National Assembly for Wales

Diolch. I've raised with the Government on more than one occasion the impact funding decisions have on the delivery of safe, lawful and sustainable commissioned social care services for people with learning disabilities and autistic people. Your response has been that the Welsh Government has committed to the social care real living wage, ignoring the fact that funding granted to local authorities has consistently not covered the full cost of delivering that commitment. 

Dimensions Cymru is a not-for-profit provider supporting 112 adults with learning disabilities and autistic people in supported living homes across Wales, including in my region. And they've told me that funding shortfalls translate into increasing difficulty in maintaining staffing levels, growing rota pressure, reduced service resilience, and uncertainty for skilled front-line colleagues. Your finance Minister has said that this is a very serious matter, in response to a question from me. So, will you therefore ensure sufficient ring-fenced funding in the final Welsh Government budget, so that social care real living wage funding reaches front-line roles, as intended, and providers can meet their statutory responsibilities without compromising safety?

Well, we are one of the only parts of the United Kingdom to promise to deliver the real living wage for care workers, and that's precisely what we've done. We did it far earlier than people expected us to, because when Welsh Labour says they're going to deliver, we deliver. That is what we've done. 

What is important now is to recognise that that additional funding has gone to local authorities. There's an additional amount of money that I hope will be agreed next week, and we know that the way that we allocate funding in Wales is that we give that allocation to local authorities and it is up to them to work it. We're very clear: we believe in subsidiarity in Wales. We believe in empowering local authorities to make those decisions on behalf of the communities that they serve.

So, I'm not going to apologise for that. We give them the money. It is important now that we make sure that people get the money that is allocated to them. And it is important to recognise also that the Minister responsible for mental health and well-being will be making an announcement next week. It will be a written statement on 20 January, and that will look at how we make sure that people with learning disabilities in particular don't have a situation where they have to live in hospitals. We need to move them into their homes and give them the support that they deserve and need.

Yesterday, I attended the care and support plan of yet another autistic Flintshire constituent, at their request. The Social Services and Well-being (Wales) Act 2014 and it's code of conduct state that an individual must feel that they're an equal partner in their relationship with professionals, that care and support plans must contain a clear date, agreed with the individual, by which the plan will be reviewed. In the case of an adult, the date of review must not exceed 12 months. This was two years. In all cases where appropriate, with the agreement of the person concerned, the local authority should also involve specified others, including other practitioners and professionals with expertise in the circumstances or needs of the person concerned, and that, where eligible care and support needs have been identified, and the individual expresses a wish to receive one, direct payments must be available in all cases where they enable personal outcomes to be achieved. But these requirements are routinely ignored. What is the purpose of Welsh Government legislation if it is not monitored and, when necessary, enforced, or at least support put in place, to ensure that the practitioners are doing it right?

It is important to recognise the difficulties that many people living with autism and neurodivergent conditions suffer, and it is important to recognise the support that is needed for them and also their families. That's why we do have statutory duties set out in the autism code of practice. We have pilots and new ways of working to develop needs-led, early help models, and we recognise that more needs to be done in relation to waiting times and to deliver that post-diagnostic support. You are quite right: we need to make sure that the statutory duties that we set out in law are actually enacted, and we do have organisations to make sure that that happens.

Good afternoon, First Minister. I'd like to thank Sioned for raising this issue. There's a really even more shocking statistic, which is that people with learning disabilities in Wales die, on average, 20 years younger than the general population, with the most common age of death being just 67. Nearly four in 10 of these deaths are considered avoidable, meaning people could still be alive today if they had received the right care at the right time. This is nothing short of an outrage and discriminatory. Despite annual health checks being added to the GP contract last April, a report from Mencap last week shows that over a quarter of people with learning disabilities were not offered a health check in the past year.

Going back to Sioned's point, which was about enabling our third sector organisations, I'd like to talk about the closure of Powys People First, which was last year an organisation that advocated on behalf of people with learning disabilities. Without this vital community effort, health checks risk becoming little more than a tick box. So, what will you do, please, First Minister, to ensure that people across Wales who have learning disabilities receive the annual health checks, but also have the access to advocacy and community support through third sector organisations, and to ensure that adults with learning disabilities do not die so young? Diolch yn fawr iawn.

We have a very clear plan: the learning disability strategic action plan. This was published in 2022. I'm very pleased to say that 33 out of the 35 actions have already been completed. The other two have been adapted or amended as a result of changing priorities as a result of COVID. We all read that report, of how people with learning disabilities in particular suffered more than others during COVID, and it's important that we respond to that. What we'll be doing next is to set out what we're planning to do to respond to that Stolen Lives Wales 'Homes not Hospitals' report that has been written by the learning disability ministerial advisory group. They, I'm sure, will have a lot to say about the annual health checks, and I will make sure that the written statement that is going to be published next week refers to the annual health checks.

Local people have waited a long time for progress in relation to the Royal Alexandra Hospital. I recognise how important this development is to the community. Now, the Welsh Government is working through the phase 1 business case. We'll assess it robustly but fairly, because safe, modern healthcare is fundamental to the NHS that people in Wales rely on. My responsibility as First Minister is to make sure that decisions on this scale are taken on the basis of strong evidence, patient need and clinical safety, and that's exactly how it's going to be handled.

Thank you for the statement, First Minister. The planning approval by Denbighshire County Council is fantastic news for the local community in Rhyl that I represent. The plans include a minor injuries unit, which will take pressure off Ysbyty Glan Clwyd, and also intermediate care beds with step-up, step-down care, which will provide flexible and short-term care to bridge gaps in health and social care needs as well for those people, which is extremely valuable.

First Minister, I'm sure you will agree that getting the redevelopment under way, now we've got this window of opportunity—now we've got some grant funding from the UK Labour Government, capital funding, we've got this window of opportunity—should be a priority for the Welsh Government. So, can I ask when an announcement regarding funding to make these plans a reality will be made? Thank you.

Can I thank you for your perseverance on this issue on behalf of the people that you represent, the people of Rhyl, who I know are very keen to see this development? Ann Jones, I know, was a champion of this in the previous Senedd. I'm more than aware of how important this is to the people of the community. The business case for the first phase for the Royal Alex has been submitted to us. Planning permission, as you say, has already been granted, but there are some outstanding scrutiny points that are being discussed with the Betsi health board, but I am assured that they are very close to resolution. The Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care expects to receive formal advice this month about the new-build components, so I am hoping for something positive to happen very soon.

Well, Llywydd, isn't it just amazing—isn't it just amazing—that the Member for North Wales tables a question on the north Denbighshire community hospital development at the Royal Alex after five years of silence on this issue in this Chamber? Now, three months out from an election, this Welsh Labour Government have resurrected the plans purely for political capital, despite denying the people of north Wales the hospital that they so badly need for over 10 years. Having been a cheerleader for a Government that has driven our regional health service into the ground, the Member is hoping she'll come up smelling of roses before the election. But the electorate will see through this, and they know the plans for this hospital have been radically scaled down from the original specifications. These plans are scaled down from what my constituents need and deserve. If they are serious about taking the pressure off Glan Clwyd Hospital and bringing down waiting times, then the Welsh Government must honour the original specifications for the hospital that were promised over a decade ago. The health board say they'd like to see the construction start early this year, so will the First Minister commit to my constituents now, today, that the hospital will begin construction early this year, and to the specifications that are needed to relieve the pressure on Glan Clwyd Hospital, which my constituents should have received over 13 years ago?

Gareth, you've had your Haribos this morning, haven't you? I do think it's important to recognise that this is an issue that Carolyn has been championing for a long time. In fact, I've been to the Royal Alex with Carolyn on two occasions, so this is not a recent campaign issue for her. What I can say is that the Tories are going to be doing a lot more of this: fantasy economics—'Let's build these huge places', having deprived us for years of capital funding. It was your Government that stopped us from being able to build this before. The taps have now been turned on when it comes to capital funding. That was not the case under the Tories. Your party needs to take your share of responsibility when it comes to our ability to build and construct hospitals in Wales. You deprived us for a number of years. The people of Rhyl, the people of north Wales, want to see this community hospital open. I would like to see the community hospital open. I would like to see the pressure being taken away from Glan Clwyd. I'm really pleased that, under a Labour Government, I hope very soon to see that we will be progressing with this project.

Diolch yn fawr. First Minister, at the turn of the century, six out of every 10 25 to 34-year-olds owned their own home. But, since then, levels of home ownership amongst that age group have fallen dramatically by a third. Your Welsh Labour Government, with the support of Plaid and the Liberal Democrats in the past, is responsible for this decline in Wales. You've failed to build enough new homes. You've pushed up the costs of household bills like council tax, which has more than trebled over the past 20-odd years here in Wales, and you've left Welsh workers with the lowest pay packets in Britain. And on top of all this, land transaction tax, or stamp duty as it's more commonly known, is robbing a generation of young people of the dream of holding the keys to their own front door. Do you accept the responsibility for your failure to help more people own their own homes, and will you get behind our plans to scrap stamp duty for main homes here in Wales?

I can't believe that the Tories are picking on Labour on housing, of all things. We are on course to deliver by the end of this Senedd term 20,000 new social homes. Just to give you context, just to give you an idea of what that means compared to what was happening in England under the Tories, under the Tories there are 700,000 fewer homes for social rent. Look at the difference between our commitment to housing in Wales and what you've done in England over 14 years. We have retained the Help to Buy commitment in Wales. That is helping people to get on the housing ladder. We are making sure that there's more money in people's pockets. You'll have seen that the minimum wage has been increased twice under the new UK Labour Government. We have new social legislation, thanks to the UK Labour Government. All of these things make a difference to the lives of people in Wales. You are determined to talk Wales down. You took a sledgehammer to our economy. Tory austerity caused the problems. We are rebuilding Wales now with two Governments at both ends of the M4.

You've got the audacity to crow about your record on housing when it is absolutely dismal. The last time the Conservatives were responsible for house building in Wales, we were building housing at twice the rate that the Welsh Government currently is. That's the fact. I know that you don't like it, but they are the facts. You say that austerity is a problem, yet you spend hundreds of millions of pounds in waste. You sent £150-odd million back to the UK Government because you couldn't decide how to spend it during COVID; you spent over £150 million on the M4 relief road, which was never actually built; you're spending millions on overseas offices and a whole host of other things that you don't need to be spending money on; and, of course, we've got more politicians coming to this Senedd when what we really need are more doctors, dentists, nurses and teachers. That's what we really need.

Economists are saying—not just the Conservatives, but economists from across the political spectrum—that stamp duty is a pernicious tax. They've described stamp duty as one of the most economically damaging taxes that we have. It gums up the housing market, it reduces labour mobility, it makes it harder for people to move for work, to downsize later in life or upsize when they start a family. Why don't you get behind our policy so that we can get our housing market moving again?

Most people don't pay stamp duty, so you're obviously focusing on the richest parts of our community. Once again, it's the old Tory approach to the economy. I'll tell you what stops people from buying their own homes, it's high interest rates—and my god they went high under Liz Truss and all of the other Government leaders that you had over 14 years. What we've got now is interest rates going down, inflation going down, wages rising faster than prices, energy prices coming down. What we're seeing in Wales is people taking a renewed interest in investing in our economy, and we've seen that in the investment summit—£16 billion being committed to rebuild our economy. After 14 years of austerity, people are taking a second look at our country. They are saying, 'We understand, you've been suffering.' We've been defending the devolution settlement. We've defended our nation against 14 years of Tory cuts. Now, the taps are being put on, now we're seeing a more stable economy than we had under the Tories, and it will make a difference to people's lives. 

Yet more claptrap and flannel from the First Minister of Wales. We've got unemployment up since Labour came to power, and we've had energy prices rising as well at well above the rate of inflation. The reality, First Minister, is very clear for everybody to see, and that is that our housing market is broken. We want to fix our housing market, and it's not just those people who want to buy their first home that we want to help. We want to help those other people who are stuck, trapped in properties that are no longer suitable for them, in order that we can get the whole of the housing market moving, so that people can benefit from owning the decent home that they aspire and dream for.

Every time someone moves home, it helps the whole of the wider Welsh economy, because people employ plumbers, electricians, decorators, carpet fitters, they furnish their homes, they spend money on the local high street, and it benefits everybody. It's a wonderful, virtuous circle. We see that. You seem to be blind to that fact. We need to stop holding Wales back, we need to help people realise their dream of home ownership, and we want Wales to be a home-owning democracy. That's the Wales that we want. We want a Wales where people have the keys to their own front door. So why don't you get behind this policy, like all of those economists out there, so that we can get Wales working?

I'm very keen to get Wales working. In fact, what we're doing is making sure that we give them those opportunities. That is why, under the Welsh Labour Government, we have seen 46,000 new jobs being created. And that's before we start talking about the 300,000 people who are employed in the public sector in Wales. Twenty thousand new social houses means massive employment across the whole of our communities. We've had a 30 per cent increase in the number of people being employed as a result of inward investment in the past year alone. Things are turning around in Wales because austerity has stopped. The Tories have gone. Welsh Labour can now move to the third chapter of the devolution story, and we will be there to write it.

I look forward to having the debate with others in this Chamber and beyond in the build-up to this election, robustly and respectfully. But firstly, I'd like to congratulate the First Minister for capturing perfectly what's at stake in May, as Labour's leaked election strategy sets out:

‘Reform define the anger and Plaid define the hope.’

That is a very accurate summary, is it not, of the current state of play? I'm proud to lead a party offering hope when others seek to stoke anger and sow division. By their own admission, Labour have talked themselves into irrelevance, mismanagement of public services, distracting internal disputes, and so many missed opportunities to stand up to Westminster and demand fairness for our nation. The Labour status quo is failing Wales, so why is the First Minister so determined to defend it?

I'm interested in hope. I'm not interested in fantasy, which is what we get from Plaid Cymru and what we've heard from some of their ideas when it comes to the offer for the people of Wales. People don't want to see division. They don't want to hear Wales being continually talked down.

We've already been at work since Christmas. We have made a very significant announcement when it comes to offering a £2 cap on bus fares in Wales, building on the fact that, actually, anybody over 60 gets free bus fares, something that people just think is going to be there for them forever. No; that is a political choice that we have made. We've also made a political choice to give people who are young bus fares for £1. That is what we get. We get a situation where Labour, when we make a promise, deliver.

It's been interesting to hear you talk this morning about the route to independence. We are the only party in Wales who believe in strong devolution within a United Kingdom context. That's who we are. We're not ashamed of it. We don't want to see independence. If you want independence, you need to demonstrate how on earth you're going to pay for it and how you're going to overcome—not just hope, but overcome—the fantasy economics that you will be offering to the people of Wales.

With Labour's record, nobody believes the words uttered by the First Minister there. Plaid Cymru talks Wales up; Labour runs Wales down. On all these pre-election promises, do them now. That is the message. If you are so capable as a Government, do these things now.

Let's have a look at another example of Labour defending the status quo. Only last week, when discussing the prospect of Wales assuming control over our railways, the Counsel General said, and I quote:

'I'm not sure we're wanting the devolution of it'.

It's quite astonishing, isn't it—a system that has enabled the chronic underfunding of our railways by both Labour and Conservative Governments, and where the idea of decisions about Welsh rail being made outside Wales is defended by a Welsh Minister in a Labour Welsh Government. To spare all the First Minister's patronising prepared lines, you can't simply blame the Tories for this one. Labour had 14 years to electrify Welsh rail and failed to do so, and it's a Labour UK Government hellbent on arguing that rail projects set to be built entirely in England are designated 'England and Wales', meaning that our nation misses out on billions. So, my question to the First Minister is simple: is the Counsel General wrong?

I've made it clear that we want to see rail devolution, as advocated in the independent commission on devolution, but once again, what we're interested in is practicalities—what difference is it going to make to the people of Wales. If you don’t get the money alongside devolution, you are going to be cutting public services. That is not a situation that I'm prepared to accept. It may be that you are so hellbent on getting the powers without the finances that you'd be prepared to do that. I am not. I am not prepared to do that.

Let me talk about Labour's record. Just since I became First Minister, we've had an extra £1.5 billion invested in Welsh public services as a result of the biggest uplift we've seen in the history of devolution. We have brought NHS waiting lists down dramatically—90 per cent since their peak. We provide free school meals to everyone in primary schools. We've seen an increase in the money that goes to the arts—an 8.5 per cent increase in money going to the arts. We've delivered a new women's health plan, and we're on track to deliver a women's health hub in every health board by March.

Of course, this is a First Minister who can't mention rail, because this is a Government that was willing to settle for a paltry sum given to Wales for investment in rail in the recent comprehensive spending review, when the Scottish Government was able to eke more capital spend out of the UK Government.

It has been six months now since the First Minister stood in this question session and insisted that, when it comes to fair funding for Wales, she was, and I quote, at the table and getting things done. The evidence suggests to the contrary. Since then, we've seen the UK Government trampling all over the devolution settlement by seeking to control how some funding is spent in Wales. We've had a former Welsh Labour Minister accusing the Labour Secretary of State for Wales of being the most anti-devolution in decades.

Yes, we do have some in the background brave enough to speak up, but with Labour's leadership in Wales, we're just seeing a doubling down on subservience to Westminster. With all the polls indicating that Wales wants a new First Minister at the table, what is the one thing she's confident that she can persuade Keir Starmer to deliver to Wales between now and May?

You want me to talk about rail. I am delighted to talk about rail. I am absolutely delighted to talk about rail, because actually, this is one of the proudest achievements of the Welsh Labour Government here in Wales—£800 million invested in over 148 new refurbished trains as part of the £1 billion core Valleys lines upgrade. That is something to be really proud of. And you know what? That's what makes a difference to the people in our communities. That's what the people in Merthyr told me on the weekend—that they love our new trains. They love the fact that most of them were made in Wales. They love the fact that we have punctuality and reliability improving—90 per cent of core Valleys lines services arriving within three minutes. We have a massive increase in the number of passengers who are using those services as well. I'm happy to talk about rail. I am more than happy to talk about rail. Do I want more rail funding from the UK Government? Damn right I do. Have I been silent about that? No, I have not. I have been absolutely clear about it time and again. We have had £435 million additional money compared with what we got under the Tories. Is it enough? No, but there will be a pipeline coming in the future.

The Welsh Labour Government has long had a commitment to move more care closer to home through the new community by design programme. Primary care contract reform has already enabled us to make significant progress. New audiology and optometry pathways mean more patients are seen locally, reducing hospital referrals. Presgripsiwn Newydd enables pharmacies to treat common conditions, freeing over 400,000 general practitioner appointments, and that enables GPs to manage more complex cases in the community, reducing hospital referrals.

All that's excellent, First Minister, but I want to look specifically at the quality and purpose of increasing our community health teams. There's a wealth of evidence across the UK that these teams, led by district nurses, are effective at keeping elderly and chronically sick people in their homes to be treated there rather than having to be admitted to hospital. I saw myself the brilliant work that was going on in Cwm Taf in one of the pilots just before the pandemic struck, and I'm delighted that there are now 10 community nursing teams in Cardiff, and another four in the Vale of Glamorgan, and they also have a night service team covering the whole health board area. So, that is good progress in terms of rolling out these self-managing teams, inspired by the Dutch Buurtzorg system.

But in Cardiff and the Vale, at least, demand still exceeds supply of health professionals working in the community rather than in the hospital. We are never going to eliminate waiting lists unless we can do things differently and shift these resources into the community. So, what is the Welsh Government doing to radically shift resources to better and more specialised primary care, so that hospitals can be reserved for things that can only take place in hospitals, like, for example, major surgery?

Jenny, this is precisely what our strategy 'A Healthier Wales' set out. It was very clear that we want to see that shift into the community. We have increased the amount of money that is being spent in the community significantly. At the same time, though, because we had the backlog as a result of COVID, we've had to put more money into secondary care. Now those are coming down, I'm hoping to see more of a shift into the community.

I know how wedded you are, how committed you are to that Buurtzorg model, and it's great to see that that is happening within our communities. So, we are deliberately moving that investment into primary and community care. We are expanding the scope and the scale of those community services. End-of-life care shouldn't really be taking place in hospitals. We are reshaping the workforce, so we have things like these self-managed nursing teams. These people have incredible skills—why wouldn't we want to use them? And we're changing how the NHS plans services, so hospitals are focused only on what only hospitals can safely do.

It's a journey, it's not going to happen overnight. COVID put a real spoke in the wheels in the sense that we have to bring those waiting lists down. They are coming down—a 90 per cent reduction from the peak—and I hope that we'll see a rebalancing into community and prevention, as it states in our 'A Healthier Wales' strategic programme.

First Minister, you're talking a very good game, aren't you, on community care, but what have we seen for the last 26 years of this Labour Government, propped up by Plaid Cymru and the Liberal Democrats? What we have seen across Wales is community hospitals closing, the number of hospital beds in the community hospitals that are open going down, and the nursing staff in those community hospitals under extreme pressure because this Labour Government has never got to grips with the workforce challenges in those community hospitals. We all want to see step-down care. You said about people dying in hospitals when they should be dying close to home. We all want to see that, but that's a failure of your Government, that is, for not getting people back into the community where they need to be seen.

So, in the last dying embers of this failing Welsh Labour Government, can you set out concretely here today what you are going to do to improve community hospital facilities across Wales and increase that bed capacity? Because I'm afraid to say that your record in this area of policy is not very good at all.

Well, as Jenny's just set out, it's not all about hospitals. It's about support in the broader community, it's about support at home, if we possibly can, and that's what we've been doing. We haven't been trying to do it, we've delivered. We've delivered it, for example, in audiology and optometry—care on our high streets that people can go to. That wasn't there five years ago when people voted for this Government. We've seen the change in the general medical services contract. That has made a difference to the way people can access services, making sure that they don't have to always go and see a GP, that actually there's a whole team around GPs that can be accessed. The new dental contract, with 400,000 people plus being supported—that wasn't there five years ago. I think it's really important also to emphasise what our pharmacies can do: 400,000 GP appointments have been freed as a result of what our pharmacies can offer, and over 0.5 million consultations.

England is just starting on this proposal; we are there, we've delivered. We should be proud of the shift that has already happened from taking care from our hospitals into our communities.

Of course, the over-centralisation of hospitals and where those hospitals are located—that can be a real problem as well. In Caerphilly, since the miners hospital closed, patients across the Rhymney valley have been left without an A&E. Ysbyty Ystrad Fawr was meant to be a replacement general hospital, but for reasons I've never understood, it was downgraded and it opened without an A&E. Patients now have to travel to Cwmbran's Grange hospital for emergency care. That is no mean feat if you are without a car when ambulance services are heavily oversubscribed. Before Christmas, it was reported that this Government was concerned about some aspects of emergency care at that hospital. So, that decision nearly 15 years ago to close one A&E and not replace it has ripple effects today, where too many patients have to travel too far to access emergency care and wait for too long when or if they can get there. That is clearly not acceptable. First Minister, do you agree that it was a mistake not to replace that A&E in the Rhymney valley and what can now be done to fix it?

