National Assembly for Wales

Good afternoon. Welcome to today's meeting of the Committee for the Scrutiny of the First Minister. The Chair of the committee is unable to attend today's meeting, so therefore in accordance with Standing Order 17.22, I call for nominations for a temporary Chair.

Clerk, I'd like to nominate David Rees.

Okay. Are there any other nominations? I see that there are none, so therefore I declare that David Rees has been appointed temporary Chair, and I invite him to take the Chair's seat for the duration of today's meeting.

Thank you, and I thank the Members for that.

I'd like to welcome everyone to this virtual meeting of the Committee for the Scrutiny of the First Minister. It's a meeting in which we will have three different sessions today, and I apologise for the late changes to the agenda, but I'm sure that Members will understand the circumstances why that has happened. Before I move on, we all are aware of the circumstances as to why the Chair is not with us today. I would like, on behalf of all the members of the committee, to send our condolences to Ann on her loss, and to the whole family. We wish her our best wishes at this difficult time.

In accordance with Standing Order 34.19, the Chair has determined that the public are excluded from attending this committee meeting in order to protect public health. The meeting is, however, broadcast live on Senedd.tv, and all participants will be joining by video-conference. The meeting is bilingual and translation is available for Members. The Record of Proceedings will also be published.

Aside from the procedural adaptions related to conducting business remotely, all other Standing Order requirements remain in place.

Following the announcement made this morning about the changes to the operation of the Wales and borders rail franchise from next year, we have adapted today's meeting to accommodate an additional session with the Minister for Economy, Transport and North Wales, which will commence at 2.15 p.m.

With that in mind, we'll move straight into item 1 on the agenda, which, for me, is the introduction and apologies. I'd like to put apologies in for Dai Lloyd, who sent his apologies in, and John Griffiths, who will be joining the meeting later, due to other commitments he has. Are there any Members wishing to declare an interest at this point in time? I see there are none, so we move on.

We move on to item 2 on the agenda, which is COVID-19 recovery and reconstruction. I'd like to welcome Jeremy Miles, Counsel General and Minister for European Transition, and with him his official, Liz Lalley, deputy director of recovery, Welsh Government. I welcome both to this afternoon's session, and we will now focus clearly on the plan, and we'll move straight into questions, if that's okay with you, because it is important, with the limited time we now have available, that we go straight into those points.

Now, the committee has today published an updated summary of the issues raised during the scrutiny work of all Senedd committees on the impact of COVID-19. As this committee consists of the Chairs of those committees, the breadth of the work done will naturally inform questions today.

Perhaps I'll open up with an overarching question—a very simple one, Counsel General. There was a £320 million package put together for recovery post COVID, and you set out eight priorities in your reconstruction plan. How are you going to actually identify which projects, and which aspects of those priorities, will be shared amongst that £320 million and how will it be balanced out?

Chair, well, I can describe the process by which we've reached this point very briefly, so that I can help the committee understand. About six months ago, the First Minister asked me to lead a process across the Government to identify the main impacts of COVID in the longer term and how we might develop some priorities for the remainder of this Senedd term to respond to that. I can talk a little bit more about the process behind that if you would find that helpful, but it led to a series of ministerial discussions across the summer, having been informed by an extensive set of consultations with stakeholders and policy discussion groups. As I say, I can discuss that a bit more if you would like some further context for it.

But, alongside that, a finance process was run under the aegis of the finance Minister, obviously, to identify how the priorities, which were developing across the Government and which you see in this document, would then have funding attached to them, if you like, in the package that was announced the same day as the document that I myself published.

You'll have seen in the statement that the Minister for Finance gave some early indications of existing commitments that have resulted from that programme. So, there were figures in her statement, for example, around social housing, around biodiversity investment, some educational investment and so on. That's on the record in her statement. But that £320 million fund, if you like, is the product of the process that we've undertaken over the summer to identify priorities. Some of that funding—well, all of that specific funding will be the subject of announcements by Cabinet colleagues in their Cabinet portfolios over the course of the coming weeks; some have already been made. The committee will see a mix, if you like, of projects—areas where the level of investment, if you like, is scaleable, so school repairs and road maintenance might be in that category, and areas where there are new projects being brought forward, so investment in the primary care estate, for example, would be in that category. And there are some other interventions where the existing policy intervention is one that is becoming more urgent, if you like, as a consequence of COVID, and therefore there'll be additional funding going into an existing policy area. So, a good example I think of that would be the expansion of the energy retrofit programme, which Julie James, my colleague, announced a few weeks ago. And there's additional funding attached to an expansion of that.

So, there's a blend, if you like, Chair, of sorts of funding, but, as I say, it's the product of aligning that process of prioritisation with allocating that fund of £320 million.

So, just for my own clarity, from what I understand you've just said, your Cabinet colleagues came up with priorities that they identified in their areas, they costed those priorities, they put that bid to the finance Minister, and as a consequence you came up with a figure for including those projects and that's—[Inaudible.]—presented.

Yes, that's right. I mean, the finance Minister will give you more detail on the finance process, obviously, but the broad point of it is there are a set of priorities and a set of bids for funding to deliver those priorities and that has gone through either an already signed-off process or a kind of indicative process where the money is earmarked for future announcements in the coming weeks. So, those two things were essentially aligned as the priorities were clearly emerging over the summer.

And are you aware as to whether any of those priorities have changed as a consequence of the recent increase in COVID cases and the COVID-19 situation?

Well, I'm glad you raised that point, Chair, because the document says this at a number of points. What is obviously the case is that the process of engagement—and just to kind of recap very quickly, we had about 2,000 submissions direct from the public through the 'Our Future Wales' channel, which we launched. We did a series of round-tables with organisations across Wales and beyond and we had a sort of standing small advisory committee to help us understand what themes were emerging and to test some ideas during that process. So, that was the consultation mechanism; that led into ministerial discussions over the summer, both in one-to-ones, but also in small groups, and we had a ministerial away day to discuss some of these priorities before publishing them after Cabinet had approved them. But evidently, during most of that period, as you say, Chair, the transmission rate was either coming down or pretty stable. Clearly, the context for that, just before the document was published, is changing and so, clearly, we have to have regard to that context, obviously. But the documents describe what remain the Government's priorities and we will endeavour to deliver them in that changed context.

Thank you. Before I move on to some specific themes within that plan, you just mentioned the consultation that was held, 'Our Future Wales'—will you be publishing a summary of those consultation responses?

Well, the document that was published, which I released at the start of October, included an annex, which was a summary developed for us by the Wales Centre for Public Policy, based on those 2,000 submissions. So, that's part of the evidence base. I should probably say for clarity at this point, Chair, that the piece of work that the First Minister asked me to do about six months ago has, as it were, come to a close, in terms of my role, on the publication of that document, which describes our plan. The implementation of it from now on, if you like, will be, as I think is evident from what I've said so far—

Portfolios.

—yes, a matter for colleagues in their portfolios.

Okay, thank you. We move on, in that case, to the business and economy section, and Russell George.

Thank you, Chair. Counsel General, we've got limited time, so I'll roll a number of questions into one, if that's all right. First of all: can you outline what role financial support for businesses will play in terms of economic reconstruction? And I'm particularly interested in beyond anything to do with the economic resilience fund or support via the development bank. Also, I'm aware that one of Government's priorities is to prioritise, in the short term, the growth and support for independent-based businesses—either independent-based or the headquarters are based in Wales. What outcomes do you particularly expect from that particular policy, and what do you think we can expect to see by the end of this Senedd term? And finally, if I can also loop in—the reconstruction plan highlights that the Welsh Government will support emerging sectors. So, what sectors particularly are you looking to support?

Okay. There's quite a broad range of questions there, so I'll do my best to try and cover the ground that you've asked for, Russell. On the first point, I know this isn't what you're saying, but those two interventions that you describe as already, if you like, on the table, are in fact very, very significant scale interventions. We're talking about £1.7 billion or something—probably more now, actually, given the announcements of the last few days. The economic resilience fund's third stage will be doubled, so there are some significant figures in there already. There will be more—there is further funding available, earmarked, if it becomes necessary into the future, for business support, which, obviously, the economy Minister will wish to announce in due course. But, alongside that, you'll also see in the document initiatives around procurement reform and local supply-chain development, which, obviously, feed in to that broader picture, as well as specific interventions that are designed to stimulate the economy. And that's all about, clearly, protecting business opportunities and job opportunities. So, significant capital investment, I would say, in a number of different areas, both economic investment and social investment, which will stimulate jobs. And specific interventions to support—on your second point, about locally headquartered, or Welsh-headquartered businesses, you'll see some specific interventions there to support, for example, small and medium-sized house builders with a stalled sites and a property development fund. So, that's specifically designed to target SMEs in the construction sector, for example, in Wales.

I suppose if you're asking me specifically what targets are we expecting to hit by the end of the Senedd term in relation to—I'm not sure it's capable of being described in that exact way, for reasons that I think maybe you'll understand. But, certainly, there'll be initiatives around—which I know you're passionate around—further investment in superfast broadband, for example, to support businesses in parts of Wales where, perhaps, I'm sure you would argue that needs more investment. So, there are some specific aspects to that.

On the point about emerging sectors, again you'll see, I think, in the document—I think there's a pretty consistent theme, actually, around innovation in housing, in energy efficiency, in renewables and so on, and some of that is developed in the document in terms of further support for those sectors. A specific example of that might be, for example, the additional money going into the innovative housing programme, which will be designed to stimulate the modular construction part of the economy, and, again, some additional funding into energy efficiency initiatives in particular. But there are also initiatives that complement our existing suite of interventions around supporting exports and supporting high-value manufacturing initiatives in particular, but some of that is around— in what will be a difficult climate, I would suggest, in the new year, following our departure from the transition period—supporting businesses in those sectors to identify export opportunities and so on; that'll be part of the mix for us as well. 

I was particularly interested in the outcomes you expect. You talk specifically about supporting independently based businesses in Wales and where there's headquarters, and it's just understanding what outcomes you expect to achieve from that specifically, but also, if I could also add as well, there's a lot of, as I'm sure you will agree and accept, regional inequality across Wales, and how your reconstruction plan aims to tackle that, and whether you've got any comments on the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development report in terms of some of the recommendations made there in terms of tackling that particular issue as well.

Certainly. On the first point, I'm not sure I can give you a specific number in terms of what that looks like, but, certainly, we would hope that the initiatives that I've just described would lead to growth in those businesses and certainly protect their resilience in what could be challenging economic times in the months ahead. On the second point that you make, you will have spotted, I think, that many of the initiatives have a very broad current geographic application, haven't they? There are pots of interventions around town centres and local economies, which will benefit all parts of Wales, and that's, frankly, part of the rationale for putting those on the list of priorities, if you like.

On your second—on your last point about the OECD, the Cabinet recently discussed this report in the context of the post-EU regional funding arrangements that we hope to be able to put in place if we get agreement with the UK Government. What I would say is that there's some very challenging stuff in there, quite frankly, about how to run regional economic development better, frankly, into the future and taking advantage of some of the flexibilities, perhaps, that might be available having left the European Union. But I would just say one thing on that: a number of the priorities in that space, in terms of regional and economic policy, in particular, which we've been talking about as part of that process, really align onto the priorities for COVID. So, some of that is around decarbonising the economy, some of it is around healthy communities. Obviously, a lot of it is around jobs and business growth. So, I would argue that that becomes now even more urgent, actually, as a consequence of what we've learned.

Is there anything in the OECD report, in terms of recommendations, that you take any principled objection or disagreement to?

Well, some of it requires further analysis, frankly—

Which bits are they?

There will be a report coming out from the Government in the next few weeks that responds to that and gives a sense of what recommendations are—of a future, of how to take that forward, if you like. So, that'll be coming out in the next few weeks.

Yes. In the interests of time, Chair, I'm happy to have done my questions, then. You're on mute, Chair.

I keep forgetting. Helen Mary, you had a supplementary you wanted to raise.

Before we move on, can I ask the technical team just to have a quick look at the sound? Because as well as the translation we're actually hearing the Counsel General verbatim as well, and therefore we were getting two versions of the Counsel General, in one sense. If you could just have a quick look at that, please. Okay, I want to move on to—

One is plenty, Chair.

Sorry, Chair, it's the Clerk speaking. I think if the Counsel General switches off his English interpretation it should be fine. At the bottom of the screen there should be a globe, and if you select 'no interpretation' then that should fix the sound.

It's already telling me that it's off, actually.

Okay. Well, we'll keep our ears open for it, and let's just hope that it'll be resolved. Janet Finch-Saunders.

Thank you. Following on from Russ George, in terms of regional economic inequalities that do exist, there is a higher proportion of workers employed in industries that are most affected by the COVID lockdown—in recent studies, seaside towns and rural parts of Wales are actually quite badly hit. Have you thought about or given any due consideration to our proposals as the Welsh Conservatives to introduce an ambitious seaside and market town fund that would enable communities to decide how we can get those worst-hit communities supported better?

Before the Counsel General answers, can I remind Members we are putting questions on behalf of our committees and Members of the Senedd, not on behalf of political parties? Just to remind people, okay. Counsel General.

Chair, two aspects of that. There have been allocations, I think, from the coastal communities fund, which, hopefully, will be supporting at least some of those coastal communities. I would just draw Janet Finch-Saunders's attention to the work in the document around the town-centre focus in particular—there are town centres right across Wales that will need additional support, given the impact on retail in particular, but other long-standing problems, and there are indications in the document of significant investment, whether that's in terms of health and social care facilities, a strategic sites fund with local authorities, initiatives to green the centre of towns, specific initiatives around the circular economy in the middle of towns, and those are interventions, Chair, that will benefit a number of the kinds of communities that Janet Finch-Saunders mentioned there in her question.

Thank you. Jayne Bryant.

Thank you, Chair. Good afternoon, Counsel General. Just following on from those questions around town and city centres, really, and the importance that you've seen within the work that you've been doing, we know that town and city centres have been declining over a number of years, and the pandemic has really heightened that. For some areas, like the night-time economy, in terms of live music venues, bars, restaurants—they've been so important. How can we make sure that they're still part of the future in terms of town and city centres?

