National Assembly for Wales

Welcome to this Plenary session. Before we begin, I want to set out a few points. This meeting is in hybrid format, with some Members in the Senedd Chamber and others joining by video-conference. A Plenary meeting held using video-conference, in accordance with the Standing Orders of the Welsh Parliament, constitute Senedd proceedings for the purposes of the Government of Wales Act 2006. Some of the provisions of Standing Order 34 will apply for today's Plenary meeting, and those are noted on your agenda. And I would remind Members also that Standing Orders relating to order in Plenary meetings apply to this meeting, and apply equally to Members in the Siambr as to those joining virtually.

The first item on our agenda this afternoon is the statement by the First Minister on the coronavirus. Thank you to the First Minister for agreeing to bring this statement forward, but may I remind everyone that it's the expectation of Senedd Members and myself as the Llywydd that statements of this significance should be made at the earliest possible opportunity to the Senedd, on all occasions? The First Minister to make the statement—Mark Drakeford.

Llywydd, thank you very much. Today, I will report to the Senedd on the latest developments as we act to control the coronavirus in Wales. Unfortunately, after a long period of gradual decline in the number of cases, we are once again seeing significant increases. We must respond robustly. A number of important measures are in place across Wales already. Over the last week, we have also introduced local restrictions in the areas where the increases in cases are steepest. Yesterday, I announced additional measures at a national level, following discussions with the other UK Governments.

Llywydd, I will begin by setting out the latest evidence about the spread of coronavirus in Wales. Fortunately, we are not yet facing the same extensive pressures as some other parts of the UK. This is thanks in part to our more cautious approach and the measures we have kept in place since the outset of the pandemic, such as our advice for people to work from home wherever possible. It is also thanks to the hard work and efforts of everyone in Wales who have followed the rules and helped to control the spread of the virus.

Nevertheless, we have seen a marked increase in cases of coronavirus since the last weeks of August. The overall rate in Wales is now 46.8 cases per 100,000 people. Yet, the picture across Wales is mixed. In parts of south Wales, we have seen large clusters and outbreaks of the virus that have led to community transmission. Llywydd, Members will be aware that we have responded to these sharp increases in Blaenau Gwent, Bridgend, Caerphilly borough, Merthyr Tydfil, Newport and Rhondda Cynon Taf by introducing local restrictions over the course of the last fortnight. The most recent of these came into force last night, as the health Minister set out in his statement to Members yesterday. But in other parts of Wales, in the west and in parts of north Wales, for example, the rates continue to be much lower.

It is sad to report, Llywydd, that we are, once again, however, seeing people admitted to hospital, requiring treatment for the serious effects of coronavirus, and particularly sadly, in the last week, we have once again seen people dying from this disease. Now is the time to take some concerted further action to try to prevent coronavirus regaining a foothold in our local communities, towns and cities.

Yesterday, I discussed a series of proposals for co-ordinated action across the UK with the First Ministers of Scotland and Northern Ireland and the Prime Minister. Many of the proposals talked about there are already in place in Wales. We have taken a different approach that is suitable to our needs and circumstances. We have been more cautious in relaxing restrictions, we have lifted restrictions step by step and we have kept some advice in place throughout the pandemic—actions and advice that other parts of the UK are now returning to adopt. 

We have all done so much already, but if we are to continue making a positive difference to this virus, all Welsh citizens need to go on following that approach. It means working from home, wherever possible—a message that is as relevant to employers as it is for workers. We must all follow the rules about meeting indoors. If you are living in an area already under local restrictions, you can only meet people who you do not live with outdoors for the time being. In other parts of Wales, up to six people can meet indoors, provided they all come from one extended household, and children under 11 do not count towards that six here in Wales.

It's now a requirement that we must wear face coverings on public transport, in shops, and in other indoor public places. And I am asking people in Wales to think carefully about where we go and who we meet, because the more places we go to and the more people we come in contact with, the greater the chances we have of catching coronavirus and spreading it to others. 

Llywydd, to help strengthen our response to coronavirus and prevent a fresh crisis in Wales, we are introducing some new measures, which will apply on a national basis, including in those areas that are subject to local restrictions. To assist people who are asked to self-isolate, we will provide a £500 payment to support people on low incomes, and we will make a change to Welsh law to stop employers from making it difficult for employees to self-isolate when they need to do so.

And alongside other UK nations, we will introduce some targeted action in the hospitality sector. The great majority of hospitality businesses have made changes to their premises and introduced new protocols to protect customers and staff. And I am immensely grateful for all the efforts that they have made to comply with the legal requirements we have here in Wales. Unfortunately, we have seen some isolated examples of poor practice, and I am very glad to see local authorities taking enforcement action where there have been breaches of the regulations. We're now asking the hospitality sector to go further. From tomorrow, at 6 p.m., hospitality businesses in Wales, including pubs, cafes, restaurants and casinos, will have to stop selling alcohol at 10 p.m. They will also have to provide table service only. Off-licences, including supermarkets, will also have to stop selling alcohol at 10 o'clock in the evening. 

Llywydd, I also want to use this opportunity to update Members about a meeting I held yesterday with the leaders of the local authorities across south Wales, together with the NHS, police, and police and crime commissioners. We discussed the local restrictions already in place, their impact on neighbouring authorities and whether those local restrictions should be extended to other local council areas. We agreed that we continue to need to be able to act swiftly and to take preventative action where possible, but also that this has to be proportionate to the risk. We should only put new restrictions on people's lives and livelihoods where it is proportionate to do so. Llywydd, there was agreement from all partners that our Welsh partnership approach is fundamental in responding to the virus—educating, informing and then firm enforcement where that is necessary.

2020 has been an incredibly difficult year for so many people in Wales, but we have succeeded the most where we have acted together to protect our families and to look out for our neighbours. We all now need to do that together once again. We need everybody in Wales to follow the rules, to act in accordance with the guidance and to take those steps to protect ourselves and our loved ones. Together, we can still keep Wales safe. Llywydd, diolch yn fawr. 

Thank you, First Minister, for your statement this afternoon. I have to say I bitterly regret that you weren't in a position to make this statement yesterday before your tv broadcast, like the other First Ministers and Prime Minister across the UK who spoke to their respective Parliaments. And I hope that you will apologise for that discourtesy, because the BBC were putting up a story at 6 o'clock, despite Members being told at 5.30 p.m., that no decision had been taken by the Government, and told just before 8 o'clock. We need to get back to a parliamentary democracy functioning here, where the Parliament actually debates and discusses these regulations and then votes on them, and I think an apology is needed from you today because yesterday was a deplorable act on your behalf, not coming before the Assembly and addressing it in a manner that should be fitting of a national Parliament. 

Could I ask you also about the six-month timeline that the Prime Minister and the First Ministers of Scotland and Northern Ireland have talked about? Is that a timeline for these restrictions, and a look forward as to when we might see some respite from the virus that you subscribe to and that other leaders in other parts of the United Kingdom signed up to, or do you have a different view?

Could I also ask why it is the case that you haven't resumed shielding, given the increased incidence of the virus in certain parts of Wales, and what measures have been put in place to protect care homes, given the increased prevalence of the virus?

I'd also like to try and understand the science behind the 10 o'clock cut-off time for serving alcohol within licensed premises as opposed to closing licensed premises at 10 o'clock. This, obviously, is different to other parts of the United Kingdom, and there's nothing stopping someone at two minutes to 10 ordering a large round of drinks and staying within a licensed premises to consume those drinks. So, I'd like to understand the science and the advice that you've received about that difference in the interpretation of the 10 p.m. cut-off here in Wales.

