this is such an important issue, and due to the stories being told by people like Chris, I'm joining my colleagues Vikki Howells and Lynne Neagle this Friday, 18 May, in a day of joint campaigning with Bowel Cancer UK across our Valleys constituencies in order to help raise awareness, in an attempt to help beat bowel cancer. Our aim is to support the Bowel Cancer UK and Beating Bowel Cancer charities in raising the profile of the symptoms of bowel cancer, as too many people either don't know or just ignore the symptoms. It's a new venture for us, in which we're joining forces to host events to help the charity deliver their vital messages. It's not party political campaigning, but it is using our positions as AMs to host events and to help promote the public health messages. During the day, we will be holding events in Aberdare, in Rhymney, and in Cwmbran, and you're all welcome to join us. You can get details from my office if you're interested. It's also good to see that Lowri Griffiths from Bowel Cancer UK is talking to the Martyrs business network at Merthyr Town Football Club tomorrow morning, because employers also have an important role in helping to spread awareness of this issue to their employees. 

So, as Hefin said earlier on, let's break some of the taboos around it and let's talk about the symptoms. Let's not dress it up in polite language: we're talking about bleeding from your bottom, we're talking about blood in your poo, we're talking about a persistent and unexplained change in bowel habit. For me, there is an important message for everyone: don't be shy, let's talk poo, literally, and let's make sure that people take action to check for the symptoms of bowel cancer. Then, as a result, we might get more people recognising the vital importance of screening, because screening is straightforward, as we've already heard. As Hefin's already waved it around, I'll wave it around as well—the kits that are readily available. Screening kits are readily available and are automatically sent to everyone over the age of 60 every two years up to the age of 74. And of course we've heard calls as well for lowering the starting age for screening.

So, let's all play our part in raising the knowledge of the symptoms and encouraging people to take up screening. Let's hope that we can play our part in preventing more people like Chris's wife Rita, Sam Gould, Steffan Lewis, and their families, from having to go through the trials and tribulations of diagnosis, of treatment, and in some cases finality. I sincerely hope that Steffan continues to challenge his condition, because we're all with you—I'm rooting for you, comrade.

I would first like to thank the other Members who have co-tabled this motion today, and thanks also to Hefin David and Andrew R.T. Davies, who were co-sponsors of the Spotlight on Bowel Cancer event in the Senedd on 6 February. That event was part of a promise made to Sam Gould by Bowel Cancer UK when he was diagnosed with bowel cancer. On this day last year, Sam was still with us. He was our friend and colleague and worked with us here at the Assembly until he became ill. He died after a brave but very quick battle with bowel cancer. We miss him every day—excuse me.

Sam only mentioned symptoms to colleagues during March last year, and, at 33, his GP wasn’t too concerned as he was far too young to get bowel cancer. Very soon, he was in too much pain, he went to A&E and was admitted and diagnosed with stage 4 bowel cancer. So, he wasn’t too young at all. Sam was our friend, but he was and always will be the adored son of June and Tim, who are watching this debate from the public gallery today, brother of Mim and Lizzie, husband to Caroline, and daddy to Olivia, Louisa and Pippa. The reason I mention their names is that we are not talking in the abstract here. This is not about statistics, charts, trends or someone else. This is about us—our lives, our husbands, our friends, our mums, our children, the people we love, the people we know and the people we are here to serve. 

Everyone lost to bowel cancer belongs to someone. Their loss affects someone—it devastates someone. But, if caught early enough, the outcomes can be good. We hope that this debate today will raise further awareness of bowel cancer and, more importantly, encourage conversations in families and amongst friends about health and well-being in general.

What I specifically want to highlight here is the genetics of bowel cancer. A relatively simple and cheap test can detect Lynch syndrome. This is the genetic predisposition to bowel and other cancers. Wales and the UK are bound by National Institute for Health and Care Excellence diagnostics guidance DG27, which requires the testing of bowel cancer patients for Lynch syndrome, but we just don't do it.

Bowel Cancer UK published this in April this year, in Bowel Cancer Awareness Month. The UK is not covering itself in glory here, but in Wales no screening for Lynch syndrome goes on—none at all; absolutely zero. We know from the event on 6 February that the professionals are beyond frustrated with this situation. They point to a lack of leadership and health service budget silos. I haven't had any response from Betsi Cadwaladr about this, but I assume from the amount of e-mails from constituents that they too are very concerned.

So, no screening for Lynch syndrome takes place in Wales—none of it—despite the requirements and the clear clinical, financial, economic and human benefits of doing so. I find this shameful. If you have Lynch syndrome confirmed, you can take preventative measures like watching your diet, exercising and, more to the point, having regular screening—it's a no-brainer.

Screening for Lynch syndrome costs £200, compared to the cost of treatment for more advanced bowel cancer, with estimates coming in at around £25,000, not to mention the human cost, which is without measure. I mentioned the names of Sam's family—his mum and dad are up there—and his girls earlier for this reason. I know that they have had no follow-up from NHS Wales—no offer of testing for Lynch syndrome either. I have no idea why the Welsh NHS and you, as the Cabinet Secretary with responsibility, are not making this happen. It makes no sense.

I urge you, as Cabinet Secretary, to finally show some leadership here and make this happen. As part of your reply to this debate, I would specifically request an answer to this question: has a single individual in Wales been identified to take responsibility, and given the budget necessary, to implement NICE DG27? Diolch yn fawr iawn.

Thank you. Can I now call the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Services, Vaughan Gething?

Thank you, Dirprwy Lywydd. I'm happy to respond to today's debate, opened by Hefin David, and happy to note that the Government will support the motion. But, in particular, I want to start by recognising the direct human impact and the experiences of people who are not just taking part in this debate today, but are outside watching, or will look at it afterwards—not just about the direct impact here of people who worked with or knew Sam Gould, or those of us who know Steffan Lewis, but, as Hefin David and Mark Isherwood indicated, people that we will ourselves have known who have had bowel cancer. 

We also welcome the report from Bowel Cancer UK and Beating Bowel Cancer. We actually have a good relationship with the Wales cancer charities, who I meet on a regular basis. In fact, I last met the Wales Cancer Alliance on 19 April and we discussed that report at that meeting and with several of the NHS's leadership groups, including the cancer implementation group and the endoscopy implementation group. What isn't in doubt is the importance of improving bowel cancer outcomes and equally the scale of the challenge facing our services. We remain absolutely committed to improving cancer outcomes. That's evidenced in our updated cancer delivery plan, which we published in November 2016, and that plan recognises the importance of early detection, a point made by a number of Members in today's debate.

The cancer implementation group has a national programme called detecting cancer early, which looks at access to diagnostic testing, symptom awareness and screening uptake. That group is funding two pilots in south Wales, covering the whole of Cwm Taf and ABMU health boards, that aim to identify early stage cancers that typically present with more difficult to identify symptoms.

The vague symptoms pathway, which we discussed before, in fact in answer to a question from Hefin David, is halfway through a two-year test and it's being delivered on a one-stop basis. I think that really will give us lots of learning to be developed and implemented across a whole system that really should lead to greater early detection, and obviously that should lead to better outcomes for people.

But, of course, much of today's debate has focused on population screening, which is a core component of our early detection efforts. Our bowel screening programme in Wales has now been in operation for 10 years. Men and women aged 60, as has been said, are sent a screening kit every two years until the age of 74. The age range that we apply, and not continuing to screen people above the age of 74, comes on the advice, for example, of Public Health Wales, but, in particular, the United Kingdom National Screening Committee, who advise all four nations in the UK about where to have the greatest benefit and having early detection to avoid premature death. 

The current kit, as has been said, requires people to collect multiple samples to be posted back to Bowel Screening Wales for analysis. In 2016-17, more than 280,000 people were screened as part of that programme, and that identified more than 1,600 people needing a follow-up, and ultimately it identified 216 people with bowel cancer. But, as has been said in this debate, those numbers only represent 53.4 per cent of the eligible population who returned a kit in 2016-17. Our priority was increased uptake, as the evidence indicates that the benefits will outweigh the risks at a population level, for this age range.

There is a difficult part here, because you can't ignore the human impact of what happens, but we have to make evidence-based choices about the whole population and whole-population screening. That's why we'll continue to follow the best advice available to us. But, bluntly, the current test isn't necessarily a very popular or easy test to administer. I'll say more about a new test shortly.