Secondly, during the pandemic we have seen more people use local facilities near to where they live, so perhaps popping out to a coffee shop that is close to their home, and more people using those facilities when they're working from home or perhaps because of the restrictions. How can we continue to ensure that they flourish as well?

Well, I think, Jayne, this question has been very prominent in the discussions that we've had with all sorts of people in the course of the past few months, and the overwhelming message is the one that your question takes as its starting point, really. Ordinarily, you would expect that, where retail, which has been under pressure for some time, hasn't it, in town centres because of out-of-town developments and so on—what you would normally expect to see is that, as the mix in town centres changes, that ought to change to a more leisure, hospitality-based mix, probably, with the sort of things you're describing. But obviously, they are the sectors that have been under probably most pressure recently, aren't they, so some of the interventions will need to be about financial support, as we have been trying to provide as a Government, to support some of those venues, either commercially or as cultural endeavours, if you like, and there are different interventions that we've had in place to address both of those. There is some work that Julie James has been leading on in terms of planning considerations and so on, about how space can be reconfigured in towns and cities to support those sorts of offerings into the future. 

On the last point that you made, which essentially is a point about footfall, isn't it, about using local facilities when you're working at home and so on, obviously you will know the ambition that the Government has set as a target for people to work remotely. I think, again, one of the things we've heard from a number of different people is the importance of remote working hubs in the future working mix—so, using some of those spaces that we will all have in our town centres and cities, repurposing them to be shared workspaces for people. So, in my case, rather than commuting from Rhiwfawr to Cardiff, you could do that to Pontardawe and work from there. So you'd have a much shorter commute, even if you're not working in your own home, which doesn't work for everybody. I think there's real potential for that. We're flagging that in the document. It's not straightforward to achieve, but it's definitely something that we've set as a priority, and I think that has the potential to really drive the kind of footfall that you're describing in your question in a very positive way. 

Thank you. You've actually quite nicely moved on to the next area of questioning, which is transport, because you've just talked about where people go to work. The first question on that is from Nick Ramsay. 

Diolch, Gadeirydd. Afternoon, Minister. Probably an apt, topical question with regard to today's news: in terms of your post-COVID policies, one of those is remote working, and that will obviously have an effect on a financially secure and viable public transport network if it's developed to its fullest. So, how are you making sure that you get that balance right between sustainable post-COVID policies and also making sure that our public transport system is financially secure and viable?

Well, today, as you say, my contribution is likely to be somewhat overshadowed by Ken Skates coming after me, but the point you make is obviously absolutely valid. There is a range of different possible knock-on effects from increased remote working. Some of it is more broadly based than that, about the economics of city centres and town centres and so on, about rental values and all the other things that our current city centre economies are predicated on. So that's an intervention that needs taking into account. On the public transport dimension of it specifically, I think that's certainly something that is under live consideration, clearly, given what we know is already happening in terms of bus services in particular, which I suppose is the area most likely to be impacted in this particular way. But I think you could also imagine a circumstance where this is positive for that, where commuting from somewhere to your local town centre to work is something you might well do by bus and that might well be an economic development that supports richer, better local bus routes. You might choose to do that rather than drive your car to Cardiff, for example. So I think there are definitely considerations that need to be taken into account. I think part of the Wales transport strategy, which will be coming out in, I think, mid November for consultation will obviously be taking some of these dimensions into account. 

Great. Thanks. And secondly, the Economy, Infrastructure and Skills Committee has heard evidence that a fundamental reassessment of the purpose of and the approach to public transport post COVID is required. What specific steps is the Welsh Government taking to support this, both in delivering short and long-term priorities?

Well, I think you're about to discuss the impact on the rail network in particular with Ken Skates, so maybe I'll just confine my comments here to the bus sector in particular, although I'm happy to answer questions on trains if you wish, Nick. But you will have seen the significant intervention—I think I'm right in saying that it's about £140 million, more or less—that's gone into bus services. Part of that is clearly an emergency response. However, part of it is a really critical recognition that, for the level of public money going into what is essentially a public service, the Government and the user, if you like, don't have sufficient control over the outcome. So, part of that future investment will absolutely be about driving different outcomes in terms of routes and service levels in general. Specifically, just to flag, the Minister for transport is keen to expand some of the pilots that have been happening in different parts of Wales around demand-responsive bus services, in particular the Fflecsi service, which you might have heard of, looking to expand a pilot similar to that, because I think that's clearly part of the future make-up of bus services. So, that, I think, is quite exciting, actually. 

So, just to conclude, greater flexibility, really, in future services. 

Certainly, in terms of the interventions that are currently considered, greater control over how bus services look on the ground, if you like, in terms of coverage firstly, and, secondly, developing even further that idea of demand-responsive transport. 

Diolch.

Mick, did you want to raise a question here?

Yes, just a short question. Isn't there a danger, though, in all this, that we're spreading the resources we have far too thinly? Clearly, transport is a major investment in many ways, whether it be in terms of green transport, new models of transport, new rail infrastructure and so on. How are you going to manage the risk that you do a lot of little things, but not the major things that might be impactive on a post-COVID economy?

That is absolutely a risk, clearly. In a sense, the whole purpose of this document is to try to avoid doing that. What we heard from a number of participants, if I can be blunt about it, is, 'This is all great, but what are you going to prioritise?' So, actually, the document is intended to be the answer to that question, if you like. I would suggest, and I absolutely know that you agree with this, that getting a public transport network that works is absolutely fundamental to any post-COVID vision, really. It's one of the areas, as we know from today's announcement, where there is the most pressure, really. But, I think, what we also learned from today's announcement is that with a bold response, you can do something really quite transformative. 

Thank you. We move on to the next area, which is culture. Helen Mary Jones. 

Sorry, I am still hearing the Counsel General giving his verbatim response, and I can hear the translation response. I can manage it, but I just want to highlight the fact that there is confusion as a consequence of this. 

For convenience's sake, if the Counsel General would prefer to answer this in English until we sort out the technical problem, that—

We'd be very grateful. Would you be satisfied with that, Helen Mary? Thank you. Counsel General, you can answer in English in this case, until we resolve the technical issue. 

Certainly, Chair. I think saying, 'Apart from the £53 million fund, what are you doing?', is not entirely fair. That is a significant intervention in the market, although I do recognise the point that you make, which is that it's a time-limited intervention. But I would still suggest that it's a significant intervention. I think, very early in the document, from memory, we acknowledge the particular pressure, I think, specifically on the arts sector. And I think—I'm not sure if this is what you are asking, to be fair—but the document isn't, if you like, a compendium of the contribution that each sector can make to the future economy of Wales. So, it isn't comprehensive in that sense.

So, the fact that there isn't, as it were, a section on the culture sector, for example, doesn't itself tell us that that isn't clearly a very significant sector in the future economy of Wales. I think, whether it's to do with the Welsh Government-led fund or the arts council-led fund, there's a significant set of interventions there. From a workforce point of view, I think we're the only part of the UK that's put forward, effectively, a creative freelancer fund, and we are looking to see how much—. And that's reopened this week, actually; I think, unfortunately, parts of it are already over-subscribed. We are looking to see if we can enhance that even further, with additional funding, because we recognise the particular pressure that freelancers in that sector are under.

I would say more broadly, in terms of the contribution the cultural sectors generally speaking have made to the COVID response, there's been great innovation in areas like our museums and libraries, and so on, in developing digital offerings to people, finding a new audience for some of that work as well, which has been particularly valuable, I think, in some of the most recent—in terms of circumstances we've found ourselves in over the last few weeks and months.

And I just want to say one thing on this as well: I think we have to see the pressure on this sector alongside the pressure that will come of leaving the EU transition period, and the risk to funding in the future. We are certainly advocating as a Government ongoing participation in Creative Europe, for example. And I think you might know that, in November, we'll be launching—well, there will be launched a website, which we've part funded, which helps freelancers in the cultural sectors understand mobility routes to work and to continue those international partnerships, which I think are important for Wales's brand internationally, but they're also important for the resilience of the sector in the longer term, facing the pressures that it does.

On the second point that you made, there is absolutely an analysis that we've undertaken that looks at the combined effects of COVID and Brexit, actually, on the Welsh language. What we know, unsurprisingly, is that some of the communities that are currently very strongly Welsh-speaking communities are some of the communities most under threat from the blend of those two things. Now, there are some positives, you could argue, from the possibility of greater remote working, which encourages people, perhaps, to work in their communities rather than feel they need to move to other parts of Wales. So there are definitely positives that one can build on there. But equally, there are risks to that, in that people move both ways, don't they, into communities, because that's an option as well. So it's a very mixed picture, I would say, but there's absolutely an understanding that, in particular, some of our rural agricultural communities have particular challenges lying ahead that will be important to address in support of the Welsh language into the future.

Helen Mary, anything further? Okay. Before we move on, I've been given some advice that perhaps, Counsel General, it might be worth you turning your interpretation on and off again, as that may work—okay?

Okay.

We'll see. 

If I can just follow up, I think we do understand, Counsel General, that the document isn't supposed to be comprehensive, but I think you'll also understand that the cultural sector, while very much appreciating the short-term support, which is invaluable—they're a sector that are feeling really vulnerable at the moment, because they are really vulnerable. And the fact that they aren't highlighted in what is supposed to be—or what people are reading as—the document that sets out the Government's priorities in recovery has sent an unfortunate message, perhaps. I'm glad you've had the opportunity today, perhaps, to reassure people working in the sector that you do see this sector as a vital part of Wales, as we build back.

Chair, I'm really anxious that the document ought not to be regarded as a list of things that we think are important, because there are many things that are very vital to the future Welsh economy, and our future as a nation, that are not referred to expressly in this document. I just want to be very clear that the document is not, as I say, a compendium of all those things. There are specific interventions that we've made, and we will want to continue making, to support the cultural sector, not least because the creativity that that sector brings to bear offers a real opportunity for us to solve some of the challenges that we'll be facing coming out of COVID. It's part of that cultural contract that Dafydd Elis-Thomas has spoken about, which I myself think is a very imaginative idea. So, I want to give that reassurance categorically, given that you've offered me the opportunity. 

Thank you. Mick, a very short supplementary because we have to move on. 

It will be very short. Do you not think that it perhaps might be appropriate that the creative arts, instead of just being looked at as a cultural sector, should actually be looked at as an industrial sector? Because it is a manufacturing sector, employing tens of thousands of people and it actually produces a product; it is manufacturing. It may be creative arts manufacturing and there's a broader spin-off from it, but do you not think that that might be one of the weaknesses we've had in our approach to economic development over the years?

Well, I think the cultural sector, broadly defined, encompasses, in my mind at least, both what we might describe as the arts aspect of culture, but also part of the creative industries. And I think there is a very significant contribution, if you look at it in the round in that way, which the sector makes to the Welsh economy and Welsh brand internationally, which is obviously increasingly important. So, I'd certainly accept the importance of that.

Thank you. We'll move on now to questions on green recovery and skills, and Mike Hedges?

Diolch, Dai. What I'm asking about is the linking of the green recovery with reducing fuel poverty and reducing fuel inefficiency in homes and the use of some transaction capital in reducing fuel inefficiency and the need to try and link the three of those together. The green recovery cannot exist, in my opinion—maybe in yours it can, but not in my opinion—without dealing with the two problems: one is fuel poverty, but also people who aren't in fuel poverty who are living in housing that is highly fuel-inefficient.

Well, I completely agree with that. I think that—my personal view—one of the most interesting and important parts of the document is the third priority, which talks about investing in low-carbon housing and energy efficiency in housing, because I think that goes to the absolute heart of where all these challenges come together really. Some of it is about fuel poverty, some of it is about energy efficiency more broadly and some of it is about quality of housing. All of that is in the space that achieves an environmental objective, a social justice objective and also can stimulate the development of new suppliers in the market and better skills development in those sectors. So, there are three or four interventions in the document in that space. I think we've already announced about £60 million in that area, generally speaking. And I completely agree with you that you can't divorce those things. And I think what we've tried to do in the document is try and find interventions, if you like, which achieve more than one policy goal and I would think that that sort of intervention is a very good example of that.

Could I come back to the use of transaction capital, because you can use it in the private sector—in fact, you can only use it in the private sector—in order to help, support private landlords et cetera in improving the fuel efficiency of their homes?

Chair, I can't remember exactly whether any of the financial transactions capital in the discussions that we had is allocated specifically to that area. I just can't remember that, I'm afraid, off the top of my head. But I certainly agree that that is something that you can use that for.

What we've been trying to do as well, which I think we mention in the document, is develop a model with local government where we have—it's probably not achievable in the short term, but it certainly would be in the medium term—a kind of scaling up of the retrofit in this space as well, which I think is an important contribution.

But you couldn't use transaction capital to support retrofit.

I'm not entirely sure about that, if I'm honest.

You can't, because it's being used by the public sector. It must go into the private sector.

Anyway, can I just move on? As you've moved on to social housing, can I also move on to social housing? We know that the only time sufficient housing has been built in Wales or in Britain—and the two are very similar—is when we had large-scale council housing built, which was between something like 1946 and 1970. Since we've stopped having large-scale council housing, we've had serious housing problems. What is the Government's intention to try and upscale the amount of council housing being built and especially ensuring, to come back to my last question, that new council housing is built, like what's being built by Swansea Council, as very low-energy usage?

Well, I'm just looking at the document now. There's an enhancement in the social housing grant, which will obviously deliver some of those outcomes, and, also, additional money going into the innovative housing programme, which is specifically targeted at environmentally friendly social housing, and in particular ones that are developed as a consequence of modular construction, which obviously are very energy efficient typically, so, absolutely, that's very much part of the thinking here. I think our estimates are that, into the next Senedd term, the Government in the next Senedd term, whoever that is, if they were looking to meet the need, if you like, in terms of social housing, would need to be looking at building around 3,500 units a year each year for the Senedd term. So, that's the scale of the task ahead really for the next term, at least. 

But that level of—sorry, the last point on this, Chair—scale is substantially less than the 1950s and 1960s. Swansea, one year, built more than 3,500 houses, when it was building West Cross and Sketty Park, never mind building the length and breadth of Wales. I would urge you to look at increasing that number quite considerably, and I don't think doubling it would be enough but certainly it would be a move in the right direction. 