Also, could you confirm whether any additional powers or regs were required from the all-agency meeting that you chaired yesterday from partner organisations that you're working with from across Wales? And, importantly, could you reaffirm that the NHS is very much open here in Wales for business, and it is imperative that people, when they need to seek additional help and support from the NHS, do interact with it, and that, ultimately, we should be moving to COVID-lite hospitals so that procedures can begin in real volume and so we can start addressing some of the horrendous waiting times we've had build up over the summer months? Earlier in the week, I touched on the point that a 60 per cent decline in procedures had occurred over the six months since the first national lockdown, and I hope you will agree with me it's vitally important that we start addressing some of the concerns people have about access and services within the Welsh NHS.

And my last point to you, First Minister, is that with the return of students to universities, FE colleges and other facilities across Wales, it is vital that the mental health of students is guarded by universities and protected, because many young people will be leaving home for the first time in what is normally a celebratory mood and something of a great adventure, but, with many of the regulations, there is a real risk of isolation on campus happening if, obviously, support is not put in place. And I'd be pleased to try and understand what engagement the sector is having with the Welsh Government to make sure that students do not fall foul of some of these regulations that are put in place to protect them and also the host communities that the universities are located in. Thank you, First Minister.

Llywydd, Andrew R.T. Davies very fairly put the point to me yesterday about making a statement to the Senedd as soon as I was able to do so. I said in my answer to him then that I could not guarantee that all the necessary decisions would have been made in time to make such a statement while the Senedd was still in session yesterday. 

The decisions we are making all the time in the Welsh Government are fundamentally important decisions that have an impact on the lives of so many of our fellow citizens. Those decisions were still being made well into the evening yesterday. I don't make an apology for coming in front of the Senedd at 1.30 p.m. today, because that is the earliest moment at which I am able to report to you on decisions that were being made yesterday, and being made in consultation with our partners and with all the seriousness that Senedd Members would expect us to apply to these very difficult and challenging times. 

Having said that, I'm very happy to reply to the other points that Andrew R.T. Davies has made this afternoon. We review our regulations every three weeks. That's not the case in all other parts of the United Kingdom. That means we are able to act swiftly and flexibly to changing circumstances. While I am fearful that a number of the national measures we have had to put in place will last for some weeks or maybe even months, I don't want to put an artificial deadline on for how long they will last, because we will review them every three weeks and we will report every three weeks, both to the Welsh public and to the Senedd, on the extent to which they are still necessary. And if we were in the fortunate position of being able to lift those restrictions more quickly than six months, that is what I would wish to see, and that is the way we have approached this matter throughout the crisis and that's how I intend to continue to navigate through these difficult times.

On the shielding population, there was no discussion at the COBRA meeting yesterday—no fresh advice to any of the Governments of the UK about returning to shielding. Shielding is a course of action that brings harms as well as protections. We know that many of those people who we asked to self-isolate in that way suffered from isolation and from an impact on their mental health and well-being. I know that the Chief Medical Officer for Wales is considering writing again to all the people who continue to be on our shielding list in Wales, updating them on the current position, providing them with further advice. But a blanket return to the position we had earlier in the year is not under consideration at this point in any part of the United Kingdom as far as I am aware. We will keep that too under very careful review.

As for the 10 o'clock point, I was influenced in the discussions, which, as I say, went on well into the evening, by information I was receiving from the hospitality sector, particularly those restaurants that have worked hard to put a business model in place in Wales in which they are able to have two groups of people come into a restaurant in an evening: a first group at 7 o'clock in the evening, a break for necessary cleaning and coronavirus protections to take place, and then a further set of people who come to the restaurant at between 8.30 p.m. and 9 o'clock in the evening. We could have had an approach in Wales where, at 10 o'clock, all those people were required to leave and stand on the pavement. I think that would have caused real damage to that business model that people have worked so hard to put in place.

And every time we make these decisions, we are balancing the needs of people in business and in employment with the need to protect public health. I think the sector is very used to not allowing people to act irresponsibly in the few minutes leading up to a 10 o'clock closure. Our system will allow people to drink up, to eat up, to bring their evening to an orderly close and then make their way home. That is the way the vast majority of people who go out for an evening here in Wales behave already. I didn't want to make their lives more difficult while we continue to bear down on that minority of people in Wales who have, as the evening gets later, found themselves consuming alcohol to an extent that they can no longer remember where they have been or who they have met with, and who, in the process, cause a wholly disproportionate impact on others.

In our meeting last evening, of course we talked about whether a regional approach was now necessary in Wales. It was a very useful meeting; I was very grateful to all the agencies who took time to attend. As I said in my statement, Llywydd, the balance of opinion was that we've not yet reached that point, that there are still local measures in the hands of those local authorities that they are able to take alongside the new national measures that I outlined in my statement to Members. But the emphasis was also on the need for us to remain right on top of the figures, acting swiftly if we need to, and, if further action is required to protect public health, we will not hesitate to do so. 

Let me reinforce the important points that Andrew R.T. Davies made about the NHS remaining open for business. Such hard work has gone on in the NHS to create COVID-secure areas, to put new protections in place so that people who need treatment for other conditions can feel confident in coming forward for them, and that is very much the message from the NHS in Wales. If you need treatment, please be sure the NHS is still there for you in Wales. 

Finally, to Andrew R.T. Davies's point about students, he's absolutely right: at the age of 18, people going away to university, it is a great adventure in their lives. Sadly, this year, that adventure will be very different. We work really closely with all the higher education institutions here in Wales to make sure that those students coming from other parts of the United Kingdom and from overseas will still have as good an experience as we can possibly provide for them, whilst still needing them too to play their part in keeping themselves safe and not posing risks unnecessarily to other people in the localities that they will now be resident in, and will inevitably have anxieties of their own about what the future might hold. 

I welcome this opportunity to discuss the Wales-wide measures announced yesterday by the First Minister. However, I also want to place on record how unacceptable it is that we weren't afforded this opportunity yesterday. The Senedd has been sidelined time and time again in favour of government by press briefing. It wasn't the case, as you were told, Llywydd, that we couldn't debate this yesterday evening as the First Minister had not yet decided, because, literally within minutes of leaving the Chamber after close of proceedings, I was told in detail by the BBC what the Government had decided. As well as being disrespectful to you, Llywydd, it undermines this institution and our roles as elected Members, it prevents proper democratic scrutiny and it's corrosive of trust. And if the First Minister wants to contradict me, perhaps he can tell us when he recorded the pre-recorded message then later relayed to the nation. 

In turning to the content of the announcement, I wholeheartedly agree with the First Minister when he says there's a very real possibility that we all have to take seriously that Wales could see the virus regain a foothold in our communities. It seems to us, however, that in the announcement last night, at least, the Government is seemingly at odds with the advice given to Ministers by the technical advisory cell, who state in their latest report published yesterday that an earlier and more comprehensive response can prevent extended lockdowns. And the evidence before us, the reason that we're having this statement, suggests that the response to date has neither been early nor comprehensive. As Wales's former chief medical officer says today, the rising wave of cases in Wales suggests that the response in Wales may not have been cautious enough. You had a traffic-light system, First Minister, but it looks like the lights went out. There was no mention of that traffic-light system nor the road map in yesterday's statement. And if we are to take Dame Deirdre Hine's critique seriously, as we surely should, we cannot halfheartedly address a full-on COVID resurgence in many of our communities, neither can we have a one-size-fits-all approach, as it fails to take into account the divergent COVID map of Wales, as you have said. 

Where special measures are required, they need to create a difference, not a headline. The 10 p.m. closing time for pubs and restaurants introduced in Antwerp to contain a steady rise in coronavirus cases led to a sustained decrease in August, but it was introduced alongside a complete curfew, a night-time lockdown, effectively, from 11 p.m. onwards. What is the evidence that the measure announced last night on a Wales-wide basis is going to have the impact that you desire? Where we have local restrictions in place in Wales, we should surely be going further—much further—by introducing the temporary, or at least earlier, closure of pubs and clubs, with accompanying sector-specific support. And in these areas, the selling of alcohol at off-licences should be restricted much earlier, to 6 p.m. or 7 p.m., which is the latest that alcohol can be bought at off-licences in Sweden. 