The point about Lynch syndrome has been mentioned more than once, and, in 2017, NICE introduced new guidelines that recommended that all bowel cancer patients are tested at diagnosis. Now, we initially thought we could do that through a specially commissioned service but that hasn't proved possible, so, following advice and discussion with the Wales cancer network, we're looking at the best way to implement the guideline. It's currently commissioned through the All Wales Medical Genetics Service for those who are at the highest risk. In a change to move beyond that, we're looking at recommendations that have been delivered on implementation that have been received from the Wales cancer network and the chief scientific adviser for health will now be looking to discuss that with health boards and the pathology network that exists. So, we will have more to say on how we will be doing more to deliver against that NICE guideline.

But, of course, it's for individual people to take up the offer of screening. It's a matter of choice. We can't force people to do so. We recognise, as I say, that the impracticalities of the current test discourage some people, but I do welcome the work that Dawn Bowden highlighted in her contribution—not just about the recognitions that others make that there are socioeconomic differences in uptake of screening, but also the need to try and raise awareness of symptoms and encourage people to undertake the test. So, a really positive initiative for Dawn Bowden, together with Vikki Howells and Lynne Neagle, to campaign on this issue.

We should see a real difference in January 2019 when we will introduce the new faecal immunochemical test, or FIT screening test. The test only requires one sample to be taken and is shown in pilots to improve uptake by 5 to 10 per cent, a significant and positive improvement. As well as being easy to use, as has been said today, the test is more accurate as well. The threshold for sensitivity for the test need to be carefully considered. Public Health Wales, through careful modelling, have advised us that the threshold in Wales should be 150 mg per gram initially, and, at that planned threshold, the advice is that the test is more sensitive and will identify more cancers as a result.

We intend to increase the sensitivity of the test over time in line with the ongoing expansion of diagnostic and treatment services, and we'll do that in a safe and sustainable manner, acting on the advice of Public Health Wales and health boards, because it wouldn't be any good to test people and refer them to a service that just isn't ready to see them. Other health services, in fact, have put themselves in a difficult position and are now having to reduce the sensitivity of the test because their follow-on services aren't in place, and, in relation to reducing the screening age, we are committed to reduce the age range in line with the advice from the UK National Screening Committee as soon as is practical to do so. We'll do that progressively over time. But, as with the introduction of FIT, increasing the age range will increase the demand on other services, and we need to ensure that health boards can safely manage and sustainably manage that additional demand. In the meantime, our focus must be on improving the screening uptake for the current group of people we have at the greatest risk of developing bowel cancer.

We will continue to work with health boards to improve colonoscopy capacity so improvements can happen sooner rather than later, and the endoscopy implementation group, a national leadership group, is working on that very issue. That's had additional focus in January from the national executive board, with recommendations due to go back next month.

I recognise that we need to get this right, and not just about screening capacity, but the far larger— [Inaudible.]—relating to people with urgent suspected cancers, cancer surveillance patients, as well as some others, such as inflammatory bowel disease. Addressing this issue will require significant focus from health boards on productivity, workforce arrangements and service models, and, increasingly, the appointment of non-medical endoscopists is helping to alleviate pressures in the system.

There is also—before I finish, Dirprwy Lywydd—the important potential of FIT to be used as a safe means for triaging referrals to colonoscopy, with a number of health boards actively considering this, and it may significantly reduce, in a safe way, the referrals made to services to allow them to better meet demand and screen outpatients. I look forward to reporting back on the progress we will make in Wales in meeting the aims and objectives outlined in the motion today.

Thank you. Can I now call on Rhun ap Iorwerth to reply to the debate? Rhun.

Thank you very much, Deputy Presiding Officer, and I thank everyone who has contributed to this debate this afternoon. I am very pleased that we have had the opportunity to put this on the Assembly’s agenda this afternoon. A series of contributors from across the political parties have described very clearly the need to ensure an early diagnosis and the importance of raising awareness, the need to recognise and celebrate the excellence of our staff, who do everything they can within the NHS in this field, and have emphasised, of course, the key role that screening can play in tackling this cancer, one of the most cruel kinds of cancer, which takes more lives in Wales than almost any other cancer. But we all believe—and you have heard us today, Cabinet Secretary—that it is possible to do more.

The motion, and all speakers, have reflected the importance of early diagnosis, whether that comes from screening or getting people referred for testing a lot more quickly as a result of symptoms that they approach a GP with, and both of those routes to diagnosis and getting more people on that road to diagnosis are going to be vitally important parts of how we improve survival rates. I think there needs to be something of a culture change from both the public here and the Government and our health service. The public understand that they need to take up the screening opportunities—you're quite right, Cabinet Secretary, to point out that this is voluntary. I should be told off at this point by Dawn Bowden for forgetting to bring my testing kit down to the Assembly Chamber with me today; it's upstairs in my bag. But we have to be willing and eager to talk about these issues, and when we have the opportunities to check on our health we should be grasping those opportunities with both hands, no matter how embarrassing or difficult we may perceive those issues to be to talk about.

The public also need to understand that they have to go to see their GP earlier when experiencing symptoms—again, not ducking embarrassment. And the Government also needs to understand that well-meaning campaigns asking people to stay away from the GP unless absolutely necessary can be counterproductive; it's something that I've warned about in the past. And those changes will inevitably lead to increased pressures on primary care, increased pressures on diagnostic capacity, but, in budgetary terms, I have no doubt at all that savings of early intervention will far outweigh the costs. And, to put a financial costs to one side, of course, we owe it to those for whom bowel cancer is a reality to give them the best possible fighting chance. We've heard Sam Gould's name mentioned on a number of occasions; we're thinking about Steffan Lewis this afternoon.

Steffan, we're thinking about you and we wish you every strength. We will be there on 14 July walking in Cwmcarn, raising funds for Velindre hospital.

We will show our support on 14 July in that walk to raise money for Velindre in your name, Steffan.

But, you know, we cannot tackle the issues that we are addressing today at a walking pace; we have to tackle bowel cancer head-on. Our message to Government—I think we've made it clear: bring down the screening age, give more people the opportunity for early diagnosis, really address with new vigour the challenges in endoscopy, in colonoscopy and pathology, all those parts of the diagnostic system that need strengthening, and always prove to us that you are keeping the sensitivity of the new FIT test under review when that is brought in next year.

Bowel cancer, I think, has had the upper hand for far too long; it's time we fought back.

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

We now move on to the Plaid Cymru debate on child poverty, and I call on Bethan Sayed to move the motion. Bethan.

Diolch. Child poverty is a scourge on our country. I'm not going to sugar-coat it for anyone here today, nor am I going to seek to mislead anyone surrounding its cause or effects. It gives me no joy, in fact, to open this debate today, discussing the same scandal of poverty that exists in Wales, which has only worsened in the last decade. Put simply, a child's in poverty when their household is earning less than 60 per cent of median earnings. So, in fact, child poverty is the poverty of adults with dependent children. It is not just a social problem but a deep and structural economic one that many communities in Wales have found themselves in for decades. We know many of the statistics, and I don't wish to repeat them all here today, as my colleagues will also outline those in more detail, but the top-line figures indicate very clearly the urgency of the situation facing Wales's next generation.

Of the 600,000 children in Wales, one in three—200,000—are living in poverty; 90,000 are living in severe poverty. Over half of children in low-income families worry about how their parents are going to pay for basic necessities. No child should have to face that kind of stress. And, unfortunately, the situation is not getting better, with the Institute for Fiscal Studies warning that, by 2021, child poverty will increase by 7 percentage points, four of which are directly linked to welfare cuts and changes.

We know too well the effects of child poverty in Wales. We know that a child who grows up in a poor household is far less likely than peers in higher or middle-income households to reach the same level of educational attainment. We know that a child in poverty is more likely to develop mental health issues, along with wider health problems. The biggest effect of child poverty, though, is the long-term consequences for the future of our nation. 

I grew up in the 1980s in Merthyr Tydfil and I lived through Thatcherism and the devastation it caused to my community and others across Wales. We saw that a generation of children growing up in poverty during that period too often stayed in poverty as they entered adulthood and they fell into the criminal justice system. I was trying to think of an example of how I recognised poverty at an earlier age in my life and it was an experience I had when going to work experience in the courts in Merthyr with a local law firm. I realised that I knew quite a lot of the young people who were going into the court that day, and I also met some of them afterwards. In fact, when I went in there as a witness to this experience, on work experience, somebody thought that I was the girlfriend of somebody who was being charged that day. I think that's where it hit home, because I really wasn't very happy or comfortable with the fact that a lot of my peers in my school age group were in that particular predicament in their lives. And they shouldn't have been in the criminal justice system, but they just hadn't been supported throughout their lives, because of the poverty that they were living in, because of the circumstances that they grew up in in Merthyr in the 1980s. And it's continuing to happen to this day in many of our communities across Wales.