Those figures I was giving were for the next Senedd term, so that will be for whichever Government is formed in that term, but I certainly—. What I would say to you is there's no lack of ambition, I would suggest. At this point in the financial year, there's a constraint on capacity to deliver, if you like, in the short term, but I completely accept the longer term picture certainly. 

Thank you. Llyr.  

Diolch.

Are you okay, Llyr?

Diolch.

Janet, do you want to raise a question on this?

Thank you, Chair.

Janet, you've just muted yourself again.

According to reports, your green recovery taskforce has received more than 180 ideas for policies and projects, and are presently deciding which to take forward. What guarantees can you provide this committee that proposals for the creation of long-term, green-collar jobs, as well as any requisite retraining or skills programmes, will lie at the heart of any report or plan brought before the Welsh Government?

Well, I'm not myself, obviously, able to influence the content of that report, but I know that the Minister for environment is looking forward to receiving it with enthusiasm, as we all are, given the significance that the green response to the COVID crisis will have for the Welsh economy and the Welsh environment. We have initial views, if you like, emerging from the group, and it's clearly about making sure the recovery doesn't lock in high carbon emissions, doesn't lock in the decline of biodiversity and so on. There are a number of initiatives that we've already taken, which the document refers to, which seek to start to address in the post-COVID world, if I can put it like that, some of those interventions, and puts further funding into existing work that we've had going on for some time, obviously, in that space.

On the point that you make around employment, we're very taken by that point, obviously, and there's a mix of opportunities here, if I can put it like that. Some of it is around supporting people into green jobs, if I can use that term, which is around particularly, perhaps, biodiversity, employment and so on. But another really very important part of it, I think, is in supporting employment in long-term, sustainable sectors, and sectors that can become, frankly, more sustainable by having business support to assist them in decarbonisation. So, what you're trying to achieve is a benign blend, if you like, of business support that focuses on getting those sectors into a more long-term, sustainable place, and then developing the skills pipeline that can provide employment opportunities alongside it.

Thank you. Also, proposals for innovative, floating offshore wind farms, which would find space approximately 45 km away from the coastline, could, potentially, generate over 3,000 long-term green jobs in Wales. That will require, however, collaborative working with the Celtic sea alliance, and the bettering of grid capacity in Wales. I understand there is a really big issue about grid capacity. Could you confirm, if you've reviewed these proposals, whether due consideration has been given to encouraging investment in micro and small-scale hydro schemes? And also, how are you working with the UK Government as regards grid capacity in Wales—a huge issue, you know, in terms of the green jobs and technology?

It is a huge issue. I'm not, myself, in a sufficiently expertly well-informed place to tell you what the most recent discussions are about grid capacity. I certainly take your point about working together with the UK Government on the renewable sector. Obviously, I was very disappointed that the UK Government didn't support the development of the lagoon in Swansea bay. For that reason, I would hope to see more support for the renewable sector from the UK Government into the future. Certainly, as you say, there's a very significant opportunity for Wales there.

Can I ask a follow-up on that point? How much consideration of joint working has been given in developing your recovery plan?

Working with the UK Government?

With the UK Government, on particular issues like this, yes. 

Well, some of it, Chair, depends on—. The capacity to deliver into the future on many of these programmes requires a commitment from the UK Government in relation to things like the shared prosperity fund, for example. Some of the initiatives we talk about here are initiatives for the rest of this Senedd term, and it also lays the ground for much longer term investment in jobs and skills, for example. Now, that is going to be compromised unless we get the sort of co-working from the UK Government that we frankly hope and expect to get. It is very much going to be shaped by whether the shared prosperity fund is one that is genuinely co-designed and effectively reflects the principles that we've been building on with our stakeholders here in Wales. We want to see that. As I mentioned in my answer to Russell George earlier, we think there's a very strong alignment between the kinds of things we could be doing with successor EU funds and the needs of the post-COVID economy in Wales, so we hope the UK Government will agree with us. 

Thank you. I want to move on now because time is moving against us to some issues on health and social care and inequalities, which will start off with Lynne Neagle.

Thank you, Chair. The older person's commissioner has expressed strong concern that older people weren't highlighted as a specific group disproportionately affected by the pandemic in the recovery plan. How do you respond to that criticism and what assurances can you give that this is going to be a recovery plan that doesn't leave anybody out? 

Well, I mean, I think if you read—as I know you have, obviously—the 'Leave no-one behind' report, which the commissioner published, a number of the themes from that report are reflected in the document and I certainly think that—. And I've just, for the record, had two conversations with the commissioner, one specifically on her response to the report, which was a productive conversation, and we've agreed to do joint-working on some of the intergenerational opportunities, I would suggest. So, that was very constructive, but I also think—. My own view is that the most important thing is what substantive impact does the plan have on the lives of older people, and I completely accept the fact that, as part of the narrative of understanding who has been adversely impacted, older people absolutely are part of that, clearly.

What the document doesn't do, as I say, is list every group that's been impacted, but I really expect that we will be judged on the actual impact this plan has on the lives of older people, and I would suggest—. There's a commitment in there in relation, for example, to support for older workers or older people most removed from the workplace. There are some specific commitments on lifelong learning, for example; there are some specific commitments in terms of social care; there are—we just talked about—some specific commitments in relation to public transport. So, many of those, I would suggest myself, will have a very, very beneficial impact on the lives, perhaps, particularly of older people in some of those cases, so I'm really keen to make sure that those things that genuinely will deliver improvements are actually capable of being delivered.

Thanks.

Thank you. Okay, Lynne? Jayne. 

Thank you, Chair. The plan lays significant emphasis on using technology and digital as an enabler for new models of care, and there are some good examples of where that's worked through the restrictions in lockdown, but there is a danger of digital exclusion among people on low incomes or people over 75 or perhaps those who live in rural areas, and I think some people will always need to have face-to-face care. What practical steps will the Welsh Government be taking to address those needs and concerns?

Well, I think it's a significant issue, clearly, and I would say there are other groups of people who are also at risk of being excluded here, so young learners in schools who don't have access to digital resources, for example. There's a range of other groups as well. So, I think what is clear is that there have been gains, for example, to the health service and to some local government services being able to deliver some of those services online. Obviously, what that does is it frees up capacity in the system that can then be made available to those people who can't engage, perhaps, digitally in the same way. But there are two, I guess—. The document, I think, in a couple of places, at least, talks about user-centred design for services and citizen-centred design; I think that's really at the heart of it. So, as you undertake these innovations, which are positive innovations and clearly will be built on, you're also going to do that in a way that brings the user into it so that you've got a means of reforming the system that works for all the people who need to be able to use it.

So, there are some specific things, which are at the hardware end of it, so specific investment made into providing equipment—laptops and tablets and so on—for care settings and for other settings, which has been very helpful, I think, in providing the channel for communication, but some of it is around skills, some of it's around inclination, some of it's around confidence. So, it's actually much more complex than providing hardware; I absolutely accept that.

I think what's happening alongside this is we hope that the work of the digital centre of public services will become very embedded in how we try and transform some of these services from a digital point of view. I think the week after next, there's a new chief digital officer for local government across Wales starting their work. There was a plan to have one for health and social care, but that's been delayed by events of the last few months. That's really about investing in leadership in digital, in public services, so that you can do the transformation in a way that goes beyond providing tablets to people and asking them to use them. That's a good and important intervention but it doesn't reach everybody. So, just to be clear, the digital inclusion piece of this is absolutely central to being able to roll out, as we want to, further digital services.

Can I just come back, Chair, as well? Following on from the points that Helen Mary and Nick had made around the cultural sector, I just want to say about the excellent work that's been going on in Wales around the cultural sector in the arts and health. I'm just thinking that it's really important to remember that that can play a real role within the recovery as well—not just in physical health, but mental health as well.

Yes, and we've talked about this before, Jayne, in different settings, haven't we? And I completely agree with that and I think there are some very good examples of that, including in my own health board in Swansea bay and elsewhere in Wales. Certainly, I think that the creative contract that I mentioned earlier is part of that sort of approach, isn't it, of introducing creativity into all sorts of aspects of public services, which I think is a very positive development?

 Thank you, Chair.

Thank you. John, do you want to talk about the issues on inequality at this point?

Yes, thank you very much, Chair. Hopefully, Jeremy—I'm sure you would have seen my committee's report on the pandemic, which as as the title said, really, put equalities and vulnerabilities in Wales into stark relief, so we knew about these inequalities and unfairnesses in Wales over quite a period of time, but the pandemic really drove it home in terms of just what it means to people when health is at stake as it is at the moment. So, I just wonder what lessons in terms of building back better, Jeremy, will have been learnt? What are the headlines, really, in terms of what we've learnt through the pandemic and what we really need to have the more equal and fair Wales that we all want to see as we move forward?

I completely agree with what you said, John, in terms of COVID either highlighting or actually exacerbating, really, some of the existing inequalities. I think there's a substantial foundation now for work in terms of addressing some of the inequalities that members of the BAME community have particularly experienced in the past few months, both from a health perspective, for a range of complex reasons, but also from an economic perspective. And I think that the work of Judge Ray Singh and Emmanuel Ogbonna's report in particular, in my own view, is providing a compelling set of recommendations in terms of what we need to do. Some of that's already started to be taken forward; Jane Hutt's been leading on some of that for us in the Government, but there are also broader socioeconomic inequalities that have been put in stark relief, frankly, and some of that—.

What we have been told is for young people now entering the labour market, they are the cohort of people for whom that disadvantage is most likely to be locked in throughout the entirety of their working life unless we do something about that at this point, just for reasons of longevity in the jobs market. So, some of it is around making sure people can stay on in school as long as possible, or go on to college or university, and there are a number of interventions we've already either announced or put in place to support that. Some of it is around making sure young people can stay in work, and supplementing that with obviously good skills training and also incentives for employers to take on apprentices, which we talked about a little bit in the document as well. So, some of it is about interventions at that level to make sure that we try and minimise the impact into adulthood, if you like.

But I think, just generally, we are keen and conscious—. I spoke a little bit earlier about interventions around women in the workplace, for example, particularly understanding that, in the last six months, some of the burdens or responsibilities of care have been, perhaps, more keenly felt by women in the last few months than even ordinarily, and a number of the interventions in the document, which have already been announced, have been designed to try and address some of those particular burdens. I think, generally speaking, as we've tried to address our response across the board, we've at least done our best to apply the equalities lens to those decisions. You know, some of those choices are very punishing choices, really, and the impacts are pretty difficult on some groups whatever choice you make, to be blunt about it, but we have tried to apply an equality impact assessment to most of those interventions that we've taken.

Helen Mary Jones, do you want to come in with a supplementary?

Thank you, Chair. Just very briefly, I'm very pleased to hear you talk about young people, Counsel General, because we know—. I'm of the generation where the young people—I was young in the 1980s, and lots of my contemporaries' financial situation never recovered from a year or two of unemployment, and I'm very glad that it's a priority to make sure that doesn't happen to this generation of young people. But can I just ask: to what extent were young people consulted in the process that led to this document, and to what extent will you be able to continue to consult with young people as you deliver on these priorities? Because I think we know that it makes a lot of sense, when we're designing interventions for any group of people, to design those interventions with those people, rather than imposing them on them. And I'm particularly concerned here, I guess, for young people who might be furthest away from the job market—young people who haven't necessarily left school with very good qualifications and who might need more support.

Well, firstly, just to say this is part of—this is the start, I guess, of what we would describe as a national conversation. So, consultations with all sorts of groups of people need to continue, obviously, around the document—just to make that broad point. Through the work of the Future Generations Commissioner for Wales, we were able to consult with a cross-section of young people in relation to some of the interventions we're discussing here, and I've asked them if they would be prepared to kind of critique the document, if you like, that we were talking to. I think we've also reached out to the Youth Parliament—obviously it's a question for the Youth Parliament if they wish to do it—to make available myself and others to engage and be scrutinised, if you like, if the Youth Parliament wishes to do that, and then to calibrate some of our specific policy interventions based on that.

So, yes, the answer to your question is 'yes', but, plainly there's more to be done into the future on that, for the reasons that I've said. And I think the point you make about—[Interruption.] Forgive me, Chair.

The time is almost up, and I want to go back to John Griffiths and he'll have the last set of questions, including John, if you want to, on sport and leisure.

First of all, I'm just going to ask about—. One thing we've seen during COVID is the community pulling together quite effectively and impressively to help people in the neighbourhood who are elderly or who are shielding or have particular vulnerabilities and so on; some of it's been structured through local authorities and the voluntary sector. What have we learnt there for the future, would you say, in terms of how we build on that as we move forward?

Well, I had a couple—I think two—round-table discussions with a cross-section of organisations from the voluntary sector with very different remits and different roles—some of them campaigning, some service delivery and so on. There is a very common set of threads, I think, we've heard from that set of discussions: one is concerns about the resilience of some of part of the sector, firstly; secondly, how the volunteering effort worked well, mostly, across Wales—not exclusively, but mostly worked well—and the challenge for us is to either support that or allow that to flourish, rather than trying to take it over, if you like, which is sometimes the instinct, isn't it, when things work well?

I myself think that finding a way of fostering the community action that we've seen develop remarkably across Wales is part of the answer to another challenge that we face, which is the mental health challenge, bluntly—the very widespread, in my anecdotal experience, level of trauma—mostly quite low level, thankfully—that most people have felt in terms of the dislocation, at least, caused by COVID, and for some people it's obviously much more serious than that. And I think that harnessing those two things is a means of solving some of those challenges. People have coped, if you like, in the last six months, by making a contribution to supporting their community, and I think that there is something in that that we need to build on, if we can.

If I could, Chair, quickly, I know—

Succinctly and quickly, and then the Counsel General will answer succinctly and quickly.  

Sport, leisure and physical activity, Jeremy, is very important to health and preventing ill health. We see the leisure trusts under real pressure now, with possible redundancies, funding cuts and so on. It's a real worry, because they have the facilities, the organisation and the staff to deliver, so I think we really need to support them as we go forward. 

I do note that we've made an intervention already of around £14 million to parts of the sport and leisure sector, but I take the point that you are making, which is about the countywide delivery and beyond of some of those services. I know that Julie James is very mindful of that challenge and is talking to local government colleagues.