The guidance on travel at the moment is neither clear nor consistent. On the Today programme this morning, you said that you were not stopping people from going on holiday, however the overarching appeal is for people not to make non-essential journeys. How are they defined? Can people visit family, drive to a beauty spot, to the pub, or jump in the car and play a round of golf? It's my birthday today, First Minister, and I was planning on going with my partner to a local restaurant—should I now cancel? These are the questions that people are asking themselves across Wales. Clearly, it makes sense to stop travel from high-risk areas, but that has to include areas not in Wales. You can't go to Tenby from Blaenau Gwent, but you can from Bolton. 

Now, a national lockdown is something we should all want to avoid. If there is a window, we must seize it now without delay and with rigorous, targeted action, backed by a comprehensive communications strategy, which should involve bringing back daily news conferences. Ministers should adopt the clear but adaptable Irish approach, consisting of five levels applied locally. It's time to turn that traffic-light system back on, First Minister, before we find the whole of Wales flashing red once more. 

Well, Llywydd, I'll see if there's anything in what the Member has said to which I can make a positive response. I entirely refute any disrespect. This Government has answered questions on the floor of the Senedd right throughout the coronavirus crisis, including right through our recess period. We have been more available to this Senedd than any other Parliament in the United Kingdom has been able to question Ministers that are responsible to those different democratic forums. We were making decisions here, as I said, well into last evening. I am not responsible for the time that the BBC requires material to be supplied to them; that's not a decision that I make, it's a decision that broadcasters make because of their scheduling obligations, and we pushed that to the very limit in order to try to make decisions in the way that I think they need to be made in Wales. And I'm very pleased to be here this afternoon, at the earliest opportunity, answering Members' questions. 

For the rest of Adam Price's contribution, I'm not sure exactly what I can make of it, Llywydd. He asked me to follow the advice of a chief medical officer who was a chief medical officer 20 years ago when I have a chief medical officer here today whose advice I am able to take and do my best to follow.

He complains about people hearing things in news conferences rather than in the Senedd, and then urges me to reinstate news conferences on every day of the week. He talks about one size not fitting all, and then urges me to go much further in restricting the freedoms available to people in their daily lives in Wales. Well, I don't agree with him. I think he is not compliant with the obligation that we have under the regulations in Wales to be proportionate in every action we take, to weigh up the public health risk, and then to take measures that we think are commensurate with that risk. It's why we will have an approach in Wales that remains cautious. How many times on the floor of the Senedd have I been urged by Members not to be so cautious, not to lag behind—as people have put it to me—when other parts of the United Kingdom have gone further, including from the leader of Plaid Cymru himself when he was pointing to Scotland as an example? Our careful, cautious approach has stood us in good stead. We will go on being proportionate as much as we can in the decisions that we make.

The Irish model, which the Member referred to, amongst his many other references to places for which I have no responsibility whatsoever, in Antwerp and Sweden and other parts of his international travel prospectus—. In Ireland, they've had to review their model so often that it is very difficult, I think, for people to keep up with the changes that are being made. We are trying, for simplicity's sake and to enable people in Wales to have a fighting chance of understanding the rules that we are asking them to abide by, to make those changes as seldom as possible. That is the course of action that we continue to follow here in Wales, and the announcements made and reported to the Senedd today are consistent with that approach.

First Minister, Andrew R.T. Davies, very generously I thought, said he bitterly regretted that you weren't in a position to make the announcement to the Senedd yesterday. Isn't the reality, as described by Adam Price, that you preferred not to? You preferred instead to give that pre-recorded interview, saying pretty much what you've just said now, pretty much what you could have said to the Senedd yesterday. You preferred to give that to the BBC because you wanted to make your announcement to the nation through the BBC and not the Senedd. And if that is not the case, can you answer his question as to what time you sent that pre-recorded video of your speech to the BBC?

Now, you don't want to pick up on the six-month projection that I think has been given by the UK Government for England, and isn't that because these restrictions are pretty much indefinite? Is your strategy not to continue keeping the economy—and society to greater or lesser extent—locked down indefinitely, suppressing the virus, ostensibly, completely different from what we were told when we first went into lockdown, that it was to protect capacity in the NHS? Are you not just going to continue that until there is either a vaccine—if it works, if it's reliable—or the supposed moonshot daily testing at a cost of £100 billion projected? Isn't the reality that the costs of what you have done are greater than what you have been trying to achieve through them? We've heard from Andrew R.T. Davies about a 62 per cent fall in operations in Wales. We've seen 16,000 fewer cancer referrals. We've seen on England and Wales data for recent weeks many more people committing suicide than die of COVID. How long is this going to continue? You can't give us an answer for that. And you say you want to rely on people's judgment, you want people to be responsible, but actually then you tell them with very varying—. You criticise Ireland for varying it so that people can't keep up, what on earth do you think's been happening here with the huge numbers of regulations and varying and often contradictory guidance, plus also the often very marginal differences from England, when communications would have been much easier if there had been a consistent approach? So, there is a conflict between that and saying, actually, you want people to be responsible. How can people be responsible when what they have to do is comply with a vast range of stuff that's very, very difficult to keep up with, even for those who concentrate hard on that?

And finally from me on shielding, you say that the CMO may be writing to people again. It's not clear what he's going to be saying to them, but the reality is that he told them to continue shielding until 16 August and the prevalence of the virus is surely now significantly higher than it was then. I think you said that letter is a few weeks' warning for people that carried on shielding until 16 August, and the reason it's very difficult for people to shield again now is because they were kept shielding for several weeks when the prevalence of the virus was low, and much lower than it is now. So, wouldn't it be more sensible for those people involved to make their own judgment as to risks and consider whether they should shield for themselves?

Llywydd, the Prime Minister asked the BBC yesterday for time to make an address to the nation given the position that we faced. The BBC suggested that the leader of the Government here in Wales should make a similar address to people in Wales. I think that is a tribute to the Senedd and to devolution: the fact that the BBC thought that here in Wales, with a Government of our own, people in Wales would want to hear from the leader of the Government. And far from it being a competition between the Senedd and other forms of letting our fellow citizens know of changes, I genuinely think Members should regard it as a sign of the way in which devolution, the work of the Senedd, the fact that we have our own democracy here in Wales, has taken root here in Wales, that the BBC thought that was the right thing to do. I have come here to answer your questions as soon as I have been able to do so and I see nothing at all that I have to apologise for in that.

The Member gets it so wrong in relation to this issue of six months. The reason I don't say six months is because I want to review these measures every three weeks, and if it is possible to lift them sooner, then that's what I want to do. The truth is so much the opposite of what he implies: I want to lift restrictions on people's lives as soon as we can safely do it, and I don't want to say to people that that could be six months away when if between the efforts we all can make together it would be possible to do that sooner. That is my ambition and it has been all the way through. I am really anxious every time we make a decision to restrict people's freedoms, and we do it simply because of the extraordinary times we live in and the risks that are posed to others. The sooner we can restore those freedoms to people, the better I will think that will be. That's the strategy I'm following and it's really not at all what the Member implied.

In a way that I don't think he seems able to recognise, his final two questions to me pointed in completely opposite directions. He started from a premise that I would agree with: there is more than one harm from coronavirus and not presenting yourself for investigations or treatment in the NHS for non-COVID purposes has been one of the harms that coronavirus has caused. As I said in my answer to Andrew R.T. Davies, the NHS in Wales is open for people and I hope very much that they will make use of it. Having recognised that there is more than one harm, he then wanted me to reimpose on shielded people a blanket set of restrictions that we know have come with harms to people as well as the protections that those restrictions offered. So, we have put advice to shielded people in line with the advice that we have had from our chief medical officer and all the other chief medical officers across the United Kingdom.