But the difference between now and the 1980s is that we do have a Welsh Government, and we did not have that then. But where is that Welsh Government? I'm not going to suggest that they hold the full responsibility, although they would never do that anyway, as we've seen from their amendment today. I know that the toxic mix of right-wing economics and pernicious welfare changes that have been ushered in by the UK Government have been a cause and a barrier to this problem, but nor should there be any sense of complacency that there isn't more that can be done by this Government in Cardiff Bay. We don't want to continuously describe the problem; we want to come up with real solutions here in Wales.

The Labour amendment today portrays their lack of seriousness on this issue, unfortunately. Yes, there is an acknowledgement that they and the UK Government are responsible, and it has outlined some worthy projects and we agree with those projects. But, in our view, no Government can claim to be taking the scandal of our poverty seriously unless they aspire to hold all the levers of change that could affect it here in Wales. The truth is that the welfare needs of all of our citizens are not being equally met. Now, in the here and now, are you seriously content to sit on the sidelines? Their needs are equally being undermined by the UK Government and it really is frustrating to hear, time and time again, that we must do this in an equal way when it's a race to the bottom at the moment. Do we really want to leave the powers of welfare reform in the hands of the Conservatives in the UK as opposed to taking our own stake in this, having our own view on these projects? That's what I find fundamentally difficult to understand from the Labour benches here in Wales. How can Labour attack Tory welfare changes as the biggest driver of the problem on child poverty when they completely reject even trying to gain control over the very powers that could alleviate the effect of, or even stop, some of those changes? To us, it portrays a fundamental lack of energy and a hunger to be nothing more than a regional grant-distributing body.

In 1964, the United States launched—and I quote—'the war on poverty', an economic opportunity Act, the long title of which reads,

'An Act to mobilize the human and financial resources of the Nation to combat poverty'. 

I'm not suggesting we have the same variety of tools to emulate that particular plan, but the sentiment and the drive of a Government drawing on all the levers at its disposal to tackle a national emergency is simply lacking here in Wales.

I also want to touch on something important. This is a debate that is taking place in other devolved nations, and those devolved nations are doing better than our country. In Northern Ireland, despite the enormous structural, social and economic discrimination faced by so many of the population, and the instability of the Troubles and its devolved Government emanating from that particular Good Friday agreement, it has a lower child poverty rate than Wales. Scotland also has a lower child poverty rate than Wales, despite not using much of the fiscal powers and advantages it has until very recently. The economic growth o both countries and their GDPs, relative to the UK average, has been stronger than in Wales. In the late 1990s, Wales had a higher GDP than Ireland. No guesses as to where we are with that one today. People in Wales will be rightly asking where is our devolution dividend after two decades of Labour rule. The Welsh Government may point to their current programmes, but what about the last decade? I think Labour needs to ask itself a serious and heartfelt question: how does it want its era of Government to be marked in this period of devolution?

As I mentioned, I remember what it was like growing up in the area that I grew up in, in a place stricken by poverty and decline—and it has got better. I fear now that poverty that was more visible in the 1980s in terms of shut factories and abandoned industrial spaces has now become more hidden. We are going through our second period of widespread poverty in Wales in my lifetime, if, in fact, it ever truly went away. At this point, many people will recognise the Welsh Labour era of the last decade as the era of poverty, the era of decline, the era of struggle. I take no partisan joy in that prospect; there is only sadness and frustration for me at the thought of yet another generation that has been let down.

Thank you. I have selected the two amendments to the motion. If amendment 1 is agreed, amendment 2 will be deselected. I call Mark Isherwood to move amendment 1 tabled in the name of Paul Davies.

Diolch. Although child poverty in Wales fell briefly to the UK level in the middle of the last decade, it started rising above UK levels again before the financial crash and recession, and only started falling after the change of UK Government in 2010. At 28 per cent, child poverty levels in Wales still exceeded those in Scotland and Northern Ireland last year. According to the End Child Poverty local authority data, in January, 178,676 children in Wales were considered to be in poverty after housing costs, with child poverty in Wales per capita above the UK average, where one in three live in poverty after housing costs, compared with one in four in Scotland and England.

Child poverty can't be looked at in isolation. After 19 years of Labour Welsh Government, Wales has the highest poverty rates of all UK nations at 24 per cent, the highest level in Wales since 2007-08. Wales also has the second highest poverty rates out of all the UK regions. Further, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation's 'Poverty in Wales 2018' report found that 

'The proportion of households living in income poverty in Wales...remains higher than in England, Scotland and Northern Ireland'

and that

'Poverty among couples with children has been rising since 2003/06.'

During Labour's last term in UK Government, the number of unemployed people increased by 1 million, youth unemployment rose by 44 per cent and the number of households where no member had ever worked nearly doubled. UK employment is now at a record high, unemployment at a 40-year low, and the number of young people out of work back down by nearly 408,000 since 2010.

Will you take an intervention?

I'll take one intervention, certainly.

Do you take any responsibility for your party's actions in Government for any of the statistics that you've just read out?

The statistics I've read out, no, because they relate to the pattern over 20 years and longer, rather than a short period of recent time.

After almost two decades of Labour Welsh Government, Wales has been left trailing behind—14 per cent of children in Wales living in a workless household compared to 11 per cent for the UK. Wales has the lowest employment rate and highest economic inactivity rate in Britain, and the highest unemployment rate in the UK nations. The Bevan Foundation's March 2018 employment briefing reports that although having job security enables workers to plan their daily lives and have a secure income, the proportion in non-permanent employment, including zero hours, is higher in Wales than in Britain and has stayed relatively high, whereas the proportion has declined in Britain. In January, the Office for National Statistics reported that income inequality has fallen over the last decade and households have more disposable income than at any time previously—I will take credit for that—with the incomes of the poorest households up nearly £2,000 compared to pre-downturn levels. That's the ONS, not a politician.

However, although UK real wages are now rising faster than prices, Welsh workers now have the lowest weekly wages out of all the UK nations, with gross weekly earnings £46 behind the UK level. Twenty years ago, Welsh and Scottish workers had identical weekly pay packets, but 20 years later, a Scottish weekly pay packet contains £43 more than a Welsh pay packet.

I therefore move amendment 1, which proposes

'that the National Assembly for Wales:

'1. Notes that child poverty levels in Wales stand above the UK level with rates rising before the last recession.

'2. Notes research for Save the Children Cymru which found that: "By age five around a third of children living in poverty (30-35 per cent) were already falling behind across a range of cognitive outcomes".

'3. Recognises that although UK Government policy in reserved areas also applies in Wales, the Welsh Government has responsibility for promoting prosperity and tackling poverty programmes, including Communities First, in Wales since 1999.

'4. Notes the importance of access to high-quality early childhood education and care for children in Wales and the need for targeted support for children living in poverty.

'5. Further calls on the Welsh Government to take all steps within its powers to tackle child poverty as part of a new plan for eliminating child poverty that includes SMART targets rather than vague statements.'

We agree with Plaid Cymru very much in that respect. The Welsh Government ended its Communities First Programme after spending nearly £0.5 billion on it. As the Bevan Foundation stated,

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

They added that a new programme

'should be co-produced by communities and professionals and not be directed top-down',

that it should be based on a

'clear theory of change that builds on people’s and community’s assets not their deficits'

and that 

'local action should be led by established, community-based organisations which have a strong track-record of delivery and which have significant community engagement.'

They also stated that if people feel that policies are imposed on them, the policies don’t work.

Thank you. I call on the Minister for Children, Older People and Social Care to move amendment 2 formally, tabled in the name of Julie James.

Thank you—

No, no, you're only moving the amendment.

Apologies. I move formally. Sorry.

Thank you.

I was ready to go. I was too keen—my apologies.

Yes. It's to formally move it, so—

Formally.

Thank you. Llyr Gruffydd.