Thank you, Counsel General. We have reached the end of our allocated time for the session this afternoon. Thank you very much for your time and your company, and Liz Lalley as well. As you know, you will receive a copy of the transcript, as usual. If there are any errors on it or any inaccuracies, please let the clerking team know as soon as possible, so that they can be corrected. Thank you again for your time this afternoon.   

Diolch yn fawr. Thank you.

For Members, I suggest that we now take a five-minute break. We will reconvene at 14:15 for the next session with the Minister for Economy, Transport and North Wales.

Can I welcome Members back to this afternoon's meeting of the scrutiny of the First Minister committee? We have, now, item 3, which is an additional item to the original agenda. Can I welcome the Minister for Economy, Transport and North Wales, Ken Skates? With him this afternoon is the Deputy Minister for Economy and Transport, Lee Waters and Simon Jones, director of economic infrastructure in the Welsh Government. Members will be aware that a statement was made earlier today by the Minister, and this session now allows opportunities for some questions and scrutiny of the issues around that statement. I'll start, therefore, with Russell George.

Thank you, Chair, and thanks to the Minister and officials for attending, as well, at such short notice. Can I just ask a couple of legal question, to start with? What's the legal basis for the approach that you've announced today, given the fact that section 25 of the Railways Act 1993 expressly says that public sector bodies 'shall not be franchisees'? It would be interesting to understand what powers are being used, in terms of your decision today. And can I also ask: who is the operator of last resort for the Welsh rail franchise under the same Act? Is it the Secretary of State, or is it the Welsh Government? Because we're limited for time, I'll get my last question in on this section as well—

I'll give you time; don't worry about that. Let them answer those two and I'll bring you back.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chair. Thank you, Russell, for your question. Welsh Ministers are the OLR. Can I just say from the outset how grateful we are to be able to address you today and to be scrutinised? We're looking at bringing forward an oral statement on this issue as soon as possible after half term, and essentially what we've announced today is designed to protect services, safeguard jobs, and secure the metro. Section 30 of the Railways Act 1993 makes provision for rail services, so on your direct question about where does the legal power sit, it's within that.

Okay. Also, are the operator-of-last-resort provisions being applied in this case? I'm just trying to understand that. Is KeolisAmey handing the franchise back to be taken on by the new company? Is that what's proposed?

We're using the operator-of-last-resort provision. We're entering into a new agreement with KeolisAmey and that's designed to do three things. First of all, the day-to-day running of the services will become the responsibility of a public body. That'll be TfW Rail Ltd, that will be a subsidiary of TfW, and there will only be one shareholder and that will be TfW. In turn, of course, there's only one shareholder of Transport for Wales, and that's Welsh Government. So—

Just to understand that, is KeolisAmey—or Keolis and Amey as I think it's referred to in your statement—will they be a partner in the new company?

Absolutely. Yes.

Okay. And it will be contracted by the company to deliver the services—that's the way you propose it works.

We're keen to make sure that we retain the experience and the expertise that both Keolis and Amey have brought to Wales. I mean, they're incredible companies and internationally renowned, and it's vitally important that we have them on our side, not just to transform services, but also to deliver the metro. The metro is an important additional element that makes our contract with KA different to the franchises that exist across the border in England. So, whilst we've taken a similar approach, in many respects, we've got that added huge investment project—the metro—which makes our solution slightly different. I don't know whether Simon Jones has anything to say on this. Simon?

Thanks, Minister. The metro has been at the heart of our thinking on this process, so we've not been able, perhaps, to do this in quite the same way as would've been done elsewhere in the UK, because other rail franchises don't typically have such a significant and complex engineering project attached to them. So, throughout all of this lot, our priority, as well as making sure that employees are safe and services are delivered, is that the metro is secured, as the Minister said. So, whilst we are moving to TfW directly operating trains, we were very conscious of the need to keep KeolisAmey, who came up with the concept design for the metro, involved in this for the duration of the project. We need to be able to rely on their expertise in the long term in order to be able to secure the metro, as the Minister says.

Thank you. You've answered some of my later questions. Is it possible also, Minister, to talk about some of the governance arrangements here? How is the new company going to be scrutinised, I suppose, effectively, beyond February of next year?

Well, TfW will remain responsible for TfW Rail Ltd, who will be responsible for the running of the services. The same governance arrangements in terms of scrutiny of TfW—scrutiny of Welsh Ministers—will be in place. But, of course, with direct control, it means that we are more accountable, if you like, so, if anything, governance arrangements will be even clearer as a result of what we're announcing today.

And can I just check what type of contract the new subsidiary will operate? Will it be like a franchise, or a concession, or is there some kind of new arrangement that you're working towards?

I'm going to bring in Simon on the details of this. But of course, it's worth saying that what's been signed this week are the heads of terms; it's the principle of what we're doing, and now we're going to work through in greater detail how it's going to be operating. Simon.

Effectively, I suppose the nearest parallel is with this being a concession, because since the start of the pandemic, Welsh Ministers have essentially been taking the financial risk on the service, just as administrations across the UK have been—so, the Department for Transport and colleagues in Scotland. It's exactly the same arrangement there where, actually, the risk has had to pass to the public sector from the private sector. We don't know when this pandemic situation will come to an end; we don't know when the suppression of passenger demand or passenger revenues will come to an end. So, we will need to maintain an arrangement where that risk is borne by the public sector until we get clarity about what the future might look like. So, I think the answer is that it's going to look very much like a concession. Keolis, I think in one of their communications to some of their stakeholders today, recognised that no private company in the world would be able to deal with this sort of financial pressure that the pandemic has brought about.

On that point in terms of the financial pressure, what are the financial implications of the decision? I ask that question, of course, on the basis that it's a huge potential financial burden on the Welsh Government in terms of other budgets—education, health and so forth. So, perhaps the Minister could outline what the financial implications are.

Yes, sure. Well, the running of the services won't cost more than the current arrangements under the emergency measures agreement, and the EMA costs are associated with coronavirus—huge additional costs—because so much of the revenue is associated with the fares that passengers pay. I think the figure—Simon will be able to correct me if I'm wrong—is that, between 53 and 54 per cent of the overall take for the operator comes from fares. That's pretty much dried up. Patronage went down to 5 per cent, and as a consequence, £170 million in revenue was pretty much lost, because it's just not being taken at the moment because of COVID restrictions and the impact of the virus and the way that we operate.

And this isn't just exclusive to rail, as I know you're aware, Russell; there are huge challenges for other areas of public transport in terms of bus services as well. What we know is that the model that has been operating for many public services is now broken as a result of coronavirus—of that there is no doubt. Simon's already said, in their communication today, Keolis have identified that no company would be able to shoulder the sort of costs that are associated with operating in the COVID environment.

Can I just check—I think you just said, Minister, that no further additional money would be required. Can I just clarify that I've heard that right?

Well, it's all—. For this year, it's all captured within the emergency management agreement, so it won't cost any more than that. Longer term, we won't be paying a profit for the operator and so, there could be cost savings there. But right now, we face the prospects of coronavirus impacting on public services right across the board, and the cost of some—

So, will additional funding be needed in terms of the longer term? That's what the question is, I suppose.

Well, we're going to be working through the cost implications as part of the detailed negotiations, and when I make the oral statement, hopefully in two weeks' time, I'll be able to provide detail of the costs moving forward. And I think—. Simon, did you want to—? Lee. It was Lee, sorry.

Could I just say something brief on that? Clearly, COVID in itself implies additional cost, and that has been seen, as Simon said, across the country, and we've seen other franchises in England being handed back. The difference we have in Wales, because we have an arm's-length body in TfW, and because we have a different contract in wanting to create the metro, we have different options here. And the option of doing nothing in the face of this—because, effectively, we signed up to a pain-sharing partnership with KeolisAmey. The whole business model collapsed in the face of COVID because the revenue wasn't coming in, and Keolis, in effect, weren't prepared to shoulder their share of the pain. Now, we had a choice at that point: do we continue to put money into this existing partnership, to prop it up and to continue to provide a dividend to Keolis, or do we make a different choice, where we want to keep the partnership going? But my point to make to Russell in terms of costs is: we had a choice of having a managed exit from this or an unmanaged exit, and an unmanaged exit would be very expensive.

Can I—? I know we're limited for time, but—

You are limited, yes.

The specific question, though, is about the long-term implications. I understand that there's a reason—[Inaudible.]—but it's the long-term implications of what additional costs might be required.

It depends on COVID, doesn't it? We don't know.

That's COVID—yes.

One Minister, please, not two.

Sorry. Lee was right: it's all dependent on passengers coming back, and passengers coming back is dependent on coronavirus. And this is irrespective of what model you operate; it would've been the same if we had continued with the existing arrangements. But the difference is that we would then have, as Lee has already said, it would then have led to a collapse by the operator and a catastrophic transfer, then, to the operator of last resort. What we're able to do now is manage a careful transition that will take us through to February, and then beyond, with the establishment of TfW Rail Ltd, as—

Yes. Sorry.

Russell, I need to bring other Members in. If there's some time left over, I'll come back to you, okay?

Thank you. Yes.

Helen Mary Jones.

Thank you, Chair. Can I just say I think this is pretty clearly the right thing to have done? I know, Minister, you referred to the model being broken post COVID; I'm not entirely sure that it was the right model pre COVID, and I've never been a massive fan of public subsidies for private profit. So, I think this may turn out to be one of the good things that comes out of the coronavirus crisis.

Chair, I've got three specific questions I'd like to ask. Would you prefer me to ask them one after another or shall I ask them all and then let the Ministers and their official respond?

One after the other, I think will be easier, so that we can get clear, succinct answers from them.

Yes, thank you very much. So, can you just tell us a bit more, Ministers, about the thinking behind why a subsidiary company to Transport for Wales was needed? I think you've mentioned, Minister, that it's in line with international best practice, but I'd like to understand a little bit more what that means. I suppose it goes back to Russell George's earlier question about accountability and lines of sight, and I just wonder why we need that extra layer.

Sure, okay. The structure that's proposed mirrors what's already being used by the Department for Transport in England. They've got a holding company with operator-of-last-resort companies sitting beneath it. It's a tried and tested model, one that works well and one that we can adopt here very easily. Essentially, what we will see is the subsidiary, TfW Rail Limited, operating with its own licences, and accountable to the Office of Rail and Road. So, it's a very clean, proven way, it balances the need for best value for money for the taxpayer, whilst maintaining also a rail service and providing the best possible experience for the travelling public, and I think the governance arrangements will be strong and clear as well.

That's helpful. Thank you. You mentioned, Minister, that there will be an ongoing relationship with the companies. I'm presuming that there will be a cost to that. Now, I appreciate with commercial confidentiality and also that you're at an early stage, you may not be able to tell us in detail—you may never be able to tell us in detail, because of commercial confidentiality before the money is spent—exactly what that cost will be. But could you describe for us in a bit more detail what Transport for Wales Rail Limited will get out of that ongoing relationship, how that will work and how that will be structured?

Yes. So, the structure and how it will work are part of the negotiations that are taking place now, now that the heads of terms have been agreed. Essentially, what the agreement will allow for is for Transport for Wales to tap into two major international companies and all of the experience and expertise that they bring with them. And it will help not just in terms of being able to deliver major infrastructure transformation, the metro, but also in terms of integrating ticketing and making sure that we integrate heavy and light rail, making sure that we are able to transform services based on what these companies have been able to do elsewhere around the world. So, expertise, delivery of the metro, passenger improvements and proven track records is what it gets us.

That's helpful. Thank you. Finally, I just want to ask you to expand a bit on the impact on the staff of this. Obviously, we will need people to run the railways, and I'm sure you wouldn't want to lose expertise, but I think there may be some sort of concern out there, people may be a little bit worried about what this means for them in terms of their jobs and, indeed, in terms of their local services. But if you could just focus in your response on the impact on the staff: what, if anything, will be different for them?

Thank you for the opportunity that you've provided me with now to discuss the concerns for staff. I think it is absolutely right that we talk about the future of 2,500 people who are employed by Transport for Wales Rail Services. Today marks the beginning of consultation on the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations 1981 process, and we expect all of those members of Transport for Wales Rail Services to TUPE across on the same terms and conditions. So, I can give assurance to the staff of TfW Rail Services that they will be involved in the consultation, unions will be involved in the consultation and we want to make sure that their terms and conditions are protected as they TUPE across.

That's helpful, thank you.

Thank you, Helen Mary. Mick Antoniw.

Minister, out of adversity, there are sometimes silver linings, and we know that section 25 of the Railways Act, which prohibited public ownership, has been a millstone around the way we've had to be able to develop our devolved responsibilities on transport.

I'm very pleased to hear about the engagement with staff and so on. Can I ask—I'll put the three points I wanted to ask together in one question. The first thing is: what level of engagement have you had with the three core trade unions, that is, ASLEF, RMT and TSSA?

The second thing is, in terms of the development of this new model, is there an opportunity to really do something more imaginative, in fact even more European in a way, in the sense of having representatives of the workers on the new subsidiary company involved in the operation and decision-making process? Because it seems to me that that would be a real foresighted change or innovation that could be made.

And thirdly, in terms of the fact that going down this road, all the work and investment that's going to take place where we take the responsibility now, which the private sector cannot sustain, we want a long-term model rather than one with franchises in England that they revert back to as soon as—after being in the public sector, they go back into profitability and then revert back so that the profits go back into the private sector. How do you envisage ensuring that we now have a long-term change ownership model, will this require revocation of section 25, and will you be now pressing UK Government to revoke this section? Do you see the new model as being one that is an all-Wales integrated transport system—so, I suppose, bus, rail and indeed air as well?

That's a big ambition that I think needs to be carefully considered, but it's an ambition that I think generally the people of Wales would certainly support. There are a number of questions that Mick has asked—I'll try to quickly rattle through all of them.

First of all, engagement with unions has been incredibly strong for some time now. I have monthly meetings with all trade unions, and also, separate to that, I have monthly meetings specifically with rail unions where we're able to discuss a whole range of contemporary issues and look forward at how we may plan for the future. During the height of the coronavirus pandemic and lockdown, those meetings were even more regular. I think the principles of social partnership and fair work that have applied to the operations of TfW will continue through to the subsidiary. Trade unions have been offered a place on the board of TfW, and that demonstrates, I think, how we are keen to make sure that union representation is at the heart of all of the operations and decisions that take place. Broadly, the unions, as I think you've seen already today in the media, support this move. They want to work closely as it develops and as we move forward to February of next year and beyond.