It still is our advice to shielded people that they should take particular care, that they should ask themselves even more searching questions about who they meet with and where they go, but it is not, we think, proportionate now to say to them that they should not leave their homes for any exercise, and if they felt confident in doing it, they could go, for example, to collect their own prescriptions, and that's because we're trying to balance the harms. The harms that come from people with vulnerable health conditions being exposed to coronavirus are very real. The harms that come from saying to people that they should never leave their homes are real as well, in the impact on those people's sense of well-being and isolation. The advice we're giving to shielded people, and which the chief medical officer may well wish to reiterate and update in any fresh letter he may send, is designed to hold that in balance, just as—in the way that I agree with the Member—our advice to people about using the NHS must be in balance as well.

Thank you very much, and I very much welcome the First Minister coming here this afternoon to make this statement. First Minister, in Blaenau Gwent, people understand and support the action that the Welsh Government is proposing, but they do clearly have some questions. Perhaps first amongst those questions is on the travel restrictions, and I'd be grateful if you could explain why you are restricting travel from the borough to other parts of Wales, and to other localities. That would be very useful for us.

We've also discussed testing on a number of occasions in this Senedd in recent weeks and months, and the health Minister was very clear yesterday that further resources will be put into testing at this time. So, I'd be grateful if you could outline how you see mobile units or walk-in testing facilities being developed in areas where there are these additional restrictions.

And you referred to enforcement in your statement: it is crucially important that these restrictions are enforced properly. Is it possible to have greater resources from Welsh Government to enable and to help local government with enforcement, so that we can ensure that everybody plays fair and that there is a level playing field here? Because I think that people have had six months now of restrictions placed upon their lives, and they want to feel that everybody is playing their part.

And finally, First Minister, people would like to know when you intend to review these restrictions and review these regulations, so that people can look forward to understanding the structure in which these regulations are operating. Thank you.

Llywydd, can I thank Alun Davies for all those very pertinent questions, and thank the population that he represents here in the Senedd for their commitment to playing their part in the efforts that are needed to bear down on this virus and to be able to bring it back under control in south-east Wales again? Blaenau Gwent is, Llywydd—as Members will know—one of the areas that are to be subject to more extensive restrictions in people's lives than the rest of Wales, and that's a real ask of people, and I don't underestimate that at all. The rules require people not to enter or to leave one of those county borough areas, and that is precisely in order to try to contain the spread of this virus. The virus spreads when people meet and when people travel, and our efforts are directed at confining coronavirus to as small a geographical area as we can manage, and that very significant ask of people in those areas to restrict their travel other than for specifically identified purposes is part of the contribution we're asking them to make.

I saw figures yesterday, Llywydd, that show that in the first week of restrictions in Caerphilly, there had been an 8 per cent fall in journeys made to and from that county borough, and that demonstrates the way in which people are willing to play their part, and I'm sure that people in Blaenau Gwent will be wanting and willing to do that, too.

On testing, Members will have heard from the health Minister yesterday about the steps we are taking to increase capacity within the Welsh system to switch some testing into the Welsh system, to deploy mobile units in those places where they are most needed, to see whether we can bring further mobile capacity into Wales in order to be able to carry out tests where they are most urgently needed. 

Llywydd, can I absolutely agree with Alun Davies about the issue of enforcement? It is a matter, as he said, of fair play. Most people in Wales already comply with the rules and the guidance, and do so scrupulously. Where there are people who don't understand the rules or are struggling to follow them, then I entirely endorse the approach that our police forces and local authorities have taken of education, information and persuasion as the first ports of call. But, for those people who knowingly, persistently and deliberately break the rules that everybody else are following, then I'm afraid it is right, on behalf of everybody else who are following the rules, that proper enforcement action is taken. We discussed yesterday, with our local authority colleagues, ways in which we can help them in resource terms to step up enforcement. I made it clear once again to our police colleagues that if there are further things we can do to assist them in that difficult work, that is what we will do. It is a last resort not a first resort for us in Wales to take that action, but where that action is needed, it will be taken.

And finally, to answer the question about the timetable, the local lockdown restrictions will be reviewed every two weeks in those areas; the restrictions across the whole of Wales—the national picture—will continue to be reviewed on a three-week cycle here in Wales.

Can I thank you for your statement, First Minister? It's coming at a very worrying time for many people with the recent rise in positive case numbers. I am a little concerned, though, at some of the detail in your statement. You refer to the current rate of positive infections per 100,000 population as being 46.8 cases in your statement, yet the data published today by Public Health Wales, on their publicly available Tableau page, is that the infection rate is just 32.1 cases per 100,000. Can I ask why there is this data discrepancy, and if it is higher, why that isn't being published in the public domain? I'm sure you'll agree with me that we need to have confidence in these figures if the public are going to be encouraged to work with the public authorities in order to get the desired result of getting these infection rates down.

Can I also ask, on behalf of businesses and residents in my constituency, which is heavily reliant, of course, on tourism as part of the economy, what message you would like to send to potential visitors to our communities? Because you said very clearly in the Senedd yesterday, during First Minister's questions, that you wanted people to check whether their journeys were actually essential journeys. Now, I appreciate and have heard what you've said to other Members of this Chamber, but I think it is very confusing for people that you're saying that people should only take essential journeys, yet we are allowing people, who are potentially coming from high-infection areas from outside of Wales, into some of these communities with many older people. So, what message would you like us to convey to businesses and to visitors? 

Llywydd, again, can I thank Darren Millar for those important questions? I agree with his opening remarks that this is a worrying time, and I'm afraid he's right that we should be concerned given the figures that we are seeing.

The figure that I quoted, Llywydd—the 46.8 per cent—is the most recent figure that I have. I am offered management information that is available in advance of the publicly used figures, which have some further testing of them before they are published, and that's because I want to provide Senedd Members with the best and most recent information that I have. In some ways, as I know that Darren Millar will recognise, it is the trend that is the most important, rather than the absolute number, and the trend is upwards here in Wales. Ten days ago, when we took the decision to make face coverings mandatory in shops and enclosed public places, we had just reached 20 per 100,000 in Wales. I'm afraid that, since then, that figure has moved upwards. It is affected by the south-east Wales corner. It's not a reflection on some parts of Wales, but the trend is important to identify.

The issue of tourism is a fraught one. I've discussed this matter directly with the Member on a number of occasions because, as he says, tourism is such an important part of the local economy of the area of Wales that he represents. The good news is that we've had tourists coming to Wales from other parts of the United Kingdom since the first part of July now, and there isn't evidence that that has led to spikes of infection in those parts of Wales that people most often visit. Indeed, the coronavirus continues to be at its lowest ebb in those places that tourists most often visit. Nevertheless, I understand, of course, that local people are anxious when visitors come from other parts—whether it be of Wales or beyond—where rates of coronavirus are elevated. So, our message continues to be at this point: visit Wales safely. If you're coming to Wales, please make sure that you do all of the things that we would expect our fellow citizens to do to keep themselves and other people safe. In that way, people can enjoy Wales and make a contribution to local economies and to jobs without risks being posed.

I asked the Prime Minister yesterday to echo a message about asking people to think carefully about journeys, particularly from those places in England where coronavirus is even further ahead than it is even in south-east Wales. I'm afraid he wasn't willing to do it. My message for people in Wales is that it's not about a rule; it's not about people trying to test the boundaries of what is allowed. That's not the right way to think about this. All I'm asking people in Wales to do is to think carefully about journeys that they may make. If it's possible, for example, to visit a restaurant or to go to a pub close to home, that is more advisable than travelling a distance to do the same thing further away. Those are the questions that I'm asking people in a common-sense way, in making judgments that people are capable of making in their own lives, because the more people we meet and the further we travel, the greater the risk. I think that that's a very simple proposition, and I feel confident that our fellow citizens in Wales are capable of making those judgments in their own lives.