Well, I'd be very interested to hear what Plaid Cymru has planned in relation to opening new A&Es in Wales. Good luck with that, because, frankly, what we are seeing is experts wanting to work together in centralised places. Of course, what we have to do is to make sure that people in our communities can get to those experts' places, because, actually, what we want to see is better outcomes for our people. That's what we should be interested in. If you're close to home but then you don't get the result that you need, that's not so good. So, let's be absolutely clear that what we need is those expert services to be beefed up and to make sure that people can get to those places in a satisfactory way.

First Minister, happy new year. It's an interesting question from a Labour MS, isn't it? There seems to be absolutely no strategy in my patch. For 26 years, there's been abject failure on your behalf, propped up by Plaid, to ensure that we get those services closer to people in their homes. The opposite is in fact true in my region. Services have been centralised in a rush and put into an unprepared Grange hospital, meaning longer distances for most people in my region to access hospital care. Now, with the minor injuries unit at Nevill Hall being closed overnight, even more people are forced in the middle of the night to travel further away from their communities to get help, with no public transport in place to enable that.

So, I'd be genuinely interested, First Minister, to know which hospital services have been pushed out closer to the population of south-east Wales, to better serve my constituents and relieve that pressure on centralised hospitals. All I see is the likes of Nevill Hall, the Gwent and the community hospitals being completely underutilised. Reform would totally ensure that free-at-the-point-of-use NHS services would be put back in our communities to ensure better outcomes for the people of Wales.

I am not taking lessons from Reform on anything to do with the NHS. There is no way that you have any credibility in this space at all, and you're a former Tory, like most people in Reform, and they are coming thick and fast from the Tory party straight into Reform, and I do hope that the people of Wales will take note of that.

We have set out how—. We have a very clear strategy on this. It is all set out. It was all very carefully consulted on with experts across Wales. The 'A Healthier Wales' plan has been delivered. It is being delivered. It will continue to be delivered. They're only just starting on this route in England. We are way ahead of them. And when you talk about no services locally, well, let me tell you that Nevill Hall has recently had a massive upgrade when it comes to cancer services—a huge investment close to home. So, don't come here and talk to me about what you're going to do in Reform in the NHS, because, frankly, you will privatise it, you will abolish it, you will expect people to take out insurance. It is simply not credible for you to make the case for more support for the NHS.

We've been extremely concerned to hear recent reports regarding the use of forever chemicals, which were contained in firefighting foams, used at the former 3M factory in Gorseinon. The Welsh Government's priority is protecting public health and the environment. We're working with regulators to establish the facts surrounding such contamination, and will ensure appropriate actions will be taken. We'll continue to collaborate with other UK Governments to assess risk, trace source and strengthen measures to tackle forever chemicals.

I'm grateful to you, First Minister, for your response. As you said, at the former 3M factory, firefighting foam that contained carcinogenic chemicals was found and revealed as part of a BBC investigation just before Christmas. We know that that could have, and has probably, caused serious health issues for those that came into contact with the site, and 3M allegedly knew about this as far back as the 1970s, and continued to use these chemicals in their products.

Some workers who did work there found themselves diagnosed later in life with cancer and are unsure at the moment as to whether this was linked to the presence of chemicals at the site. A 2006 storm caused the system containing the foam to release onsite and travel into waterways, including the Afon Lliw, and onto the high street in Gorseinon as well. That may sound historic, but a 2023 study showed that the Afon Lliw still had perfluorooctane sulfonic acid levels 21,000 times above the recommended safe levels. That will cause an awful lot of concern, not just for workers at the site, but the wider community in Gorseinon as well. So, how are you getting answers—that certainty—and, if appropriate, compensation for former workers at the site? And how are you protecting our wider community and our waterways, including our wildlife as well, in Gorseinon?

Thanks very much, Tom. This is, I think, a situation and an issue we should take really seriously. These forever chemicals are a group of synthetic chemicals and they're known for their ability to repel water, dirt and oil. They're actually used in a lot of consumer products like non-stick cookware, stain-resistant fabrics, and in Gorseinon in these firefighting foams. So, it is important that we monitor what's going on. Natural Resources Wales is expanding the monitoring of such chemicals. Welsh Government officials are in regular contact with Swansea city council in response to the recent reports, to make sure we better understand how the firefighting foams have been used, the extent of any remaining contamination and the actions required to address it. That investigation is currently under way by the council, and a report will be made available once findings are concluded.

Thankfully, fires and fire casualties have declined significantly over the past decade. That reflects the emphasis we and the fire and rescue service place on fire safety and prevention. Our Building Safety (Wales) Bill will create even stronger safeguards for blocks of flats and similar buildings.

As we saw on the news, the fire at a Swiss ski resort over the holidays was absolutely horrific. Joyous new year’s celebrations quickly turned into absolute horror when a fire broke out at a bar in the Crans-Montana resort. Forty lives were lost, 116 others were injured, and 83 of those are currently being treated for severe burns. We can't be complacent that something like this couldn't, potentially, happen in Wales.

A part-time member of my staff, with over 40 years' experience in the fire safety sector and the owner of a fire safety company, believes it's questionable whether all premises in Wales have been established, managed and maintained to provide a safe environment. This is particularly the case for events at venues that are occasionally used for such events. There is a case to be made that a regime of during performance inspections should be reintroduced to provide enhanced safety. Is this something that you would consider? And has your Government considered fire safety in the wake of the Swiss Alps tragedy?

Thank you very much, and I'm sure we were all horrified to see the terrible tragedy that was unfolding in Switzerland—so many young lives snatched on a day that should have been a joyous occasion. So, clearly, our sympathy, across the whole of the Senedd, goes out to those people.

I think it's really important that we don't speculate too far. There's still an investigation being undertaken. Businesses here are subject to stringent regulation, but I take your point that if there's a temporary situation then perhaps we need to make sure that that happens. I will ask officials to make sure that we look again at the situation in Wales if anything comes out of the findings of that fire in Switzerland.

First Minister, sadly, once again Christmas and new year have been blighted by a number of house fires and deaths caused by lithium-ion batteries catching fire. Many families will have purchased e-scooters and e-bikes imported from China as Christmas presents, and many of these products are prone to catch fire. How is the Welsh Government working with trading standards and the UK Government to ensure products containing rechargeable batteries do not pose a serious fire risk?

Well, as I said, the number of fires and dwelling fires, which were much the most dangerous, are now at an all-time low. So, we're absolutely heading in the right direction, and part of that is because we have these extensive programmes of free advice and support—£9 million of Welsh Government funding has gone into 0.5 million home visits for those most at risk of fire since 2015. So, that's a lot of visits and, clearly, in particular, targeting those older people's homes, fitting them with smoke detectors. All of that is being done across the whole of Wales and has made a difference. I will ask the appropriate authorities to look into whether, specifically, there is an issue that they need to look at in relation to those lithium-ion batteries, which do seem to be causing a greater problem. Again, this is a new thing that's come up. We need to make sure that we keep up to date with the new threats when it comes to fire.

The Welsh Labour Government's £1 billion of investment in the south Wales metro is already delivering practical improvements on the Treherbert line. Passengers now benefit from better bus station facilities, clearer and more reliable travel information and the introduction of pay-as-you-go ticketing across the core Valleys networks, which are making journeys simpler and more flexible. And, from 2026, you'll be pleased to hear that we'll deliver four trains per hour on the Treherbert line, and that will be a step change in frequency that will make rail a genuinely convenient option for people across the Rhondda valleys.

Thank you, First Minister. The Treherbert line is vital for Rhondda residents to get to work, to school and to college. For too long we were stuck with an unreliable service and old rolling stock. The difference we've seen over the last four years, as part of the south Wales metro investment, is amazing. Rhondda residents deserve modern rail services, and I'm proud that it was a Welsh Labour Government that delivered the electrification of the line, station modifications, brand-new trains and now a later service on a Friday, even though we would like to see later services on other days, not just a Friday. Given the progress made so far, can the First Minister please provide an update on future ambitions for the line, more specifically delivering four trains an hour, toilets on platforms, and later services from Treherbert at the top of the valley down towards Porth and Trehafod?

Thank you very much, Buffy, for your enthusiasm and your advocacy for the people of your constituency. I know you've been very keen, and I think the people of your community have been very patient while all the changes have been made, but I'm glad to hear that they are now reaping the benefits of that investment.

Brand-new electric tram trains are going to be introduced on the core Valleys lines from spring this year, and the interesting thing is that we're the only ones in Europe who will be able to work on three different kinds of energy sources, and they can be switched as they're travelling. This is unique. This is Wales absolutely at the cutting edge of rail technology. This is a major milestone, and that's key to unlocking a four-trains-per-hour service on the Heads of the Valleys at Treherbert, Aberdare and Merthyr. It was great to be in Merthyr on the weekend, where, again, people were really enthusiastic about the transformation in those rail services in the community.

I recognise that people in your community sometimes want to go on a good night out, perhaps to the capital city, but they don't want to spend extortionate amounts on taxis to get them home, and that's why that night rail service is really critical and will make a difference.

Also, when it comes to toilets, Transport for Wales is undertaking a major programme of station improvements to install new, fully accessible toilets. That is going to be at Treherbert, Tonypandy and Treorchy, which means that passengers are never going to be more than 20 minutes away from a toilet facility on the core Valleys lines.

I see that the First Minister is being slightly ungracious in not thanking the Conservative Government in Westminster for bringing forward the city deal that actually enabled the metro system to come into being. I've heard her say twice now that Welsh Labour have delivered this project. It was the city deal, combining the moneys of the UK Government with the Welsh Government, that delivered the metro scheme. Yet, in the Vale of Glamorgan, we are still waiting on the pledge for two trains an hour to come onto the Vale line as an improvement for the metro scheme in the Vale of Glamorgan. So, when in the Vale of Glamorgan will we see those two trains an hour that other areas of the metro are seeing, and will you pay a full compliment to the former UK Government for its money that it has put into this scheme?

No, I won't. I'm not going to pay a compliment to them, because actually they've short-changed Wales over 14 years.

So, misleading the Senedd, is it?

One per cent—1 per cent—of rail funding we get in Wales. It's not good enough. It's not acceptable. It's not acceptable from the Tory UK Government, and it's not acceptable, frankly, from the Labour Government either. We will keep pushing to make sure we get our fair share of funding when it comes to rail in Wales. What we've seen is a 90 per cent improvement. When it comes to a situation of reliability, 90 per cent of Transport for Wales services on the core Valleys lines arrived within three minutes of their scheduled time. That makes us in the core Valleys area the best performing rail network for punctuality in Great Britain.

Community radio really matters. It gives people a voice, and I think it keeps communities connected. I see that every week on Pure West Radio in Pembrokeshire, where I've got a regular slot and where people are very, very quick to tell you what they think. But it has taught me that people really value local voices over national noise. And it's a good reminder of the reach of these stations and the trust that they've built in their communities.

Thank you for that answer. Can I firstly thank you for appearing on my local community radio station, GTFM? I think we ought to congratulate them for the tens of thousands of listeners they have, but also the information they provide at really key times—really genuinely local information, whether it's the weather, whether it's COVID, whether it's local events or local news. The thing about community radio, though, First Minister, is that it's free, it's very professional, but it's also volunteers. It provides a key public service and it provides and publishes information that is intensely local.

Now, obviously, GTFM serves the greater Pontypridd and Rhondda Cynon Taf areas, hundreds of thousands of people, but it is dependent very much on the funds it can raise. It has had a smallish grant from Creative Wales, which has been very welcome—the first one in many, many years. But, looking at public service broadcasting and public service advertising from Welsh Government, I'll give you these figures: 2022, there were 23 bookings with GTFM of public service advertising for that particular year; 2023, there were eight; 2024, there were four; 2025, 14. Now, this advertising is really important, but it seems to me that the policy is inconsistent. And I know, with advertising changes and commissioning and so on—. Can you do what you can to ensure that all Welsh Government public service advertising, as a matter of course, should be on community radio? Because not only does it mean that information gets out into our communities, but it also improves the sustainability of our community radio.

Thanks, Mick, and thank you for championing in particular GTFM, who I know do a really valuable service, and there are wonderful people working there. As you say, they're all volunteers, and they do a job that is, I think, critical for the people who live there. When we spend money on advertising, the key test for us is simple: does it actually reach the people we need to reach, on top of whether it provides value for money? Community radio does reach audiences that national outlets often can't and don't reach, and national radio doesn't have that level of trust that you talked about, because they've built up that relationship with their local community.

Now, Welsh Government, clearly, has to follow procurement rules and those value-for-money principles, but, within that framework, we absolutely consider reach, relevance and community impact. I'm really pleased that, through Creative Wales, we have awarded £100,000 last year to the Wales Community Radio Network, and we are trying to make sure that we know how best we can support these community radio stations that are so critical to our communities.

People in rural areas deserve the same quality of care as anywhere else. That's why we've increased NHS funding, backed targeted improvement work in Powys Teaching Health Board, and we're progressing the Newtown well-being hub, to bring more services together locally. Alongside that, we're expanding pharmacy-led care, strengthening community services, and investing in the rural workforce so people can get care without unnecessary travel.

Thank you, First Minister. I'm interested in your answer, that people in Montgomeryshire deserve the same level of care as anyone else. From July, of course, you will be aware, First Minister, that many Powys patients waiting for treatment in English hospitals are waiting considerably longer for treatment, despite that capacity being available in those English hospitals. This isn't about capacity; this is about the health board telling patients and those trusts they cannot be seen any sooner because of financial constraints. They say—Powys health board says—they have to live within the financial expectations set by your Government.

Now, one of my constituents, Mrs Handcock, contacted me just a few weeks ago to say she's currently been waiting 78 weeks for her hip replacement. She's in severe pain, her mobility is deteriorating considerably, and she has been told that she will have to continue waiting, and we know she's likely to continue waiting until at least 104 weeks. She can't understand why that is the case. We also know, of course, that the average wait for English patients waiting for the same treatment in the same hospital is just 29 weeks. Can you tell me, First Minister, if that £180 million extra that you referred to for the health and social care budget will go towards funding Powys health board, in order that they can end this inequality and ensure that English and Welsh patients are treated equally, especially when being treated at the same hospital, and treated by the same health professionals?

The average time for treatment in Wales is 19 weeks. I don’t think people hear that often enough. Now, clearly, we want to bring the waiting lists down. We have seen a 90 per cent reduction in two-year waits since the peak, but the average wait in Wales is 19 weeks. So, let’s make sure that people understand that.

Clearly, we want to bring the waiting lists down, and that’s why we have put significant funding into that. Plaid Cymru have supported us with putting that additional money into the health service, into local government, because those are the priorities. And of course that money will be distributed around all of the health boards.

Thank you, Llywydd. I'd like to correct the record for the Vale of Clwyd Member Gareth Davies's contribution. He said that I had previously been silent on the Royal Alexandra Hospital. I've had the public record checked and I have made 15 public contributions, including today, on the Royal Alexandra Hospital. Thank you. 

Now, I’d be naïve not to expect some electioneering in this Chamber from now until May, but I do also expect factual accuracy, especially in the context of the integrity of individual Members in this Chamber. It’s not for me to know where that factual accuracy lies, but I will always allow the case for the defence to be made. [Interruption.] Gareth Davies, are you listening to me, because this was directed primarily at you? So, I’d expect you to listen to me as well, and I’ll make that as a ruling for the remainder of this term as well.

Trefnydd, I’d like to request a statement from the Cabinet Secretary for Transport and North Wales on the delivery of rail services in west Wales, especially given that we heard from the First Minister earlier that she wants to talk about rail services at every opportunity. Well, let’s talk about rail services, because, unfortunately, rail services to and from Pembrokeshire continue to be a huge problem for many of my constituents. And in one particular case, trains were cancelled from Haverfordwest with no replacement buses to transport travellers at all, which caused utter chaos.

In another case recently, a constituent informed me that their train was terminated at Carmarthen, and that Transport for Wales paid for a taxi to transport her for the rest of her journey. The people of Pembrokeshire deserve better, and it’s vital that there is an urgent review into the delivery of services in west Wales, so that action can be taken to ensure that people living beyond Carmarthen are actually able to rely on local rail services.

Therefore, I’d be grateful if we could have a statement from the Welsh Government outlining what action it intends to take to improve the delivery of rail services in west Wales.

Diolch yn fawr, Paul Davies. And, of course, rail services in west Wales, as the First Minister has said, in terms of the delivery of rail services, particularly from Transport for Wales—. And you've seen the good ratings and outcomes in terms of the delivery of services, and the punctuality and timing of services from Transport for Wales, which I know is very welcome as well, and I'm sure that your constituents have travelled on those new routes. But you do have an opportunity to raise this, specifically in relation to west Wales, with the Cabinet Secretary for Transport and North Wales, as it is his oral Senedd question time tomorrow.

Trefnydd, I'd like to request two statements from the Welsh Government. The first is regarding Grok, which is X's artificial intelligence tool. We've heard of the horrific manipulation of images. I would like to know what discussions have taken place between the Welsh Government and the UK Government to safeguard the citizens of Wales from this platform. 

I would also like to request a statement regarding the recent announcement on Consumer Energy Solutions entering administration. Obviously, the impact has been immense in terms of job losses—I know that's a concern of constituents of mine—but also I'm increasingly being contacted by those who had work undertaken through CES and who are now concerned because the work is not of the standard and whom they should go to for support. So, in terms of a statement, I think there are a number of Senedd Members who would like the opportunity to raise these concerns, but also to hear how the Welsh Government will be supporting both the workers and also those impacted. I know my colleague Siân Gwenllian has put in a topical question, but I think this is an issue that is wider, and we do require those answers from Government as well.

Diolch yn fawr, Heledd Fychan. Can I join you—and I'm glad you have raised the issue—in my huge concerns about Grok? The fact that a social media platform such as X is allowing users to create abhorrent and illegal content, largely focused on women and girls, is utterly unacceptable. It is important that we, as many of us who can today, across this Chamber, say that X and Grok AI must take immediate action to end this function, to stop these images from proliferating further. This morning, the Cabinet Secretary for Education met with Ofcom Cymru and expressed deep concern about this abhorrent issue. Ofcom outlined the investigation that they announced yesterday and the need to follow due process, of course, to determine whether X has failed to comply with its legal obligations under the Online Safety Act 2023. So, we welcome this investigation and look forward to swift and decisive action. We also welcome the new legislative action set out by the UK Government to clamp down on this. Ofcom must conclude their investigation as quickly as possible. Obviously, we are awaiting the outcome of Ofcom's investigation and any enforcement action taken. It is important that we recognise this and express our opinions and views on it strongly today—this important opportunity that we have throughout our parliamentary session.

On your second point, in terms of Consumer Energy Solutions, I acknowledge that a topical question has been tabled on this. I can say at this stage today that my understanding is that Consumer Energy Solutions has been reliant on, as I'm sure you and colleagues know, the UK Government's energy company obligation scheme to promote and fund its services. This will close at the end of March. This is going to have significant consequences for the company. Officials are due to meet the company today; we will be able to feed back in terms of the outcome of that meeting. Our employability teams and Careers Wales are being put on notice to work with the company and the workforce. I think it's very important also, because, obviously, the company has got to enter into consultation regarding redundancy with the majority of its employees, that you've drawn attention to the concerns about the work that was undertaken for the consumers, as well as the workforce. So, I'm grateful that you've raised both those issues in the business statement.

I'd like to ask for a statement on how the Welsh Government is working with partners like Show Racism the Red Card. I think all Senedd Members probably had information from Show Racism the Red Card, which shows that they worked with 797 schools in Wales in 2025, to help foster equality, inclusion and community cohesion. So, it seems to me that it's absolutely essential that this sort of partnership is continued. So, could the Cabinet Secretary tell us how she plans to continue working with organisations like Show Racism the Red Card in order to make an anti-racist Wales?

Thank you very much, Julie Morgan. I think everybody, I'm sure, in this Parliament, in the Senedd, received information from Show Racism the Red Card, and also inviting us all to an awards event that's forthcoming. I think we have to show our strong support for Show Racism the Red Card. I recall, many years back, going and joining one of the workshops in a school. It had such an impact on the school students. It's good to hear that they've reached out to over 796 schools in Wales. More importantly, not just because of the implementation of our 'Anti-racist Wales Action Plan'—and they are a key partner in terms of delivery of that plan—but also because the teaching of stories, contributions and histories of people from black, Asian and minority ethnic backgrounds is now compulsory throughout the revised Curriculum for Wales. This is also another contribution to that, because what's very important as well is that we are putting resources into the teaching and learning. Many of you will also know about the pioneering work of DARPL, the diversity anti-racist professional learning team, based at Cardiff Metropolitan University, working with schools across Wales, making a huge impact and helping the teachers as well as the learners. I very much welcome the contribution of Show Racism the Red Card.

Can I call for a statement, Trefnydd, from the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care on access to PET scans and CT scans for patients in north Wales? I've been alerted by constituents to the fact that the contract that was in place with a third party provider to provide these scans for north Wales patients expired at the end of last year. There's nothing new yet in place. It appears that the tendering process to replace those services has collapsed and, as a result, there are scores of patients who are desperately in need of scans, some of whom are cancer patients and cannot start their therapies and treatment until those scans have taken place. It's putting patients at risk of harm. The health board tell me that they are doing their best to find alternative arrangements in the short term before a scanner is available in Wrexham at the Wrexham Maelor Hospital, but this situation is very concerning to patients and their families. I do think that we need an urgent statement on what action is being taken to resolve this matter, given especially the governance and leadership concerns that we have more widely in this Chamber about the Betsi Cadwaladr health board.

You're right to raise this with Betsi Cadwaladr. Thank you for raising it as well here in the Chamber, but it is for Betsi Cadwaladr to answer those questions, which I'm sure you've raised. The Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care, I'm sure, will also want to clarify the position and ensure that you have that feedback.

I'd like to call for a statement, please, setting out how dignity and tolerance are being taught in schools. Since the Caerphilly by-election, I've been made aware twice of incidents where children have been taunted and physically attacked on their way home from school. In one instance, the child who was attacked was Ukrainian. This was reported in the press. Lindsay and I have been contacted separately about another incident, the details of which I won't go into because they're not public.

Lots of us are increasingly worried about how even children now are responding to the vile and racist rhetoric we're hearing in political debate. No child should be told to 'Go home'. They are home. Wales is their home. Yuliia Bond, a Welsh Ukrainian living in Caerphilly, has pointed out that this abuse doesn't start on the street. It starts with words, with lies, and with hatred that is allowed to fester. Can updated guidance please be given to schools setting out how to tackle this ongoing and increasing problem? Because our children deserve for all of us to be so much better than this.