You talk about whether a change in the law will be required; will section 25 have to be dealt with, finally? Well, it's for DfT to work out what they want to do with this particular section of the Act, because they face the same problem across the border as well. The measures that are being brought in, strictly speaking, are meant to be temporary measures, but we don't know how long 'temporary' actually is, so we'll be using this model for as long as it takes.

And do you see that, in terms of the communication with the public now on this—obviously, there's a lot of media today, but I see the messaging, this is really now a publicly owned service run for the people of Wales and accountable to the people of Wales—is that how you envisage the future of this industry?

Yes, it is, and that's why I think, again, generally the people of Wales have welcomed today's announcement, but I do have to stress that, right across the public sector at the moment, there are real challenges in delivering services with them costing more, and with public finances under great strain. But yes, accountability direct to the public is something that the people of Wales, I'm sure, will be celebrating.

Thank you. Llyr Gruffydd.

Apologies, Chair, I didn't pick up on the first part of the question, so I'll deal with the capacity question, if I may. Clearly, the fact that we'll TUPE over 2,500 people into Transport for Wales Rail Limited, including experts and managers, will help in terms of supporting capacity. And, of course, Transport for Wales has its own board, who are looking very carefully as well at the organisation's capacity. Within our organisation, Simon's team, I have to say they are pressed; they are under enormous pressure. Any additional capacity that we're able to secure would be very welcome indeed, and we are looking at how we can do that. Of course, there are constraints, though, in terms of financial resource to be able to support that. But it is something that we are looking at very, very carefully indeed, not least because we've got the added pressure of Brexit and all of the transport-related uncertainties that are to come in the weeks and months ahead. 

So, the cost of the model—

Can I try and answer the first part of the question, as you didn't hear it?

Yes, please, Lee. 

So, in terms of the—. There are two elements to the cost. The one is the transitioning out of the existing partnership model. So, there are some one-off costs there for compensating KeolisAmey for their intellectual property and so on. Then, in terms of the running costs of the new model, we don't anticipate them being higher; in fact, they should be lower, because we don't have to pay the profit element that, currently, Keolis has. In fact, that will be—there should be some savings there. 

Yes, so, wearing my Finance Committee hat, the question basically was: given that we've seen the supplementary budget, you don't foresee that your department will be asking for any additional money as a result of what's happened, over and above what's already been allocated to you in additional money because of the effects of COVID more generally.

Well, the money we've been asking for additionally is to compensate for the loss of revenue. So, it's been significant: in buses, £140 million; in railways, £165 million this financial year. So, very heavy additional costs, because we want to maintain the services but obviously the business model is no longer there. But, in terms of the running costs, no, we don't anticipate additional costs. 

Or the additional capacity that the Minister mentioned, potentially. 

Sorry, forgive me—[Inaudible.]

Could you repeat, Llyr?

[Inaudible.]—earlier to seeking additional capacity in terms of the civil service and—[Inaudible.]

That's within the organisation, so that would be from the centre. But that's a human resource matter within Welsh Government; it's not to do with the actual operation of the border franchise services. 

Okay. Diolch.

We've almost come to the end of this session. Russell, I said I'd come back to you for the final two minutes and, there you are, you can have the last question. 

Thank you, Chair. On the financial aspects again, Minister, have I got this right? There was £5 billion of investment announced in 2018. So, how is that going to be split between the various parties and companies involved?

Well, that £5 billion amounts to the cost of running the services, the transformation, the metro programme. So, there are a huge number of budget lines that are captured within the £5 billion headline figure. And in terms of the operating costs, it'll be Transport for Wales Rail Limited that are responsible for that, and therefore the expenditure will fall with them. As we've already said in the announcement, in terms of the delivery of the metro, that contract with Amey Keolis Infrastructure Limited will continue. And in terms of the joint venture for making sure that we've got the expertise and the experience to be able to transform services, the costs of that I've already said we'll be working through as the detailed negotiations continue. 

Simon, anything more on the £5 billion at all?

Minister, as you say, it's quite a complex picture. I think you offered earlier in your oral statement to provide a bit more detail about this, and that's perhaps something that—

Okay. That's helpful.

I should say—sorry, Chair, for any—. Just to clear up any doubt at all, our commitment to the rolling stock remains. That was that £800 million programme. That remains. And the metro, £736 million, that remains. That will be delivered. 

And if the Chair allows me to ask a final question—. Obviously, there's a big role for the UK Government here in terms of the cross-border nature of the franchise and the fact that rail is a reserved matter. So, I wonder what discussions you've had with the Minister, the Secretary of State for Transport, and what is the UK Government's position on the decisions that you've made.

Well, it's broadly similar to a decision that they made in regard to Northern Rail earlier in the year. We have regular discussions with counterparts in the Department for Transport; in fact, the next meeting is due to take place later this afternoon. So, engagement with the other DAs and with Whitehall is pretty good. 

Have the UK Government got a position on what you've undertaken here in Wales? Is there a position from themselves?

Well, given that they've had to do something so similar with Northern, I would suspect that there is only great sympathy for what we've had to do, and agreement that it's the right course of action. What we would not want to see happen here in Wales is for that catastrophic failure to occur, and a transfer to take place without any consultation on TUPE. And we've been able to establish a 90-day consultation period as a result of good, strong negotiations with Keolis Amey, an agreement that enables us to retain their expertise, their superb capabilities, whilst also ensuring that we deliver a new model where we have accountability fully to Welsh Government, where the public can be satisfied that we are serving their interests, not profit. 

Thank you, Minister. We've come to the end of our time allocated. Can I thank you, the Deputy Minister and Simon Jones for attending this afternoon at very short notice? It's very much appreciated, the opportunity to ask some questions and scrutinise the announcement today. So, thank you very much. As you will know, you will receive a copy of the transcript. If you identify any factual inaccuracies, can you please let the clerking team know as soon as possible so that they can be corrected? So, once again, thank you for your time. 

And, for Members, we'll now have a 15-minute break. We'll recommence at 3 p.m. when the First Minister will be in the next session. 

Can I welcome Members back to this afternoon's meeting of the Committee for the Scrutiny of the First Minister, and to the next item on the agenda—our evidence session with the First Minister? Can I welcome Mark Drakeford, the First Minister? And with him today is Des Clifford, director general of the First Minister's office. Welcome, both.

Thank you.

I'm sure you're aware that the theme today is related to COVID-19 and the recovery plan, but also we are keen to explore the current position, as far as the Welsh Government's concerned, on Brexit and European Union relationships and the transition period. And we'll start off in that area, if it's okay with yourselves. I suppose the first question is: what level of confidence have you been able to gain from discussions you or Ministers have had with the UK Government as to the possibility of a relationship being agreed before the end of the transition period?

Well, Chair, I think it is difficult to offer you a great deal of confidence, given that we are so very late in the day and the brinkmanship continues. I think there is a deal there to be done—it will not be the sort of deal we were promised; it will not be comprehensive, it will not be deep. But, even in the last days, I think it is possible to do better than 'no deal'. We follow the negotiations from afar, really, and have no direct ability to influence them. But my view is that the obstacles on the path of a deal—state aid, fisheries, and now, of course, the adjudication arrangements—they're all capable of being solved; it is political will rather than technical obstacles that stand in the way.

Have you been given more confidence by the fact that they're starting negotiations again today—that there still seems to be a desire to reach a deal on behalf of both parties?

Well, Chair, I remember the very first meeting that the Welsh Government had with the UK Government immediately after the referendum. It was in July 2016. David Davis, the then Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, came to Cardiff. He met the then First Minister—I sat in on the meeting—and we were assured that this was the easiest deal that would ever be done, that all the cards were in the UK's hands, and that it was all going to be a breeze. Here we are, weeks away from leaving the European Union come what may. So, I think you've got to be realistic about how much confidence you can take from a process that has failed at every stage so far to deliver on the promises that have been made for it. It can happen, but, as I say, it's political will rather than anything else that has to be summoned up to make it happen.

Let's put the confidence to one side, and ask the question—. You mentioned earlier that you were not really a part of the negotiating team, and you weren't involved in those negotiations, which I know we've talked about for many years in my committee. But have you been given assurances that you will see text of any agreement prior to their approval, so that the Welsh Government can have an analysis of what it actually means of that agreement?

No, we've had no such assurance, nor do I expect that we will see it, other than maybe a very short time before it is made public in every other way. So, I'm afraid that's been a bit of a history of all of this—that devolved administrations, across the United Kingdom, get a very tiny amount of headroom once the decisions have all been made, but not in any sense a sharing of a text on which we would be able to comment or represent Welsh interests.

Thank you. Llyr.

Thank you, Chair. Well, First Minister, that's another reason for Wales to stand on the international stage in its own right. I know that we are not here to discuss that, but it's one answer to the frustrations that many people feel.

Could you tell us a little bit about what work the Welsh Government is now doing then, with a 'no deal' prospect obviously looming, to ready business in Wales for the end of the transition period? Clearly, we have noticed a ramping up of advertising, and that narrative from the UK Government. Is there anything in particular that the Welsh Government is doing to play its part in that respect? 

Well, Chair, throughout the process of leaving the European Union, we have used Business Wales's EU preparedness portal as the front-line provision of advice and guidance for businesses specifically here in Wales. We continue to make that service available. We are using the Business Wales networks as well—its newsletter, its social media channels, its mailing lists—in order to reach as many businesses in Wales directly on preparedness.

We have the European transition working group, which is a sub-group formed by the Council for Economic Development, again in order to make sure that we are sharing with our partners as much of the information as comes our way. In the end, it has to be the UK Government that leads on this matter, because they know things that we don't know. We pass on everything that we are able to pass on in order to help businesses to prepare, but we can't do this for the UK Government. We can try and do it alongside them, and we do that.

I think that it's important to say, Chair, isn't it, that we are pitching that information into a sector that has a very significant degree of EU fatigue, and who have been marched up this hill a number of times over the last couple of years, only to be marched back down it again. Every time that happens, I think that it is harder for businesses to summon up all of the energy and resource that they need to prepare. I think that the UK Government's own figures of preparedness are demonstrating that.

So, how do you characterise the relationship, then, in terms of co-ordinating the approach to the end of the transition period between the Welsh Government and the UK Government? In your earlier answer, you sounded a bit despondent yourself in that respect.

Well, in some ways, Chair, that engagement has stepped up significantly very recently, but that's also a bit characteristic of the way that things are done with the UK Government. There will be long periods of silence and then, when a crisis emerges, suddenly we are all back around the table together again.

So, Welsh Ministers are now attending meetings of XO, as it's called. This is the UK Government Cabinet sub-committee for transition planning. Ministerial colleagues here attended meetings of that UK committee on 6, 13 and 21 October, but those were the first invitations that we'd received since January. So, I would say that, at the moment, because we are staring at such a difficult period, then devolved Governments are being invited back to be part of that planning. But, it's after a long period in which we were not included in the UK thinking.

Okay, thank you, Llyr. First Minister, just one final point on the preparedness. Clearly, there's a question as to getting ready, and there are projects in the pipeline, and there are actions to be taken in the transition. Are you comfortable that the current budget does not require additional resources being put into those actions and plans, to ensure that we are able to cope with the transition period coming to an end?

Well, Chair, can I say that there are different sorts of resources that we need to think about? There may be that we will have to find some bits of money for some of the things that we will need to do over the months ahead, but money is probably not the resource that we will most need: it's human resources that we will have to bring together, whether that is in the way that Llyr Gruffydd was describing in terms of civil service capacity. But for some of the new responsibilities that we will have to discharge at the borders, for example, we will need staff who are trained in particular specialist fields to be able to discharge those responsibilities, and those staff are not necessarily in very easy additional supply. So, yes, there are resource issues, but they're not in the way that we most often talk about them in terms of 'Can we find the money to do things?' There will be other sorts of resources that are also scarce, and we will be having to work hard to assemble those resources to support the work that will be necessary.

Thank you. Of course, another aspect of the transition period coming to an end is what happens to the internal market, and the UK has published its United Kingdom Internal Market Bill, and I'm going to ask Mick Antoniw to ask some questions in relation to that.

First Minister, we've obviously had a number of debates in the Senedd about the internal market Bill, but at the same time as that Bill is going through, we have a tsunami of other legislation relating to frameworks and so on. But the internal market Bill is really the apex of the constitutional change and powers that are being sought by the UK Government. The House of Lords Constitution Committee has recently published a very substantial critique of the Bill, and you've indicated that there are aspects to it that the Welsh Government is totally opposed to. I wonder if could just summarise the current position with regard to those items that Welsh Government regards as absolute constitutional red lines within that internal market Bill, and the sort of amendments work that is going on to seek change, predominantly, I understand, within the House of Lords.

Thank you very much, Chair, and I should begin by thanking Mick Antoniw and his committee who have, on behalf of the Senedd, borne the burden of a very considerable amount of work already in the number of statutory instruments that we have had to take through ourselves and others that we have agreed that the UK Government should take forward on our behalf. And there is a further major weight of work coming our way, whether there is a deal or no deal in the current negotiations, and Mick's committee has had to shoulder a lot of that.

In a way, I think Mick Antoniw partly answered the question for me by pointing to the amendments that we are promoting, because those summarise those aspects of the Bill that are the least acceptable to the Welsh Government. Those are the aspects of the Bill that directly reverse powers that have been held here in the Senedd since 1999, that provide UK Ministers with untrammelled powers to interfere in devolved responsibilities, and those aspects of the Bill that give UK Ministers powers to spend, unilaterally, in devolved areas without any reference to Welsh Ministers or to the Senedd. We are promoting those amendments, as Mick Antoniw said, in the House of Lords at the moment.

The Counsel General spoke at a briefing session for peers on 14 October. It was chaired by the cross-bench Welsh peer Baroness Ilora Finlay of Llandaff. It was a very well-attended meeting and it was very much reflected in the debate that followed in the House of Lords in the following week, where support for the Welsh Government's position was expressed, not simply by Labour peers, as you might imagine, but by Liberal Democrat peers, by Lord Wigley on behalf of Plaid Cymru, by cross-bench peers and by Conservative peers as well. Lord Bourne, Nick Bourne, well known to many of us from his years leading the Conservative Party here in Wales, said that this Bill throws all that work on common frameworks over, and that is regrettable. It's heavy-handed and it's unwise; this is not the way to keep our union united.