First Minister, the pandemic has taken a toll on everyone's mental health, and many of us have got through it because cases were coming down, and we could see a light at the end of the tunnel. I'm deeply worried about the impact of a long and difficult winter on everyone's mental health, particularly those cut off from family and friends' support, and our NHS and social care staff.

You said again today that there is more than one harm from coronavirus. What steps will you take to mitigate the harms this winter on everybody's mental health, and what assurances can you give that everybody who needs support from mental health services, whether young people or adults, will get that support? We know that that didn't happen in the first phase of this pandemic.

Can I also ask about people living with dementia? The terrible figures of excess deaths of those living with dementia have laid bare the impact of loneliness and isolation in the first part of this pandemic. I believe that there needs to be a clear plan to mitigate the impact of the next phase of the pandemic on people living with dementia. What steps will you take to introduce one? Thank you.  

Llywydd, I thank Lynne Neagle for those important points, which she raises very regularly on the floor of the Senedd to make sure that none of us forget about that very important dimension. She will know that we are already taking measures. Our decision not to restrict people's ability to meet in the outdoors is part of our determination to continue to use the weeks that are left to us when it is possible to do so in our climate so that people are able to get the mental health benefits of doing so. I was very glad indeed last week, given the fantastic weather we had, that Welsh people were not in the position that people are across our border, where there are significant restrictions on the ability of people to take advantage of the outdoors. She will know as well that our rule of six continues, outside the local lockdown areas, to allow six people from our extended household to meet together. Again, it's a powerful motivation in coming to that decision not to restrict those households further for the mental health and well-being needs of that extended household. Despite the real anxieties that we have, I hope we will be able to sustain that position for longer here in Wales.

The impact of coronavirus on the mental health of young people has been particularly in our thoughts as universities resume here in Wales, as Andrew R.T. Davies said in his opening question. We have worked very hard with the higher education sector here in Wales and with the National Union of Students, who I must say I think have been fantastically constructive contributors to making sure that the welfare and well-being of students who are coming back to Wales or coming to Wales to study is properly safeguarded, to make sure that those services are in place to the maximum extent that we can make them. When I visited a school here in Cardiff last week it was heartening to hear from staff and students of the way that the extra investment in counselling services in our schools is making that more available to students in our schools this term than at any earlier point in the history of our school counselling service.

Finally, to turn to Lynne Neagle's issue of dementia—an enormously challenging issue—I'm afraid there really are no straightforward or simple answers that are available to us. We struggle all the time with the issue of visits to care homes, knowing how important they are to people with dementia particularly, but knowing how vulnerable those people are to the virus being brought into an environment that in other ways has been so very carefully guarded to protect people's physical health. So, what we are doing is working closely with the third sector, with our partners in local authorities, and those who represent the views of families and people who have dementia, to put in the best balance we can manage between protecting those people's physical health and diluting the impact of the necessary restrictions on the mental health and well-being of that population. I wish there was a straightforward answer to it, but I know there's not. It's a matter of constant dialogue and trying to come to the best possible accommodations we can between some powerfully conflicting obligations that we have to that population.

Finally, Mick Antoniw.

First Minister, just a couple of points. Firstly, I very much appreciated the address to the nation. I think that was a very important landmark during this pandemic.

I wonder if we could have clearer guidance for the pubs and clubs in our constituencies. Many of them are raising questions. They are very keen to operate within the guidelines and to operate safely for their community. Things like table service, darts, bingo, chair location and so on are important issues to them, and I think anything that gives them greater clarity would be very, very much appreciated. 

Can I ask about the £500? You'll know that when we gave the sum of £500 to care workers we couldn't persuade the UK Government not to deduct tax on it and to make it exempt from impacting on benefits. Will it be completely exempt from any of those? If so, that would at least be a welcome move on this occasion. 

And finally, working from home and workers who have to—what discussions have there been with the trade unions on this? And can you give us a bit more information about the Welsh law that would be introduced that will give protection to those workers who choose to self-isolate? We know from past experience that some have had pressure put on them in those circumstances to come into work. This not only undermines the efforts in respect of tackling the pandemic, but also causes very serious stress and anxiety amongst many of our workers who want to do the right thing. And perhaps you could just clarify the role that the trade unions might have within this as well. Thank you, First Minister.

Llywydd, can I thank Mick Antoniw for what he said about the information we were able to broadcast last night, and the importance of that, both to citizens in Wales, but, as I've said, I think marking the significance of devolution in the lives of people here in Wales? His question about details for pubs and clubs points at some of that dilemma that I've answered some questions about this afternoon, about expecting that I could have provided all of that detail, and much more, while the Senedd was still sitting yesterday. We have spent all morning, and will continue to spend more time still, in working with those sectors in order to make sure that we have the answers that are needed by those people in pubs and clubs and restaurants, and in other parts of our economy, who so want to do the right thing. And part of the way we have done it in Wales is to have that social partnership approach, in which we work with people to come to those conclusions and then publish the results. And I don't have, even now, some of the answers to the points that Mick Antoniw has raised. But I give him an assurance that we are continuing to work with the sector to give those people who want to follow the rules, who want to do the right thing, all the help that we are able to provide them.

On the £500, the latest information I saw was that the UK Government did not intend to make that exempt from income tax. I regret that. I think that's another contradictory decision, if it turns out to be true—trying to provide people with an income so that they don't feel under pressure to go into work and then taking money away from them with the other hand. Let's hope that that turns out not to be the final result. We will talk with the UK Government about the best mechanisms. Mick Antoniw will know that we have some advantages in Wales, and we never abandoned the social fund here in the way that it has been so abandoned across our border. We used our discretionary assistance fund, very much in his own constituency, back in February, to provide the £501,000 help that we were able to provide for people who had been flooded. And we will look to see whether the discretionary assistance fund, which, Llywydd, has made over 73,600 emergency coronavirus payments to people in Wales, providing more than £4.6 million in assistance to people during this pandemic, is the best vehicle for getting the £500 as quickly and as unbureaucratically to people as possible.

In terms of working from home, we discussed this this morning in the social partnership council, with both the Wales TUC and individual trade union colleagues in attendance, and their support for that remains very important, and we will work further with them to make sure that those rules are properly understood by members and by employers. Llywydd, let me end by saying that I think the vast majority of employers in Wales have worked very hard to protect their employees, have not wished to put them under pressure to return to work where they could work successfully from home. In other parts of the United Kingdom, there have been examples, for example, where people who have been asked to self-isolate have been made redundant by their employers. The regulations that we will put in place in Wales will prevent that from happening here, because we want to make it clear that it is an obligation for employers and employees to self-isolate when that advice is provided to them. We want to support all those good employers in Wales who already help their workers to do just that, and our regulations, as ever, are designed to support good trade unions and good employers who want to do the right thing. 

I thank the First Minister.  

The next item, therefore, is the questions to the Minister for Finance, and the first question comes from Joyce Watson.   

Since the outbreak of the pandemic, there have been seven meetings of the finance Ministers' quadrilateral, where we have discussed a range of issues, including the fiscal response to the crisis, the UK Government's autumn budget and the forthcoming comprehensive spending review.

Thank you for that answer. But at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Welsh Government capped the eligibility scheme for business rate holiday and excluded all retail, hospitality and leisure premises with a rateable value of more than £0.5 million. And that targeted approach enabled Welsh Government to add £100 million to the economic resilience fund that, in turn, helped safeguard thousands of jobs and support thousands of small and medium-sized enterprises during that period. That didn't happen in England, and they don't have an equivalent economic resilience fund, so many of their businesses lost out. So, could I ask you, Minister, when you have your round of talks with the UK Chancellor, will you ask him to take a more targeted response in the autumn budget in order to save those most-at-risk jobs and businesses by a catch-all scheme, whereby you have a situation that large supermarkets, who had a rise and an increase in their profits, benefited at the cost of those smaller businesses? 