Thank you very much, Delyth Jewell. Isn't it regrettable that you have to raise this? This appalling feedback affecting the mental health and well-being of our children and the children and young people that we welcome to Wales, who are part of Wales. Can I pay tribute to Yuliia Bond, who has made an enormous contribution as a Ukrainian coming to Wales? We were able to meet with her, and I've certainly met with her on many occasions. I think this goes back to following up the question from Julie Morgan about Show Racism the Red Card and the fact that we are implementing the 'Anti-racist Wales Action Plan'. I know that the education Secretary will be very worried to have this feedback, but this is about community cohesion. It's about travelling to school as well, and it's about the fact that we need to now recognise that this is a challenge that we all need to take responsibility for, but particularly our schools, local authorities, and all of us as elected Members, and I'm grateful that you've raised this. I can absolutely condemn the way in which this misinformation, disinformation and corrosive discourse now is affecting our young people.

Trefnydd, I want to add my voice to the concern and condemnation we've already heard regarding recent reports about the use of X social media platform AI tool Grok, and I ask Welsh Government for a statement and, perhaps, an update regarding the Government's approach when it comes to tackling the abuse of women and girls online and the use of certain social media platforms. I am going to just share a little bit about what has happened on Grok, and I issue a warning because some of it is deeply unpleasant. It began with what people allegedly called a 'put-her-in-a-bikini' trend, which began at the end of last year, and apparently really exploded at the beginning of this year. Within days, hundreds of thousands of requests were being made to the Grok chatbot, asking it to strip the clothes from photographs of women. The fake sexualised images were posted publicly on it, freely available for millions to see. That evolved into increasingly explicit demands for women to be dressed in transparent bikinis, then in bikinis made of dental floss, placed in sexualised positions and made to bend over so their genitals were visible, and it gets more extreme. Some users, mostly men, began to demand to see bruising on the bodies of the women and for blood to be added to the images. Requests to show women tied up and gagged were instantly granted.

I am sure all of us in this place condemn such use of social media. I know you have said Ofcom was investigating and the UK Government yesterday committed to expediting the implementation of legislation to tackle some of this. But the response of X was to change it so that anyone that wasn't a subscriber couldn't access it, so essentially making the abuse of women a premium service. So, Trefnydd, can I ask for an update on the Welsh Government's own continued use and approach of X, and a statement on how the long-lauded Welsh Government's violence against women strategy will incorporate online harms, because we need to call this what it is? It's technology-facilitated violence and abuse against women.

Thank you very much. Again, it's very important, although gruelling, absolutely horrific, to listen to that description of abuse as a result of the misuse and abuse of social media, so thank you, Hannah, for drawing this to our attention today and revealing this across the Chamber. I won't repeat the points that I made earlier on in response to Heledd Fychan, but I think we all today would acknowledge that the way that X, that social media platform, is still allowing users—and you referred to the fact that they are now saying 'subscribers'—to create that abhorrent and illegal content is utterly unacceptable. But it adds to the strength of our concerns that we raise with the UK Government, that we're raising with Ofcom, and which the Cabinet Secretary for Education raised this morning.

But, just to link it to our VAWDASV strategy, actually, it was at last year's White Ribbon event that it was revealed how much online abuse now is affecting women and girls. Women and girls face disproportionate risks online, including misogyny, co-ordinated harassment, image-based sexual abuse, as we've now heard so clearly today, and cyber stalking technology-facilitated abuse. This is clear. Online violence against women and girls isn't separate from other forms of abuse. It's part of a wider continuum and we must address it as that. So, just to reassure our colleagues that, with the VAWDASV blueprint, online harassment and digital harm is integrated into our broader approach to tackling gender-based violence and harassment through the blueprint. We are challenging harmful attitudes and behaviours to prevent violence, but we do now have the Online Safety Act 2023, and Ofcom has got that role as formal regulator. They're going to produce guidance shortly for providers on tackling harmful content and activity. And there is this new offence on sexually explicit deepfakes to address tech-related abuse and recognise the efforts made to address such abuse. We must make this public, we must make this very clearly expressed in this Chamber and outside this Chamber. But we do have to ensure that people are aware of this, because the Online Safety Act 2023 does recognise that the sharing of abusive images is a crime. So, I would like to bring an update on these discussions to the Chamber in due course.

Trefnydd, I'd like a statement from you, please, on what work the Welsh Government is doing to support white, working-class men and boys across Wales. Recently, a Plaid Cymru candidate took to X to call a panel I sat on 'pale, male and stale'. This derogatory and offensive language has no place in our society. We know that white men—and this is a fact—and boys face some of the biggest challenges in our society. They have the lowest educational outcomes, the lowest job and employment prospects and the highest suicide rate of any group of people, and the offensive language thrown at white men and boys is wrong and, I believe, has no place in this Chamber or wider. So I hope, Trefnydd, that you will condemn the comments of that Plaid Cymru candidate and show that this Welsh Government supports our white men and boys across Wales.

Thank you, James Evans. I do recall the really important debate that Sam Rowlands promoted in the autumn, last term. It was a very important discussion about the role of men and young men in society and the community, and their role and contributions and opportunities. We, of course, condemn derogatory and offensive language of any kind.

I also am going to follow up on the issue of X and ask specifically questions both of us and also the Welsh Government. I've made the decision to come off X, and I would urge everybody here to come off X. I'd also like to ask you for a 'yes' or 'no' answer: will the Welsh Government be coming off X? Thank you.

Thank you very much, Jane. It is an important question. I can only say that this is something where the Welsh Government, of course, is communicating across a range of channels, and we do recognise and share the concerns raised about X, and many of us have come off X anyway. But, at the moment, there is a presence still on the platform, but it's under review. And it's important that you've raised this today, so that we can look at it again. There have been steps taken to reduce our activity on X during recent months, and you will probably have heard from the UK Government, the Secretary of State, Liz Kendall, about this. It's still being used by millions of people in the UK. We do need to look at this, so I'm glad that you've raised it today. We also do, I think, need to await the outcome of the Ofcom investigation in relation to X, which I'm sure will have a bearing on this.

I call for an urgent statement at this eleventh hour before the final Welsh Government budget on support for third sector providers of key health and care services. As I've repeatedly warned, the Welsh Government's failure to support the increased costs imposed on them will cause further contraction in these services and far higher costs for under-pressure statutory NHS and care providers in consequence. Last week, a support worker for Mencap Cymru in north Wales wrote to north Wales Members, stating,

'We need to see a firm commitment made clear before the final budget in January to show that the work that we do as support workers is valued and we're paid fairly for the incredible jobs we do.'

Similarly, hospices in Wales already facing cuts have stated that £3 million does not constitute the sustainable funding settlement promised by the Welsh Government. Last week, the UK Minister for Care announced the addition of a further £25 million to the £100 million capital funding available for adults' and children's hospices in Wales, on top of revenue funding, including an additional £80 million for children's hospices over three years, dwarfing the Welsh Government's hospice funding here in Wales, where healthcare is being shifted out of the community into hospitals in direct contradiction of stated Welsh Government policy. I therefore call for a very urgent Welsh Government statement before it's too late, accordingly.

Well, thank you for raising that issue, and of course this is something that is our responsibility, and a responsibility that has been taken very seriously. In fact, the First Minister responded to it through questions earlier on today, in terms of our commitment to those services that you have identified in terms of direct funding to organisations, but also to the services that are provided by local authorities and the wider third sector.

Can I ask for two statements, please, Trefnydd? Even though I raised this issue last year, I would like to once again strongly urge you, Minister, to ensure that we get Welsh Government clarification regarding conversations that you’ve had with the UK Government in regards to the Pathways puberty blocker trial, which would enable experimenting on children as young as eight. Serious safety concerns have been raised following the Cass review about potentially damaging and life-changing decisions for all the children involved, some, as I said, as young as eight, who are clearly not ready at that stage to make a decision of this kind. With now over 120,000 people signing a petition to force the UK Government to debate this, to try and stop this abhorrent trial from happening, it is clear that many people are against this. So, why is the Welsh Government so reluctant to speak on this and to act to safeguard Welsh children in this regard? I’d like an update, please.

Also, the UK Government has now talked about ending the use of migrant hotels. I would like a statement on what discussions the Welsh Government is having with the UK Government about where these people would be placed in Wales instead. It’s not exactly as though we’ve got a surplus of housing, is it, because of the abject failure of Labour and Plaid to build those houses in Wales. Already we are seeing houses given to illegal immigrants as a priority over our veterans and our Welsh families, so what are we going to do about this? Our communities deserve to know.

Can I just say, on the first question that you raised, we’re committed to improving the gender identity development pathways and support available for young people in Wales. I’m particularly committed to ensuring that our young people themselves will be engaged when we develop services for Wales. Also, as part of our LGBTQ+ action plan, we are committed to reviewing provision of healthcare, particularly for trans youth in Wales. We continue to develop a pathway for young people to access services.

It's important, and I’ve responded and it has been made very clear, that referrals from the waiting list are now being seen by three regional providers in England, which includes a service in Bristol. There is now work being done with the joint commissioning committee. I’m concerned about looking at what we are doing for our young people in Wales. That is why I’m answering your question in this way. It is important that we try and have commitment to services closer to home.

I utterly and totally reject your second question. People who come here for sanctuary are supported, in line with the numbers who come here as a result of those who the UK Government deem appropriate in terms of dispersal. It is very important that we recognise that, when people do come to Wales, if they are seeking sanctuary and then they have been awarded the right to remain, they integrate into our community. Those kinds of questions draw attention to the fact that young people in Wales are experiencing the kind of disrespect and racism, I would say, that has been highlighted this afternoon.

Today I would like to share the voices of some very thoughtful young people from my constituency, the pupils of Ysgol Bodfari, who took the time to write to me before the Christmas recess about protecting our seas, beaches and wildlife. Their letters were heartfelt and incredibly well informed, speaking about plastic pollution on our beaches, discarded fishing nets and the harm caused by the wrong items being flushed down toilets and which end up in the sea. They drew attention to the 8 million tonnes of plastic going into the seas and oceans each year and the harm that this causes to marine life. The pupils showed a real sense of responsibility, understanding that caring for the environment is something that is beneficial to us. The Welsh Conservatives support efforts to conserve our environment in ways that are manageable and sensible. The pupils also highlighted the role that we can all play through small actions like picking up litter or thinking carefully about where we throw each of our items away that can make the real difference.

I'd like to ask on behalf of the pupils of Ysgol Bodfari if the Welsh Government would provide a statement outlining what action is currently being taken to reduce plastic pollution, protect our marine life and keep our beaches and oceans clean, and how the Welsh Government is helping to educate the public on how they can be more mindful to avoid contributing towards plastic waste finding its way into our waterways in Wales.

Thank you very much, Gareth Davies. I think we would all want to congratulate the young people who you engaged with and recognise their awareness, their sense of responsibility, and the fact that this is about marine conservation and preservation, and also recognising the scourge of plastic pollution. Many of us I think have been involved in schemes and initiatives to remove plastic from particularly our coastal areas and our rivers, but it's the young people today we must congratulate. You can send my thanks back to them, and recognition from the Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Secretary for Climate Change and Rural Affairs, who I know will be very interested to hear this news of those young people's contributions.

Business Minister, can I please request a statement from the Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Secretary for Climate Change and Rural Affairs about the ongoing issues at Ty Llwyd quarry in Ynysddu? Serious concerns remain about an apparent illegal discharge at the woodlands immediately below the Ty Llwyd quarry site. Local councillors Jan Jones and Janine Reed recently recorded a video showing leachate flowing under the green metal boundary fence and directly into the woodland. The source appears to be an overflow from the aeration chamber located just below the quarry. This material was visibly entering the unprotected area of the community woodland, which is entirely unacceptable in itself.

Natural Resources Wales has been formally notified of the incident. However, despite the clarity of the evidence and the obvious environmental risks, there is a growing concern locally that the response has lacked urgency and a thorough investigation. The community woodland is indeed a valued local amenity used by residents, families and children. Any uncontrolled discharge of leachate into such areas raises serious questions about environmental protection, regulatory oversight and public confidence in enforcement.

Will the Cabinet Secretary please investigate whether this incident constitutes a breach of permit conditions, what enforcement action is being taken, and what measures will be put into place to prevent any recurrence, before bringing a Government statement forward? Thank you so much.

Thank you very much, Natasha Asghar. I am sure that you have raised this with NRW, and I would also suggest that you write to the Cabinet Secretary for Climate Change and Rural Affairs about this. I am sure that already NRW are looking into it, and also looking into it with the local authority as well. Thank you for raising it today and drawing attention to it.

Formally. 

Diolch, Llywydd. Thank you very much. Today, Members of the Senedd are being asked to consider and vote on two motions. The first is whether the Mental Health Review Tribunal for Wales (Membership) Bill should be introduced as an emergency Bill, and the second is to agree the draft timetable we have proposed for its passage through the Senedd, should the first motion be agreed.

It's very rare that we as a legislature consider introducing Bills using the emergency procedure. It has not happened this Senedd term. I want to reassure the Senedd I have very carefully considered whether this Bill should be introduced as an emergency Bill. I make this proposal because there is a real risk that without passing this Bill, the Mental Health Review Tribunal for Wales will no longer be able to fulfil its statutory responsibilities. 

We are proposing to move this short Bill through the Senedd as quickly as possible to minimise the impact on the tribunal's important work and the very vulnerable people it seeks to protect, because this is not just a matter of statutory functions and deadlines; at the heart of the tribunal's work are some of the most vulnerable people in our society. The Mental Health Review Tribunal for Wales has hugely important responsibilities. It seeks to safeguard the rights of people who have had their liberty restricted under the Mental Health Act 1983. It reviews the cases of people who are detained in a hospital or living in the community subject to a conditional discharge, community treatment or guardianship order. It does all these things at great pace. If you are detained on mental health grounds, which could hardly have a greater impact on your life, this tribunal will review whether that decision was appropriate. And because of the importance of that review, it is mandated this takes place within seven days of the date of detention. 

The tribunal's ability to deliver on those responsibilities is now at serious risk. The reason for this is because of the identification of a technical issue in relation to the definition of 'registered medical practitioner' in the Mental Health Act 1983. It has come to light that medical members of the Mental Health Review Tribunal for Wales must hold both General Medical Council registration and also a current licence to practice. All medical members are GMC registered, but there are just 19 who have both GMC registration and a licence to practice who are available to sit at this time. The president of the Mental Health Review Tribunal for Wales has stopped non-licensed members from sitting on cases until this issue can be resolved. While the 19 members have been asked to make themselves available as much as possible, the clear advice of the judiciary is that there not enough medical members to cover the volume of cases listed in the coming weeks. Members without current practicing licences, who are often retired from practice, have sat on a disproportionately high number of the tribunal's cases. 

Despite its reduced capacity, the tribunal has continued to meet its statutory duties so far. They've done so thanks to significant additional workload on tribunal staff and because the cohort of medical members who do have a licence to practise have been willing so far to sit on additional hearings over and above their availability. In some cases, they have only been able to do this by postponing clinical duties, which is of course unsustainable and counterproductive in the longer term. I am very grateful to the staff of the Welsh Tribunals unit for their effort. I pay tribute to the medical members who have increased their tribunal work to get the tribunal through this period. I recognise that doing so has taken them away from other duties, and I'm very grateful. We have brought this Bill forward at the fastest possible pace to ensure this period lasts only as long as it absolutely must.

I'm also very grateful to you, Llywydd, for agreeing in these circumstances to cut short significantly the time you usually allow for the process of determining whether the Bill is within competence. And I'm very grateful to those staff of the Senedd Commission who worked over the Christmas recess to support you and to help us in the Government identify the procedural steps needed to allow today's Bill to progress.

The Bill is very short and concise. It makes only those provisions that are absolutely necessary to address the identified issue and enable existing medical members without a licence to practise to sit on the tribunal without going through a time-consuming reappointment process. This will bring the eligibility of medical members into line with the equivalent tribunal in England. We have considered whether we could resolve this issue through alternative courses of action, including using UK legislation. However, this would take many months. We must pursue the fastest possible resolution to this eligibility issue. The consequence of failing to treat this as an emergency Bill would be a delay of many months, with a profound impact on the work of the tribunal and the people whose cases are waiting to be heard.

Llywydd, a Senedd Bill pursued through the emergency procedures is the only available route to resolve this issue in a timely manner and to protect the rights of some of the most vulnerable people in society. I therefore propose the motion that the Mental Health Review Tribunal for Wales (Membership) Bill is treated as a Government emergency Bill. Subject to the Senedd's agreement of this first motion, as the Minister in charge of this Bill, I must propose a timetable for consideration of Stages 1 to 4, or any reconsideration Stage, of the Government emergency Bill. I've therefore proposed a timetable that would enable Senedd consideration of the Mental Health Review Tribunal for Wales (Membership) Bill to start today and to be completed tomorrow. This allows time for Stages 2 and 3. Given the limited scope of this Bill, it is my hope that Members will not consider a need to table amendments. I urge Senedd Members to support the timetable I propose. Diolch.

I'd like to thank the Counsel General for her time yesterday and for the time of officials. The Welsh Conservatives will be supporting this emergency legislation on its two-day journey through the Senedd. I do have some broader policy questions, but they're obviously not for you, Counsel General; they'll be for the Minister for Mental Health. As I said, we support this Bill in principle as it goes forward, and we look forward to the debate as it progresses.

We will also be supporting this emergency Bill and the motions to facilitate it this afternoon. We do have some issues that we'd like to raise later, if the Senedd is minded to support these motions, in the fundamental principles debate. I'd just like to confine my comments now to some questions.

I'm grateful to the Counsel General for meeting with us yesterday morning. Having had some further time to reflect, I was wondering whether you could say a little bit about what, if any, additional information will be provided to us in the form of, I suppose, an explanatory memorandum, anything in the way of human rights or justice impact assessment or something along those lines, and any advice that she's able to share in terms of European convention on human rights compatibility and these matters, seeing as we are discussing, obviously, issues that are relevant to article 5 in terms of liberty. 

I was wondering as well, given the compressed timetable, whether the Counsel General is able to commit to, so far as it's possible, and I realise that we are within those confines, answering questions that will be raised during the various stages; principally, I'm thinking tonight, because, obviously, by tomorrow we'll have run out of time. So, if there are questions, and, certainly, I'll have some questions that I’ll want to raise, to the extent that it's possible, will the Government provide those answers before tomorrow's stages so that we can deliberate in that context?

There are just a couple of them that I'll share now, if you like, because they are more technical. One relates to the issue of live cases in two regards. First of all, are you able to confirm, if not now, then during the later stages, whether the Welsh Government, Welsh Tribunals or the tribunal itself has received any pre-action correspondence or issued previous claims relating to the central question here of the licence-to-practise defect? Are there ones that are likely to start within this period now, up to Royal Assent, or have there, indeed, been previous actions brought on this very point at the heart of the Bill?

The other question is more in relation to the tribunal case load, and, again, I appreciate that this is more a matter for the policy Minister, but if the Counsel General is able to raise this with colleagues, can you give a greater sense of the current case load over the next four to six weeks, which, I suppose, is the pertinent period that we're talking about? What does that mean in terms of the potential risks, and what contingency plans are being put in place in regard to that current case load in this interim period, if I can describe it in that way? What guidance has been issued to the tribunal itself, for example, and to health boards, where that's relevant, to ensure that patients' article 5 rights that I referred to, to the maximum extent that it is possible, are protected during this period of potential delay?

Finally, Members will have had a briefing from the Royal College of Psychiatrists Wales. I was wondering, Counsel General, whether you'd be able to share with us what consultation you have been able to do, obviously at pace, with relevant stakeholders, such as the Royal College, Mind Cymru and Adferiad, and will you be seeking to summarise that in a further briefing for Members?

Diolch, Llywydd. There are a number of issues there that we'll deal with, assuming this vote is passed, during the general principles point later. If this is passed, then the documents necessary for Members to be able to scrutinise properly will then be circulated, but we've got to get the procedure in the right order. Everyone will receive the small suite of documents if this passes, so you will have that.

I can answer a couple of those questions now, just for the sake of it. Some of them I will make sure that I can answer by the time we get to the next stage, assuming we do get to the next stage. The case load is about 2,000 a year. There are about 700 cases we've been able to list, because we have members who are fully qualified in the sense that they have practising certificates. The rest have not been able to be listed. There's a very strict statutory deadline, and that's why we are doing it by this emergency route, because we would very much like to list them. The tribunal, as I said in my opening remarks, is in danger of not meeting its statutory obligations if it cannot list them, and we just don't have enough people to be able to do it.

In answer to your question about why are we doing this now and so on, the incoming president clearly reviewed all of the legislation, as you'd expect her to do, and she has drawn it to our attention. I can't honestly tell you whether we were consulted on the legal change that came into effect in 2009. We have tried to find out, and I don't know. I wasn't here then, and we haven't been able to find out. So, we were unaware of the situation until it had come to our attention. This is slightly speculative by me. It appears that the word 'Wales' was left out of the original legislation by mistake, and nobody noticed that.

This Welsh Government, the Welsh Ministers, do not appoint these tribunal members. They are appointed by a judicial appointments committee recommendation to the Lord Chancellor, so we would have been utterly unaware of any issues around the lawfulness of it. We have explored whether this could be done, therefore, by the UK Government to correct that, and it takes many, many months. This is the fastest way to do it, and I think, in the interests of the individuals in question, it's the best way to do it, although I absolutely accept your point about the difficulty of emergency legislation and scrutiny.

In terms of the more general points, Rhys, you know I agree with you on all of that. A tribunals Bill is being prepared. The draft, I hope, will be ready before the end of the term, and we very much hope that any incoming Government will use it as one of their year 1 legislative provisions because it's not controversial and it will sort out a load of things. Many of the things you've mentioned would be things that that tribunals Bill would deal with.

But just to reassure people about the qualifications of the members on this tribunal, all medical members of the tribunal have been through a rigorous recruitment process run by the Judicial Appointments Commission. They all have unconditional registration with the General Medical Council as fully registered medical practitioners. They will have held a full-time or part-time appointment as a consultant psychiatrist for at least three years, one of which was in the last five years, and they will all have membership of the Royal College of Psychiatrists.

While they're a member of the tribunal, they receive training, which the president of the Welsh Tribunals has a statutory requirement to provide. No other country in the UK or the Republic of Ireland requires them to hold a clinical practising certificate at the same time, and many of the members are obviously recently retired. I do want to reassure everyone that those people who have been sitting on the tribunals are fully qualified mental health practitioners.

We have legal advice to the effect that the decisions cannot be impugned, but to put that beyond all doubt, we are putting a retrospective provision in there. I will check this, Adam, but as far as I know, we do not have any existing cases that have this problem because the new president has stopped anyone who hasn't the right qualifications from sitting. So, we don't have any present cases that are going through, so to speak, in this. I will just check that, but that's my understanding.

So, you can see why we're doing it like this. I agree it's not the best way of doing it, but, in fact, it's the only way to do it and to make sure that the individuals who are caught up in this system have the best provision. Sadly, Llywydd, mental health issues are more prevalent over the Christmas period than at any other time, so it is also the busiest period for the Tribunal. I think we need to take that into account as well. I would very much ask Members to support this Bill as an emergency motion and its timetable, so that we can have this conversation later on during the general principles part 1 debate today, and then later on tomorrow. Diolch.