And in some ways, even more authoritatively, Lord Dunlop—and I refer to him, because he was the person who Theresa May asked to carry out a review on behalf of the UK Government on inter-governmental arrangements here in the United Kingdom. That report was presented to the incoming Prime Minister. Lord Dunlop told me that the incoming Prime Minister had promised that he would regard his work with all the seriousness that Mrs May had regarded it when she set it up. But the current Prime Minister has had that report for months and months, and is declining to publish it. Lord Dunlop is a member of the Constitution Committee of the House of Lords, to which Mick Antoniw referred, and he referred to this as a Bill of doubtful necessity, 

'the proverbial sledge-hammer to crack a nut.'

He hoped that the Government would be willing constructively to amend the Bill. Well, our amendments are exactly in that spirit. They are constructive amendments; they replace the power grab by an emphasis on shared work on common frameworks; and they prevent UK Ministers from subverting the devolution settlement by spending without constraint in areas that are not their responsibility at all.

First Minister, the other part of the Bill, of course, is that I was going to come on to what I call the shared prosperity part of it, although it's perhaps a bit of a misnomer in terms of the use of that wording these days. Section 47 of the Bill not only allows the spending in devolved areas, but then the opportunity to present the Bill to Welsh Government. Has that or any of these aspects been specifically discussed with the UK Government? Is there any engagement with the UK Government, or is that something that is now no longer happening or feasible?

Well, this aspect of the Bill, Chair, was, in my view, a very late addition to it, because our discussions at official level in the lead up to the Bill led us to believe that this idea was not to be included in it. So, there were certainly no ministerial discussions of this idea. And Mick Antoniw is right that, even after the Bill was published, it has emerged, that these powers to spend in devolved areas may not be, as was implied by UK Ministers, that this would be extra money being spent in Wales, but that this is likely to be money taken away from the money that comes to Wales already and then spent by people in Whitehall who have no accountability to the Senedd whatsoever. I think it really defies belief as a set of proposals. And as a series of contributors in the House of Lords debate emphasised, it is deeply undermining of the union.

First Minister, Lord Neuberger, the former president of the Supreme Court, recently spoke on another part of the Bill, which presumably causes some concern for all of us and perhaps for Welsh Government as well, and that is the aspect in terms of the legitimisation of illegal actions—the breaking of illegal agreements—and also the restrictions of the role of the courts system in terms of judicial review. He, as former president of the Supreme Court, referred to this, and he's not a melodramatic individual, as being, 'a step on the road to tyranny'.

In terms of the red lines that Welsh Government will have on what would be acceptable to giving consent to this Bill—and we've been told that every aspect of the Bill requires consent from the Welsh Government—what are your thoughts on that particular aspect? Because this is really almost a human rights, a jurisprudence, a rule of law issue that has always been something that has been very highly valued within Wales and within Welsh Government since devolution.

Well, Chair, I don't think I can put it much better than Mick Antoniw has put it himself. Our legislative consent memorandum makes it clear that the Welsh Government will not be able to recommend legislative consent for a Bill that gives UK Ministers the right to break the law. Lord Neuberger, in the way that Mick Antoniw has said, points to the human rights aspects of it; other Members of the House of Lords, including very distinguished former members of the judiciary, point to the way in which it will undermine the reputation of this country abroad.

I said in an earlier answer that state aid and fisheries have, up until recently, been the two sticking points in the negotiations, but to my mind, absolutely understandably. The European Union is now requiring higher levels of assurance that, if the UK Government enters into a legally binding agreement with them, the UK will not unilaterally be able to renege on that agreement. It is doing that because that is what the Government is doing in the Bill; it is taking powers to do exactly that. That is deeply corrosive of the United Kingdom's reputation. As you could see, person after person queued up in the House of Lords to ask: how can the UK Government expect to be taken seriously when it points to breaches of international law by other states around the globe when it itself is prepared to act in this way? And I couldn't be willing to invite Members of the Senedd to give its consent to a Bill that does that.

Thank you, First Minister.

Thank you. Llyr, did you want to add anything?

Thank you. First Minister, we've come to the end of the session on the EU and Brexit arena. This is going to be something we will obviously revisit as the transition period comes to an end at 31 December and we move into the new position. And as has been pointed out, no matter what happens regarding the agreement, there will be changes in the way in which we do business with our European neighbours come 1 January, particularly in relation to customs and other aspects.

But we move on now to the area of COVID-19, the recovery plan and perhaps some issues that are topical and relevant to today's situation. I'll start off with a very simple one. You've had a COVID-19 recovery plan published, but clearly since then, we've seen an increase in cases and a need to take action by the Welsh Government, with the introduction of local restrictions and the introduction, now, of the firebreak. How does that impact upon the recovery plan that you foresee?

In one way, Chair, it doesn't change anything, because we need a recovery plan, because there will be a life for us the other side of the crisis, and it is very important that we find some time to think about that and to prepare for it, and to think of the sort of future for Wales that we would like to shape together the other side of the pandemic. Inevitably, the difficult days that we are going to face over the autumn and winter is going to have an impact on the speed at which that recovery period arrives, and our capacity to be able to take advantage of it.

So, it's doesn't take away the fundamentals. There will come a time when we will recover, and we cannot afford to wait until that time to plan for it. The speed at which we can implement our plans and the context within which we will implement them is inherently uncertain, because coronavirus continues to be—as I know I've said to you before, but the chief medical officer says it to me quite regularly—it remains a virus full of surprises, and even those people who are the closest to it and the best able to model the future continue to be taken by surprise by some of its twists and turns.

Am I right, therefore, to say that the plan, as you point out, is there for the point at which we recover, but if we don't take action, the starting point at which that plan comes into place will be in a very, very different place?

Yes, absolutely, Chair. The recovery plan is predicated on us doing everything we can to keep Wales safe from coronavirus, and if we weren't to do that, if we were to allow the virus just to take hold, as we are sometimes—even on the floor of Senedd, there are people who appear to advocate that to us as a strategy—if we were to do that, then we would never be in a place where the plan of the sort that we have put forward would ever be able to begin to be implemented.

Thank you. We move on to the areas of health and social care now, and we'll start with Lynne Neagle.

Thank you, Chair. Good afternoon, First Minister.

Good afternoon.

Can I ask about the backlog that we've got now in our health service? We know that the problems in the spring and early summer have created that backlog. I know that protecting NHS capacity has been one of the reasons for the firebreak. What are we going to do, if we continue to see these high case numbers, to make sure that other NHS work can continue?

Well, Chair, I think the good news is that two things have recovered over the months since March and April. On the one hand, the willingness of Welsh citizens to come forward to the Welsh NHS has recovered, because, I know Lynne Neagle will remember very well, back in those days, it wasn't simply that the NHS wasn't able to do all the things it did before, but even where it could, people weren't turning up to it. So, in a range of ways, people's willingness to use the service has recovered. The number of people admitted to hospital through the emergency route in September just gone was only 3 per cent lower than it was a year ago. Back earlier in the year, the fall in the number of people presenting for ambulance calls or accident and emergency departments was far, far lower than that. So, that's been a recovery. And, on the other side, the ability of the health service itself to provide services has recovered. It is not easy, but cancer services are back to about 90 per cent of the volume that they would normally have been carrying out, and planned care is somewhere between 50 and 60 per cent of where it would otherwise have been.

Now, the health service continues to plan to expand the range of services that it can go on recovering, and that is particularly true in primary care. Our ability to do so really does depend, in the way that Lynne said in her question, on our ability to bear down on coronavirus. Because, if the numbers had simply continued to go up, as they have been in the last four weeks, then it's not that the NHS will be overwhelmed in the sense it can't cope at all, but it will cope by stopping non-coronavirus work in cancer, in cardiac, in stroke, in emergency—all of things that we all depend on the NHS being there for will come under huge pressure. It is absolutely part of the reason why we have introduced the firebreak at this point: to turn back the pace of coronavirus cases so that we can cope more easily with them, but to protect the ability of the NHS to go on providing for others. The recovery to where we were—and it's a matter of bitter regret to me, having been part of a Government that has invested huge sums of money and seen waiting times come down progressively from 2014 to 2019, that that ground is now being rapidly lost and will take a very long time to recover. 

Thank you for that. If I can turn to mental health, I very much welcome the appointment of a Minister for mental health and well-being. I think it's crucial that we have a dedicated focus on that area. But, as you know, I was concerned that suicide prevention wasn't included in the job description. Now, we know that there's a lot of concern about suicide rates increasing as the pandemic goes on and difficulties with the economy, and we also know that only 25 per cent of people who die by suicide have been in touch with mental health services in the year before their death. It is a public health emergency. Is that something, First Minister, that you can look at including in Eluned Morgan's job description?

Yes, thank you very much to Lynne Neagle for that, Chair. And since she raised this with me recently, I've had discussions with officials here, and the next time we update the ministerial list of portfolios, then I intend to create a separate line in those responsibilities to make it clear that Eluned Morgan is responsible for suicide prevention services and all the extra investment that we put into them during the time that Vaughan Gething was responsible. But, in order to highlight the significance of that work, I'm very happy that it is highlighted as a separate line in her responsibilities.

Thank you, that's very welcome. And I was also really pleased to see the prioritisation of children and young people when you made the announcement about the firebreak on Monday, because we know that children and young people have suffered hugely throughout the pandemic. But one group of children that I'm still very worried about are babies, and I've asked you about the First 1000 Days in the Senedd. We know that people who have new babies are finding life pretty tough at the moment. Now, in England, Public Health England has announced that health visitors will not be redeployed during the pandemic this time and health visitors are absolutely crucial to support families who are struggling and it's a safeguarding issue. Can I ask you to look at that with a view to protecting health visitors to do that vital work with families through this difficult winter?

Well, Chair, as I remember acknowledging, in answering Lynne Neagle's question on the floor of the Senedd in the early days of the pandemic in March and April, health visitors were redeployed in some cases to do other work. They've all returned now to their health-visiting duties, so we're running a full health visitor service at the moment. And even in the most difficult days, we were still providing face-to-face contact for new parents who, for example, needed the specialist service of perinatal mental health services—for families who needed that.

The whole reason for the firebreak, as we've just been discussing, is to avoid the need to redirect people from other really important duties to deal with the pandemic. So, in general, I'm very happy to say that that's what we intend to do. I haven't had a specific discussion with my health Minister, Vaughan Gething, about protecting health visitors separately from all of that, but I'm very happy to make sure that I convey those views to him.

Thank you. And just finally from me, First Minister, something that I've raised with you several times is the issue of care home visiting. I do recognise how challenging this issue is, because it involves not just risk to individuals, but risk to a whole care home community, but there is growing evidence that people living with dementia will suffer really badly if they don't see their families, and some of them will literally just lose the will to live. We saw that in the first part of the pandemic. I don't think we can just leave this to local government and care homes—this is going to require an effort from Government to try and find a way through this, whether that's by designated key visitors or some sort of pilot. Can I ask you to look at this again, because it is crucial, really, that we protect those most vulnerable citizens from the worst impacts of this virus?

Well, Chair, of course I'm happy to say that we are looking all the time at this most difficult issue. And it is, just in the way that Lynne has said, a really, really challenging issue. We know the impact of not having visitors—what that is on people who live in care homes, and on their families as well. We'll all have had, as individual Members of the Senedd, some deeply affecting letters from families who've lost loved ones, not being able to see them—all of the things that must weigh so heavily on people. And yet we know that coronavirus only gets into care homes in one of three ways, really: it's either brought in by a resident, a staff member or a visitor. And once it is in a care home, as we saw so devastatingly earlier in the year, it has a population who are even more vulnerable than anybody else to it spreading right through the care home. So, I don't think we can be anything other than entirely understanding of the efforts that care home owners and managers want to take to prevent that from happening.

Nearly 60 per cent of care homes in Wales still haven't had a single case of coronavirus, and they guard that really jealously, as you'd imagine, and they want to build the walls very high to stop it happening in future. The position on visits during this really difficult period is that they can still happen—that is the national guidance—but they happen by exception and they happen when there are really compelling circumstances, when they need to. And, as hard as that is for people who suffer from dementia, or families of people who are in very distressing circumstances, it is being done in order to save the lives of all those other people in those care homes who are so vulnerable to it. But in the sense that we review it over time—and we're continuously discussing with Care Forum Wales or local authority colleagues and others the guidance that we can provide—then, of course—. And, as new ideas emerge of the sort that Lynne was referring to—nominated visitors, testing regimes, personal protective equipment, all those things—of course, we continue to be very directly interested in them and prepare to act on them where we can sensibly do so.

Thank you, Chair. Thank you, First Minister.

Thank you, Lynne. Before I ask Jayne Bryant to come in, can I just ask a question on from what Lynne was saying? She was talking about the First 1000 Days. Can I go back to the first day situation? I've had many constituents contact me regarding the fact that going through childbirth without your partner is very difficult—or family support. I've even had one who actually had a miscarriage and had to go through birth of a miscarriage situation without any support from a partner or family member. Can you ask your health Minister to look very carefully at the guidance they're giving to this area to ensure that women who are giving birth are able to have family support or partner support at all points when they need it, not just simply at the moment of birth full stop? Because I'm sure anyone who's been there knows very much the benefits from that support from the individual.

Well, Chair, of course, you are pointing to a second real pinchpoint in all of this. And we are talking about a workforce who are absolutely dedicated to the involvement of families in the whole business of helping a family through the fantastic experience that pregnancy and the birth of a child is intended to be. You won't find a more dedicated group of people to wanting that to happen than the people who work in our midwife teams and in our consultant-led services. But, in the end, it has to be an individual clinical judgment, doesn't it? Because clinicians are having to weigh up the different risks that are involved. And there will be different risks involved, depending, just for example, on whether a woman who is carrying a baby has herself an underlying health condition. We can give guidance, but I really think it is one of those areas where it's only the team who are directly involved in the care of that individual who are able to make a fine-grained assessment of what can be done and how far you can go in mitigating risks and allowing family members to be involved, as we would want and as they would want, as much as possible and at every stage.