I thank Joyce Watson for this question and for her ongoing and evident concern for small and medium-sized enterprises, particularly, I have to say, in the more rural parts of Wales. And Joyce is absolutely right to point to the fact that businesses in Wales have access to the most generous package of support anywhere in the United Kingdom. So, the Office for National Statistics have recently published some data that shows that 34 per cent of businesses in Wales have benefited from support, as compared to 21 per cent in Scotland and 14 per cent in England. So, that really does show the added value that devolution has brought to the response to this crisis.

And, again, Joyce is right that we do need a much more targeted approach now, as we move into the next phase of addressing the crisis, looking particularly at those sectors of society that have suffered greatly and continue to suffer as a result of the crisis. Hospitality, tourism, for example, stand out, as does aerospace—Jack Sargeant raised that sector in the Chamber just yesterday—and, of course, the automotive industry, the steel industry and so on—all industries that are absolutely vital to Wales, and of which we have a greater share than elsewhere in the UK. So, I give my assurance that I will absolutely be continuing to press for that more targeted approach as we move through our response to the crisis.

Minister, I'm looking for some detail from you about what you're trying to secure by way of further consequentials in that budget from further education spending. Further education is obviously going to be one of those sectors that we rely on to help us recover from COVID, and while the specific pressures are obviously for another Minister, the £23 million that came from the Welsh Government's COVID pot, welcome though it is, is only partial compensation for the £47 million education budget cut, which was inflicted in order to help feed that COVID pot, and it doesn't really completely reflect the additional COVID consequentials from the UK Government. Can you commit to making it clear where consequentials have come in for FE, as a result of the autumn budget, and also make it clear for us to see whether more, the same or less ends up being committed net by Welsh Government? 

Yes, I'm very happy to be extremely transparent in terms of the data on consequentials that we receive from the UK Government. So, very recently I wrote to the Finance Committee giving the latest detail of the consequentials that Welsh Government has received, and in relation to what UK Government spend. Although I will make the point that, of course, the Welsh Government isn't an administrative arm of the UK Government, and money that does come, as a result of consequentials, is deployed in relation to particular Welsh pressures and Welsh priorities and Welsh concerns. I'll also add that we were able to negotiate with the UK Treasury an agreement that we would have consequentials in advance of announcements that have been made across the border in England. So, our total consequentials thus far have been £4 billion, but for part of that we don't yet know to what those consequentials relate, and that was something we were able to negotiate because it did give us the ability, then, in Wales to provide additional funding to health, additional funding to local government, to give them the certainty and ability to plan, rather than waiting for each and every small announcement from the UK Government. So, that's been a really good example of good working between Welsh Government and HM Treasury, although I think there's some way to go yet in terms of the flexibilities that we're seeking.

Minister, 2020 has highlighted how vulnerable our economy actually is—vulnerable to COVID and vulnerable to a changing climate. We are woefully unprepared to cope with such shocks to our systems. What discussions have you had with colleagues across all four nations about ensuring funding goes towards mitigating the risks of future pandemics and the challenges we face from climate change?

I'm really grateful to Caroline for highlighting the fact that, even though we've been dealing with a pandemic, which has been all-consuming in so many ways, actually, that huge issue of climate change hasn't gone away, and, absolutely, we must be continuing to address it. So, our mind is very much focused, as we continue to address the acute end of the pandemic, also on looking ahead to the recovery and the reconstruction. And the discussions that we're having right across Government are very much framed within the lens of our Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015, but with that particular focus on how we can create a green and fair recovery. 

I know that Jeremy Miles has been working very hard across the summer, engaging with stakeholders right across Welsh life to better understand the concerns and ideas there, and he'll be saying something more about the particular steps that we will take in terms of that recovery shortly. But I can give you reassurance that the decarbonisation agenda, the green agenda, is at the heart of that. 

Robust appraisal, management and assurance are the core governance principles of the projects funded by the Welsh Government. This includes assessment and management of the risks posed to the project, which is underpinned by an independent review mechanism of the projects performance at key stages in its life-cycle. 

Well, thank you very much for that response, but you will, of course, be aware of the recent report by Audit Wales on Ysbyty Glan Clwyd, which went £60 million over budget. Now, there is criticism made of the health board there, but it's also very critical of the governance arrangements of the Welsh Government. Despite the clear concerns expressed about the business plan, and the fact that the business case wasn't sufficiently strong—despite that, the plan was approved.

Of course, if the Welsh Government and the health board had had that clear business case in place before approving that plan, then it's unlikely that it would have overspent. So, who takes responsibility for that failure?

Llyr Gruffydd is right to point to what was a critical report from the Wales Audit Office. But it is important at the same time to recognise that the Welsh Government had already taken steps to improve its arrangements for approving business cases before the funding problems at Ysbyty Glan Clwyd came to light. And further improvements in Welsh Government processes have been embedded, reflecting the outcomes of that review into this project.

So, further Welsh Government internal audit work undertaken in 2014 stated that there was no evidence to suggest that the capital estates and facilities did not discharge their function with monitoring the project, and it's very important as well to recognise that, in 2017, the Auditor General for Wales published a report that was called 'Implementation of the NHS Finances (Wales) Act 2014', and within that report there was recognition of the steps that we have taken in Welsh Government, and steps taken by the NHS capital estates and facilities team to significantly strengthen its review of capital projects. And the report said that there are significant lessons and good practice that can be learnt from the approach taken in the Welsh Government's NHS capital programme. So, while I would absolutely acknowledge those issues that were highlighted in the report, it is also important, I think, to acknowledge the progress and improvement that has happened since.

Unfortunately Minister, this isn't a one-off, is it, because the Wales audit office has repeatedly highlighted areas of public expenditure where the money either was being wasted or failed to deliver a notable outcome? So, we can refer to, for example, the rural development grant or Communities First—those are two that immediately spring to mind. Now, I understand and appreciate that it's down to individual Ministers to decide on their spending portfolios, but as far as you are concerned, as the finance Minister, is it not your role to ensure that value for money is achieved and public money is not wasted? So, please, could you outline the role that you play in ensuring that portfolio holders spend their budgets appropriately and accountably, and how do you and your department help to steer that ship back onto the right course if you see that they are not doing so?

I'm really grateful for this opportunity to highlight some of the work within the COVID context that we've been doing to ensure value for money and affordability in every proposal that has been brought forward through the COVID-19 reserve, which, of course, is the funding that is behind everything that we've done to respond to the crisis. So, every single day, at the start of the crisis, I convened a team that looked at every single bid that was coming forward from colleagues across Welsh Government—so, additional funding for the NHS, funding for free school meals, funding to support local authorities with their loss of income. Every single bid that related to our response to COVID has come through that particular group, where we provide that additional layer of surety and that additional layer of robust scrutiny to ensure that we are making decisions that have value for money at their heart and, of course, affordability at their heart too. 

So, that group has met probably close to 100 times now since the start of the crisis, and that's all been about interrogating every single bid that comes forward from any part of Government to seek additional funding to respond to the crisis and to provide that additional layer. So, that's very much, I think, a process that I hope will give people confidence that, when these decisions are being taken, and taken very rapidly, there is an additional layer of probity applied to those decisions.

Minister, as we've already heard from these questions, one of the benefits of the governance of public projects in Wales by the Welsh Government is that there is direct accountability here on the floor of the Senedd and close to the people of Wales, and that's the way it should be. It also means that projects are seen through the paradigm of Welsh policy, including the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015. So does she have any concerns with the idea of quite distant Whitehall Ministers and Whitehall mandarins tramping across Wales in their size 10 boots and distributing largesse in future, without that close-to-the-people accountability and without taking account of the policy framework in Wales?