As I informed the Senedd last year, the NHS and social care began the process of planning for winter in March, learning from the experience of winter 2024-25. I was determined that health and social care organisations would work together to plan earlier and more rigorously than before to provide a more resilient system-wide service offer. This year's winter plans have focused on prevention and on building community capacity, on resilient, urgent and emergency care services and improving the flow of people through and out of hospital. These were catalysed in a national early discharge winter sprint fortnight in the two weeks leading up to Christmas Eve. This was a Wales-wide concerted effort from all health and social care partners to improve discharge arrangements, to support people to be discharged from hospital earlier in the day and over the weekend.

Over the course of the winter and the festive period, we've seen an increase in the number of people seeking care from GPs, the ambulance service and hospital emergency departments. This demand has been driven by a combination of winter illnesses, such as flu and respiratory syncytial virus and the cold weather, including last week's storm Goretti.

The surge in respiratory illnesses, including flu, placed a strain on both health and social care services in the run-up to Christmas. In the week to 21 December, there were 284 in-patient cases of confirmed influenza, 11 of whom were in critical care. We hope that we've seen the peak of the flu wave, but the latest data shows there were 261 people in hospital and eight in critical care in the week to 28 December. 

Staff shortages, whether due to illness or well-deserved holidays, have compounded pressures on services. Considering all these challenges, Dirprwy Lywydd, I want to put on record my thanks to all NHS and social care staff for their work over this demanding period. Their dedication, professionalism and compassion has been extraordinary. 

I'm encouraged to report, Dirprwy Lywydd, that despite the high level of demand, our health and social care services have broadly remained resilient. Essential services have been maintained. The Welsh ambulance service has reported increased levels of emergency calls, especially for breathing difficulties and falls, driven in part by the colder and icier conditions. Following changes to its clinical model, more people with breathing problems are being successfully and safely managed at home or in the community, unlocking more ambulance capacity to respond to other 999 calls. Operational information suggests that by reducing the time ambulances wait to hand over patients at emergency departments, these improvements have released more crews to respond more quickly to new calls.

There have been spikes in demand at hospital emergency departments and reports of an increase in more acutely unwell patients. This has meant, on occasion, that some people have spent longer than we would want in emergency departments. However, staff have worked tirelessly to triage and treat patients as quickly and safely as possible, prioritising those with the most urgent needs.

Hospitals have, at times, operated at or near full capacity, with bed occupancy rates reflecting the sustained demand for in-patient care. But the number of people to be cared for in non‑clinical areas in emergency departments reduced in the lead‑up to Christmas. The work to improve timely discharge, including during the pre‑Christmas winter sprint, has made a difference.

NHS operational information shows that non‑emergency patient transport services completed a remarkable 6,050 journeys in December—5 per cent more than in 2024—helping more people return home from hospital earlier in the day. In the three days leading up to Christmas day, 981 people were transported home from hospital. And the proportion of people discharged by midday has improved compared to last year.

Social care services played a vital role in supporting vulnerable people in the community and in residential settings. The capacity of social care has been tested, but strong partnerships with local authorities and voluntary organisations have helped to maintain support for those most at risk. The NHS and local authorities have put in place a range of measures to boost capacity and support the flow of people through the wider health and care system. These include hospitals opening additional beds wherever possible, and staff having been redeployed to areas of greatest need. There has been an increase in the use of community-based services and social care support to help to ease pressure on hospitals. For example, there were more than 6,900 sore throat test-and-treat consultations in community pharmacies in December.

The ambulance service’s new 999 falls co-ordination desk and other developments as part of its new clinical response model, the advent of virtual wards, and increased use of digital technology, are all helping the health and care system to manage demand and maintain continuity of care.

Dirprwy Lywydd, as we move into the second half of January, we are prepared for further surges in demand. Welsh Government officials and NHS performance and improvement continue to monitor system pressures on a daily basis. Following the positive impact of the winter sprint fortnight in December, we will be running a second winter sprint between 21 January and 4 February. By working together in that way, we can concentrate on making lasting improvements.

Dirprwy Lywydd, in closing, we are committed to working with the NHS to provide safe, timely and high-quality care. I saw first-hand the dedication of health and care staff over the festive period when I visited the Grange hospital after Christmas and in the weeks leading up to Christmas across a range of other emergency departments. This is a demanding time of year for the health and care sector, but we have plans in place to navigate this period, and, while services are extremely busy, they are resilient.

I extend my heartfelt thanks again to staff and to partners for their hard work and commitment. I also encourage the public to support our NHS by using the right service for their healthcare needs. NHS Wales 111, pharmacies and the common ailments scheme can provide help and advice for a wide range of illnesses without the need for a GP appointment or going to A&E.

I'll begin, as always, by placing on the record my thanks to NHS and social care staff across Wales—doctors, nurses, paramedics and care workers and the support staff who have once again carried the NHS through one of the most pressurised months and periods of the year. But gratitude alone cannot compensate for a system that is repeatedly pushed beyond safe limits. The Cabinet Secretary describes services this winter as broadly resilient and tells us that essential services have been maintained, yet, for patients across Wales, the lived experience this winter has been one of overcrowded emergency departments, ambulances outside hospitals, and waiting lists that are continuing to grow. When resilience is claimed so confidently, is it reasonable to ask whether the description reflects the operational reality or simply the absence of a complete system failure?

According to the latest statistics from Stat Wales, NHS performance reports for December 2025, over 28 per cent of patients who attended A&E waited more than four hours. And I was recently in Prince Charles, where someone was asked to wait up to eight hours, and someone had been there over 12 hours. So, I'm not quite sure where we're getting waiting list time data from.

Category A ambulance response times are nine minutes and 43 seconds, missing the Government's own eight-minute target. More than 750,000 people remain on an NHS waiting list, and bed occupancy has remained close to 95 per cent—well above the 85 per cent threshold identified by the Royal College of Emergency Medicine as the point at which safe and elective care begins to break down.

Cabinet Secretary, if these figures represent resilience, then what do you consider to be system failure, and how much further must performance deteriorate before that description changes? You tell us that winter planning began last March and that lessons were learned from the winter of 2024-25, yet the same pressures reappear with remarkable consistency: delayed discharges, escalation areas becoming routine, and staff stressed to breaking point. If planning is generally improved, why do front-line pressures still peak at unsafe levels every single January?

The statement places significant emphasis on short-term winter sprint measures, including a pre-Christmas discharge push, and a further sprint planned later this month. These initiatives may improve flow temporarily, but they also raise a deep concern: why has the NHS in Wales become so reliant on repeated emergency sprints just to cope with predictable winter demand? How do you, Cabinet Secretary, intend to move the system away from this start-stop model towards genuine year-round resilience, and do you think this model is stopping transformation of the service?

Despite repeated commitments on recruitment and retention, staffing gaps remain severe. The Royal College of Nursing in Wales reported in December last year that more than 2,000 nursing posts across Wales remain vacant, with rising reliance on agency staff as a consequence. Staff shortages are acknowledged in the Government's own statement, but when will we see measurable reductions in vacancy rates rather than continued reliance on goodwill just to bridge the gap in the missing service?

Primary care, which should be the first defence against rising hospital demand, is also under huge strain. Nearly half of GP practices in Wales have closed their lists or reduced access, citing workload pressures, funding constraints or GP burnout. How can hospitals ever operate safely when access to primary care continues to shrink? And where in this statement is the plan to restore capacity rather than simply managing the fallout?

I turn to hospital flow. In turn, this cannot be fixed without social care capacity. The Welsh Local Government Association has repeatedly warned of deepening workforce challenges across domiciliary care and residential care, directly contributing to delayed discharges and blocked beds. The Government highlights short-term improvements in discharge activity before Christmas. But, Cabinet Secretary, what is being done to stabilise the social care workforce so that these gains do not evaporate when short-term funding ends across Wales?

Infrastructure also remains another long-term weakness across Wales. We continue to receive lower per head capital investment than hospital estates in other UK nations, leaving staff working in outdated buildings, ill-suited to modern clinical demand and infection control. So, when will the Welsh Government bring forward a long-term capital strategy that matches future demand, rather than relying on temporary fixes in ageing estates across Wales?

Finally, there is the issue of accountability. Despite repeated winter crises, performance continues to be described as resilient. But resilience should be met with the ability to absorb pressure without harm, not the normalisation of unsafe delays, corridor care and exhausted staff. At what point does the Cabinet Secretary accept that managing decline is not the same as delivering recovery?

Cabinet Secretary, this statement will go some way to reassuring people across Wales, but I know what most people are saying out there: the people of Wales deserve better—more than warm words and emergency measures. They deserve ambition, honesty and a clear route to recovery within the NHS in Wales.

I agree the people of Wales are entitled to honesty. Can I take the opportunity of correcting some points the Member made in his questions? Whilst it is correct to say that demand is up to very high levels in certain parts of the system, it is not correct to say that there are more ambulances waiting outside hospitals this year than last year. In fact, there have been considerably fewer. That matters a lot, because people are spending less time in the back of an ambulance and are being admitted more quickly, and those ambulances are available to transport other people to hospital. That has not been without its challenges, but that is absolutely the state of affairs on the ground, and that is positive from patients' point of view. It's still far too high, but it's markedly less than it was last year, and I'm sure he would want to welcome that when he has an opportunity to put the record straight.

He also made the point that waiting lists are going up; waiting lists are in fact going down. We've published data that shows you they're going down. It's really important that, when we have these exchanges, they are premised on the facts and the data. I think that is important to put this issue, serious issue, in context.

He made a very important point about bed occupancy in hospitals. He is correct to say that the levels of occupancy are above where we want that to be in the system. He's also correct to say that obviously causes challenges in terms of flow through other parts of the hospital. I have been pleased to see, at parts of the festive period—not consistently, but—there has been evidence of a reduction in corridor care. It hasn't been maintained, but there have been times when that has been reducing. I think that is a positive sign for work that can be, as he says quite rightly, continuous throughout the year.

I don't think it's fair to say that the system is dependent on stop-start interventions. This is the first time we've had a second sprint. It's quite difficult to do a second sprint because of the resource allocation that goes with the first sprint, but the truth is it has meant there's more capacity in the system. It has taught all parts of the system that, by behaving in certain ways, we can get patients flowing through the hospital safely more quickly, there can be fewer people waiting in corridors, and we can discharge people more quickly before midday—all of the things that we want to see, all of the things important to make sure that the system comes back into balance.

Finally, he made two important points, one in relation to staffing. There has been a very creative approach to redeploying staff over the last few weeks in order to manage peaks of demand, but, on a more sustainable basis, also to deploy more senior clinical decision makers to emergency departments so that they can make decisions about discharge or admission in a more effective way, and I'm pleased to see that.

Finally, I would echo the point he makes about the importance of the social care workforce. This Government is committed to expanding and supporting the social care workforce, as he will know. I think the system has worked well together in a very difficult context over the last few weeks. We've seen the number of delayed discharges reduced year on year. They're still too high, but we are seeing progress in the system. We want to see that continue.

Sadly, the workforce's dedication is frequently undermined by a system whose elements simply don't function together as effectively as they should. This is typified by the persistent issue of delayed hospital discharges, itself a reflection of Labour's long-term neglect of community care. Last year, the Cabinet Secretary announced his 50-day challenge to address this issue. However, while this did lead to some promising initial gains, sustained improvement has proved less apparent. In the 12 months since the start of the challenge in November 2024, there has been a net reduction of 18 in the total number of delayed pathways, a less than 2 per cent decrease from the original baseline, while such delays have again been on the rise in north Wales over recent months. Meanwhile, total days of delay have increased by over 7,500 since last July. So, why has the Government found it so difficult to embed these early gains on a more permanent footing? Does this speak to the need to better co-ordinate and disseminate best practice on a more systematic basis across health boards and local authorities?

This is the first winter during which the new ambulance performance framework has been in operation. While we do welcome the principle of shifting towards clinical outcomes, recent trends that show the return of spontaneous circulation—ROSC—rates at their lowest level since the introduction of the framework are concerning. Can I ask, therefore, what were your expectations of the new framework during the first six months of implementation? Are the ROSC levels where you expected them to be by now? You also committed to reducing the number of people who are taken to hospital without injury or with a partial injury by 10 per cent by the end of 2025. Can you confirm whether this was achieved?

Comprehensive vaccination coverage is, of course, the most effective preventative method of easing pressures on our health service, and emphasising this message is all the more important now when we consider the reckless anti-science discourse of far-right parties like Reform. This winter has also seen important changes to the delivery of the national immunisation programme, which included the central procurement of the inactivated influenza vaccines by NHS Wales Shared Services Partnership. Can I ask what positive difference has been seen as a result of these changes? And how confident are you in the robustness and legal rectitude of the relevant governance arrangements given the allegations raised by the former chief executive David Donegan?

Finally, managing winter pressures sustainably means ensuring patients are both aware of and able to access the level of care that is most suitable for their condition. Unfortunately, the shrinking capacity of both community and primary care has led to disproportionate demand on emergency care. Last year, there were almost 60,000 recorded attendances at EDs in which the patient was ultimately referred for treatment in primary or community settings. Meanwhile, 54 per cent of total nationwide attendances required no follow-up. This isn't to say they were all unnecessary, but we know that in many cases the relevant issues could have been resolved without recourse to emergency services. It reflects the reality that, for many people in Wales, A&E has become an extension of the GP surgery. Do you, therefore, have confidence that services such as NHS 111 are effective in directing patients to the most appropriate setting? And if so, why aren't we seeing the results on the ground? Furthermore, do you believe that expanding access to GP services, including extended surgery opening hours, should be a specific and key consideration of preparations for next winter?

I thank the Member for his questions. There is a range of important points that he makes in the contribution that he has made. I send my best wishes to his wife as well for a speedy recovery. 

He is right to say that there needs to be a rebalancing in the approach and a focus on enhancing care that can be provided in a community setting, so that the public don't feel that they need to be transported or conveyed to A&E. The work that the Welsh Ambulance Services University NHS Trust has been doing to make sure that people with breathlessness can be treated in community settings or in their own homes, I think, is making a contribution to that. 

He made an important point about conveyance due to injury. I'll provide the data that he requested; I don't have it in front of me. But health boards have been implementing, in that context of a community service, a community-based falls response service. And that's allowed, I think so far, 77 care homes to receive equipment and almost 1,000 staff to receive training, which has meant that there's been a significantly lower level of conveyance to hospital compared to last year for patients with falls. There is more to do in relation to that, but clearly there are signs of positive development in that space, together with the establishment of a falls co-ordination desk, which again enables people to be managed more quickly and avoids unnecessary ambulance transport. So, I think that's part of the shift that I know he supports as well, to see those services provided outside hospitals, wherever that is possible.

I think he made an important point in relation to the pathways of care, delayed discharges from hospitals. There has been year-on-year improvement, but it hasn't been to the extent that I know that he and I would both want to see. I don't actually think it is about dissemination of best practice. I've spent much of the last year making sure that the system is disseminating as much best practice as possible, but there is evidence of variability in how it's being applied. For example, we've commissioned an audit of the adoption of the trusted assessor model, which enables a much more streamlined assessment of the needs of individual patients. That is still too inconsistently applied. In the last few weeks, we have set out additional expectations of health boards and local authorities in being able to implement that trusted assessor requirement. We'll  continue to make sure that we set clear expectations of all partners in relation to implementing the 10 measures that we established, as he acknowledged, successfully, as part of the 50-year challenge last year.

In relation to the vaccine procurement, I think what we've seen this year is positive in terms of the increase in vaccine take-up. Just before Christmas, there were 70,000 more vaccinations that had been given in Wales, compared to the same time last year. So, that shows some increase, and vaccine uptake in NHS staff, which is absolutely critical, both in terms of staff attendance but also infection, was at least 4.5 per cent higher than at the end of last year's programme. There has been a concerted effort since the start of December to identify cohorts of people where, although there has been a higher take-up, it isn't as high as we want to be able to see. So, in particular, among older people and some in more deprived communities, there has been a particular focus on providing vaccinations in that context. Just to confirm, I am confident in the legality of the governance arrangements in relation to vaccine, as are the regulators, and that is also known to Velindre.

Finally, he made a very important point, I think, about the capacity of NHS 111. It is a very good way for patients to get very rapid advice on what's the fastest way of getting the treatment that they need. I think that there are questions of familiarity and perception about people feeling that they can get more rapid access by attending an emergency department; that often is not the case, in fact, as we will have heard in today's discussion. I think, in relation to GP services, one of the critical things that has been implemented, but needs to be expanded, is urgent care through GPs. That is part of the reason why we see such pressure in EDs, which could be dealt with in primary care settings with a strengthened urgent care offer. We are seeing that in parts of Wales already, but there's more work to do, I think. 

Aneurin Bevan University Health Board's Grange Hospital, Cabinet Secretary, as you know, has been subject to considerable issues around its accident and emergency department and waiting times since that hospital opened. I'm very pleased that you've been able to visit a couple of times to see the winter pressures first-hand, and phase 1 of further investment to increase capacity within A&E took place in the middle of December. But obviously the pressures and the concerns that come to me from constituents very much continue, and I know that a critical incident was, in fact, declared just yesterday at hospitals across the health board's area, reflecting the winter pressures, I guess, that we're very familiar with. I just would like reassurance from you, Cabinet Secretary, that you will continue to work very closely with the health board around these pressures at A&E at the Grange, given that there will be further investment following on from that phase 1 development, to make sure that that investment really does deliver the intended benefits for patients. 

Yes, certainly. I was able to visit between Christmas and the new year, and I was able to see at first-hand the result of the investment into the expanded emergency department waiting area, which was making a difference in terms of patients' experience, certainly of being in the hospital. And I was hearing some first-hand indications there that there was capacity to enable discharge, but that patients were too acutely unwell to allow that to happen at the scale at which, certainly at that point in time, the hospital was expecting to be able to do. 

There has been significant investment. We will continue to support the health board, as the Member will be aware. I mentioned in my answer to James Evans the expansion of senior decision making in the ED in order to be able to make sure that patients are either admitted or discharged more quickly, and there's been an implementation of that approach in the Grange Hospital, and a therapist-led front-door frailty model as well, which I think will make a difference to some of the reasons why people are ultimately admitted. People who are admitted because of causes to do with frailty are often admitted and then other challenges develop, as he will know. So, having a more appropriate intervention at an earlier stage to support those patients is really important. 

Good afternoon, Cabinet Secretary. I just really wanted to focus in on social care. I know that Mabon has done that as well. It's really critical, isn't it, that we get social care right in order to ensure that people don't go into hospital in the first place and then can leave hospital as well. I'm aware of the Powys model, which has benefited from the £30 million funding that was agreed between us. Some £1.3 million went into the pathways of care transformation grant, which is about accelerating hospital discharges, and I'm pleased to see this reflected in the statistics, that in November, 37 per cent of patients in Powys were still in hospital, which had dropped from 42 per cent in October. But the national average in Wales is 16 per cent, so you can see how wide the situation is in Powys. So, I would just like to know what you're planning to do in relation to our rural areas, to support them in relation to the pathways, and to allow those patients to leave hospital, because we know that actually staying in hospital is a harm in itself. Diolch yn fawr iawn. 

It is, and I think it is very important to identify it in that way. People who are ready to be discharged and are well enough to go home should not be in hospital. That is not the best place for them, it’s not the safest place for them. So, I think it is important to see it in the way that the Member puts it. She’s right to say that the pathways of care transformation grant, which we were able to agree with her as part of the agreement last year, has made a difference, and it has enabled a step change in ways of working in Powys and in other parts of Wales as well. I think one of the key elements is strengthening the community offer, isn't it? So, enabling people to be discharged more safely and to have the support that they need, and I’m pleased as well to see the expansion, the significant expansion actually, in reablement support right across Wales, which is making a real difference in enabling people to be discharged safely more quickly.

I'm grateful to the Cabinet Secretary for outlining the pressures facing our national health service at this time of year. He will be aware, and we’ve spoken over recess, about some of the pressures facing people in Blaenau Gwent, and he’s aware of my concerns about ambulance response times in the borough. He’s aware that there have been some instances of some very vulnerable people who’ve been waiting simply too long to receive the care that they need at that time, and I’d be grateful if the Cabinet Secretary could outline how the Welsh Government will be providing additional support to the ambulance service to ensure that vulnerable people can rest easily knowing that help will be provided when they need that help, particularly at this time of year when our services are under such enormous pressure.

The Member makes an important point about ambulance response times. There has been a difference in the performance of the service depending on the level of acuity of the patient. At the most critical end, median response times have been positive, and within the range that we expect. At that end of the acuity range, if I can use that language, the system has performed well. I think there have been examples, as he has raised with me, about people waiting too long whose vulnerability may not be the same at the point where they call the ambulance, but clearly by waiting for an ambulance too long that can get considerably worse. There have been, certainly last year, colleagues will remember, particular pressures at the Grange, with ambulances waiting outside for very, very long periods of time. The most recent information I’ve seen is encouraging; not anything we’d be content with, but encouraging. There were 37 per cent fewer lost hours this year than last year in terms of ambulances outside the Grange, which I think shows a level of progress, but we do need to see a focus at the hospital level on improving handover, making sure that the ambulance service is able then to be released to pick up patients in the community. The health board is developing an improved Gwent telehealth service and response, which will support a better response for people who have fallen in the community, who may not need to be taken into hospital, but may not be aware of that themselves.

I'm grateful for the opportunity to contribute to the winter pressure statement this afternoon, having experienced some of that pressure first-hand after rupturing my patellar tendon just before Christmas. I spent a little bit longer in the Grange than you did, Cabinet Secretary; I spent 36 hours in a chair at the Grange before a bed became available. I was then sent home overnight a day later, and had surgery the following day at another hospital.

It was clear throughout that staff were doing everything possible in extremely difficult circumstances caused by systematic capacity failures. They did the NHS proud, but both staff and patients are being let down. I'd like to thank all those members of staff that helped me out. They're working really, really well.

I did note what you said about the Wales-wide concerted effort to improve discharge arrangements, but we must guard against unsafe discharges driven by a scramble to create that capacity. I'm supporting a constituent discharged back to a care home with no notice, no handover, no paperwork, no belongings and a cannula still in situ. I'm sure you'll agree that's not acceptable. Can you clarify what action the Welsh Government is taking to stop these situations from happening and to put safeguards in place for further sprints? Diolch.

I wish the Member well in his recovery. I agree with him that the staff at the Grange, and the other hospitals that he will have had the benefit of care from, have been playing a remarkable role in recent weeks and months.

We want to make sure that people are safely discharged home as soon as they can be. It's absolutely unacceptable if someone is discharged home in the way the Member described. There are clear protocols in place that should prevent that. The health board will want to know about that example, I'm sure, in order to be able to address that specifically.