Thank you very much, Deputy Presiding Officer. I want to focus my comments on the need to ensure equal access for children to early-years education. I will start by sharing a statistic with you: over half of children from disadvantaged areas in Wales will start school with deficient communication skills. Indeed, children from the poorest 20 per cent of the population, by the time they are three years old, will be almost a year and a half behind the better-off children in terms of language development. Think about that; when you’re just three years old, you’re already 18 months behind. This is important, because this is one of the most certain measures of the outlooks for individuals later in life. Weak skills, in terms of communication and vocabulary, have a huge impact on lifelong outcomes in terms of behaviour, mental health, preparedness for school and employment too.

Bethan made reference earlier to the justice system and young people within the justice system. Sixty per cent of the young people on the youth justice estate have communication difficulties. Almost 90 per cent of young men who have been unemployed in the long term have communication and vocabulary problems. Without effective communication, a third of children will need treatment for mental health problems when they become adults. The evidence is clear that the provision of early-years education of a high quality, available to all, is the best way of bringing children out of poverty—and that’s what Plaid Cymru wants to see.

Will you not accept that progress has been made with Flying Start in actually getting children from two to three? And what you said at the very beginning is something that I've written about and said for the last seven years: too many children are starting school and are a year or two years behind, and they've got to try and make it up in the next seven. But surely Flying Start must be seen as progress.

Well, if you've written and spoken about it for seven years, you don't need to tell me; you should tell your own Government. I'll come on to Flying Start in a minute, because you do make a valid point, but I'll address that in a moment.

Therefore, I’ve outlined why I believe it’s important that we commit to provide free childcare for all children at three and four years old, as a means of tackling this inequality that I have referred to. This debate is timely because just this morning we started to scrutinise the childcare funding Bill that this Government has brought forward, and that policy, brought forward by Government, limits free childcare to working families. One could argue—and the Government does argue—that that brings benefits to them, although there are questions, in my mind and in other people’s minds, as to the evidence to support that, but in my view it also increases the risk that those children from the most disadvantaged families, the unemployed families, will be left even further behind. Plaid Cymru wants to break that vicious circle of disadvantage and low attainment.

The children’s commissioner, Save the Children and others share Plaid Cymru’s view that excluding children from non-working families from this childcare offer will expand the education gap rather than narrow it. Some of the evidence that we’ve heard is damning. The children’s commissioner said, for example:

'Not only is this Bill likely to disadvantage children of non-working household disproportionately, it is also unlikely to achieve its main aim.'

She also says:

'I am therefore unconvinced that this investment is evidence-based or well-targeted…I do not believe that the policy behind this Bill shows that the scheme will be suitable for the long-term.'

Now, those are the children's commissioner's views.

Do you know, by the way, that couples who earn up to £199,000 a year will be eligible for the free childcare offer? Now, the Government tells us that those who are less well-off have access to Flying Start—and I'm now addressing the point you made, Mike. Most disadvantaged children, of course, don’t live in Flying Start areas, and that’s the problem: it’s geographically limited. Half of our poorest, most disadvantaged, most fragile, most at risk of being left behind children will be shut out by this policy because they won’t be able to access free childcare, whilst families earning potentially £199,000 a year are given free childcare by this Labour Government. Is it really what Labour now represents? Because if it is, you've clearly lost your way. Listen to the children’s commissioner, listen to Save the Children and others, listen to Plaid Cymru: make the childcare offer universal so that everyone, including our poorest children, can equally have the best start in life.

Well, I make no excuses for repeating some of the figures used by Bethan Sayed and others, because they deserve repeating time and time again. Approximately 600,000 children live in Wales. Of those, one in three, or 200,000, are in poverty; 90,000 are living in severe poverty. More than half of Welsh children in low-income families are worried their parents are finding it harder to pay for everyday necessities such as food, heating and clothes.

Unfortunately, the rhetoric in this Chamber blames cuts to benefits as the main cause of poverty. This is just not the case. Lack of good, well-paid jobs is the greatest factor affecting poverty in Wales, whether it is poverty for children or the sector as a whole. It is the failure of the Welsh Government to provide those jobs that is the reason for the appalling situation and figures for poverty in Wales. It is a lame excuse to blame UK Government benefit cuts, as unwelcome as they are, for the increasing number of food banks and other indicators of poverty in Wales. The only true and sustained route out of poverty is employment—good, well-paid employment. The Welsh Government claims that unemployment levels are at an all-time low but masks the fact that much of that employment is part-time, or worse, through the iniquitous zero-hours contract system of so-called employment.

I do believe strenuous efforts are now being made by the Welsh Government to alleviate this problem: better apprenticeship programmes, an education system much more aligned to business needs and a number of interventions designed to get the long-term unemployed back into work. But all this against the backdrop of 20 years of Labour Government in Wales—a Government that promised to eradicate poverty by 2020, and needless to say, there's not much time to achieve that goal. And I will point out that for 13 of those 20 years, there was a Labour Government in the UK Parliament at that time. Twenty years that included the debacle of the Communities First programme, which the Government promised would bring an end to poverty in our most deprived areas, and which actually delivered, apart from some isolated cases, almost nothing: £410 million down the drain. Evidence for this lies in the figures quoted above. One wonders how many real long-term jobs would have been created if we had given £1 million with proper controls to 410 proven entrepreneurs.

It is now time for the Welsh Government to deliver on their promises. The people of Wales, and especially those condemned to a life of poverty, deserve better than that delivered in the last 20 years.

Whatever your political hue, we can all agree that not a single child should grow up in poverty. Not a single child should face the indignity and stigma that poverty brings.

I want to start by outlining the context in which I'm calling for change. We've heard the statistics. Child poverty here is higher than any other UK nation. What does this mean for our children? It means that a third of children face a daily struggle, a demeaning struggle, that leaves them hungry, ill, subject to being picked on, and devoid of hope for a better future.

Just last month the Trussell Trust confirmed that foodbank use in Wales continues to grow. Buried in those statistics was the fact that 35,403 of those forced to rely on food parcels were children. Now, I know that the Minister is not proud of these figures, but Labour are in Government. Labour has the power to change things, and so it is Labour that must take responsibility for this dreadful situation.

I also recognise that the Conservatives in Westminster retain control over some of the levers that could help bring children out of poverty: the rape clause, which means that women with a third child have to prove they were raped before they are able to receive tax credits, or the new bereavement support payment system that has slashed financial support offered to those who have lost a loved one from 20 years to 18 months, and then, of course, we had the chaos that is universal credit—the botched roll-out of Westminster's flagship benefits reform has left families desperate and even homeless. These are policies that are causing suffering to those who are already suffering. It's benefit reforms such as these that are cited as one of the core reasons for an increase in child poverty. In fact, the Equality and Human Rights Commission found welfare reform policies will push 50,000 more children in Wales into poverty, and that is an outrage that demands change.

So, what can be done to change this situation? Firstly, the Welsh Government must stop cutting its funding to those in need of support. Just last week we were forced to debate the Welsh Government's decision to cut the school uniform grant for the poorest children. This week Labour are under pressure to reverse their decision to scrap the Welsh independent living grant. In today's amendment to the Plaid Cymru motion, the Government points to the economic action plan as a means to alleviate poverty. Now, I'd like to invite the Minister now to intervene on me to tell me how many times the word 'poverty' is used in that action plan. Do we have a question there? Do you know how many times the word 'poverty' is mentioned in the action plan?

I'm happy to intervene. You won't be surprised that I don't know how many times the word 'poverty' is used in that plan, but, actually, the child poverty strategy is still in place and we'll be reporting in 2019, as my predecessor in this role said. Also, the attack on poverty and the raise in prosperity is not only articulated within that plan, but also with the employment plan that we'll be bringing forward, and every strand of Government thinking. It is embedded across Government. So, I can't play the game of how many words are within a document, but I can say that tackling poverty goes right across this Government's thinking.

Well, I can help you. I can tell you that your economic action plan, which you rely upon heavily to reduce poverty, has a mention just once of 'poverty'. It's on page 24, and it's in a list.

Now, it's the poverty of ambition from this Government that is leading to the poverty of our children. Just last week I called on the Minister to join Plaid Cymru in supporting the devolution of welfare administration, and what was this Labour Government's response to that? Pretty much that the Conservatives in Westminster are more able than yourselves to deliver benefits for those people.

Now, let me just make a few facts clear regarding the devolution of welfare administration. It will be—[Interruption.] Go on.

I didn't say that the UK Government was more able to administer welfare, I was saying the Welsh Government doesn't want to be administering the UK Government's Tory cuts.