I absolutely do share those concerns and it is really difficult to imagine how just two clauses in a Bill could be more damaging to Wales from a devolved public spending perspective. It puts huge powers in the hands of UK Government Ministers to spend in Wales in areas that are currently devolved and have been devolved for 20 years. We have the networks here in Wales; we understand where the money will make the difference. We have those local relationships that will use the money well.

There are big issues here. I mean, what happens is the UK Government presumably will top-slice money from the Welsh Government's budget; this isn't additional spend. If the UK Government is looking for areas to spend within its own responsibilities, I'm sure that many of us can have a list as long as your arm of ideas that they could spend on, starting off with things such as electrifying the main line to Swansea, investing in the tidal lagoon in Swansea and investing in broadband so that Welsh Government doesn't have to pick up the tab for things that are rightly the responsibility of the UK Government, including rail more widely, and that's another area where we've had to act because the UK Government doesn't want to. So, they should start off by focusing their spend in the areas that they're responsible for and leave Welsh Government to undertake its own responsibilities. 

Questions now from the party spokespeople. The Conservatives' spokesperson, Nick Ramsay. 

Diolch, Llywydd. Minister, procurement is one of the key ways in which public bodies need to be able to demonstrate that they are securing value for money, something that we took evidence from you on recently in the Public Accounts Committee. Two of the Auditor General for Wales's reports in autumn 2017 concluded that national governance arrangements for procurement could be strengthened and should be strengthened. How are you planning to do this? 

Thank you very much for raising that issue, and I think that a key thing in our armoury in terms of procurement is the Wales procurement policy statement. Now, that was last fully updated in 2015, and that provides the strategy and the framework for the Welsh public sector to undertake public procurement. And the effective application of that has delivered positive impacts, but I know that we can do more, we can go further, so a revised WPPS is currently being developed to reflect on and build upon the closer working relationships that have been developed with the Welsh Government and the wider Welsh public sector during the COVID pandemic in our response to it.  I think our relationships in that sense have never been better, so it's an opportunity for us to ensure that our procurement benefits from our new ways of working.  

Thank you, Minister, and I'm pleased to hear that that work is under way, because the National Procurement Service frameworks do need looking at and overhauling. Public bodies in Wales have been spending in the region of £6 billion procuring goods and services, so we shouldn't be in any doubt about the importance of procurement in getting the Welsh economy moving again. Unfortunately, as you know, the auditor general's reports concluded that public bodies are not using NPS frameworks as much as was originally anticipated, whilst the cancelled procurement for Job Support Wales was a high-profile procurement failure that brought into question the Welsh Government's commitment to be an exemplar of best procurement practice. So, can you update us on, firstly, when your review into this will be published and completed, and how you are addressing these problems so that companies across Wales can be reassured that the Welsh Government is getting to grips with these problems and changing the whole procurement culture in Wales?  

I'm happy to provide that update. So, my colleague Lee Waters has been leading on some really important work in terms of the foundational economy, and, as part of that work, we commissioned the Centre for Local Economic Strategies to work with us to ensure that we can identify public services boards clusters across Wales and work with them to consider new ways of working and how they can maximise the procurement opportunities in local economies. Now, that work has been affected by COVID, but implementation plans will be agreed by the end of this month. And the underlying objective for that is to identify areas of procurement that currently flow out of the region or, indeed, out of Wales, and to ensure that that's used as the baseline then to develop those new approaches, to drive up the involvement of local suppliers in expenditure. So, a really important piece of work and a new way of working and, as I say, we should be able to say more about the agreement of plans to take that forward later on this month. 

Thank you, and I look forward to hearing that information later this month. I appreciate that officials' time and your own time and the Government's time over recent time has been preoccupied with the pandemic and dealing with that, but if I can, in my final question to you, ask how this whole issue of procurement can be seen in terms of the issue of building back better, and renewing the culture that we have in Wales. Procurement surely does have a huge part to play in achieving the building back better process, given the huge amounts of money that we are talking about here—the £6 billion I mentioned before, but there's additional money as well. It's also important, I'm sure you'll agree, that procurement policy is in alignment with the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015. The commissioner has called on the Welsh Government to factor in the Act at the very start of the procurement process, or even, importantly, at a pre-procurement stage. This is, as I said before, Minister, about changing the whole culture of how we deal with procurement in Wales. It's a massive area, but do you agree that, along with tax policy, actually—another big change in recent times to the way that this place operates—it can be one of the key levers at your disposal in providing value for money for the taxpayer, supporting the Welsh economy and helping in that process of building back better? 

Yes. Oh my gosh, I find myself in agreement with the Conservative spokesperson on that issue. Absolutely, procurement can play a huge role in terms of building back better in ensuring that spend is kept in our local communities.

You'll be familiar with the foundational economy challenge fund. That's been really important in terms of identifying local areas where improvement can be made. So, an example would be the forest nation centre, and that's testing the concept of using skilled, value-added manufacturing approaches to increase the use of Welsh timber within housing, and that's something of interest across several portfolios in Government. And also the controlled environment agriculture pilot, and that's exploring the development of community, old agriculture facilities. So, lots of different ways in which we can ensure that spend is kept more locally for the benefit of local people, and that challenge fund I think has been really instrumental in bringing forward new innovative ways of working on which inevitably we will want to build as we come out of the crisis.

The Plaid Cymru spokesperson, Rhun ap Iorwerth.

Thank you, Llywydd. With a quarter of the Welsh population now under higher level restrictions as a result of the pandemic, I was pleased to see new measures announced last night to support people financially. I'm referring mainly to the £500 payment for those on lower incomes and support for employers to continue to employ people who are unwell. I think it's very important that we have the details of this scheme as soon as possible. Could we have those details now, and are we likely to see further announcements on support specifically for those areas identified as needing more restrictions in place?

Thank you. As you say, last night, the First Minister made the announcement about the £500 payment for people on low incomes who are required to self-isolate. As he said earlier on in the First Minister's statement, we're still working on the details of that, looking at the delivery mechanisms. The First Minister talked about the potential for using the discretionary assistance fund as a mechanism for that. Other options are available and are also being considered. And we're also looking in detail at what the eligibility criteria will be as well. So, I'm afraid I can't give you all of those details today because some modelling work is being undertaken by Welsh Treasury on that, but, as soon as we do have more details about the scheme, obviously, I'll be very, very keen to share that.  

I appreciate that you are still working on the details, but I remember another £500 payment that was announced some months ago for workers in the care sector, and it took an exceptionally long time to work out how that payment should be made, and that process isn't completed even today.

Local authorities, if I could move forward, have done heroic work during this pandemic. I am concerned to hear about some uncertainty among local government leaders regarding funding for councils as we face the winter months, which are going to be a strain, of course. According to one council, they managed to reclaim first quarter losses quite easily, but the story is very different with the second quarter. So, can I have confirmation of the additional support that's ready to be provided to compensate councils and confirmation that processes are being hastened to ensure that losses incurred already are paid back as a matter of urgency, or councils are going to face great stresses very, very soon?

Well, Welsh Government worked really closely alongside the Welsh Local Government Association and the Society of Welsh Treasurers through the early part of the summer to better understand the potential for lost income across the rest of the financial year. Lost income might come from things such as a lack of services that the council might normally provide—for example, car parking, theatres, and so on. So, a great deal of detailed work went on there and that's why I was very recently able to announce additional funding for local authorities in respect of items, including lost earnings, which brought the additional funding for local government up to nearly £500 million. So, I think we have worked with them beyond that first tranche of funding, which I recall was in the region of £70 million. But now we have provided funding that should look across to the end of the financial year. So, I'm concerned to hear that a local authority has suggested that this is an ongoing issue, but perhaps if you write to me we can get into a bit more of the detail of that.