I don't want to diminish that point at all in saying I think it's also really important that we, in the way that Jane Dodds was pointing out, also regard someone waiting too long in hospital as being unsafe as well. We know that causes deterioration. Wales is actually leading the way in the UK on a new tool to measure the deterioration of patients whilst they're in hospital, and so I think that will help us really bring a laser-like focus to how we can support more rapid discharge.

I do want to say that I think Aneurin Bevan health board in particular are working on the optimal hospital flow framework across all of their sites. We do want to see that embedded fully. We have to see it implemented completely so that we can get patients moving safely through the hospital and home.

Does the Cabinet Secretary think that it's important to remember that while the winter pressures are undoubtedly putting a great deal of pressure on the NHS in Wales, there's also essential fundamental work that is still carrying on? I think he said in his statement that essential services have been maintained. I'd like to highlight an exceptional example of NHS care delivered here in Wales amidst the winter pressures. My constituent has asked me to raise this publicly so that you hear it and other MSs hear it.

My constituent Jane Williams has written me a letter describing the excellent care she received at the neurology department at the University Hospital of Wales in Cardiff. She was diagnosed with a rare tumour in her thoracic spine and had to experience long, complex and high-risk surgery. She praises the surgeon and his team for a life-changing outcome. Her post-operative care on the neurology unit was, in her words, 'world class'. She speaks of a culture of compassion, professionalism and teamwork that extended from senior clinicians to every member of staff involved in her recovery. She describes seamless, proactive care delivered with calmness, respect and humanity. She has asked me to bring that up in this debate. We are aware of the great pressures on the health service, but this is happening at the same time.

I thank Julie Morgan for that. I think it is important. Necessarily in these discussions, we focus on the challenges in the NHS, and that's very appropriate, but it is true to say that most people's experience of the NHS most days is positive. The overwhelming commitment that people show in the NHS to delivering that care is appreciated by people right across Wales. I'm very pleased to hear of her constituent's experience.

Cabinet Secretary, can you confirm that the Welsh Government collects data on corridor care within Welsh hospitals, and if the Welsh Government does collect that data, how many today are being cared for in a corridor across hospitals in Wales?

Secondly, I understand that many hospitals are affected by a norovirus outbreak that has resulted in ward closures and the loss of hospital beds. Are you able to update us on how many hospital beds are currently unavailable to the Welsh NHS, to relieve some of the winter pressures you've touched on, because of the norovirus outbreak that hospitals are enduring at the moment?

On the latter, I don't have the data in front of me, but I'll certainly write to the Member with that figure for the beds today.

On the first point, he'll be aware that in previous discussions in the Chamber I've said that we will be using the winter sprint to be able to develop a way of recording corridor care, as we describe it, so that it then could be published. We have been trialling approaches, which is what's enabled me to say that I've been able to see a reducing trend in parts of the last few weeks. Having got that for the first sprint, we'll be testing that in the second sprint, and then we'll be in a position to make routine publication of that. But I'm happy to share with him the information that I have available to me.

I'd certainly be grateful for that information, because you mentioned, in your statement and in your responses, things broadly remained resilient. But where that wasn't the case, I think it's really important that we understand how those lessons are being learnt for this next winter. I had to go into A&E with a family member and, I have to say, I was horrified by the conditions that I saw there. You talk about corridor care—there were people on the floor for hours, denied water, no blankets, no pillows, actually deteriorating, and it was heartbreaking to see the impact, not only on the patients, but on staff and their morale. To see that first-hand is quite something, and you do wonder, when people don't have a family member or someone to support them, how they get through that, without someone advocating for them to try and get a bed. People were waiting well over 30 hours for a bed, having being admitted by ambulance, and I just want that assurance of how do we ensure those lessons are learnt so that things are progressing, for the sake of staff as well as patients.

I can hear the distress in her voice, and I share it. I've seen that first-hand myself, and I agree with her, it is unacceptable. None of us want to see a friend, a family member, or a neighbour treated in an inappropriate setting. So, it's our approach as a Government, it's our expectation as a Government, that that is exceptional. But she is right to say that's happening more than any of us would want to see.

I think the crucial aspect of focusing on early discharge and on improving the application of the flow framework is that we have seen it reduce examples of corridor care. One of the of the things that we've been focusing the service on during the sprint periods, but since then as well, is increasing the number of patients that are safely discharged before midday. We know that creates much more capacity in the system than discharging later in the day. It's about how you operate ward rounds and how you allocate clinical resource in order to be able to make that a more routine part of the discharge process.

We have seen improvements. They've been variable, but there have been improvements in that level of discharge. That will be fundamental to how we can tackle corridor care. And as I say, we're working on how we can get that data into a position where it's shareable in a way that we can then all scrutinise that together. I think that's critical in having an eye over the system overall.

Of course, we're all grateful for the work that people are doing at the front line, and also the admin staff behind them, who are enabling people to leave hospital in a timely fashion. I also want to give a shout-out for the night shelter service that's operating in Cardiff, operated by the churches, which has prevented people being taken into hospital who are on the verge of death because of the cold weather we had at this time. This is a service that's going to be running until the end of March, so anybody who wants to get involved should do so, because it's a critical service for those who are homeless.

I want to understand why we have this winter sprint fortnight, rather than holistic appropriate discharge every week. I wonder if you can just say a little bit more about that.

Yes, certainly. The winter sprint fortnight was implemented this year as a means of focusing the entire system on a small number of metrics that we know can make the biggest difference to improving capacity in hospitals and the flow of patients. It has had that effect. It created more capacity going into the winter. We heard in the statement about the number of people transported out of hospitals in the last week of that sprint, for example.

One of the challenges in implementing that protocol on a continuous basis is that it involves quite significant allocation of staff resourcing from elsewhere. So, it's difficult to sustain that particular way of working, and it's quite unusual to do a second sprint, but we’ve seen the benefits so clearly in the first that I wanted to make sure we were building in that second opportunity. However, it is also true to say that many of the approaches that we've seen work during those two weeks—we are expecting and will continue to expect those to be applied on a continuous basis. That metric of the number discharged before midday, for example, is one of the key indicators of how much capacity there is being created in hospitals, and I'd expect to see that continuing to improve.

Diolch yn fawr, Dirprwy Lywydd. Cabinet Secretary, on 5 January, Cardiff and Vale declared the emergency unit as 'extremely busy'—hardly surprising. But there, NHS staff don't only have to cope with busy times and more patients, but working with a deteriorating hospital infrastructure, including sewage leaks, water damage, and poor cleanliness. Has the UHW 2 project been cancelled, and if so, how will you address the formal concerns of 300 senior medics about the health board's ability to deliver safe and modern healthcare services?

And finally, I'm aware that at a Cardiff and Vale board meeting in November they heard how the Welsh Government had, by that point, sent them seven letters with regard to winter planning. The board heard how some actions remain unachievable due to short notice, complexity, and significant investment required. What lessons can be learnt from that feedback for next winter? Diolch.

Cardiff and Vale has been involved in the planning with every other health board since March of last year, so it's a collaborative process and it's been ongoing for a long time and earlier than in other years in order to be able to create more capacity. There will be things that emerge during the course of the months that do have a fast turnaround. I'm afraid that's sometimes how the system has to work. Health boards have significant capacity, which, at this time of year, does need to be deployed to the most urgent priorities.

On the point that he makes about the letter, he'll know that I raised that with the board in the public accountability meeting very recently, and I know the health board has responded to the letter with some detailed commitments and offers to continue discussing some of the particular concerns.

On the issue of the estate, he'll know that we are funding a survey for future investment purposes. There has been some intervention, some funding available, but the Welsh Government is supporting the health board to get an overall estate assessment for future purposes.

Diolch. Wales is emerging from an unprecedented period of challenges, from Brexit and the aftermath of COVID to the chaos and the austerity of 14 years of a Conversative Government. But even in the face of these pressures, this Welsh Labour Government has remained steadfast in our economic mission: driving growth, resilience, and fairness. Today, I will set out how this Government has shown clear and unwavering direction, how we have delivered in difficult circumstances, and how we are positioning Wales for long-term success.

The First Minister has been clear: creating good jobs and opportunities for people in every part of Wales is our top priority. Everything we do in economic policy is driven by that ambition: jobs with fair work at their core—secure, and future ready. We have committed to working hand-in-hand with businesses, unions, across Government portfolios, and in close partnership with the UK Government. Wales is fully connected to major UK-wide initiatives. From pioneering AI growth zones to developing a defence cluster, these collaborations are driving innovation, creating jobs, and positioning Wales as a dynamic, forward-looking economy that competes on a global stage.

I want to highlight the progress that we're making across the four national priority areas set out in our economic mission. First, a just transition and green prosperity. We are accelerating decarbonisation across industries, embedding fair work, and helping businesses cut energy costs permanently. Through the Welsh Government energy service, £270 million has been invested since 2018, installing nearly 50 MW of renewables and avoiding over 1.1 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions, reducing bills for schools and hospitals whilst creating skilled local jobs. In 2024-25 alone, the energy service delivered a record £107.7 million in support for 233 projects, from heat pumps, to solar, to zero-emission fleets.

Our optimised retrofit programme is transforming social housing with a whole-home, fabric-first approach, improving affordable warmth and building the workforce and the supply chains needed for net zero. We are also targeting transport emissions through practical measures, with pathways for electrification, low-carbon fuels, and hydrogen projected to save 8.4 metric tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent by 2050.

Offshore wind is moving from planning to delivery, with over 15 GW in the pipeline and a £4.8 billion opportunity for Welsh businesses. This is supported by the UK Government investment in Port Talbot to anchor supply chains, regenerate and create jobs for coastal economies. And finally, our beyond recycling strategy is embedding circular economy principles, turning waste into wealth and reinforcing Wales's global leadership in recycling.

Our second national priority area is a platform for young people, fair work, skills and success. We've delivered on our commitment to create employment, self-employment and training opportunities for young people in Wales, ensuring that they have clear pathways to securing meaningful futures. At the heart of this is our young person's guarantee. Since its launch at the end of 2021, the guarantee has supported 64,000 young people, 10,000 of whom have already moved into employment. Our Communities for Work Plus programme is piloting innovative approaches in Neath Port Talbot, Denbighshire and Blaenau Gwent, to support people who face additional barriers. Together, these programmes are ensuring that no-one is left behind.

We also know that skills excellence is a cornerstone of success. We're investing £144 million in apprenticeships, from foundation to degree level, towards our target of 100,000 new apprenticeship opportunities, so employers in priority sectors can recruit the talent that they need as well as supporting 5,000 young people via Skills Competition Wales.

Our third national priority is stronger partnerships for stronger regions and the everyday economy. We're strengthening regional leadership and delivery. Corporate joint committees are working with the Welsh Government and the UK Government to co-design interventions that reflect local strengths and ensure accountability. These include two investment zones, in Cardiff and Newport and Wrexham and Flintshire, each backed by £160 million over 10 years, prioritising advanced manufacturing, semiconductors, clean energy and innovation. We're leveraging major place-based opportunities through the Celtic and Anglesey free ports, and these are now live, with tax sites designed and seed capital on course to be released. They're focused on floating offshore wind, hydrogen, carbon capture and advanced manufacturing, delivering high-quality, union-recognised jobs consistent with our fair work policy.

Our four regional economic partnerships continue to align investment to sector priorities like compound semiconductors, life sciences, digital and clean energy, with city and growth deals accelerating cluster development and infrastructure. And the local growth fund in Wales of £547 million over the next three years will further drive economic priorities. Crucially, we're valuing the everyday economy, social care, childcare, retail and hospitality. Our approach embeds fair work and social partnership, improves pay and standards, and treats these foundational sectors as engines of local prosperity.

Our final national priority is investing for growth, innovation, research and development and entrepreneurship. Our mission-led innovation strategy aligns research and commercialisation to national outcomes. Through the SmartSuite and partnerships with Innovate UK, we're backing R&D and industry research collaborations. Our collaborative innovation plan connects Welsh businesses to UK funding, shares data and strengthens the pipeline from university research into high-growth companies. To drive entrepreneurship and scale, Business Wales has supported almost 34,800 businesses and entrepreneurs since the start of this Senedd term, helping create 4,700 new businesses and sustain over 21,600 jobs. Our export action plan delivers tailored programmes to build export capacity and access overseas markets, generating over £400 million in new export sales. The Development Bank of Wales provides patient capital to boost productivity and innovation, investing £1 billion since 2017, supporting over 4,600 businesses. We're also investing in strategic employment sites through our property delivery plan, delivering over 1 million square feet of new or refurbished floor space and 850 acres of land, unlocking private investment and creating thousands of jobs across Wales. Our mission is clear: to futureproof Wales's economy and position our nation for sustainable growth. By investing in skills, innovation and green prosperity, and by working in strong partnership with Governments and regions, we're building an economy that's fair, resilient and globally competitive.

So, we have helped businesses and households move towards green energy whilst also reducing the amount of energy they use and cutting their bills, and that's helped create new green jobs as well as cleaner air.

We've invested in skills and helped more than 60,000 young people prepare to get a job, and provided nearly 100,000 new apprenticeships. That doesn't just help the individual apprentices, of course, but it helps businesses to recruit the talent that they need, and we've seen some really big announcements in the last few months—new investment in nuclear at Wylfa on Anglesey, two investment zones and, of course, the progress on free ports. These show real optimism in Wales and real practical opportunities for people across Wales to get better jobs with higher wages.

The Wales investment summit was a landmark moment setting out our ambitions for the future. It brought together 350 delegates from almost 30 countries showcasing Wales as a destination for business. This didn't just promote Wales—it catalysed a pipeline of new projects and partnerships. Through these efforts, the Welsh Government has earned trust on the economy, demonstrated resilience and adaptability in the face of change and laid robust foundations for long-term growth. We're building an economy that can respond to future challenges, seize new opportunities and deliver prosperity for communities across Wales. And these actions position Wales to compete globally, whilst ensuring fairness and sustainability remain at the heart of our approach.

Well, the Cabinet Secretary presents a narrative of economic resilience and momentum here in Wales. However, the narrative is not supported by the reality facing Welsh workers, Welsh businesses or communities across our nation. There was no mention of some of Wales's key economic industries such as oil and gas, agriculture and tourism. After years of claims about fairness, resilience and partnership, Wales is now performing worse than every other part of Great Britain on the fundamental economic indicators that matter most to working people.

The most recent labour market overview for Wales, published only last month, shows a continued and worrying decline in paid employment, with approximately 2,000 jobs being lost each month. The employment rate stands at just 70.8 per cent, almost 4 percentage points below the UK average. Unemployment in Wales has risen to 6.1 per cent, the highest rate anywhere in the UK, increasing by 1.4 percentage points in a single quarter alone.

Even more alarming is the level of economic inactivity. At 24.5 per cent, Wales has the highest inactivity rate in Great Britain, significantly above the UK average. And these figures aren't abstract. These figures represent real individuals excluded from the labour market, employers unable to recruit and communities falling further behind. At the same time, Welsh businesses, the engine of our economy, the wealth creators and the employers, are burdened with the highest business rates anywhere in Great Britain. Business confidence is at a record low and closures are rising. This, I'm afraid, is not the sign of a thriving or resilient economy.

This decline is taking place while the Welsh Labour Government continues to support decisions made in Westminster that actively undermine economic growth. The UK autumn budget, endorsed here by Welsh Labour, removed £26 billion from the economy through tax rises, including a substantial increase in national insurance contributions. That decision has driven up costs for Welsh businesses, increased the risk of job losses—and we've seen the statistics that back that up—and forced many firms into downsizing or closing altogether. It has compounded pressures on GP and dental practices that were already struggling to cope.

At a UK level, the outlook is deteriorating further. Gross domestic product growth is forecast to be lower in every year of the forecast period. Inflation is now higher than it was when Labour took office. The tax burden has reached a historic high of 38.3 per cent of GDP, and unemployment is projected to rise in the coming years. Borrowing is increasing, debt interest is rising and the size of the estate continues to expand. This is not a credible plan for economic growth. It is a recipe for stagnation.

Dirprwy Lywydd, the Cabinet Secretary speaks of optimism and opportunity, yet the leaders of one in eight small and medium-sized enterprises, almost 700,000 businesses across the UK, are actively considering relocating as a direct result of the tax burden. That should concern every Member of the Senedd. In fact, these figures that I've read here this afternoon should embarrass every single Labour Member here who thinks that their record in the economy is anything but abysmal. While investment zones, free ports and long-term strategies may offer future potential, Conservative policies, I might add, provide little reassurance to today's businesses struggling to survive or the families facing higher taxes, fewer job opportunities and the rising cost of living.

But there is another way. We, the Welsh Conservatives, have set a clear and practical plan to fix the Welsh economy: cutting the basic rate of income tax, funding through efficiency savings rather than cuts to front-line services, abolishing Welsh stamp duty for primary residences, getting our housing market and our economy moving, eliminating business rates for small businesses and revitalising our town centres, scrapping the damaging tourism tax—at least I'm willing to talk about tourism, unlike the Cabinet Secretary; no mention of tourism in her statement—ensuring democratic accountability where councils propose excessive council tax rises, and levelling up all parts of Wales through targeted investment in seaside and market towns. 

Dirprwy Lywydd, economic growth does not come from higher taxes, it does not come from a large estate and it does not come from increased welfare dependency. It comes from backing enterprise, rewarding hard work and creating the conditions in which businesses can grow and employ more people. 

Are you going to ask a question now?

Wales deserves an economy that works for everyone, not one—

You need to ask your question, Samuel. I haven't heard one in five minutes.

I'm sorry, Dirprwy Lywydd, but that statement didn't deserve any questions. It's abysmal, the Welsh economy, after 26 years.

Luke Fletcher. No question.

Do you want to answer anything?

I'd like to reply nonetheless, because there are several things, I think, in that statement that I think do deserve a response, not least my offer to the Member to have a session sitting down with the chief economist, the chief statistician and a representative of the ONS, because I come to this Chamber week after week to hear data that is no longer considered formal national statistics being rehearsed by the Conservatives. So, I think that a session setting out the challenges with the data, and setting out the real basket of data that should be looked at in terms of the economy, I think might be helpful and useful to the Member in order to get that picture. [Interruption.] Because, actually, when we talk about GDP, as the Member has talked about—

Wait a minute, Cabinet Secretary. I would expect Members of the Government to allow the Cabinet Secretary to actually answer and respond, if she wishes to.

We had talk of GDP this afternoon. So, in historical terms, GDP per person between 2010 and mid-2024 saw the worst performance in GDP per person since records began in 1955 on the watch of the UK Government, which was the Tory Government at that time. And if we look at the overall performance of the economy here in Wales, actually I think there is an awful lot that we can be positive about. The latest data shows that earnings growth continues to outstrip inflation. That's helping many households right across Wales to cope with the cost-of-living pressures. Also, over the last 10 years, median gross weekly earnings for full-time adults in Wales grew by 47.2 per cent, exceeding the increase for the UK as a whole. And, of course, the annual growth estimate of labour productivity, as measured by GVA per hour worked in Wales between 2022 and 2023, the latest I have figures for, shows a 14.1 per cent increase in productivity here in Wales, compared to 10.5 per cent elsewhere across the UK. So, I think that there is an awful lot to be said about the improvements that are being made within the economy here in Wales, making Wales a fairer and more equal economy.

Now I call Luke Fletcher. 

Diolch, Dirprwy Lywydd. I do think this statement was a missed opportunity. There is a lot of self-congratulation, which is disappointing. It's very rich in rhetoric. It's poor in reflection. I think what we needed today was a genuine assessment, warts and all, of where the economy is at. And, yes, talk about some of those positives, but also talk about what some of those negatives are. Let's take apprenticeships as an example. There's a lot to be proud of when it comes to apprenticeships here in Wales, but there are a lot of things that we need to improve on as well. So, will the Cabinet Secretary at least admit that there are some deep-rooted issues within the Welsh economy that need to be resolved, that not all is as rosy as she says?

When the Government declares that it does remain steadfast, it's earned trust and it's laid a robust foundation, it invites, actually, one very simple question, and that is: for who? It's not what I'm hearing when I'm out and about talking to businesses across Wales. The claim that Welsh Labour has earned trust on the economy doesn't seem, actually, to be backed up in practice. After a quarter of a century in charge of Wales's economic levers, the outcomes speak for themselves: one in three children in Wales growing up in poverty; the highest proportion of young people not in work, education or training of any UK nation or region; productivity, wealth and incomes remain low, while economic inactivity remains high. These are not the hallmarks of an economy that is thriving, resilient or fair.

Turning to the Cabinet Secretary's claim to be working hand in hand with the UK Government, unfortunately I think this jars badly with reality as well. The First Minister said recently that Keir Starmer is not on the ballot paper. Now, that's a line designed precisely to emphasise distance rather than closeness. 'Hand in hand' suggests partnership, but what we're seeing instead looks far more arm's length. Just look at the top-slicing of £86 million from the local growth fund to the Pride in Place fund, which the Welsh Government has no involvement with. This is using the post-Brexit settlement to claw back devolved powers. Now, Plaid Cymru and the Welsh Government condemned this behaviour when it was carried out by the Conservative Government, and the Welsh Government itself launched a judicial review against the Tories for doing exactly this. So, where's that condemnation now? It's not only constitutionally wrong, it's a deeply inefficient and sub-optimal way of delivering economic development.

Now, it's also extraordinary, I think, that a statement about the Government's delivery of the Welsh economy makes absolutely no reference whatsoever to Tata Steel, one of the most catastrophic industrial episodes in modern Welsh history and in this Senedd term. What lessons has the Government learned? What does this say about industrial resilience, about ownership, about the state's role in protecting strategic capability? These are questions I feel that the Cabinet Secretary should be tackling head-on in a statement like this. Where's the reflection in the statement? It simply is not there—no reference to what Professor Calvin Jones describes as the heart of Wales's economic weakness: the endemic lack of Welsh ownership.

This ownership gap affects investment decisions, business growth, job quality and innovation. Ownership must feature far more prominently in how the Government measures success, because an economy where assets, businesses and decision making are owned and made elsewhere will always struggle to deliver for the people who live in it. Any serious country in the world cares about who owns what; it seems that Wales and, more broadly, the UK simply do not. That's exactly why Plaid Cymru believes that there's a need for a new national development agency for Wales, working alongside a reformed development bank, with a clear mission to grow and retain Welsh-owned businesses, support succession so that successful firms stay rooted here, and address governance and transparency shortcomings. So, how does the Government actually see the delivery on increasing ownership in this term? Has that even been assessed by the Government?

Finally, then, and linked to that ownership issue, there are many inspiring examples of community wealth-building across Wales, from co-operatives to community-owned enterprises. Too often, these successes have happened despite Welsh Government policy, rather than because of it. There's a job of work that needs to happen around insourcing and procurement. The Welsh Government has really missed a trick by not putting more into these schemes of work. So, in what way has community ownership progressed under this Government? We hark on in this place about the immense potential of Wales and about our immense potential as a nation, but potential alone does not build prosperity. That requires honesty about failure, clarity about purpose and the courage to use the powers we have and to demand those powers that we need, none of which has been displayed by Government for some time.