You've refused to take responsibility and you are more than happy to keep blaming the Tories for something that you could have within your gift. Also, the devolution of benefits would be cost neutral because the block grant to the Scottish Government was adjusted upwards to reflect the transfer of responsibility for welfare.

By making some changes, we could alleviate pressure on the NHS and other devolved services, actually leading to money being saved. The conclusion has to be a simple one: Labour is not a party of principle but of political expediency, shunning responsibility in favour of helpful political ambiguity. 

I want to finish my speech by calling for action from this Government. I call on you to stop abdicating responsibility. You are the Government. You are responsible. Take control of the administration of welfare and lift these children out of poverty.

In the summer of 2017 a report was published, ‘Communities First—Lessons Learnt’, and that was by the Equality, Local Government and Communities Committee, of which I am a member. Recommendation 4 of the report stated:

'We strongly recommend that a clear tackling poverty strategy is published, which brings together the many strands of poverty reduction work to help provide clear direction and to help the Assembly scrutinise the Government’s approach. The strategy should include clear performance indicators to ensure effective performance management, as well as setting out a broader evidence base to help underpin effective evaluation of different approaches to tackling poverty.'

The Welsh Government rejected that recommendation. The committee’s response was this:

'We remain disappointed that this recommendation has been rejected. We feel that a framework provided by a Strategy or Action Plan is absolutely essential to enable us to scrutinise whether Government policies are working. The key is a clear action plan, with performance indicators, which are disaggregated by area and gender…An action plan would also help demonstrate how well integrated the Welsh Government’s approach is, and ensure that cross-portfolio work is all working to the same goal.'

It is a scandal that this Government doesn’t have a clear strategy for eradicating poverty. The Government’s stubbornness suggests one of two things. One, that eradicating poverty is not a priority, or that they don’t truly believe that it’s possible to eradicate poverty and that failing to reach targets would be a signal of failure, and therefore it’s better not to have any targets at all and not to have a plan. In terms of the child poverty strategy—yes, there is a strategy, but it appears that that has remained static since 2015.

I turn now to the issue of the school uniform grant, and the Government has announced that they intend to scrap this grant at a time when children and families are fighting against the increasing challenges of all kinds that they’re facing. In Gwynedd, thanks to the Plaid Cymru policy, the council will continue to provide this crucially important grant, despite the cut from Government. More than 800 children will continue to receive support from the council in order to assist parents who have difficulty in meeting the financial demands of school uniforms.

I am very proud that Gwynedd Council has been able to continue to provide this grant that so many families rely on. A total of 842 young people were supported in Gwynedd during 2016-17. At that time, they were supported through the Welsh Government too, but that support is to be scrapped. But the support will continue in Gwynedd, and more than 800 pupils will be able to benefit from that. The council is doing that because one of the founding principles of Plaid Cymru is to support disadvantaged children, young people and families. School uniforms are crucial items, not 'nice-to-haves'.

Gwynedd Council has also scrapped zero-hours contracts for all staff, apart from those who wish to have such contracts, and have introduced the living wage universally. That's what Plaid Cymru does when we hold the levers of power and where we are in government.

So, to conclude, we need action—we need urgent action. This afternoon, Plaid Cymru has proposed a number of practical ways that could be adopted. The first thing that needs to be done is to draw up a strategic plan to eradicate poverty. Elements of welfare could be devolved so that we could create a more humane system. A package of childcare could be created, which includes parents who are unemployed as well as those in work, in order to provide equal access to early years education. We should scrap zero-hours contracts in public services and introduce the living wage.

Those are just a few ideas that could be implemented immediately if there was the will here to do so. Thank you.

Thank you. Can I now call the Minister for Children, Older People and Social Care, Huw Irranca-Davies?

Diolch yn fawr iawn, Dirprwy Lywydd. My apologies for being a bit premature earlier. Can I begin by genuinely welcoming the focus on child poverty within this debate? It's right that we focus on this, because we know that child poverty, unresolved, can diminish the early life of a child and further diminish their life chances as they journey to and through adulthood. 

Let me just turn, right at the outset, to some of the contributions that have been made already and thank everybody for making those contributions. Bethan rightly identified the scourge of child poverty and the negative impact as well of the tax and benefit changes. She challenged us on having a sense of complacency—I'll turn to that in a moment, because I do not believe we have—but also challenged us not to sit on the sidelines. I'll turn to that in a moment as well, because I do not believe that this Welsh Government is sitting on the sidelines. She asked, 'What about the administration of UK Government policy?' I'll turn directly to that, but can I say that what we shouldn't be is the administrators of UK Conservative Government policy? I'll turn to that in a moment.

Mark Isherwood contributed to the debate and talked about the stubbornly high child poverty in Wales. He's right, and that's why we can't be complacent. Child poverty is stubbornly high, but let me just correct and put on the record here that it isn't correct, first of all, to say, as some people might suggest, that child poverty in Wales has increased. In fact, the most recent households-below-average-income data published in March this year show that relative child poverty has fallen by two percentage points in Wales for the three years to 2016-17 after housing costs were paid, compared to figures—last year, sorry, compared to figures published in 2017.

Also, it's not correct to say that child poverty levels in Wales stand above the UK level, because those same HBAI data published in March show that relative child poverty after housing costs in the UK currently stands at 30 per cent.

I will take the intervention.

Will you agree that the End Child Poverty local authority data published in January, which broadened the definition of child poverty to take account of wider demographic factors, found that, in fact, Wales did have the highest child poverty in the UK? The reduction in child poverty I referred to came from Government statistics, from Government databases, and not from something I pulled out of the air or from some party briefing document.

We're playing around with different datasets here, but those statistics are certain and they're independent and they're proven. However, where we can agree is that it is too high—it is stubbornly high—and we need to use all of the levers in our control to actually bring child poverty down.

If I can turn to some of the remarks from Llyr, he, like many others, highlighted the pernicious impacts of child poverty, and took the intervention from Mike Hedges, who flagged up, actually, the beneficial impact that the Flying Start programme has—indeed had—in those areas it's in. We need to make sure that those same effects are being seen outside of the Flying Start areas, either with that programme or other programmes that we have as well. In fact, our very well-targeted childcare offer, as I said when I appeared before the committee—. The majority of those who are making use within the first year, of the seven pilot authorities, are those below the Welsh median salary—it's those who are actually most in need of having that childcare offer who are the ones who are taking that offer within the first year that we've been assessing that, but we'll bring forward some analysis in the autumn as well.

David, can I simply say, with respect, it is not a lame excuse to point to the responsibility of the UK Government in this as well? We have levers in our control; we do not have all the levers to actually play with. But it was good to hear you praise the efforts of Welsh Government on things like tackling zero hours.

Leanne, I understand that you focused on identifying how many words are in certain documents on poverty. What you didn't do, I have to say, is look at the policies within those strategies that are being delivered now on the ground that are making a difference; the actual tools and mechanisms. I'll turn to some of them in a moment.

Siân talked about how this Welsh Government doesn't have, actually, a policy and strategy around tackling child poverty. Well, we do, and we will refresh it and we will bring forward the progress on that, actually, in 2019.

But what we also have, Siân, is a cross-Government programme of raising prosperity for all. You also raised the issue, by the way—. I'm not sure if I have time to—

Are you willing to take an intervention?

I will in a moment. Siân, you also raised the issue of the school uniforms grant. Well, the Cabinet Secretary for Education has already made clear her intention to introduce an improved scheme from September 2018—a scheme that will be more flexible, more relevant for the needs of disadvantaged learners. My officials have already been involved in discussions regarding the development of this new scheme with the Cabinet Secretary for Education, who will make an announcement during the coming weeks. And I'm happy to take the intervention.

I am talking about a strategic plan across Government—an overview across Government with clear targets on tackling poverty. Now, I recognise that there's a child poverty strategy but, of course, children are part of families and we need a strategy to tackle poverty that is over and above that. There isn't one, and it's scandalous that there isn't one. 

I agree that poverty is a scandal whatever level it is at, but I'll turn to some of the practical policies that actually change that as opposed to big words in strategies and what is actually going on. It's without any sense of complacency because we actually need to do more. 