Thank you, First Minister, and I appreciate that answer. But, very often, I've often seen the response, sometimes, back, 'It's Welsh Government guidance', so, you know—. Jayne.

Thank you, Chair. Good afternoon, First Minister. Just following on from Lynne and Dai, really, I just wanted to highlight the issue of mental health among our health and social care workers and the NHS staff, because they've put in such a Herculean effort throughout this. And one of the consistent messages that I've heard from staff, whether that's in care homes or in the NHS—well, all across it, really—is about not being able to—the impact on them of not being able to have loved ones into wards or to say their final goodbyes to people, and that has really stuck with them. They completely understand the reasons and are all very happy and keen to support the measures in place. But the impact on them from seeing this happen to other families and people has a real impact, I think, on those and will continue to. I'm just wanting to alert you to that and just see if there's anything that can be done to support the mental health of our health and care workforce. 

Well, Chair, I think that it's a really important question. It's another strand in our decision to introduce a firebreak here in Wales, because of our concerns at the impact on our workforce of the growing number of people coming back into the system—a workforce who have done so much for us all already and who face another winter with real fear of the impact that it will have not just on services but them individually and the demands that will be made of them.

The mental health component of it is very real. We have strengthened a number of the services that we had previously. We've made them available to a wider range of workers in the health service. One of the things that I have felt has worked well—in some places, certainly—is, when we asked people who had retired to come back to help us in the last pandemic, one of the ways in which very experienced doctors and other clinicians were deployed was not so much to do face-to-face patient work, but to support quite young staff, sometimes, having to make extraordinary decisions and see things that they wouldn't have expected to see at all in that part of their careers. Having somebody that you can go to and just share that with and talk through it, and hear from someone who has seen quite a lot themselves during their careers, has been one of the ways that we've been able to deploy people willing to come back and make use of their training and experience. And it is in recognition of the psychological, emotional impact that working in these incredible circumstances has on the people we ask to do so.

Thank you, First Minister. A great amount of learning will have been taken from the first lockdown and the local restrictions, and the chief medical officer has talked about future potential restrictions. How are you learning from those experiences from other countries, understanding behaviours, and using scientific evidence to develop future plans?

Well, Chair, I think it is one of the positive things, as we go into this winter, that we do know a lot more about the virus than we did back in March. There definitely are new and more effective forms of treatment available that our clinical staff have developed, whether that is use of steroid-based treatments that have been well known in the NHS for many years, but are found to be effective in helping people with the coronavirus—.

Even in these early days of this second wave, there is some preliminary evidence in Wales that the flow of people from hospital beds into critical care is not at the same rate as it was back in April. That is because there are more effective treatments earlier on in the onset of coronavirus. So, certainly, those people providing treatments at the front line tell us that they feel that they've learnt a lot, and they've got a different repertoire of things that they are able to put in place and understand better the point in the progress of the disease at which those interventions are likely to be successful.

I think that Jayne Bryant has raised a very interesting issue about behavioural sciences. I see more, these days, in technical advisory cell reports and the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies advice about behavioural impacts than I remember seeing back in the early days, when it was all very heavily epidemiologically driven. I think that we have learnt that you can have very good advice, but, if you can't persuade people about it, or if it isn't conveyed to them in a way that they can understand and follow, then that good advice doesn't get translated into the actions that make that advice effective. So, I think we are learning a lot there, definitely, both as to how we communicate effectively, but also the way in which those messages are received and translated into people's behaviour.

Obviously, we're in a much better position in some ways. Back in the early days of the pandemic, we were learning very fast indeed and had a great deal of help from the armed forces, at that point, in terms of how you distribute literally millions and millions of items of PPE across Wales to hundreds and hundreds of different settings. All that learning is now secure. You know, we are much better placed going into this autumn and winter than we were back there. So, some parts of learning, we've already captured and put there ready for the way we will need to operate over the weeks ahead. In other things we continue to learn; we continue to learn as we go along, and try to learn those lessons and then reinvest in the decisions we are making to make them as effective as we can.

Thank you, First Minister. Just finally from me, the social care system is under increasing financial pressures. What plans does the Welsh Government have to reform the system to ensure sustainable funding for social care in the future?

Well, I think that is a really very big question, and to be fair, it was a very big question before coronavirus as well, because the social care system is chronically underinvested. We have, as you know, an inter-ministerial group on paying for care that was working primarily on the proposals put forward by Gerry Holtham; a way of raising funds to make sure that they were available to improve care services in the future. That work had been interrupted by coronavirus, but it is resuming, and the group will be meeting again next month.

We are missing one really big part of the jigsaw, because we cannot devise, I don't believe, a system in Wales until we are clearer about the result of the work that the UK Government is carrying out. Because whatever system they devise will have an impact on the benefit system in particular, and our proposals will have to take that into account. So, no doubt in the same way as our work has been interrupted, the UK Government has faced the same difficulties. But it is quite a number of years now since the Dilnot review was published. I well remember a conversation with Norman Lamb, who was at the time the Minister responsible for implementation of Dilnot in the UK Government in 2015, who told me that he was really close to bringing forward proposals for their implementation, and then the general election in 2015 interrupted that. Since then, we've had a series of announcements about when a Green Paper on paying for social care would be published, and all those deadlines have come and gone. I see the Prime Minister mentioned it again, in his speech to the Conservative Party online conference, only a few weeks ago. We will not be able to complete our planning until we have that piece of the jigsaw in place as well. So, we'll carry on doing our work, but part of what we need to do is dependent upon the work of others as well.

Thank you, Jayne. We now move on to areas of business and the economy, and Russell George.

Thank you Chair. Good afternoon, First Minister. Recently, the Economy, Infrastructure and Skills Committee has been doing work on COVID recovery in the business sector, particularly taking evidence from the foundational sectors—tourism, hospitality, hair and beauty. Now, what they told the committee just a few weeks ago is that, to survive the winter, their sectors will require additional financial support to what is currently available. Since then, of course, we've had your announcement on Monday that there'll be a Wales-wide lockdown, which will, of course, affect all those sectors that I've outlined. You've also offered an additional package of financial support, as well, but where do you believe that there are gaps with regard to support for those particular sectors, following your announcement of extra financial support earlier in the week?

Thank you, Chair. That's a very important question for us as Government. It was discussed at some length this morning at the social partnership council. The package that we announced was warmly welcomed by both the Federation of Small Businesses and the Confederation of British Industry, and they both drew attention to the fact that there are significant discretionary funds included within that package of £294 million that they very much welcomed. They welcomed it because of the point that Russell George has made—that there will be things that will emerge where we will need to adapt our plans to respond to those needs, and the discretionary part of the funding package will allow us to do that.

We've invested over £90 million already in the foundational aspects of our economy, whether that is in tourism, hospitality or sectors like beauty and hairdressing and so on. Those firms and companies will be, in many, many cases directly eligible for the non-discretionary part, the automatic grants that will come as part of our plan. But the discretionary part—the discretionary £2,000 top-up grants, for example—will be able to be calibrated to respond to any gaps in funding that emerge over not just the firebreak period, but as we go further into the winter as well.

Thank you, First Minister. I'm pleased to hear that there's discretion. I'm particularly thinking of small businesses that are, perhaps, not based in business premises, so the likes of independent traders, electricians. They are prevented, of course, from doing their work in many cases over the next two weeks. So, is your suggestion that these discretionary funds will be able to help these small, independent traders? And if so, how do you envisage that happening and that money getting out to them as quickly as possible, given the fact that from Friday, they won't be able to work over the next two-week period?

Well, they will be able to take advantage of some of the support through the UK Government in terms of income lost, and I see that the Chancellor made further announcements today in the self-employed support that he has offered to extend the length of that support and to make it more generous as well. So, of course, we welcome anything that comes in that way and look forward to being able to study the detail of it.

Russell George, I know, will understand that, in some of the sectors that he's referred to, there are extra challenges for Government in making sure that the help we give is not exposed to fraud and exploitation, because we are able to rely in other businesses on things that are already in place that demonstrate that that is a bona fide business, and we can rely on that. VAT registration is the most obvious example. We can rely on the checks that have already been carried out to give us the confidence that that is a business that genuinely exists and that Welsh money is going to the right place. Some of those other occupations that Russell mentioned don't come with some of those pre-prepared bona fides, and we've been working hard to try to find proportionate ways in which people can demonstrate that they are genuine and that we can get money to them, while still having to be mindful of the fact that this is public money, and it can't simply be handed out on the basis that if people ask, they get. There have to be some checks and balances in there, even in these really challenging times.

I understand, First Minister, some of the challenges that you've outlined, but it doesn't probably help me and others in the committee who have to deal with constituents contacting us when they say, 'Look, I'm a sole trader; I can't work for the next two weeks. What do I do?' So, you've answered the question, First Minister, but I would appreciate it if you could give this further consideration for this particular group—sole traders, independent traders, the likes of plumbers and electricians. I do feel that they've fallen through the gap in previous support and this support now.

Can I ask you, First Minister, when will you be able to publish, on your Government's website, the detailed list of which businesses will be required to close on Friday, tomorrow?

Well, the regulations are published this morning, Llywydd—Chair, rather, so people will be able to consult them, and I know, as I said, when the social partnership council met this morning, the FSB was providing advice directly to businesses having now got the regulations in front of them, and we will publish further advice beyond the advice we've already been able to provide now that the legal requirements are there for everybody to see.

I appreciate that the legal requirements were published this morning, but when I looked at the Government's website last night, there was no list of which businesses are required to close, and still that is not in place. The legislation may be in place, but I do suggest that the Welsh Government need to publish, like was previously published by both Governments, a list of which businesses require to close and don't require to close. That's not yet available, and yet the lockdown approach will be coming into force tomorrow. So, I would urge you to get that list published with some urgency, First Minister.

But with regard to which businesses are required to close, in the previous lockdown, there were businesses such as clothing and hardware shops that were required to close, but those businesses such as Asda, Morrisons and Tesco were selling those items of clothing and hardware, and it felt very wrong and disproportionate for small businesses. Are the new regulations that you've published this morning and the further detailed list that I think is about to be published—I think you're telling us—will that incorporate a fairer approach in terms of which businesses are required to close, dealing with some of the issues I've outlined?

Yes, Chair, it will. We have already said—I don't want anybody to get the impression that we've said nothing about which businesses are required to close. We've been very clear that retail businesses, hospitality, leisure, hairdressing, beauty, all of those things are already clear to people. So, there will be many, many businesses for whom there is no ambiguity at all about the need for them to close, and that is particularly important, because unless they are legally obliged to close, they will not be able to claim help from the Chancellor's job support scheme. So, we will provide further information to give those companies the guarantee they need that they can make those claims.

I think in the first set of restrictions, people were reasonably understanding of the fact that supermarkets didn't close all the things that they may have needed to. I don't think people will be as understanding this time, and we will be making it clear to supermarkets that they are only able to open those parts of their business that provide essential goods to people, and that will not include some of the things that Russell George mentioned, which other people are prevented from selling. So we will make sure that there is a more level playing field in those next two weeks.

Well, it's good to hear that, and I appreciate that there'll be a fair system—either that those supermarkets can sell those items, and so can other businesses, or it's the same across the board.

Finally, if I'm able to, Chair, in terms of Business Wales support, I've had constituents contact me—queues for 40 minutes, and some not able to get through at all for advice, and at the same time, I've seen promotion from Welsh Government telling businesses, 'Contact us' at the same time. Do you think there's sufficient resource within Business Wales to be able to accommodate the demand that's coming in as a result of the restrictions announced on Monday?

Llywydd—Chair, rather—we moved a large amount of extra resource into Business Wales earlier in the year in order, in those days, to respond to the big spike in demand for advice and for their services. Of course that fell away as people became familiar with the rules and we're having to remobilise some of that help into Business Wales to boost its capacity now. It's a challenge, isn't it? It isn't like turning on a tap. People have to be moved from jobs they're already doing, but that is what we are doing—we are expanding the capacity of Business Wales to try to answer as many of the questions that come their way as quickly as we are able to do so. We're still encouraging people to use as much online information as is available as well.

Okay, thank you. Helen Mary had a supplementary.

Yes, thank you, Chair, and thank you, First Minister. The additional business support that's been announced is obviously very welcome. If I can take us away from the immediate restrictions for the next fortnight and look slightly further ahead, there will be some businesses that were completely viable before COVID and will be completely viable when COVID is over, but that can't meaningfully trade, perhaps, for another five or six months. It's everything from wedding shops, for example, which can barely do what they were doing, and I'm thinking particularly of cultural businesses, venues—those kinds of businesses. I'm particularly concerned, obviously, for the smaller independent ones. What further thought is the Welsh Government giving to what kind of support could be available to help those businesses almost hibernate for that period? And obviously then, there's the question of what support could be available to their staff during that period. Because I'd suggest, First Minister, and I think you'd agree with me, that we will need those businesses as soon as it is safe for people to start going back to musical performances, back to the theatre, but also we will be wanting to have parties, and the gentlemen's outfitters that hire out evening suits and morning suits for weddings—we'll need all those businesses. So, what further thought has the Welsh Government given to ensuring that those businesses can still be there when we come out the other end?

Well, Chair, Helen Mary Jones used the word that I would have chosen to answer her question, because I do completely agree with all the points she has made; 2020 has been a dreadful year for so many of those businesses. In 2019, they were completely viable. We want them to be viable again in 2021, and the strategy between here and there is a hibernation strategy, in just the way that Helen Mary said. We want to be able to provide a sufficient level of support to those businesses that, for now, have to draw in their horns, they have to minimise their outgoings, but they need to be there in sufficiently good health that, when things improve, they are able rapidly to come back to life and to do all the things that they wanted to do before. Our ERF, the £140 million we had already announced before the two-week firebreak period—a great deal of what was in there was designed to help companies to do just that: to hunker down during these difficult periods, but to retain the core of what they do and an income for people to manage somehow during these times in order to be there when the better times come. I was particularly convinced that that was the right strategy because of what we saw in our tourism industry back earlier in the year. So, they were small businesses that hadn't been able to operate at all—right through the Easter period, all that fantastic weather in May and the May bank holiday, and so on—but when they were able to resume in July, they really came back to life so quickly. That gives me some confidence that it is possible to help firms in that way—that if they can hibernate, they will come back.