I would begin by acknowledging that, absolutely, there are deep-rooted issues facing the economy here in Wales, one of which is productivity, and it gives me the opportunity to clarify some of the statistics I used in response to the previous contribution, and it is around productivity. The annual growth estimate of labour productivity, as measured by gross value added per hour worked in Wales between 2022 and 2023 was higher for Wales than 11 of the 12 countries and English regions within the UK, and Wales's productivity grew faster than the UK since 2009, at 14.1 per cent for us and 10.5 per cent for the UK.

Both of those things, I think, are very impressive. They do show us leading the way, but, actually, we recognise, absolutely, that productivity is a real challenge for us here in Wales, and it is a challenge for a number of reasons, partly because of our geography, our lack of large conurbations and so on. We know that and we understand that, so that’s one of the reasons why we have identified productivity as being one of the key aims that we want to achieve now through the local growth fund. So, through the local growth fund, we've said that we really want to focus on productivity and also tackling economic inequalities in Wales, and having that kind of laser-like focus, I think, on those things through that local growth fund of £0.5 billion over the next three years is really, really important. So, our consultation has recently closed on that and that focus, I think, was really welcomed by many respondents in that. Actually, some respondents wanted us to focus even more closely on things, so we're working through those consultation responses at the moment, and we'll be publishing a report on those very shortly.

And the local growth fund, I think, is a really good example of the UK Government and Welsh Government working closely now, because, of course, the UK Government has passported that or has provided that funding now for the local growth fund to the Welsh Government. It will be for us to determine the allocation of that funding, and, as I say, we set out our proposals in the consultation and we will be making some decisions on that shortly. I'm having really good meetings with local government and the economy spokespeople very regularly on that, and I'm really grateful for their input as we seek to navigate our way through the local growth fund.

Other areas where the UK Government and Welsh Government have worked really closely together would include the AI growth zones, of course. We really made a strong case to have two here in Wales and the UK Government agreed to that. I think both of those now will help us really be able to magnetise growth in AI and the associated innovation in those particular parts of Wales. That's really to be welcomed. Again, free ports, the city and growth deals—really good examples of UK Government and Welsh Government working really closely together.

I do think it is important to recognise the challenges at Tata during the course of this statement as well. I've been in correspondence just this week, actually, with Tata, and I'm really pleased with the updates that we're receiving. Tata is expecting all of the electric arc furnace-related equipment to be arriving on site early this year. We do understand that Tata itself is pleased with the progress that has been made to date on the construction of the EAF and the related assets. Also, Tata has recently provided the National Grid with land for the construction of substations in readiness for the National Grid to deliver the connections to the site for December 2027. So, that, again, is really positive and we're aware that the company is in the advanced stages of talks with potential commercial partners to secure sufficient high-quality scrap for use in the EAF when it comes online as well. So, we're really in close contact with Tata, and I know that colleagues here who are part of the transition board—yourself, of course, and the Deputy Presiding Officer and others as well—do value those opportunities to have those conversations and updates.

And then that overall approach, really, in terms of the approach to economic renewal— it is a very Plaid answer to everything to set up a new quango, a new development agency, but we've been empowering home-grown businesses in Wales via the development bank, invested £1 billion since 2017 to protect 50,000 jobs. We're providing our business support schemes and a national innovation strategy—all of that is already generating new businesses and exports. And whilst Plaid proposes an economic fairness Bill and a Welsh green new deal, we're actually already doing this thing; we're already on that journey towards net zero. We've invested over £270 million from the energy service, 50 MW of renewables installed, 1.1 million tonnes of carbon dioxide avoided, plus record support for over 230 decarbonisation projects through that energy service. So, a lot of this is already happening.

And I'm absolutely delighted to recognise the importance of social enterprises here in Wales. We do provide core funding for social enterprise support to Cwmpas and to Social Firms Wales to support and provide bespoke specialist business support to social enterprises here in Wales. And, of course, we provide funding towards the Social Business Wales project, and that provides, again, specialist social enterprise advice and operates alongside Business Wales as well. So, I really want to recognise the importance of employee ownership. You'll have seen that we've smashed our target for employee-owned businesses here in Wales, and that wider point about retaining the value here in Wales is something we absolutely recognise through, for example, setting up Trydan Gwyrdd Cymru, Wales's only energy company, to ensure that the benefits from the projects on those sites are retained here for people in Wales.

I was pleased to hear what you had to say, Cabinet Secretary, regarding Tata. I was at the Llanwern site just last week, actually, looking around the Zodiac plant, which is state of the art in terms of providing steel for the automotive industry. I was very struck by the commitment of the workforce, trade unions and management at Llanwern to the future of Llanwern, not just in terms of conserving what's there, but developing the steel activities. The workforce now, I think the average age is in their early 30s, so it's very different to what we, perhaps, have been accustomed to in the past, and, obviously, the workforce want to see a long-term future for the steel industry at Llanwern. Part of that, Cabinet Secretary, is looking to further investment. There is a memorandum of understanding between the trade unions and Tata, and that does seek further investment at the Llanwern site in processing lines to build on what's there and to help be part of that transition to green steel. So, I'm sure, Cabinet Secretary, you'll be working with Tata, with the trade unions, with the workforce, with UK Government, Newport City Council and other key partners to make sure that that investment happens in a timely fashion and really does deliver a strong future for Llanwern.

I absolutely want to see that strong future for Llanwern, and am really interested to hear about the relatively young age of people working there as well. I think that that is really exciting, and those young people should able to work with confidence that they have a long-term and exciting career ahead of them in Tata in Llanwern. So, I think that that's really important, and we can help ensure that by having those really collaborative relationships with Tata, with the unions, with the local authority and with yourself, of course, as the local representative, to ensure that we are hearing directly from people working in Llanwern.

I think that the fact that the UK Government has recognised steel as being a foundational part of its industrial strategy is really important. It does demonstrate the national importance of steel to the United Kingdom, so I think that that's really positive. Of course, the steel strategy, which we've been working alongside the UK Government on, will be really important, ensuring that the funding that will come from the national wealth fund, for example, is enabled to be invested in the steel sector here in Wales. So, we want to work with Tata, with others, to ensure that projects come forward to make the most of that really important and exciting opportunity for investment.

Good afternoon, Cabinet Secretary. I just really wanted to pick up an issue that Luke mentioned, which is about how do we have an economic policy and an economic approach that benefits everybody here in Wales. We need to support those businesses that are socially responsible. We need to look at how we manage a just transition to net zero, and surely our focus should be on economic growth not as an end in itself,  because it needs to lift people out of poverty and it needs to protect our planet.

In your statement, which I thank you for, there is nothing there that refers to the issue around poverty and child poverty, which Luke referred to. We know that one of the key issues there is about providing free and affordable childcare, which lifts people out of poverty, because we can get parents back to work and we can ensure that those children have the opportunities to do as well as they can at school and those families can get more income in. So, I'd just be really interested to hear where you see childcare and the issue around child poverty fitting into a model of economic prosperity here in Wales. Diolch yn fawr iawn.

Thank you for those questions. Whenever the First Minister talks about economic growth and jobs, she always talks about good jobs and growth with purpose. So, it is about socially responsible growth. It's about making sure that, when we grow the economy, we're doing it in a way that has people and the planet at its heart. That's very much our approach, which I hope is demonstrated through our economic mission, which sets out the importance of decarbonisation and the importance of opportunity for everyone.

Some of the work that we're doing with the UK Government again on those pilots, in terms of getting the people who are furthest from the labour market supported into work, I think is really, really important to make sure there's opportunity for everyone, alongside, of course, the work that we're doing on the young person's guarantee, again, really important to make sure that young people have the opportunity to go into employment. Actually, we have some really, really good examples of some innovative things that we're doing with young people, particularly to make sure that they don't find themselves at a young age leaving school or college and finding themselves out of work, because that's going to be very difficult then after a period of time to start a life of employment.

So, the Big Ideas Wales programme is really exciting; that's helping young people develop their big ideas as to what their careers might look like in future, but also helping with some of their most innovative ideas. Also, we're able to provide young people with grants of up to £2,000 if they're seeking to become unemployed, potentially to get some of the kit or the experience or training that they need as well if they've got a particular career in mind, which would require some additional help just to get that business for them off the ground.

Also, that critical point around childcare is absolutely central to ensuring that people are able to get into work. We know one of the most important things we can do in terms of raising children out of poverty is to make sure that they grow up in households where their parents have a good income and are employed, are able to inspire those young people then to employment in future as well. So, we recognise it for all kinds of reasons in terms of why it's so important. We've always been really proud of the work that we've been doing here in Wales to prioritise our childcare offer, but we definitely know there's more that we need to do in that particular space. But we don't see it in isolation; we see it very much as part of our strategy for the economy overall.

I very much agree with the Cabinet Secretary's analysis of the economic inheritance. The previous UK Conservative Government was one of the most economically incapable and incompetent that I can remember in my lifetime. Together with the disaster of Brexit, we've been bequeathed a very, very serious economic outlook.

And we've seen investment from the Welsh Government in the Heads of the Valleys in Blaenau Gwent. We've seen the investment of £2 billion, of course, in the new dual carriageway connecting Blaenau Gwent and the Heads of the Valleys region with important markets across the United Kingdom. But what we haven't seen from the Welsh Government has been a jobs plan to maximise the value of that investment. As you know, I'm not convinced that either the northern Valleys initiative or Tech Valleys have been delivered sufficiently well by Welsh Government. We haven't seen sufficient drive, we haven't seen sufficient ambition, and we haven't seen sufficient delivery from Welsh Government.

So, what I would like to ask you this afternoon is: will you work with me and other members in the Heads of the Valleys to deliver a jobs plan that will empower the communities in the Heads of the Valleys and ensure that we benefit from the investment that Welsh Government has made, and that we can create jobs and careers and a vibrant economic activity environment in the Heads of the Valleys to challenge that of other parts of Wales and the United Kingdom?

I'm really grateful for those points, and as the Member was speaking, I was hearing the Conservative spokesperson shouting, as they always do, about leaving Government with the highest growth in the G7. But actually the International Monetary Fund data shows that the UK had one of the weakest economic performances of any G7 country between 2019 and 2023, and those were the last four full calendar years that were presided over by the previous UK Government. I think that's much more representative of growth rather than a particular quarter as well, so I think that we can bear that in mind as well.

So, the important points that the Member was making were very much about the Welsh Government's investment in the Heads of the Valleys road. I think that that has been really important in opening up strategically that part of Wales for employment, and I do take the challenge that has been set down in terms of the work that's been going on. Clearly, there's been a lot happening, particularly looking at what more we can do in terms of property, because we know that we need those commercial-ready sites, property sites, for businesses to locate on in order to create those jobs in the area, and it's something that we are looking really closely at.

The Member will know that I've asked for some work to be done at his request, which looked at the northern Valleys initiative and Tech Valleys, and what we can do, working with the Cardiff capital region, to bring that work more closely together in a coherent way. But I'm very, very happy to have that further discussion about what more we can do to unlock jobs in the Heads of the Valleys area, both with Alun Davies and other interested Members.

Diolch, Llywydd. I'm very pleased to open this debate on the general principles of the Senedd Cymru (Member Accountability and Elections) Bill. I move the motion to agree the general principles of the Bill, but after careful consideration, I will not be moving the financial resolution today. The recommendations of both the Member Accountability Bill Committee and the Legislation, Justice and Constitution Committee that I have accepted would result in significant changes to Part 2 of the Bill.

In particular, the provisions that currently set the parameters within which lay members of the standards committee must operate would be removed and left almost entirely to the discretion of a future Senedd through Standing Orders. Amendments on this basis create significant additional uncertainty about the estimated costs currently identified in the regulatory impact assessment. I believe that more work is needed to provide assurance in respect of the accuracy of those figures in advance of agreeing the financial resolution. It's my intention to table the financial resolution motion for debate at a later date, to allow Stage 2 proceedings to take place as currently scheduled on 12 February.

So, turning to the substance of the legislation, this Bill will strengthen our standards processes and enhance the accountability of Members to those we represent. As I said several times during the Stage 1 scrutiny process, while the Welsh Government has brought this Bill forward, it is, at its very heart, a Bill that has been delivered on behalf of the Senedd. The Bill reflects the significant cross-party work that has been undertaken through the Standards of Conduct Committee's two reports on individual Member accountability, published last year, and represents a further evolution in our parliamentary democracy.

I would like to place on record my thanks to the Member Accountability Bill Committee, the Legislation, Justice and Constitution Committee and the Finance Committee for their thoughtful consideration of the Bill and the recommendations set out in the reports. I am also grateful to stakeholders for their engagement with the scrutiny of the Bill.

The Government has faithfully sought to translate the recommendations of the Standards of Conduct Committee into legislative provisions. However, I have been and continue to be open to the views of committees and Members during Stage 1 scrutiny, and it is on that basis that I have responded to the committee reports. I am therefore pleased to confirm that I have been able to accept or accept in principle the majority of the committees' recommendations. Whilst I have noted certain recommendations, this is in order to give further consideration to them ahead of the amending stages. A number of the recommendations made by the LJC and Bill committees cover the same or similar issues. Therefore, in my remarks today, I will seek to draw those matters together rather than cover the reports separately.

So, Llywydd, turning to the specific recommendations, I will begin with those in relation to Part 1 of the Bill on recall. I've accepted the recommendation of both the Bill and LJC committees that a duty should be placed on the Standards of Conduct Committee to issue recall guidelines. However, I wanted to highlight a technicality, given that guidance can only be issued following a resolution of the Senedd. I will prepare an amendment to place a requirement on the committee to lay draft recall guidelines before the Senedd. Both the Bill and LJC committees also recommended reducing the threshold for the Senedd to approve the recall guidance from a two-thirds majority to a simple majority. Having discussed both options at length during scrutiny, I made it clear that I would be led by the committee's views and would therefore bring forward an amendment on this basis.

Recommendation 6 of the Member Accountability Bill Committee makes clear the importance of consultation with the Electoral Commission and electoral stakeholders on the format of the ballot paper for a recall poll. In accepting this recommendation, I note that section 11 of the Bill requires the Welsh Ministers to consult the Electoral Commission in advance of making the recall regulations, which will include a sample ballot paper for returning officers to use at a recall poll. We will also undertake wider public consultation on those regulations, and I will also consider how best user testing can be undertaken to ensure that the ballot paper is clear and understandable for voters.

Llywydd, I have accepted the recommendation of the Member Accountability Bill Committee to extend the role of the electoral management board to cover recall polls, noting the evidence provided by the EMB to the committee. I will work closely with the Cabinet Secretary for Housing and Local Government to prepare amendments on that basis.

Members will know that the Bill does not currently provide a Member with time to have an appeal heard in order to overturn a conviction prior to a recall poll being triggered. I've noted the conclusion of the Bill committee on the basis of the range of evidence they gathered, and highlight to Members that the committee appreciate the logic for aligning this provision with a mechanism for automatic disqualification of a Member. This was the rationale on which the Bill's provisions were drafted, striking a balance between maintaining fairness towards the Member, whilst ensuring that the recall system is workable and effective. On the basis of the Bill committee's conclusion, I have rejected recommendation 6 of the LJC committee, which recommended allowing for criminal appeals to be exhausted before triggering a recall poll.

There are also a small number of other recommendations with regard to recall that I have not been able to accept. I have noted the recommendations relating to section 4 of the Bill. I recognise that both the Bill and LJC committees have concluded that consistency between the consequences of criminal conviction in the courts of England and Wales and the courts of Scotland and Northern Ireland is of greater importance than creating notification requirements on courts where it was in the competence of the Senedd to do so. I remain of the view, however, that a notification system for the courts in England and Wales is appropriate in relation to recall trigger event A, but I will give further consideration to this ahead of Stage 2.

Recommendation 13 in the LJC committee report would place the duty on the Welsh Ministers to conduct a full public consultation on the regulations under section 11. Given that there is already a public law obligation on the Welsh Ministers to consult on such regulations, as evidenced by the public consultation on the conduct Order passed by the Senedd last summer, I do not believe it's necessary to create a statutory obligation on the same basis.

Both the Bill and LJC committees recommend that the Welsh Ministers be required to make regulations under section 11. I'm conscious that placing the Welsh Ministers under a duty to make the regulations may create a tension between the need for Ministers to comply with the duty and the discretion of the Senedd to approve draft regulations laid before it. Therefore, I do not consider it necessary or appropriate to amend the existing power to a duty.

Recommendations 10 and 11 of the LJC committee report propose that any criminal offences in relation to recall polls should be placed on the face of the Bill or limited to those that currently exist in law. I'm not able to accept these recommendations. The rules for a recall poll will not be developed until the regulations under section 11 are made, so it is not possible at this stage to determine the specific criminal offences that will apply. However, I do consider it's very likely that many of the existing criminal electoral offences will be applicable.

And finally, on recall, I've accepted in principle the Finance Committee's recommendation on the need for a post-implementation review of the system, but I believe it may not necessarily be appropriate for this to be set out in legislation or be tied to the first use of a recall poll. The Bill already requires the Electoral Commission to prepare and publish a report on the administration of a recall poll. Given the nature of the Bill, I believe it should be for the Senedd to determine the most appropriate time to conduct a post-legislative review, and it's within its gift to determine when the best time for that would be.

Llywydd, turning to Part 2 of the Bill, both committees have recommended that the level of prescription set out in section 18 of the Bill regarding the Standards of Conduct Committee and lay members should largely be left to Standing Orders. I have instructed my officials to consider this further, and will prepare amendments to remove the elements of prescription.

I've accepted in principle recommendation 10 of the Bill committee, which states the standards commissioner should be subject to the Welsh language standards. My officials will engage with the Welsh Language Commissioner, and I will work closely with the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Welsh Language to prepare amendments to give effect to this.

Then turning to Part 3 of the Bill, which relates to the issue of deliberate deception, I've been clear during scrutiny that the creation of a new offence is novel and complex and therefore is not something that should be rushed. I've also acknowledged, as highlighted by the committees, the need for full assessments of the impact of such an offence on the justice system and on human rights, particularly as compatibility with convention rights is a core element of the Senedd's legislative competence. This will need to be carried out as part of the continuing work to develop the offence alongside relevant stakeholders.

I'd like to praise again the Standards of Conduct Committee for their work on this and their report published last February. It was important that the Government took into account the evidence gathered by the committee and their recommendations. That is why the Welsh Government took the decision to bring forward the duty to create such an offence, ensuring that the progress on the creation of an offence will be continued by the next Welsh Government.

I note that the Bill committee and the LJC committee recommended amending the Bill to include the offence at Stage 2 on the basis of consultation with key stakeholders, but were unable to reach a consensus as to the way forward if that was not possible. I’ve therefore committed to giving further consideration to the feasibility and implications of bringing forward an amendment ahead of Stage 2.

Finally, I have noted the LJCC recommendation relating to an update on the Minister of the Crown consents needed for the Bill, and I have said in my response that I will write to the committees with an update in the first week of February.

Llywydd, I am looking forward to Members' questions today and to continued scrutiny of the Bill as we move into amending stages, should Members agree the general principles motion that I am moving today. Diolch.

Diolch. The Counsel General has said that she will not be moving the financial resolution. This debate is now therefore on the general principles motion only, though Members can, of course, refer to the financial resolution should they wish to do so. If the general principles are agreed this afternoon, the Bill will enter Stage 2 tomorrow and amendments can be tabled. However, no proceedings may take place until the financial resolution has been agreed.

As you have just heard the Counsel General confirm, completion of the Stage 2 proceedings is still envisaged as 13 February, and the financial resolution will need to be agreed or not before that date. That’s for all to be clear on this. As made clear, I am merely supporting—. Not ‘supporting’, necessarily. I'm explaining my interpretation of what was just said by the Counsel General.

We’ll go to the debate. Where am I going first? David Rees, how could I forget you? The Chair of the committee, David Rees.

Diolch, Llywydd. Before I focus on the committee's report following our scrutiny of the Bill, on behalf of committee members I want to place on record our huge thanks to the committee team for their hard work in supporting our work, particularly within the tight timescales we were working to. Without their efforts, we could not have undertaken our duty to the level we have. And also to those witnesses who gave evidence to the committee.

On to the Bill. It’s important to start by stating that the aims of the Bill, which are to improve accountability of Senedd Members to those who elect them, and to ensure that candidates in the Senedd elections provide truthful and honest information, are things we should all seek to achieve and support. Thus, as a committee, we all agree that strengthened mechanisms to enhance that accountability should be supported, not least because of the effect this could have on public trust in the Senedd.

Nonetheless, the committee is concerned at the pace at which the Bill has been developed and its speed in going through this Senedd. Indeed, we wrote to the Business Committee twice expressing concerns over the challenging timetable.

Additionally, comments we heard that a large number of things in the Bill are a place to start the conversation are far from the best legislative practice, and only serve to demonstrate that the Bills brought before this Senedd must be as a result of those conversations, not as the starting of those conversations.

Daniel Greenberg, the UK Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards, placed great emphasis on the importance of public confidence and involvement in reforming the standards regime, but the proposals in this Bill were not subject to such public consultation by the Welsh Government, and our own engagement was limited by the time available for Stage 1 scrutiny.

Looking at the report, as has been highlighted, we made 11 recommendations and 18 conclusions, which demonstrates our position that the Bill needs significant improvement. I thank the Counsel General for her response to our report and her willingness to make some of those changes we seek. As the Counsel General has already stated, Parts 1 and 2 of the Bill focus upon the introduction of a recall system and the strengthening of the Standards of Conduct Committee.

On Part 1 of the Bill, there is general support for a recall procedure to be available to Welsh voters should the behaviour of Senedd Members fall short of what is expected of them. However, many stakeholders raised concerns about constraints on the operation of a recall system as a result of the closed list proportional representation electoral system we will be operating, in particular the way the recalled Members will be replaced by the next eligible person on a political party's list, rather than through a by-election, which is currently the operation in Westminster. The committee believes guidance for recall polls must balance flexibility with a need for certainty and transparency. To improve clarity, issuing such guidance should be mandatory, which is captured in our recommendation 3. I'm very pleased to hear the Counsel General intends to bring forward an amendment to place such a requirement on the Standards of Conduct Committee to lay draft recall guidance, leaving the final decision on the Senedd.

The Bill's current requirement for two thirds also has been recognised, and the Counsel General has agreed to the recommendation to change that in an amendment. Again, we very much appreciate that. Much of the detail relating to the conduct of a recall poll will be set out in secondary legislation made under section 11 of the Bill. Our committee's fifth recommendation is that the Bill should be amended so that the Welsh Ministers are required to make these regulations, rather than enabled to. I heard what the Counsel General said in her opening contribution that she rejected this recommendation, stating that she did not consider that such an amendment is needed because the 'may' is not a true discretion, as if no regulations are made, the Act, if passed, will become unworkable. But we do see Bills where Ministers are placed under a duty to bring forward regulations, so I would welcome clarification on why 'must' can appear in other Bills, but not this one.