So, let me first of all say where we can agree. It is our clear moral duty to do all in our power to tackle poverty through the tools we have to hand in Wales. But it is also right that we recognise, as we do in our amendment, that the responsibility for tackling child poverty lies with both the Welsh and UK Governments. For the sake of those young children, we need the UK Government to play its part too. That's why I, the leader of the house and the Minister for Housing and Regeneration wrote seeking urgent UK Government response to the Equality and Human Rights Commission report, which predicted that it was UK Government tax and welfare policies that could plunge 50,000 more children into poverty. It's the latest of several respected organisations asserting that the UK Government's tax and welfare reforms in relation to disadvantaged families will drive a significant rise in child poverty in the coming years despite what we are doing, and despite what they're doing in Scotland, by the way, as well.

But we can make a difference through our policy in Wales. As a Government, we recognise the fundamental importance of investment in the early years, which can transform children's long-term health and development and their achievements in later life. Our child poverty strategy underlines the importance of a preventative approach to tackling child poverty through cross-Government action, and our national strategy, 'Prosperity for All', referred to earlier, highlights early years and employability as priority areas for tackling poverty. It sets out not just our vision but the key actions we will take during this Assembly term to ensure that children in Wales from all backgrounds, whatever their circumstances, have the very best start in life.

We welcomed the Save the Children report that was published in January this year. It was challenging, but, as that report recognised, Welsh Government has indeed invested in a wide range of early years programmes. Amongst these are the groundbreaking Flying Start and Families First programmes. If Tessa Jowell is looking down at us now, she will be looking down at the Flying Start programmes that we are delivering here in Wales and expanding with pride, and will be looking across the border and wondering what's happened to Sure Start.

They have been life changing for some families with high needs: our investment in early years development and education; the pupil development grant, which has narrowed the educational attainment between children who receive free school meals and those who do not; our universal Healthy Child Wales programme for nought to seven-year-olds; Supporting Families, helping our children realise their potential; the educational foundational phase for three and four-year-olds, helping our children thrive; the childcare offer, which even in the pilot stage—my apologies, Dirprwy Lywydd, I took a couple of interventions. Are you happy that I continue?  

You can have about 30 seconds to wind up. 

Okay. Well, let me turn to the aspect of devolution of welfare or administrative control. We do not support this for reasons of principle and hard-headed practicality. On principle, we believe that we should all be entitled to an equal claim from a welfare state to provide support when needed and to tackle poverty in Swansea and in Swindon, in Bangor but also in Bognor. In practical terms also, a broader based welfare support system provides resilience against localised economic shocks and cyclical downturns that a smaller system simply cannot, and we should, Dirprwy Lywydd, be extremely cautious of rushing to changes in the social security system before assessing the costs. The costs to Scotland are significant, including £66 million for administration and a one-off amount of £200 million for implementation of their newly devolved welfare powers. Should we be putting those into front-line services that tackle poverty? We can do more, Dirprwy Lywydd, without seeking further devolution. We can do more, and we intend to. Breaking the cycle of deprivation—

You've had longer than 30 seconds.

I'm closing, Dirprwy Lywydd. But breaking that cycle, Dirprwy Lywydd, of deprivation and poverty is a long-term commitment of this Welsh Government. It underpins our national strategy and our responsibility to make a difference to people's lives. It's a moral imperative too, but the UK Government must play its part.

Thank you very much. Can I now call on Bethan Sayed to reply to the debate? Bethan. 

Diolch. Thank you to everybody who has contributed here today. I'd just like to start on the point that was made with regard to the devolution of administration of welfare and the points that were made in interventions by Rebecca Evans and Huw Irranca-Davies. I don't understand the rationale, because it seems to suggest—. We're in the situation where these welfare reform cuts will be going ahead anyway and, surely, if we recognise the fact that we don't have control over what happens in the rest of the UK, then we'd want to have control over the proportion of welfare that we could possibly have influence over. In fact, we recognise that on the equalities committee. We recognise the fact that, when we had evidence from those who came down from Scotland to give evidence, you could change the nature of the debate by having those powers within your grasp. Please read that evidence—we're all about telling each other to read specific documents in this Chamber—please read that evidence to show how we can do things differently, because, no, of course we don't want those welfare reforms to happen, but they are going to happen, and surely you would want to have those powers here in Wales as opposed to them being delivered upon us by those who are not in touch, who are not able to understand the lives of the people of Wales.

Thank you for taking the intervention. If we thought that simply devolving administration or something else in terms of this would suddenly solve the problem, then it would be something worth going about. But would you agree with me that, actually, in looking at that, we also need to be very careful of the unintended consequences and the costs that would come with that and the danger to the social union that actually protects the fabric?

I've addressed the costs until I'm red in the face in this Chamber, and I don't want to go over the cost issue, quite frankly. We've explained quite clearly the fiscal framework and Scottish Labour seemed to support that. It's one tool; I'm not saying it's a panacea, but surely it is one tool in the box of wider issues that we can have control over here in Wales.

With regard to some of the other contributions, I'll quickly go through some of them. Mark Isherwood gave us quite a lot of information on poverty, but I didn't hear him taking any responsibility for anything that the Conservatives are doing on a UK level, and perhaps some humility would be nice on occasion. [Laughter.]

Llyr, we see—

Did you read your leader's letter last week?

What? Do we want to have a debate about that here now? I don't think that's appropriate.

No, there's no across-the-Chamber debate, please. Carry on.

Llyr Huws Gruffydd talked of deficient communication skills that emerge in the education system if people don't get the same opportunities, with 60 per cent of young people in the justice system having communication problems. That's why we as a party say that we need the powers here in Wales, in order to deal with that situation.

In the context of childcare, we've heard again on the equalities committee that this should be a universal offer for parents, because when it starts at the age of three or four, parents will have lost the opportunity to go back to work. That is the basis for our view in that regard.

David Rowlands, you said that welfare reform was not the main cause of poverty and it was lame to blame welfare reform. I think it's lame not to want to do anything about it, quite frankly. So, I'd only agree with you up to a point, and I think that's where we've said, on numerous occasions, that we'd like to try and have some control over that system. But I do agree with you, although I don't agree with UKIP all the time, on the skills agenda and the jobs agenda. I think if we give those possibilities to our young people, that is something that we can support.

Leanne mentioned the rape clause and that universal credit has left many families in desperation, and that 50,000 new people are in poverty as a result of welfare reform. And, again, she made the point about the devolution of the administration of welfare quite strongly, and I think that's something that we won't win here today, but we will continue with that particular argument.

Siân Gwenllian stated there's no clear framework in terms of tackling poverty, that they can't reach targets, and that's perhaps why they don't want those targets in place any longer. I was speaking on child poverty when I was first elected, and those targets were in place for a reason so that we could track what the Welsh Government was doing. Without those targets, that simply isn't possible. Congratulations too to Gwynedd Council who have tried to do away with zero-hours contracts and have restored the school uniform grant in Gwynedd. It's important that we speak about what's happening positively at a local authority level.

I think I'll just finish with the document that we've talked about. Yes, you know, we may discuss how many times poverty is mentioned, but the fact is, there is no tangible way of tracking how we progress within this document. It reads well and it reads like a very good Government document, but we can't then see how we can use any targets to drive our scrutiny of this particular strategy here in the National Assembly for Wales, and I think that's what people outside of this Chamber want us to be able to do. So, if there's an action plan that could emanate from this, which has more detail on targets and on delivery, then I would certainly welcome that, and I don't know if there's something that the Minister has to say on the matter.

Yes, simply to help clarify as part of the debate. So, the key performance indicators remain in place, and one of the things that we are looking at across Government and across Government Ministers are milestones that underpin those key performance indicators. So, we already know things such as the number of people with are entering the NEET category, young pregnancies, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera—some of these key indicators. So, there is work going on to look at what we can do that could actually be measured so we could see progress being made.

Okay. Thank you very much. That's all I wanted to say. Thank you.

Thank you. I'm glad we got to the end of that debate without any further interventions. That's good. The proposal is to agree the motion without amendment. Does any Member object? [Objection.] Therefore, we'll vote on this item in voting time.

Unless three Members wish for the bell to be rung, I will now proceed to voting time. Okay. So, we move to voting time.

The first vote this afternoon, then, is the debate on the Assembly's dignity and respect policy, and I call for a vote on the motion, tabled in the name of Jayne Bryant. Open the vote. Close the vote. For the motion 52, two abstentions. Therefore, the motion is carried.