Can I just ask a brief additional point on that, Chair, if I may?

Yes, and then I have to move on. 

One of the pressures on those businesses will be financial commitments that they entered into before COVID. I was talking, for example, to a bus operator who had just made a massive investment in decarbonising his fleet, but because he only runs holiday businesses rather than hybrid local businesses, he's in real problems with meeting those financial commitments. Is there anything further that Welsh Government can do, perhaps with UK Government, to try and reduce some of those pressures, particularly on hibernating businesses that we know will be viable, as you've said, First Minister, once this is over? I know steps have been taken, but businesses are saying to me that now that short-term support and the payment holidays and so on that were available at the beginning of the crisis are over, that that's just extra debt that's been piled on them again and that, for some businesses, that might be crucial as to whether they'd make it out of hibernation or not. 

Chair, these are very important points that Helen Mary Jones is making. I've had an opportunity to discuss them already with the leader of Plaid Cymru, Adam Price, and I know that Ken Skates is very happy to discuss, probably directly with Helen Mary, I would guess, some ideas as to how DBW, the Development Bank of Wales, might be mobilised, so that if companies have made those investment decisions prior to coronavirus, and those investments are made with mainstream financial institutions who may be less forgiving of the difficulties, maybe DBW would be a vehicle we could use to step in, and to take over some of those obligations, but to be able to navigate a way through them with companies in a way that is more sympathetic to the difficulties that are not of those companies' own making. 

Thank you. Mike Hedges.

Diolch, Gadeirydd. What we've seen since February is a huge increase of online shopping, a huge increase in homeworking, a huge increase in video-conferencing, a reduction in home-to-work travel, and we've seen the sale of diesel and petrol drop down to 62 per cent of its February numbers. These are things we've seen, and I don't believe we're going to go back to where we were in February. We might go part of the way back, but I can't see us going all the way back. What I'm asking, First Minister, is to give some thought to how we want our economy to come out of this. I'm asking him to look at a green recovery, I'm asking him to look at ICT, and life sciences in particular, as areas that have got the opportunity to produce high wages, do wonders for the Welsh economy, and be areas that are in growth. I know we talk a lot about the foundation economy, but there's equilibrium in the number of hairdressers, there's equilibrium in the number of nail bars, and there's equilibrium in a whole range of these personal services. Unless you can increase the population by 50 per cent, you're not going to increase the number of those by 50 per cent. 

Of course, Mike Hedges is absolutely right about that. Chair, I don't want to go back to the way things were. In many ways I don't. When I hear people saying, 'I wish we could get back to normal', for some people, normal wasn't very good at all. We need to go back better for those people. And the environmental aspects of the coronavirus crisis I think are one of the things we should seek to capture. For many people, for many communities, it has been a most dreadful experience. But that shouldn't mean that we lose sight of some of the positive lessons we can draw from it.

You've heard me, I'm afraid, probably say before that I'm in Cathays Park today, the biggest of the offices of the Welsh Government. There would have been 2,000 people in here almost every day in February. Most of them would have tried to get here between 8 o'clock and 9 o'clock in the morning; most of them would have tried to leave between 5 o'clock and 6 o'clock in the evening. Cardiff is the most commuted city in the whole of the United Kingdom. That was adding materially to the impact on safety, air pollution, noise pollution, and I think that we can capture some of the things that Mike has mentioned in a green recovery.

We have set ambitious, I think—they're not targets in the conventional sense; they're ambitions—for having 50 per cent of the staff of the Welsh Government, long term, working remotely. Not the same people—not half the people always in work, not half the people always working remotely. People coming two days a week into their main office, being able to work the rest of the week from hubs, in towns much closer to where people live, or their own homes, where that is better for them. It's better from an environmental point of view, better in terms of reviving those town centres, places which we know have struggled in other ways, and I think better in terms of productivity.

I absolutely don't want to go back to the days when I would spend two hours on the train going to London for a meeting that lasted an hour, and then coming back again, where we are absolutely able to transact those meetings very successfully in the way that we are talking to each other this afternoon. So, capturing the positive lessons from a green perspective is, to my mind, a very important part of how we emerge from the crisis. 

Can I come back on ICT and life sciences as growth areas of the economy that we ought to be trying to drive forward? 

I agree with that as well. The Welsh Government has invested significantly in the life sciences. It was a particular passion of our former colleague Edwina Hart, who moved considerable amounts of money inside her health budget to support the interface between health and wealth in Wales. It's how we have the life sciences hub and so on. But I think that gives us a good platform to go on developing in those areas in the way that Mike had suggested.

And there has been a boom, hasn't there, in ICT already? The rapidity with which we have deployed those technologies, not just in the way we work, but in the way—. I was answering a question on Tuesday on GP services and just reflecting on things that I genuinely think would have taken us years to negotiate with the general practitioners committee to have got everything in place and we have done it in weeks and months in terms of remote consultations, Consultant Connect, all those things. They do give us a bit of a blueprint for how we can craft a future in a way that is different, but is also really rapid in the way that it takes advantage of some of the things we now know we can do.

I'd just say that we've made eight years' progress in eight months because of the pandemic.

Having worked as health Minister, knowing how difficult it sometimes was to get change to happen, eight years in eight months is probably not a bad summation of what we've managed.

Janet Finch-Saunders.

Thank you. Good afternoon, First Minister. Following on from the points made by Russell George about the Business Wales website, obviously, as elected representatives, when any announcements are made in Welsh Government, people do come asking, 'Can we do this?, 'Can we do that and the other?' And, quite often, when we refer them to the—. Well, we actually use, as an instrumental tool of intelligence—we look at that to be able to advise people. But I've got to be honest, from when you made the announcement, the chopping and changing that's been on there—. And one thing in particular was about businesses of £50,000 one day and now businesses of £51,000. Can you please speak to whoever is working on that website to make sure that any information that goes out is correct at that time and it's not changing? Because it's almost incumbent on us to give accurate information to individuals and when we go on and see what's being offered and then it's changed, frankly, I don't think that is good governance. I think we've got to work together on this and it's very difficult if we haven't got factual information.

And then, secondly, you will be aware—and I have been, you might say, jumping up and down about Conwy county borough and the way that it impacts on Aberconwy. Now, you'll be aware, First Minister, that several regions were in local lockdown prior to the firebreak announcement, including Aberconwy. By the time of the end of your firebreak, they will nearly have been in lockdown for six weeks. Now, from what we understand and from information on Business Wales and from all the announcements made, the financial assistance that's been granted will be able to be received by those only going into lockdown from the firebreak time. So, technically, they will only have been affected for the 17 days, as opposed to those businesses in Conwy County Borough Council, Flintshire and wherever else. Surely, there has to be some extra support for the businesses that have been in lockdown for longer. It just doesn't make economic sense not to do that. A bit of a long one there for you there, First Minister. I do apologise.

No, not at all. Thank you for both questions. On the first part, Members can be assured that the people who are getting that advice together, putting it up on the website—they do their best all of the time to make it as accurate and as comprehensive as they can, but feedback is really useful. I know that all Members here use it and certainly my office—you can imagine that my office gets people e-mailing from the length and breadth of Wales looking for answers. And my office relies on the same sources as yours will. Any feedback from Members of the Senedd about where things need to be done better is really useful. So, any further points Members have, I'm very grateful always to have them.

On the second point, maybe I wasn't completely following the question, but just to be clear, the help that is available is not only available to businesses who are affected by the firebreak. So, the ERF, the phase 3, which was announced before the firebreak, was ever being actively contemplated, and was to help businesses both in local lockdown areas and indeed those who are not yet in that position. So, there will be help for businesses that have been affected by local restrictions for longer than the firebreak. There will be additional help for those businesses who are obliged to close during that two-week period. But that is as well as and not instead of the help that will be available to businesses in those many local authorities in Wales who already have been living with local restrictions. 

Well, yes, as you can imagine, Llandudno is very much a high-business-rate revenue area and it's been so badly affected for so long. So, really, what I'm saying is if they were in lockdown for nearly six weeks at the end of August, and other areas that are in that same predicament, it should be proportionate, so technically they should receive more funding and not exactly—. If you look, it certainly reads as though they will be disadvantaged. So, if you would just look into that for me and maybe write to me about it, but that's the impression of researchers, everybody looking at this, even the businesses themselves, who are very intelligent, very articulate, very able to look at this and feel that they are being massively disadvantaged again. So, I think there needs to be two tiers, in a way, to make sure that the ones who've been in lockdown longer actually receive more funding—appropriate funding.

Happy, of course, Chair, to look at that, and if we need to make that clearer for businesses, I'd like to do it because I think the position, actually, is that they will get more help, not less; they will get extra help because of the additional impact of the two-week firebreak and they will still get the further help that would have been there through the economic resilience fund put out there before the firebreak was itself part of our landscape.

Thank you.

John Griffiths. 

Diolch yn fawr, Gadeirydd. Mark, we know, and it was detailed in the report of the equalities committee that I chair, that the existing inequalities before the pandemic were reinforced and exposed and put into sharp relief, as we say in the title of the report, by the pandemic. It's really important that we understand these issues and we address them as we move forward, particularly because we know the economic consequences of COVID-19 are going to be quite marked and difficult and with us for some time. It's really good that Welsh Government responded with the work for the BAME community through Professor Ogbonna's work. I wonder if you could say something about the position of young people, because we know from previous experiences of recessions and economic difficulties that young people are often particularly hard-hit. What are the headlines of Welsh Government's efforts to make sure that we're not in that position again as we move forward?

Chair, I thank John Griffiths both for the question and for the work that his committee has done, because he's right, of course: coronavirus has the effect of further entrenching inequalities that were already scars on our society, and we have to really attend carefully to that, as we tried to do with the Ogbonna report, and we'll be publishing our race equality action plan shortly. My colleague Jane Hutt has been taking the lead in that, as she has in chairing, for example, the disability forum. I know she's chaired six meetings of it over recent months, and it's been a real engine for us, that forum, in making sure we understand the impact of everything that goes on in the lives of disabled people.

But as far as children are concerned, Chair, I was able to meet only within the last couple of weeks with the children's commissioner to talk about her annual report. And we focused quite a lot in that discussion on the 'Coronavirus and Me' survey that the Welsh Government has funded but which was led by her office and children in Wales and had that fantastic response: 24,000 young people in Wales spontaneously taking part in it. And I think Sally published her final report from that survey; she's published a report on children in disadvantaged households, in BAME households, and her final report week ago was on disabled children. They absolutely are worth committee members looking at them, if you have a chance, because they tell such a vivid story of the impact of coronavirus in the lives of those children.

If I was highlighting three ways in which I think we could say that we've tried to respond to the pandemic, they have been some of the direct ways in which we've supported children: our free-school-meals extension, so that children in Wales will have access to free school meals through the holiday periods for the rest of this Senedd term and through Easter as well; we provided over 10,000 digital devices to make sure that digitally excluded children are able to participate in remote learning—9,000 licences to go alongside that, to support those families, as well as the other things that schools have done to respond to the needs of vulnerable children during the pandemic; and in mental health as well—a focus, I know, for John's committee in its work, but particularly in Dr Lloyd's committee, and the committee chaired by Lynne Neagle—focusing on the particular impact in the lives of young people of coronavirus, and more services through existing schemes such as school counselling, extending the number of hours available in secondary schools, extending its reach into the final year of primary school, and online facilities for young people.

I think one of the things that I feel that's come through to me particularly strongly in the field of mental health is that people who find themselves in need of help for well-being or mental health reasons—you've got to have a range of things for people. Some people want to speak to somebody face to face; for some people, that's the last way in which they want help. They want to speak on a telephone to a human being, but who doesn't know them, and the anonymity matters to them. And for some young people, online ways of getting help matter too. So, we've put significant investment into improving those services for children, and right up to our students in higher education as well, with £10 million more to support higher education institutions, with a bit more on top of that from the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales to make sure that those young people embarking on a university education or returning to Wales to their education have the help they need in place as well.

Thank you. We've almost completed our time, so I'm going to give Helen Mary Jones the last question, and it's going to be succinct and sharp, and I'm sure the Minister is going to answer succinctly and sharply as well.

Thank you, Chair. The cultural sector, as you know, First Minister, has expressed concerns that the Chancellor's winter economy plan doesn't support workers in an industry where much activity is, as we've partly discussed earlier, still not able to happen at all, or is economically unviable because of social distancing. What discussions has the Welsh Government had with the UK Government about this and what further support will the Welsh Government be able to make available to the sector?

Thank you, Chair. So, we do have discussions with the UK Government on the cultural sector. It's a mobile workforce in many ways, people who earn a living by being part of a whole network of different possibilities, so we do have discussions with them. I heard Jeremy Miles's answer to the committee earlier about the £53 million cultural recovery fund, which the arts council is now determining in grants being made. The £7 million freelancer fund, phase 2, opened on Monday of this week, and already is very heavily subscribed in some parts of Wales. We're exploring options to seek traditional funding for the freelancer fund, and we will work through the arts council directly with arts bodies right across the spectrum of them in Wales to see what more we might be able to do, once the £53 million has been deployed and we're clearer about where help has been provided and where help may still be needed.

Thank you, First Minister. You've timed that perfectly; we've come to the end of our allocated time slot. Can I thank you for your time this afternoon? As you know, you will receive a transcript of the meeting, and for any factual inaccuracies, please let the clerking team know as soon as possible. Could I also ask you to pass on to the Permanent Secretary and the staff our thanks for their work? Because we often appreciate the work done by public servants in the local authorities and our health services, but I know that your staff in particular have been working very hard, and for very long hours over some of the difficult things they've had to face, and it's very much appreciated by the Members.

Well, Chair, thank you. I appreciate that very much too, and I will make sure. I meet the Permanent Secretary every week; I'll make sure that those thoughts are conveyed to her, and I know they will be very much appreciated, so thank you very much indeed. Diolch yn fawr.

Thank you.

For Members, we'll move on to the next item of business, which is a motion under Standing Order 17.42 to exclude the public for the remainder of this meeting. Are Members content to do so? I see them all nodding, so I'll take that as a 'yes'. We now move into private session for the remainder of this meeting.