Many of the provisions in Part 2 of the Bill prescribe how the standards regime should operate, and the committee concluded that the Senedd's procedures are a matter for the Senedd. Any limits placed in legislation on the Senedd's ability to design its own structures must be kept to a minimum.

While the committee welcomes the spirit within which section 18 has been drafted, we believe it is overly prescriptive and is at odds with long-standing principles about the self-regulation of parliaments. Therefore, the committee's eighth recommendation sets out what provisions we believe should be provided for in the Bill, including the establishment of a mandatory Standards of Conduct Committee, enabling lay members to be appointed to Senedd committees when considering matters relating to standards of conduct, and provision expressly prohibiting certain people from being appointed as lay members. We do not believe that any other provision currently in section 18 is required, and the Bill should be amended accordingly.

Finally, let's turn to Part 3 of the Bill—the section that has raised most awareness in the media today. As a committee, we are in agreement that safeguarding against the deliberate spread of misinformation is important to the proper functioning of elections and our democratic process. In our report, we echoed the sentiments of the Counsel General that it would be difficult to identify anyone who disagrees with the principle of holding to account those who are found to have deliberately misled in order to affect the outcome of an election.

However, introducing a criminal offence prohibiting the making or publishing of false or misleading statements of fact during an election is an extremely serious and highly complex matter. The committee concluded that such a significant provision should be subject to the scrutiny and transparency of the primary legislation process, and not left to the Welsh Ministers to bring forward via secondary legislation where it cannot be amended. It will either be accepted or rejected.

The power given to Welsh Ministers in the Bill is extremely broad. The Bill does not define the scope of a possible prohibition, its content, to whom it would apply, or what defences would be made available to individuals. There is a huge void in that information.

We are disappointed that the Welsh Government did not conduct the work required to bring forward a new criminal offence on the face of this Bill and did not consult with the Crown Prosecution Service, judiciary or police, despite having committed to legislate in this area 18 months ago. The lack of consultation and lack of detail in the Bill is not acceptable for a proposal that could create a new serious criminal offence with potentially life-changing consequences for individuals.

Our recommendation 11 is clear. The Government must draft detailed provisions for the proposed offence, consult widely, including with those likely to be impacted, such as the police, CPS and Ministry of Justice, conduct and publish justice and human rights impact assessments, and table comprehensive amendments at Stage 2 so that the full details of the offence are on the face of the Bill.

If this cannot be done in time for Stage 2 proceedings, or the amendments tabled at Stage 2 are deemed insufficient, the majority of the committee recommend that section 22 of the Bill should be removed before Stage 4 to allow for further work on the issue to be taken forward in future primary legislation.

In responding to our report, the Counsel General said that the creation of a new offence is a novel and complex issue and isn't something that should be rushed, and we agree with that. She says that she will consider the feasibility implications of undertaking this work in such time as to insert the offence into the Bill via Stage 2 amendments. I heard what she said, but I ask the Counsel General now to confirm that, should this work not be possible, she will table an amendment to remove section 22 from the Bill.

I will close by reminding the Senedd of recommendation 1 in our report. If the Senedd supports the general principles of the Bill and it advances to the next stage of the process, all Parts of the Bill require amendment and improvement before it is passed at Stage 4 and enacted.

Diolch, Llywydd. The Legislation, Justice and Constitution Committee reported on 23 December, drawing five conclusions and making 18 recommendations.

This is a Bill of considerable constitutional significance and importance. Its overarching aim of improving public confidence and trust in the conduct of elected representatives, and therefore the democratic process, is welcome. However, for those reasons, significantly more time should have been made available for Stage 1 scrutiny. Given the Bill's aim, it's regrettable that there's been limited public consultation by the Welsh Government and insufficient time for committees to engage the public through the Senedd’s legislative process.

In seeking to proceed quickly, the Welsh Government has brought forward some provisions that it has not fully thought through. This led us to express concern with the approach it has taken and with some of the approaches to legislating the Bill adopts, such that it risks breaching what the committee considers to be the principles of good law making. In our view, a laudable policy aim should be translated into legislation that delivers that aim effectively. Simply having legislation on the statute book, irrespective of its quality or effectiveness, to promote that aim would not be responsible and risks being counterproductive.

If the general principles of the Bill are agreed today, we believe the Bill should be substantially amended to mitigate some of our concerns and to bring it closer in line with established constitutional principles. In that regard I would like to focus on sections 11, 18 and 22 of the Bill. 

Section 11 is essential to the operation of the Bill’s recall system. The committee is concerned at the breadth of the regulation-making power it contains, making seven recommendations as a result. Their purpose was either to strengthen section 11 or seek an explanation on how the powers could be used, a key consideration for this committee and one of considerable importance given the power will be exercised in the next Senedd. Specifically, section 11(3)(c) permits the creation of new criminal offences by means of regulations. This is not appropriate. New criminal offences should be created through primary legislation, a view consistent with those of distinguished parliamentary practitioners. We therefore recommended that the Bill should be amended to include on its face any new criminal offences that would apply in relation to recall polls. If the intention is not to create new criminal offences, we recommended that the offences referred to in section 11(3)(c) should be limited to criminal offences that already exist in legislation. We are disappointed by the Counsel General’s response to these recommendations and do not find her arguments persuasive.

The committee’s report noted that the Counsel General said frequently that the Welsh Government should not be telling the Senedd how to conduct its business, which she asserted was not a good look for any democracy. However, that view has not been translated into the drafting of section 18 of the Bill, which is overly prescriptive of how the Senedd should manage its own affairs. As a result, we recommended that the Counsel General should table amendments to section 18 such that it only makes provision for there to be a standards of conduct committee and that non-Members of the Senedd may be appointed to that committee as lay members.  

Finally, our report highlights concerns with section 22 of the Bill. This section provides an exceptionally broad power enabling the Welsh Ministers of a future Government to create by regulation a new criminal offence prohibiting the making or publishing of false or misleading statements of fact before or during an election. It provides no definition on the scope of any offence or to who and how it would apply. We consider this approach to be constitutionally inappropriate. As we have indicated already, the creation of a new criminal offence should be provided for in primary legislation.  

We therefore made two recommendations. Recommendation 16 is that the Counsel General tables an amendment to remove section 22 from the Bill and instead sets the new criminal offence on the face of the Bill by amendment at Stage 2 proceedings. Recommendation 17 sets out how that should be achieved. If the Counsel General does not table these amendments, a majority of the committee believes that section 22 should be removed from the Bill. Diolch, Llywydd.

The Bill's aims of enhancing public trust in introducing a recall mechanism and strengthening the standards process are important reforms, but they come with inherent challenges. In particular, estimating costs for a new recall system with a reformed electoral framework is complex. The Counsel General told us that the assumptions underpinning the cost estimate of approximately £275,000 per recall poll are informed by stakeholder engagement, but constrained by limited historical data. We recognise the uncertainty, but believe the broad cost ranges set out in the RIA are a reasonable starting point.

The Bill's permissive provisions for appointing lay members to the Standards of Conduct Committee also create significant uncertainty in terms of measuring the financial impact. The RIA includes a wide annual cost range of between zero to around £87,000, reflecting unknowns regarding the use of the power, how many lay members may be appointed and their remuneration. While we consider the risk appropriately mitigated for now, we would expect revisions to the RIA, should the Bill be amended during the remaining legislative stages, to include a mandatory framework for lay members. That is why we are recommending that the Counsel General continues to work closely with key stakeholders to ensure that the RIA remains accurate and reflects any amendments to the Bill, and I note that the Counsel General agrees with this approach.

Written evidence from the Chief Executive and Clerk to the Senedd also identified an induction on ongoing support requirements for lay members. We would like to understand the financial implications of undertaking these activities, and recommend that the RIA be revised to include associated estimated costs. The Counsel General has committed to work with the Senedd Commission to assess these costs and amend the RIA accordingly.

To provide maximum transparency, we also call for costs associated with lay members to be recorded under a distinct budget line in the Senedd Commission's budget, separate from the commissioner for standards. This will enable the Finance Committee and other relevant committees to monitor expenditure and facilitate effective scrutiny of costs associated with the Bill's implementation. We welcome the Senedd Commission's positive response to this recommendation.

Turning to the new power for the commissioner for standards to initiate investigations without a formal complaint, we note that the RIA identifies no additional costs, and although we accept that these investigations are likely to be rare, this could still require staff time and the displacement of other work. We are pleased that the Counsel General has accepted our recommendation to work with the Senedd Commission and the commissioner for standards to assess the opportunity costs associated with this power, and update the RIA accordingly.

I thank the Counsel General for her statement in moving this Bill today. I'm also grateful to the Chairs who have spoken in this debate so far, and I certainly want to support the comments made by the Chairs of the committees, in particular on the challenges in drafting together a response to this legislation in such a tight time frame. I would encourage Members, if you haven't had a chance already, to read the reports produced by the committees on this legislation, because with the time constraints we did have as committee members, I think what's been pulled together is pretty remarkable, actually. I'm grateful to the clerks and Senedd staff for their support through this.

But I think in saying that, it's a real shame that this has been rushed, quite frankly, because this legislation is worthy of the full scrutiny, public consultation and preparatory work that any piece of legislation should be due. It's a shame that this hasn't been able to take place to the level that usual legislation would have—[Interruption.] And fast-tracking—. Certainly.

Just on the point the Member made about it being rushed, this Senedd has been discussing the issues around this for some two years. The standards committee took quite a considerable series of evidence sessions, which I sat on as an observer. The process is an iterative one, as in all legislation. We're, today, halfway through passing a Bill in 48 hours. Parliaments all the time pass Bills at varying timescales, so I think it's overstating to say it's being rushed.

I think that's what surprising about the fact that, as you say, there has been discussion for a long time, but the Government's chosen, at the very last moment possible, to introduce this legislation, considering, then, the timetable in terms of amendments thereafter. I agree on the point that I'm surprised that the Government chose at the very last moment possible to introduce this Bill, and it should have been introduced sooner, because the formal consultation has not taken place on this legislation, as you would and should expect it to. And the risk, of course, of this is that it then undermines the good, well-intentioned part of the Bill. At its heart, this Bill seeks its simple but crucial aim, which is to strengthen the trust between us here as Members of the Senedd and the public that we serve, and we all want to see that trust strengthen.

There are elements of this legislation that this side of the benches certainly support and have called for, in particular around the introduction of the recall mechanism. As I say, it's something we've called for previously. It gives constituents the power to remove a Member from office in case of conviction or a serious misconduct, and it's a significant and welcome step. It's true that the electorate should be able to hold Members who represent them to account when that trust is broken. Of course, there are amendments that should be made to that part of this proposal, but, broadly, what's been laid out before us today is welcome. 

And the second Part, broadly, around the introduction of the standards committee as a statutory committee—again, there's broad support for that. There are some significant elements of that, though, that I think—. And I'm grateful to the Counsel General for taking notes and certainly accepting a number of those recommendations around the types of lay members and the restrictions on lay members. I think there could be a real risk if former politicians sit on that committee as lay members in terms of showing true independence of thought and moving away from political interference as to the behaviour of politicians of this place. Members will note recommendation 8, in particular, in the Bill committee's report about those who should not be appointed as lay members, and I'm grateful to the Council General for her consideration of that.

There is a significant concern, though, around the third Part of this Bill, section 22. This aim of protecting voters from deliberate misinformation is absolutely understandable, but these measures could inadvertently restrict legitimate debate and political discussion. We've heard that already. The LJC committee highlighted the need for clarity on legislative competence and human rights implications, particularly regarding restrictions on speech in the context of candidate conduct. And, of course, the introduction of any new criminal offence, especially one that relates to freedom of speech and the proper functioning of our democratic system, is an extremely serious matter. There's a long-held constitutional principle that new criminal offences should only be introduced via primary legislation, where they can be subject to that full consultation, that full scrutiny, full assessments and appropriate amendments. And that simply has not taken place with what is in front of us today. 

There are few parameters as to the scope of the prohibition. In fact, as the committee report outlines, this poorly drafted part of the legislation does not define the scope of possible prohibition, doesn't define its content, to whom it would apply or what defences would be made available to individuals. There's no definition of what constitutes a statement of fact, nor clarity on what is meant by 'making' or 'publishing'. The Bill is silent on the time frames for prohibition, the period for complaints, the scope of persons covered and whether the offence requires knowledge or recklessness. In short, section 22 of the Bill—if its purpose is to strengthen trust in the democratic system, then this section is not fit for that purpose. And I believe, certainly, it should be removed from the Bill, especially as it puts at risk areas of the Bill that have been well thought through.

I'll bring my comments to a close, Llywydd. We believe that accountability should be effective, proportionate and deliverable in practice. On the recall mechanism, I believe that the Bill succeeds. On other measures, there is still work to do to ensure that the proposals strengthen trust, rather than create confusion or unnecessary legal complications. The Conservative group will be supporting the general principles today, but we will certainly be seeking amendments to this Bill at Stages 2 and 3, and we look forward to any Government amendments also. Diolch yn fawr iawn.

I want to make it clear that I'm contributing in my capacity as Chair of the Standards of Conduct Committee, and, in that role, I was grateful for the opportunity to give evidence to the Member Accountability Bill Committee, however brief that was. My contribution today will focus predominantly on the recall part of the proposed legislation and, as Members will likely expect, the aspects of the Bill that seek to strengthen our Senedd's standards process more broadly. Acting to ensure that the Senedd has the processes in place to maintain both individual and institutional integrity is central not just to the work of the Standards of Conduct Committee; it is a crucial cornerstone of our devolved democracy. That's why, in past months, and in the weeks remaining in this Senedd, as a committee, we are committed to what is a package of reform aimed at building trust and transparency in our processes, in our politicians and in our politics. We recognise that change is needed to create confidence in the political system, and proper processes are pivotal to this.

Turning first to the recall aspect of the legislation, the committee was in full agreement that a system of recall should be introduced in time for the seventh Senedd and that this should be tailored for Wales and the system we will have in place at the next election. This power would be a key part of the standards regime, allowing the people of Wales a say in whether an individual who has acted in a particularly egregious manner should be allowed to carry on representing them. It's integral to any strengthened standards process, and I would strongly urge all Members to not just support this, but to continue to work collaboratively to ensure that we have this provision in place in time for the next Senedd. The Standards of Conduct Committee will have a role in issuing recall guidance, as we have heard, which Members will be consulted on, but, given the importance of this, it should not be left to chance nor delay, and I also welcome the recommendation to change the approval threshold for the recall guidance from a two-thirds majority to a simple majority, as it brings it into line with other standards matters.

I'd like now to focus on some welcome and well-warranted proposals in the Bill that will serve to strengthen the Senedd standards process as a whole, and, importantly, sit alongside the work that my committee is currently undertaking to both reinforce aspects of the code of conduct and the tools we have here in the Senedd to better tackle matters around dignity and respect. With that in mind, the committee welcomes the provision for lay members on the Standards of Conduct Committee—something we recommended as part of the work we've been tasked to do on individual Member accountability. Once again, this is an improvement to our system and one that I believe we should all support and that should be ready to hit the ground running early in the next Senedd.

The Bill requires each Senedd to establish a Standards of Conduct Committee in statute. This was not a recommendation of the standards committee, but is welcome in showing a firm commitment to standards of conduct and should strongly underpin the standards regime as a whole and make clear its significance to us here. On this, the Member Accountability Bill Committee recommended limiting legislative details to essentials, which is good practice in terms of legislating with regard to the Senedd.

In closing, it is a privilege to have been elected to our Senedd to serve the community that shaped me, but with that privilege comes a responsibility not just in respect of our own individual actions, but to do all that we can together to ensure the integrity of the institution as a whole. We also have a responsibility as employers. This is not just the home of devolved democracy; it is a workplace too. We should want it to be a beacon of best practice in both respects.

Would the Member give way?

Absolutely.

Sorry to interrupt you towards the end of your speech. I just want to test something with you, as this is a Stage 1 debate. Specifically on the proposal to give the standards commissioner the freedom to launch their own investigations, which I supported as an observer on the standards committee, it does raise the question of what controls does the standards committee have on the commissioner were they to go rogue. There have been concerns about this current commissioner sometimes not conducting themselves in a way that the committee themselves are comfortable with, and that's been reflected in reports. If we're going to extend the power of the commissioner even further, what safeguards are there existing and what ones might we consider to make sure that this is done in a way that is within the comfort levels of Members?

I thank the Member for his contribution when I was in mid flow, then, towards the end of my—. I think it's—. It is something that was discussed during the standards committee evidence, and I think it would be helpful at the starting point, before I talk about, perhaps, the guardrails that are in place, to state the rationale behind this recommendation. I remember, in discussions in the standards committee, there was a vision of, perhaps, a standards commissioner, or any standards commissioner who is in an independent position to be stalking the corridors of the Senedd, looking for cases to take up. But the rationale in reality behind it was that we'd found in previous cases, perhaps in the course of an investigation, that something else was brought to the commissioner's attention and they were unable to investigate it, because there hadn't been a separate complaint about that matter.

The standards committee is able to question the commissioner on any approach taken, and the committee is not compelled to agree with the findings of a standards commissioner. The independent standards commissioner, although independent, also does need to have the confidence of the Senedd, and there is a mechanism for a motion to remove from office that could be tabled if six Members supported that. If I go back to the provision around lay members, I think that is also a really crucial point in terms of strengthening that process and the mechanisms of accountability there.

Just to go back, Llywydd, if I may, and wrap up in terms of that responsibility as both employers and as representatives here, I think we only make this place a beacon of best practice by all playing our part, not simply in the way that we conduct ourselves and the contributions we make, but in resolving to collectively strengthen our politics through those processes in place, and we call for those other significant wider steps to solidify our Senedd standards system, which are absolutely critical to achieving this. Diolch.

Firstly, I'm grateful to the committee and the Chair and the clerks, and the Counsel General as well for your time in meeting with myself and Adam and other Members as well. We spoke last December about how misinformation undermines community cohesion and how deliberate deception leads to tinderboxes and bonfires. That has happened—thankfully not here in Wales, but it has happened in our country, in the UK.

The need for speed, therefore, is that we face a significant threat, a significant threat here in Wales to our democracy with the Senedd elections. Lying flourishes in politics because we can get away with it, because we face no real consequences. If we wish to heal our democracy and stem the growth of distrust, we must first set our own house in order.

I do recognise the serious concerns raised by the committees about this Bill and the frustration expressed about leaving key decisions to secondary legislation. I agree that we need a clear definition of what constitutes a false or misleading statement, one that allows for no fudging of excuses and one that is clear about the consequences for breaching it. I also sympathise with comments made about how much detail the Welsh Government is leaving to secondary legislation, meaning that committees have not been able to scrutinise it as they would wish. It is encouraging to hear that many would have no objections to elements of this Bill if this detail was on the face of it. These are concerns that we cannot dismiss.

Freedom of speech is fundamental, but freedom of speech is not freedom to lie. We must ask ourselves what is the chilling effect of unchecked political deception on democracy itself. Fresh polling conducted by Compassion in Politics last year found that nine out of 10 people support the idea of making it a criminal offence for politicians to mislead the public.

For too long, across political parties, we have tested the public's patience on this. I was privileged to listen to some of the Radio Wales phone-in at lunch time today, and to hear voices from the public and from Dai Rees as well. [Laughter.] Well, you are—[Laughter.] May I set on the record that Dai Rees is a very important Member of the Senedd and a member of the public as well? But to hear members of the public phoning into that phone-in, and what we heard was incredulity that this wasn't already a law. I heard one man talking about how it put the icing on the cake that the Senedd was agonising over the terms of this Bill—the absurdity of doing so whilst politicians continue to avoid accountability. Another stated that if politicians had been fired for lying in Wales in the past we wouldn't be in the mess we're in.

This, for me, is a no-brainer, as many of you will know. In finance, in medicine, in law, when you sell a car, you can't deceive a customer. We're not talking about rhetoric or opinion; we're talking about factual matters, something which courts judge on every day of the week. The safeguards are there; the provision is tightly drawn. There are already laws against vexatious complaints and lying about the character of another politician during an election. The Bill simply extends that protection to the public, preventing politicians from deceiving them.

How many more times will we tell the people of Wales to wait? How much lower must trust fall before we act? Honesty in public life cannot just be a principle; it has to mean something in law. We must set a new standard for political integrity and show that Wales—[Interruption.] Yes, of course, sorry.

I fully appreciate what you're saying, and it's not the principal point here, and you've already highlighted the importance of having it on the face of the Bill, and the evidence we received was very much that it must be primary legislation. This will not be enacted in time for this election. Therefore, do you agree that what we should be doing is making sure that there is one in place for the election in 2030? And if we want something on the face of the Bill and it's not in this particular Bill at the time that we discuss Stage 4, then it should be deferred and the next Welsh Government should bring forward primary legislation that deals with that specific issue.

Thank you so much for that point. My very clear point is that if we pass this at Stage 1, then there is an opportunity at Stage 2 to debate whether this comes in earlier, which some of us actually feel very strongly that it should. So, thank you for the opportunity to clarify that.

Leadership—and we are leaders—requires more than bold statements. It requires follow-through on commitments, even when that path is difficult. So, I do urge Members to support the general principles of this Bill, whilst committing to the hard work of amendment and improvement that must follow at Stage 2. Let us prove that we can hold ourselves to the standards we expect of others. Let us show that, when people demand accountability, we have the courage to deliver on it. Diolch yn fawr iawn.

I very much welcome today's debate on the general principles of the Senedd Cymru (Member Accountability and Elections) Bill. As always, it was an interesting experience to sit on the committee scrutinising Stage 1 of the Bill, and, like others have said, I'm very grateful for the support given to us by the committee staff.

As you stated when you gave evidence to the committee, Counsel General, this Bill is unusual in that it's not a policy Bill, but it is a legislative proposal where the Welsh Government is actually the enabler to ensure that the Parliament is able to manage issues around matters to ensure our democracy is as robust as possible. The Stage 1 report that's before members from our committee was based on the limited scrutiny we as a committee were able to hear due to the very tight timeframe imposed upon us. I personally believe this Bill would have benefited from much wider pre-consultation and hearing more views from a wider civic society, but, unfortunately, time did not allow for this.

However, as you yourself have said, Counsel General, we are where we are, and this is an opportunity to bring forward a coherent Bill. It is good the Welsh Government have accepted the majority of our committee's recommendations, but what happens next is crucial. We need this legislation in place. I would not want our Parliament to be one of only a very few Parliaments, I think, without a recall system.

Ahead of Stage 2, the amendments that are brought forward need to be considered and well thought out to ensure the legislation is the very best it can be. You did say in your opening remarks that you'd instructed officials to look at amendments being brought forward, but I think that it would be good if you could confirm that you're very content to work with our committee to bring forward those amendments. Any recall system must be pragmatic and it must work with the closed list system that will be used from now on in the Senedd Cymru elections.