We now move to vote on the Plaid Cymru debate on child poverty, and I call for a vote on the motion tabled in the name of Rhun ap Iorwerth. If the proposal is not agreed to, we vote on the amendments tabled to the motion. Open the vote. Close the vote. For the motion 10, no abstentions, 44 against. Therefore, the motion is not agreed.

We now go to vote on the amendments. If amendment 1 is agreed, amendment 2 will be deselected. So, I call for a vote on amendment 1, tabled in the name of Paul Davies. Open the vote. Close the vote. For the motion 17, no abstentions, 37 against. Therefore, amendment 1 is not agreed.

I now call for a vote on amendment 2, tabled in the name of Julie James. Open the vote. Close the vote. For the motion 33, one abstention, 20 against, therefore, amendment 2 is agreed.

We now vote on the motion, as amended.

Open the vote. Close the vote. For the motion 34, no abstentions, 20 against, therefore the amended motion is carried.

We now move to the short debate. If Members are leaving the Chamber, can you do so quickly and quietly, please? We now move to the short debate and I call on Jenny Rathbone to speak on the topic she has chosen. Jenny.

Thank you very much, Deputy Presiding Officer. My debate is about the very important issue of rented housing and why we need rent controls. I've agreed to give a minute of my time to David Melding and nobody else has indicated that they want to speak.

Good, affordable housing is the cornerstone of a decent society. Housing is too important to the population's health and well-being to be left to market forces alone. We cannot allow a rampant free market to condemn generation rent to expensive, insecure low-quality housing. Housing is being used as an advancement opportunity, rather than a place for people to live, and this is fuelled by politicians who keep on talking about getting on the housing ladder, as if it is a nirvana we all need to aim for. I've got no problem with people wanting to own their own homes, but it is not, in itself, an essential requirement for happiness and success. It's our job, as legislators, to deliver prosperity for all and to protect those who are less able to protect themselves, and we urgently need firm action to change the dysfunctional housing market, which is condemning generation rent to permanent insecurity and instability, and distorting our economy.

Social housing is insufficient to meet demand and new tenancies are now mainly confined to people with protected characteristics. But the first rung on this hypothetical housing ladder is beyond the reach of the majority of my constituents. I accept that the picture in Cardiff is not the same as across the wholes of Wales, where, happily, a mere 15 per cent are in private rented accommodation, but in my demographically young constituency, it is in danger of becoming the dominant position, with all the insecurity and instability that that involves. While local authorities do their bit to close down properties that are not fit for human habitation, there's an almost complete lack of consumer protection for private renters.

Complaining about disrepair often leads to eviction and many tenants instead put up with appalling conditions. That doesn't mean that there are not good landlords who maintain their properties promptly and effectively, but the tenant has no right to remain and no reason needs to be given for ending a tenancy. It's that instability of renting that is so damaging for well-being. No roots can be put down, no certainty about schools or jobs that a family can count on. Each tenancy ending means finding at least a month's deposit, more agency fees, unpredictable rent increases and moving costs. It doesn't need to be like this.

Before 1989, private rented sector rents were determined by the Valuation Office Agency, and the VOA set a fair level of rent for the property and calculated by how much that amount could increase. This provided certainty for both tenants and landlords, but the Housing Act 1988, at a stroke, moved Britain from one of the most forcefully regulated of private renting in the world to the most de-regulated, uncontrolled system in the developed world. Since 1989, landlords in Britain have been allowed to charge tenants what they think the market will bear. Unfortunately, the only de facto rent control that has been introduced is a cap on housing benefits, which has just given rocket boosters to the already unacceptable levels of instability.

The Department for Work and Pensions estimates that nearly 50,000 households in Wales will be affected by the cap on housing benefits. Paying 30 per cent of local market rents instead of the previous 50 per cent shrinks the options of the poor and also takes into account the size of the property. So people who are forced to downsize as a result of the bedroom tax don't just see the space of their home shrinking, they also see their options shrinking very substantially. They don't even have the option of squeezing into a tiny home to stay near their child's school or their elderly parent, because they'll also be caught by a further cap on different sized properties. So, the smaller the property, the less housing benefit will be paid.

The House of Commons Welsh Affairs Committee inquiry into the impact of changes in housing benefit in 2013 warned that efforts to control housing benefit increases quite rightly have to include strategies to manage spiralling rents in the private rented sector, including direct rent controls. I agree, and nearly five years later we need urgent action now. Rents in Cardiff have already outstripped housing benefit caps. For example, a two-bedroomed flat in Admiral House on Newport Road costs £1,200 for two beds, or £950 for one with a single bedroom. This isn't leafy Cyncoed. This is an area challenged by dangerously high levels of air pollution. Indeed, even many housing association rents now exceed housing benefit caps.

The lack of rent controls has become a form of social cleansing. People who are poor cannot find anywhere to afford in Cardiff and they either become homeless or they're forced to move away, splitting up families and denying people the support networks that make for cohesive communities. This is a recipe for adverse childhood experiences and mental illness. We need rent controls. We need an end to unfair evictions and a radical overhaul of the housing system to deliver rent stability.

The power to regulate rents in the private sector was transferred to the Welsh Government by the UK Parliament in 2006, and the Renting Homes (Wales) Act 2016 introduced a new legal framework for renting a home in Wales. Landlords now have to undergo a minimum training into their rights and responsibilities in order to get registered. The forthcoming Bill to abolish letting agency fees, while important, is not going to be sufficient to deliver a fair deal for tenants. Agencies will unfortunately seek to add the costs onto monthly rents, which are already unaffordable.

Fair rents offer a sustainable means of preventing rents spiralling further out of reach to so many of our urban communities. Indeed, even the Welsh Government's annual report on private sector rents recognises that the lowest property at that time, at the end of last year, was £325 a month for a non-self-contained single room or bedsit, and the highest median price was £750. But in Cardiff, that spirals to over £1,000 for the average rent, and in many cases, as I've already suggested, it is much higher.

So, there are two ways in which we could introduce rent controls. First, we could protect families from unfair rent rises by giving them the option to challenge unreasonable rent through an independent tribunal system. This could be the Valuation Office Agency, as before, and this would guarantee fairness and predictability for both tenants and landlords. Alternatively, we could give local authorities the opportunity to apply to Welsh Government to create designated rent pressure zones in order to place caps on rent increases in areas that are determined to have been subject to excessive rent increase. The latter is the route being considered by Edinburgh and Glasgow following the Scottish Parliament passing the Private Housing (Tenancies) (Scotland) Act 2016.

But we don't have to just look to Scotland for inspiration. Many countries across the world have tightly regulated rental markets. Germany has its rental price break, which limits rents on new tenancies in property hotspots like Berlin, Munich and Dusseldorf to 10 per cent above existing rent benchmarks. It's worth noting that two thirds of people in Berlin rent. Tenants are heavily protected, but landlords are cut some slack, too. Rents can be increased if the property is improved and the break does not apply to newly constructed properties.

In New York, rent controls only apply to tenants who've lived there since 1971 and in properties constructed before 1947, but rent stabilisation also applies to nearly half of rented apartments, preventing landlords from hiking the price more than a set guideline for an area, unless, of course, they go for luxury decontrol, which is for properties above $2,500 a month, and, presumably, those people are better able to fight their corner themselves. But it does mean that half, rather than two thirds, of properties in New York are now subject to controls, compared with a lot more than that 40 years ago. Now, Paris recently introduced new rent controls. La loi Alur controls rents in zones of high demand, setting a median rent per square metre for a given area, separating districts' real estate into price bands based on whether it's furnished and the number of rooms. The application of these controls in other cities in France may follow.

Perhaps the most interesting example is that in Holland, which I want to look at in the context of our UK macroeconomic situation, which is that in the last year across the UK a record number of buy-to-let landlords are now paying in cash to hoover up more and more properties, according to the UK's biggest mortgage lender, Countrywide. The record £21 billion in cash purchases in bricks and mortar is at an all-time high for the last decade, and some of this cash comes from remortgaging, taking equity out of homes they already own, and a lot of it is heading towards Wales because the overheated London and south-east market is beyond the pockets of many investors. But we have to understand that this £21 billion that's going into bricks and mortar is something that could be going into the productive economy—creating jobs, creating goods and creating exports for our economy. And, meanwhile, the outcome of this deregulation is clear: bulging buy-to-let portfolios for the rich, with profits rising year on year and those not lucky enough to own their own homes are being fleeced.