A standards of conduct committee should be mandatory, and the inclusion of lay members will, I believe, enhance it. We heard very different views about lay members, and of course there are parliaments that have lay members already, from which we can learn. I'm strongly of the opinion that certain individuals—and that's set out in our recommendation 8—should be disqualified from being a lay member, and I note your comments about further consideration of the criteria and also the consequences of having very strict criteria, because we all recognise the difficulties often faced in recruiting to public appointments here in Wales. Perhaps you could expand a little in your closing remarks on your thinking around the criteria.

Making factually incorrect statements to intentionally mislead the electorate is deliberate deception. As to whether the offence should be placed in primary legislation or dealt with by the current system, i.e. secondary legislation, again there was conflicting evidence on this and also concerns regarding there being little detail on all aspects of the new criminal offence. And again, I heard your remarks regarding bringing forward an amendment at Stage 2. As others have said, political integrity is so important, and if it's lost it's very difficult to recover. We see that in other parts of the world. So, this Bill in its entirety is being brought forward to ensure that there is more trust in our politics and I am pleased to support the general principles and look forward to Stages 2 and 3. Diolch.

You wait for an accountability Bill to come along for 20 years and now, like re-regulated buses, two arrive simultaneously, because while we're discussing Stage 1 of this Bill here, next week is the Report Stage of Westminster's accountability Bill. This is no accident. Both Bills respond to the great crisis of our time, the crisis of trust that has hardened into a crisis for democracy itself. Both Bills contain proposals for a new criminal offence of politicians misleading the public. And I think that it is really important, as Westminster moves forward with their proposal, that we should not move away from ours, because as we've heard, the public will not understand—they will not understand—and they certainly will not accept it, when a promise has been made by the Government to bring forward this legislation.

The UN says that misinformation and disinformation are the biggest threats the world now faces after pollution and climate change. And it's getting worse by the hour, because an army of bad actors now have the most sophisticated tools of deception in human history at their disposal. NewsGuard has found a network of TikTok accounts posing as media brands using AI to produce deepfakes of Keir Starmer announcing bogus policies. In the first week of December alone, these accounts produced 197 videos garnering 943,000 views. Reset Tech found 150 YouTube channels had used cheap AI to produce over 56,000 political deepfake videos in the UK. Those videos were viewed—and wait for it, this is not a typo—1.2 billion times in 2025. 

Lying in politics is the wild west of impunity at the moment. George Freeman, the Conservative MP, found that out when he complained about a deepfake video just before Christmas showing him defecting to Reform—one of the few where this actually wasn't true. The police told him there was no law against it. There was nothing they could do, despite the Representation of the People Act, despite the Online Safety Act, the Electoral Commission and everything else. That is the accountability gap that democracy, if it is to survive, must fill and must fill quickly. Because democracy is a machine that runs on truth. Thomas Jefferson, no less, understood this when he wrote to Richard Price, our very own constitutional guru of the Garw valley. He said,

'wherever the people are well informed they can be trusted with their own government'.

Without truth, no trust; without trust, no democracy. So, that's why, in order to defend democracy, we persuaded the Government to make the pledge they did make, and I quote—I remember negotiating with the former Counsel General Mick Antoniw and with the Trefnydd—that,

'the Welsh Government will bring forward legislation before 2026 for the disqualification of Members and candidates found guilty of deliberate deception'.

The Bill in its current form, in my view, doesn't deliver fully on that promise. A duty to introduce secondary legislation is not the same as the primary legislation that was pledged. But the response to that—our response to that—should be to request, as the committees have done, that the Government places this in primary legislation. And if the Government's not prepared to do that, in order that this Senedd keeps the promise that has been made to the Welsh people, then we as legislators should bring forward amendments to do that, or put as much detail as we can on the face of the Bill.

The suggestion that we should remove it, at this time, when we are facing the biggest crisis in democracy that we ever have faced—. Imagine the headline: 'Senedd lies on introducing a ban on lying.' The Government, having made—[Interruption.] The Government, having made that pledge, has to—[Interruption.] The Government, having made that pledge, has to commit to it. And it's for that reason that we have to proceed on this basis. I'll give way.

Thank you for giving way. I don't think it's a question of the Senedd lying in this situation. I think it's important that—and my point is this—the Senedd gets the law right, and that it's good law. That's important, and if we rush this and don't get it right, then I think we'll be held accountable for that as well.

Now, on the point you made about taking section 22 out, what we've highlighted as a committee is that if the amendments you're talking about aren't brought forward, there's a risk you could lose the recall element, because this element is not good law.

Well, I'll respond to you, if I may, in quoting Thomas Jefferson a second time. In the very same year he wrote to Richard Price, he also famously wrote to James Madison about the Bill of Rights, and what did he say?

'Half a loaf is better than no bread.'

If we cannot secure all our rights, let us secure what we can. That's how democracy works. There will be an opportunity in the later stages of this Bill to improve it, not to remove the commitment in terms of deliberate deception; improve it. And yes, the next Senedd, I hope, will go further again. But to do nothing while we face the crisis of these times, I think, is to abdicate our responsibility, and I believe that the public will rightly hold to account a Government that reneges on the promise that it has made, and I hope that the Counsel General will confirm that she intends, and the Government intends, to keep that pledge that was made on the floor of this Senedd. 

I think one thing that unites everybody in this Chamber, no matter what they might feel about this particular Bill, is a great deal of sympathy for the Counsel General, who finds herself in this situation this afternoon.

The Bill seeks to do a number of different things, of course, most of which were certainly not referenced in the previous contribution. I think there is unanimity in this Chamber that we do need to have reform to the standards committee, that we do need to have a recall process, and whilst there will be debate and discussion, as there should be, the principles of these things are established and, I think, accepted by all political parties here this afternoon, and Members across the Chamber.

But I also think that what is important is that we pass legislation that is fit for purpose and actually delivers on the promises made. I always enjoy listening to Adam's contributions, but he himself has misled everybody listening to him as to what this Bill will achieve. I agree with what's been said. I agreed with what Jane Dodds said earlier. I agreed with what Members across the Chamber have said about deeply misleading information that has become the common currency of social media. We heard, just before Christmas, 'rage bait' created as a word of the year, because people see information on social media, they've got no reason to disbelieve it, and they accept it as being true. And what happens is that you have the infection of misinformation and disinformation at the heart of our democracy, at the heart of our political and national discourse, and that is a disaster for us. It is an absolute disaster for us, and it needs to be regulated, and I've made that case over many, many years. But this Bill, of course, doesn't do that. This Bill doesn't do any of that, because the powers don't exist here in order to do it. This Bill seeks to do something different.

I believe that Members in this place should be subject to higher standards. I believe that Members in this place should be subject to a code of conduct that demands that we tell the truth, not just during an election campaign, but 365 days of the year. I believe that we do need a standards process that holds Members to account if they fall below the standards expected of them, and that's what we have at the moment, and that's what we're seeking to reform.

But this Bill doesn't do any of the things that the people here this afternoon have been claiming that it does do. It doesn't address the cesspit of X. It doesn't address the disinformation on Facebook. It doesn't address the fact that billionaires can buy our democracy. It does none of these things. It does none of them at all. It doesn't create an offence, and that is, in itself, offensive. It should create an offence. If you want to create new law, you have to do this properly—I will give way—but this Bill does not do that.

This Bill gives enormous powers to Ministers as yet unelected because we don't know who's going to be in office after May. Despite the confidence of some people here, we don't know who’s going to be holding these powers. So, we are giving people, who are as yet unelected, enormous powers to create offences that could lead to Members here being disqualified, and nobody in this room, in this Chamber, can define what that offence will be. I give way.

If, at a later stage in this Bill, an amendment was laid down, along the lines that the Criminal Bar Association in Wales actually did present to the committee, which does do exactly what you've just outlined, that deals with the cesspit of deliberate deception in politics, will you support it?

I described the cesspit of X. Now, don't try to misrepresent in this debate what I just said. You can't actually tell me what that amendment is, but you're asking me to support it. Now, let me say to you, Adam, let me say to you—[Interruption.] Let me say to you, you cannot argue about honesty in politics in that way. That's just a parody; it's not a reality of a debate. So, I believe—[Interruption.] I've given way to you once, I won't give way again.

I believe that we need to have good law passed in this place that does what we claim it's going to do. Section 3 of this Bill is not good law. It doesn't do what it claims to do. It is bad law delivered in a bad way—[Interruption.] I think my time is up, actually. 

So, you won't give way.

I will give way. I'm happy to give way if the Llywydd allows me to.

Yes. [Laughter.]

Good answer. The right one. Thank you.

You didn't know the question either.

Don't give me the option, Alun Davies. [Laughter.]

You've made the point that this, in your view, is not good law. But you've heard the point that Adam made about half a loaf versus no bread at all. This is about changing the culture and the way we operate. And there is an opportunity to bring amendments at Stage 2. That's the point that we actually have the full debate. So, actually passing it now, will you agree to vote for this at this stage?

I never argued that I'm not going to take this forward to Stage 2. I actually started my contribution, if you were listening, saying that we needed large parts of this Bill, and you don't suggest that you need large parts of this Bill and then vote against it at Stage 1, which would prevent you from amending it to get the sort of Bill you want. Of course I'll be voting for it at voting time because I want to see amendments to this Bill. And I want to see parts, certainly Parts 1 and 2, passed into law. So, I will be voting for it.

But let me say this, and I will try to conclude my remarks now, unless there are any further interventions. Let me say this: there are significant challenges facing our democracy at the moment, really serious challenges facing our democracy, and misinformation and disinformation. The impact of social media on our public discourse is at the heart of all of that, and we need serious regulation to deal with that. That is a matter for the United Kingdom Government. I very much welcome the legislation, which has been passed with cross-party support over recent years, to deliver some of that regulation. I believe it needs to go much, much further, and I very much welcome the more muscular approach adopted by UK Ministers since the beginning of the year.

since the beginning of the year.

So, I believe that we do need serious regulation of social media, particularly to ensure that we are able to take back honesty as part of our political and public discourse. I also believe that we need to address issues around artificial intelligence, which Adam Price has rightly identified as a serious threat to our democracy. This Bill does none of those things. None of those things at all. None of those things. And I'll say this to Jane Dodds: you might fool yourself, and you might fool Members in this Chamber by making the argument that this Bill will fundamentally change the culture of where we are, but what will seriously affect the culture of where we are today is serious regulation of social media, and I believe that we require that. What we don't need is bad law passed in a poor way, rushed through in order to make people feel good about themselves whilst not addressing the fundamental issues that this society has to face.

Diolch, Llywydd. Well, that was extremely interesting, and I very much welcome all the comments that have been made by the Chairs of the committees, members of the committees, and other Members today. Llywydd, I'll try my best to respond to most of them, but I'm under time constraints, obviously. So, I will try my best to do that. So, in no particular order, because I've written them down as people said them, as Lesley Griffiths acknowledged and David Rees skirted around in his contribution, this is not a Government policy Bill. This is a Bill where the Government enables the Senedd and parliamentary authorities to change the way that that parliamentary authority regulates Members and potentially candidates in an election. So, it is not a Government policy Bill. So, some of the comments that have been made stray across, in my view, into thinking it is a Government policy Bill, but it absolutely is not. So, the Government very much feels that the parliamentary authority should be in charge of its own procedures, and the Bill seeks to enable the parliamentary authorities to do various things in order to be able to regulate the conduct of Members in the future. So, I just wanted to start from there.

And then, as I say, in no particular order, I was very happy to accept the recommendations made by both the Bill and LJC committees to reduce the two-thirds majority threshold to a simple majority for the approval of the recall guidance that the Standards of Conduct Committee will devise, and also to change it to laying draft recall guidance so that the Senedd can go through the approvals process. But I am slightly baffled by the fact that the committee goes on to recommend moving all of the sections on lay members and the establishment of that process into Standing Orders, which require a two-thirds majority. So, I think the Government is going to have to think carefully about how that would work, because I'm not sure that was the intended outcome, but it would be the intended outcome if that's the route we went down. So, again, it's not for the Government to say what the parliamentary authorities want to do, and, Llywydd, I hope you don't mind my saying so, but I will want to have a conversation with you about some of those and the way that those flow together, because some consistency in the way that the rules are outlined will be important to the parliamentary authorities.

So, I accept that recommendation, but I do want to look very carefully at the issue about moving all of the lay members and everything else into Standing Orders, which would then require a two-thirds majority in order to even get off the ground. And then that's because, as I said to Peredur, that changes the financial composition of the Bill, because if that's what we do, we have no way of knowing whether lay members would ever be appointed, or whether such a majority could ever be found in the ensuing Senedd. So, I just wanted to make that point very clear.

Then in terms of the drafting practice around the regulations, it's common drafting practice in Senedd and UK Acts to use 'may' when conferring delegated authority on Ministers to make subordinate legislation, even when the delegation relates to subordinate legislation that's essential for the operation of the Act. So, it shouldn't be taken to mean that Welsh Ministers could decide not to make those regulations. A recall poll could not function without provision being made in regulations as to the conduct of the poll. And if the Bill is passed, I expect the next Senedd would want the system of recall to be implemented as soon as possible once the new Standards of Conduct Committee is established after the election, and they issue the recall guidance in question.

But that leads me back to the loophole of if they haven't yet appointed the lay members, and they have to do that by Standing Order two-thirds majority, you might get yourself into difficulty. I do think I need to think carefully with the committee about how those two things hold together. I'm not sure they do hold together right now.

A lot of people have talked about the rushed nature of the legislation or the speed with which the legislation has been brought forward, and several people seem to have thought we could have done it 18 months ago

18 months ago before the Senedd's standards committee had reported or even looked into it. I don't accept that. I also would also like to say to all Members here, especially those of you who are hoping to return, that you are moving to a four-year term. So, if you can't legislate in the fourth year of that term because you've run out of time, which you will have, what are you going to do?

So, the Senedd really needs to consider whether all Bills need the same amount of scrutiny for everything, because otherwise you will end up with only two useable years in your next Senedd. So, that's a general point to make, but it's one that I know, as Minister for Delivery, in charge of the legislative programme, is one the Senedd should seriously look at, because otherwise you are seriously restricting your ability to do it.

Turning to the business of the offence and whether it should be in primary legislation, just to point out to Members that criminal offences in relation to recall polls, the Bill currently proposes that those should be set out in regulations. That is absolutely consistent with the approach taken to the regulation of the conduct of all Senedd general elections via the conduct Order, which is made under section 13 of the Government of Wales Act. Furthermore, establishing precisely which criminal electoral offences it will be necessary to apply to recall polls requires further detailed consideration. The conduct Order is enormous. Some of you will remember very recently it going through this Senedd. That is what sets out the current criminal offences for elections in secondary legislation. So, the idea that that's somehow lesser or does not afford proper scrutiny is simply not so. [Interruption.] Of course.

I understand what you just said about the conduct Order, but those offences were actually in an Act within Parliament, in primary legislation. So, whilst the conduct Order might introduce them for the first time here, they are primary legislation within Westminster.

Yes, but they're not primary legislation here, David, and the Senedd accepts the conduct Order and secondary regulation as the way that we conduct our elections. And so this is—. The Bill proposes a consistent approach to that in terms of that all criminal offences affecting an election should be contained in the conduct Order, because otherwise you face the spectre of having to look in several different places for things that affect you. Similarly, we have sought to make sure that the disqualification regime and this regime match, so you don't have—. I had a long conversation with Jane Dodds and Adam Price, if you don't mind my mentioning it, about making sure that the flow-through of disqualification into election and so on made sense and coherence with this. It's quite important to make sure that we do not flit about with different standards depending on which part of the cycle we're in. So that's why I have noted those recommendations; I think we need to think through what that flow looks like.

My own view is that if the Senedd—. This is a personal view, not the view of the Government; I too am a Senedd Member as well as a member of the Government. My own view is that if you don't put the lay members, the changes to the standards commissioner's functions and all the rest of it on the face of the Bill, you will find that this isn't done until towards the end of the next Senedd, if it's done at all. So, for those of us who very much want to see that in place—I speak as an individual Senedd Member here now, not as a member of the Government—I would very much urge that those provisions should be on the face of the Bill. And, Llywydd, I would very much like a conversation with you about how the parliamentary authorities want the Government to enable those kinds of things to happen.

I want to finish by reiterating that we feel very strongly that the Welsh Government should not tell the parliamentary authority how to conduct its proceedings; that this is an enabling Bill, that it enables the parliamentary authorities to do the right things that they wish to do. May I remind you, Members of the Senedd, we are then all going to vote on what is a Senedd Bill? So, just to be really clear, that would then become a Senedd Bill that regulated the parliamentary authorities and their conduct. So, I just wanted to be very clear that that is where we were coming from.

A couple of other things I just wanted to run through, Llywydd, if I still have a little bit of time to do so. A few people mentioned—. Sorry, I’ve lost my space in my scribbled notes now. Give me one moment. Peredur, I really wanted to just thank you for the sensible approach that the committee have taken and to pledge—. I think you asked me to say that I would come back to you with various details, so I just wanted to say that of course we will do that. We will try and make sure that we keep in lockstep. And to assure the Llywydd that we will lay the financial resolution in time for Stage 2 proceedings, once we understand what we’re talking about. So, I need to have that conversation as soon as possible. So, I just wanted to be really clear about that.

In terms of what is in the Bill and what isn’t in the Bill, one of the issues for this Bill is around the competence of the Senedd. So, the Senedd doesn’t have general competence to change free speech

to change free speech or regulate social media companies, or do any of those things. It does, however, have competence to regulate the behaviour of candidates in Senedd elections and Senedd elections. So, we need to couch it in ways that ensure that it isn't subject to challenge.

I don't have to remind Members, I'm sure, that Stage 4 of this Bill is currently scheduled for the very last sitting day of the Parliament. So, if it was to be referred during the intimation period, that would be the end of it—it would fall; there would be no chance for it to come back and be rescued. So, it's really important that it stays inside competence and this is a matter I've discussed with a large number of individual Members across the Chamber. I'm more than happy to have those discussions going forward.

And then finally, Llywydd, I really hope—and I think Alan Davies said this—that Members will agree the general principles of the Bill, because I think it's really important to be able to continue this conversation, to continue the process of amendment and improvement of the Bill, to make sure that we do not fall behind other UK legislatures in terms of recall, and that we have the best possible set of guidelines and conduct requirements for both our candidates and our Senedd Members. So, on that basis, Llywydd, I really hope and urge Members to agree the general principles of the Bill. Diolch. 

Diolch yn fawr, Llywydd. I'm pleased to propose that the Senedd agrees the general principles of the Development of Tourism and Regulation of Visitor Accommodation (Wales) Bill. As you would expect, I want to thank the Chairs and members of the Economy, Trade and Rural Affairs Committee, the Finance Committee and the Legislation, Justice and Constitution Committee for their detailed scrutiny work on this Bill. I also want to thank all of those who have taken time to share views and expertise in evidence. If the Senedd agrees that the Bill should move forward today, then I look forward to further engagement with them as the scrutiny process continues.

Llywydd, all three Senedd committees have made detailed recommendations about different aspects of the Bill. Where committees have asked for information in advance of today's debate, I have done my best to provide it. There are, of course, other aspects that will also be addressed this afternoon. I should also say at the outset that, of course, I welcome the recommendation of the Economy, Trade and Rural Affairs Committee that the Senedd should agree to the general principles of the Bill.

At the start of my contribution, I want to highlight just three key purposes that lie at the heart of the licensing scheme that the Bill seeks to establish. The Bill begins from a commitment to the promotion of tourism in Wales, strengthening its worldwide reputation for quality of product and experience, endorsing the work of our many excellent providers, while requiring their competitors to meet the same standards. In doing so, the Bill creates a clear, modern, bilingual code of Welsh law to support the industry and to make the law accessible to Welsh citizens, and in doing so, to build on the register created under the Visitor Accommodation (Register and Levy) Etc. (Wales) Bill passed by this Senedd last year.

And thirdly, the Bill is predicated on a determination to put the experience of the visitor at the forefront of this new legislation, providing visible reassurance to visitors within and to Wales 

within and to Wales that any regulated accommodation they book will meet the standards they expect. 

Now, in order to put these principles to work, the Bill creates a licensing scheme for self-contained, self-catering accommodation, and it provides a way in which that licensing scheme can be extended to other types of accommodation in the future. The system created strikes a balance between light-touch obligations for those providers who are already doing the right things, while being robust in requiring others to meet their obligations. And in those residual cases, where there is a clear refusal to meet those obligations, the Bill puts in place procedures to stop those providers from operating.

How then does the Bill propose oversight of the system and how should it be exercised? Early in its development, Llywydd, and drawing on experience elsewhere, we concluded that it would not be proportionate physically to inspect all accommodation before awarding a licence. In the early stages of Bill implementation, those who are already operating will be enabled to continue to do so while the evidence needed by the new system is assembled and approved. For new entrants, that evidence will have to be provided in advance of opening, so that visitors can be confident that the necessary standards are being met. 

The Bill divides these standards into specific and general requirements. The specific standards very largely reflect obligations that already exist for providers, things that they should already be meeting, in relation, for example, to gas, electrical and fire safety. The Bill adds in a new requirement in relation to public liability insurance. In all these cases, the intention is to make it as easy as possible for providers to demonstrate that they have these requirements already in place, providing reassurance to visitors in the process. The general standards apply if accommodation, despite having a licence, nevertheless proves unfit for visitors. In those circumstances, the Bill ensures that robust action can be taken to ensure that a property is safe and of a standard that visitors are entitled to expect and to enjoy.

For the tourism sector to thrive in Wales, it has to do so in a sustainable partnership with its host communities. In addition to reassuring visitors and other operators, the Bill will help to support this relationship by showing that providers meet the standards it sets out. 

Now, Llywydd, the advertising requirements in the Bill were subject to scrutiny by both the ETRA and the LCJ committees, with recommendations made by both. I want to be clear that advertising requirements are a key part of the Bill. Where a potential visitor is attracted by an advert, it is right that they are able to see in Wales that the premises is registered and that registration provides a clear and simple pathway through which the visitor can establish whether that accommodation needs to be licenced, and, if so, whether a current licence exists. 

During Stage 1 scrutiny, intermediaries argued that they should not be held liable for the accuracy of information hosted on their platforms. Now, I want to work with those companies to make it as easy as possible for them to comply with the requirements of the Bill, but I am not convinced that they should be absolved from the responsibility to ensure that the information they provide is accurate. If this Bill succeeds, anyone advertising visitor accommodation in Wales must include the registration number for that premises in the advert. That is the gateway to the third of the principles I set out at the outset, putting the visitor at the forefront of the new system. Of course, if advertisers have a reasonable excuse for not including the registration number, then no offence will have been committed, and I've asked my officials to work further with the sector to ensure that this approach is clear.