So, I just wanted, lastly, to look at the situation in Holland, which is dominated by—. Three quarters of all homes are owned by housing associations, and the private rented sector in the Netherlands has declined from 17 per cent to 8 per cent. Strong regulation, particularly rent controls, is often seen as one of the reasons for the decline in private renting. But it's important to see that both owner occupation and social rented sectors have benefited from subsidies and tax incentives, while private landlords have been disadvantaged, especially from the 1980s. But, compared with other European countries, the social rented sector is thriving and people are generally content with it. I think that it's time that Welsh Labour really looks at introducing rent controls to fix this broken housing market, and, if necessary, increasing the size of the social housing sector to ensure that everybody can be appropriately housed, with the security that goes with it. So, I look forward to hearing the Government's response.

I thank Jenny for bringing this important subject to our attention this afternoon. We have a very clear approach, I think, from the left side of politics and you make some interesting and powerful points. I agree with you on a couple of issues. The housing market is, in areas, certainly dysfunctional and there are a number of reasons for that. We have this phenomenon of generation rent, where people who formerly would've bought their own homes now have to rent. They have relatively high incomes, many of these people, but they do not have the capital to make a purchase or put a deposit down, and I think they need security of tenure as much as what you call fair and controlled rents.

What I think we should have is a comprehensive review of housing policy and how it relates to the new demands we have. We are facing a shortage of supply; I think we all agree with that. I think we do need some more models. The Dutch example is an interesting one; it's capturing more people than we would capture in terms of what social housing here is deemed to be for, and there are ways of doing that through housing associations, possibly, or new ways in terms of co-operatives being formed, which is also a model favoured in many continental countries. I think we need all these approaches, and, when we eventually get out of the financial crisis, I do hope that this phenomenon of people chasing the high returns you can get by investing in housing does stop, because I do agree with you—housing is beyond the normal economic good. It's much more fundamental. It's much more like health in that respect. So, there are issues here. I don't agree with everything you've said this afternoon, but you might be surprised by how much I do agree with.

Thank you. Can I ask the Minister for Housing and Regeneration to reply to the debate? Rebecca Evans.

Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer, and I'd like to thank Jenny Rathbone for bringing forward this debate today. Of course, I share her concern that everyone should have access to a good quality and affordable home, regardless of whether they buy or rent, regardless of whether their landlord is a social or private sector landlord, and regardless of where they live.

The private rented sector is playing, and, I think, will continue to play, an increasingly important part in delivering our housing agenda. It's been a growing market for a sustained period and now represents some 15 per cent of our housing stock. For people who rent, issues of affordability, quality and security of tenure are very real, and that's why this Government has placed great emphasis on ensuring that the private rented sector is well regulated and well managed, and we will continue to do so. In this way, we can help ensure that it offers a viable long-term solution for those people who choose or need to rent in the private rented sector. 

It's true that rent controls exist in many cities across the world. The question is: to what extent do they answer the particular issues that we face in Wales? Our Welsh housing market shares some but not all of the characteristics found elsewhere. The Cambridge Centre for Housing and Planning Research's 2015 study into the effects of rent control on supply and markets tested the two main approaches to rent control. One approach is to provide an absolute control over the rent level. The other is to allow the landlord to set an initial market rent, but limit rent increases. The research reported on the potential for unintended consequences in both approaches, and discussed how important the response of landlords would be.

Shelter has recently responded to calls for rent control by pointing out that absolute approaches to rent control were causing harm to the very people we seek to assist. If we reduce the returns landlords can receive, we risk incentivising them to sell rather than rent their properties, and this might benefit middle earners who would like to see more homes available to buy, but, for those who can't afford to buy, the unintended consequence might be greater homelessness as a result of the private rented supply shrinking.

Similarly, we would not want to inadvertently discourage private landlords from investing in the quality of the homes they offer for rent. Welsh Government rent officers report that, in the small number of instances where rent controls remain under the rental Act, properties tend to suffer from a lack of modernisation and maintenance, and we shouldn't be surprised that the profit motive negatively affects the behaviour of landlords when they're constrained in this way.

It's also worth remembering that housing is about the interplay of a complex system, and one of the consequences of restricting rents in one area could be the reduction of local housing allowances, and therefore the level of benefit available to disadvantaged tenants. This is because of where the thirtieth percentile sits. 

So, limiting rent increases as a form of rent control might provide less of a disincentive to landlords. However, historically, inflation within the Welsh private rented sector has been lower than in England. Since 2012, the index of private housing rental prices shows that growth has been, on average, 1.5 percentage points lower. The evidence suggests that the Welsh market is not stretching rents far beyond inflation.

Our focus has been on accentuating renting as a quality housing option. We have made considerable strides over recent years towards bringing the private rented sector and tenure law up to date. The vast majority of our private landlords provide high-quality property and a good service for their tenants. Rent Smart Wales has helped to spread these good approaches by making sure landlords are aware of legal minimum standards for property conditions and they know the expectations on them as landlords. Rent Smart Wales has been a very positive step. Eighty nine thousand landlords are now registered, which is a 98 per cent compliance rate, equal to that of vehicle excise. Eighteen successful prosecutions have now taken place, with significant fines being imposed. 

Our Renting Homes (Wales) Act 2016 will make it simpler and easier to rent. It also deals with the issue of retaliatory evictions, protects the tenancy rights of victims of domestic abuse and ensures that properties are fit for human habitation. It's an important improvement in the lot of over 1 million people who rent their homes in Wales. 

In March, we had the short debate on the use of no-fault notices, or section 21 notices. My commitment to working with landlords to build a vibrant rented sector cannot be at the expense of tenants. That's why I'm committed to working on this. Discussions with stakeholders have already begun, and I've met with Shelter Cymru to discuss our options. Several approaches are being explored currently, such as the extension of the notice period, providing incentives for landlords to identify a specific reason for notice should they seek a quicker possession.

Renting can be expensive in high-demand areas, such as parts of Cardiff. This reflects how difficult it is to afford to buy in these areas and we mustn't forget that the price of buying property also impacts on landlords who need a rental return on their investment, or else they can just sell the property and cash in any increase in the value of the property. Affordability is an issue that I'm keen to tackle, including how affordable it is to access the private rented sector or to move within it. That's why I've announced my intention to bring forward legislation very shortly to ban fees charged to tenants when they enter, renew or end a tenancy. 

So, what are the solutions that we should be grasping in our Welsh context? Again, Shelter's response to the rent control debate has been very interesting. They've pointed to the break in the link between rents and housing benefit, as a result of UK Government policy, which has made renting less affordable. Welfare reform is damaging and it's having a real impact on tenants and landlords. I've been very clear about our opposition to the UK Government's approach, which means that local housing allowances do not reflect the real cost of renting. This must change if the housing market is to operate effectively. 

We do not control welfare policy here in Wales but we do continue to do everything we can to ensure that the operation of the welfare system is integrated with our policy agenda. Discretionary housing payments provide support to vulnerable people, such as those we are assisting through the Supporting People programme. A number of authorities were not fully utilising their budget, so we worked with the authorities to develop a framework ensuring more consistent use of DHPs. This approach has been successful in reducing the number of authorities underspending their allowance from 13 to three in just one year. Now, we will work on those remaining three to ensure they're spending their allowance in full.

The other area Shelter points to is the need to increase the supply of affordable housing, ensuring that the whole housing system works effectively. I'm proud of the work we're doing in Wales on this and the progress that we're making towards our 20,000 affordable homes target. I recently announced an independent review of affordable housing supply, which will examine arrangements supporting the development of affordable housing. This review takes place against the backdrop of our longstanding commitment to increase the supply, which lies at the heart of our programme for government. I hope that it will allow us to set even more stretching targets in future, whilst also continuing to create a climate that drives up quality.

The Welsh way is to look for partnership where consensus is likely to deliver the outcomes that we seek. I believe that we have established a strong partnership with private sector landlords in Wales—a partnership where clear responsibilities, standards and professionalism are properly enforced and poor landlords are held to account, and where the rights of tenants are protected, whilst still offering incentives to the good landlord. So, I'm not afraid to regulate the sector where I feel it's necessary to do so and I share the concerns of others who have spoken today, and I'm always open to exploring ideas from here and from elsewhere—we've heard of a number of interesting models from other countries—whilst in the end settling on the solutions that suit both our Welsh housing market and our Welsh partnership approach. Thank you. 

Thank you very much. And that brings today's proceedings to a close. Thank you.