The concern is, of course, that it will be an ongoing issue for quite some time, and there are certainly concerns about what will happen over the winter months.

And finally, I wanted to get something on record, if truth be told. As we face climbing out of the economic hole that we're in at present, it's become apparent during this pandemic that the fiscal arrangements of Wales are entirely inadequate. Can I have an assurance from you that there is discussion with the UK Government on the new rules and fiscal circumstances that you would like to see and that that will be a priority for you? And will you agree with me that this is certainly something that cannot be put to one side because of COVID—it's something that needs to be done more swiftly as a result of COVID and the economic problems caused by it?

Absolutely, I'll give you my assurance that inter-governmental mechanisms in relation to finance, and also fiscal flexibilities in particular, will continue to be at the heart of conversations that I have with the Chief Secretary to the Treasury. So, you'll recall earlier on in the summer one of our big concerns was about being able to switch capital to revenue—that was something that we were looking to do. But, actually, as a result of the additional advance funding I was able to negotiate with the Treasury, I'm actually more interested in different flexibilities now. So, one would be, for example, the ability to draw down more from our Wales reserve, should we need it, or to carry more over at the end of the financial year, if we felt that was prudent to do as well. Because, obviously, the crisis is no respecter of financial years, and things can happen right at the end of a financial year, or at the beginning, and it makes the budget management very difficult.

Now, all of these things are things that the UK Government could very, very simply agree to. They don't involve additional funding; they simply involve allowing us to use the funding that we have in the best way. So, I'll continue to have those discussions. I know that there's sympathy, actually, from various parts of the Senedd on that—and beyond—so, if we can work collaboratively on that, I'd welcome those opportunities.

Brexit Party spokesperson, Mark Reckless.

The First Minister, a couple of weeks ago, was asked, I believe, about income tax rises, potentially, next year, and I think he replied that, with COVID, the economy was so weak that it'd be wrong to contemplate any increase in income tax. Does that mean that income tax rises should only be considered when the economy is strong?

So, as you say, the First Minister was interviewed on precisely this issue, and he did say that he wouldn't consider raising income taxes for people when the economy was in a very difficult situation and, potentially, in a recession. Of course, we've looked ahead at the data that we've had from the Bank of England, from others, as to what the economy might look like. Obviously, there are severe difficulties in terms of the crisis anyway, but, as we move closer towards the end of the year and potentially facing a 'no deal' Brexit, obviously that will compound the issues facing us. So, the First Minister was quite clear that there would be no intention to increase income taxes when the economy was in a particularly difficult situation. And, of course, I know that we're all turning our minds towards this as we think of what we will be offering the people of Wales in the upcoming election, and I look forward to a debate on income tax later on in the Chamber this afternoon too.

Given the very significant impact on the Welsh Government's finances of the COVID crisis, and, in particular, the likely reduction in tax yield because of more stringent measures in Wales compared to what the UK Government has done for England, how, ultimately, does the Minister expect to put the public finances back on a sustainable footing? Will she be cutting spending? Will she be increasing Welsh rates of income tax? Or will she be expecting a bail-out from the UK Government?

So, I don't think that the differential rate of moving out of lockdown between Wales and the UK Government will have a big impact on tax yields. Land transaction tax and landfill disposals tax are our two Welsh taxes, and both of those account for a relatively small portion of the Welsh Government's budget, and, of course, although the movement out of lockdown was different, actually, across both sides of the border, we both faced severe disruption to these for a significant number of months this year. So, I don't think that the impact will be great on the Welsh Government's budget.

The decision on whether or not to proceed with the M4 relief road was, and remains, an entirely devolved matter.

That's not what everyone in the UK Government says, is it? You referred earlier, Minister, to what you said were two clauses that could not be more damaging to Wales. If I understood correctly, those were two clauses enabling, or at least confirming, the ability of UK Government to spend money in devolved areas over and above money already committed by devolved Government. Surely, for most people outside the Cardiff Bay bubble, that would be an unambiguously good thing, if they have the UK Government spending money over and above what Welsh Government spends. Given, in your election manifesto, you said you would build the M4 relief road, if UK Government is willing to pay for that instead, and we get it without having to pay for it, wouldn't that be a good thing?

The internal market Bill says nothing about spending on public services over and above the Welsh Government's budget. I'm sure that, if we're all honest, we would understand that this will mean a reduction in the Welsh Government's budget. And, of course, I'm not going to rake over the decision that was made some time ago now by the First Minister, but affordability was part of that. The other major concern that he had was about the environmental impact of the plans as well. But, as I say, this currently remains the purview of the Welsh Government.

Can I ask, Minister—can I ask you about the 29 houses that were purchased for over £15 million via compulsory purchase orders in preparation for the building of the M4 relief road, and, specifically, the two properties that were bought for just under £1 million in April of last year, just two months before the First Minister took the decision to abandon the M4 relief scheme? People looking in will certainly, I think, feel that these decisions on spends were disjointed. We've now seen £157 million of taxpayers' money wasted. In regards to the properties purchased, money would have been spent, of course, on professional fees. The properties themselves remain as assets. Can you provide an update in regards to the position of these properties? Have they been sold? Are they being marketed? And how much capital has been released back to the Welsh Government to allow it to spend on other capital projects?

I will have to liaise with my colleague the Minister for enviroment—sorry, the Minister for economy and transport—in relation to your question about the properties, are they being sold, have they been sold and so on. I'm afraid I don't have that answer, but I'll ensure that you do get it.

Minister, would you agree with me that if UK Government has funding available for transport infrastructure in south-east Wales it should come to the Welsh Government to decide how it should be spent? And, in line with the M4 commission, it should be spent on public transport infrastructure, for example, a new walkway station in Magor, which is very much supported by the local community.

Yes, I do absolutely agree with John Griffiths on this. He, as well as I, welcomes the latest report from Lord Burns and his team and the significant evidence base that sits behind that, and, of course, it recommends a significant upgrade to the south Wales relief rail lines as part of an integrated multimodal public transport network. This, of course, is something that John Griffiths has been promoting for his area for some time, and it does point the way to a more sustainable, long-term alternative to car use in that part of the world. I think that this is the right way forward, and we're very happy to work with John Griffiths and others to ensure that we can play our part in making that a reality.

As set out in my letter of 24 April to the Finance Committee, the Welsh Government received consequentials of £58 million capital and £1.2 million revenue as a result of the UK Government's building safety fund announced in March.

Thank you. Thousands of people in Wales live in flats that are at risk of fire. The properties are worthless. There is a Welsh Grenfell waiting to happen. I visited Victoria Wharf and shot a video showing the incredible toll this is having on residents, and 750,000 people have viewed the video, and saw and heard residents say that they wrote to you and the First Minister and, I quote, they've heard not a word back. They did get a response from Lynda Thorne, the cabinet member for housing in Cardiff, saying, and I quote again:

'The problem is that members of the Welsh Government are up for election in May next year, and so although'

the housing Minister

'is committed, everything depends on the results of those elections.'

It's shameless that you seem to be trying to blackmail people into voting Labour instead of addressing the very serious problems. The Conservatives in London have introduced a £1 billion fund to start fixing the problems in England, but a civil servant in Wales has stated:

'While the Welsh Government will receive some consequential funding, it is for Welsh Ministers to decide how this money will be spent in Wales.'

So, have you actually decided now, and can the thousands of people—thousands—living in unsafe flats that are worth nothing expect some kind of Government help and Government action, and a response, whether there's an election or not?

Well, what's shameless, Llywydd, is that performance there, I have to say. You will have heard from the Minister for Housing and Local Government just last Wednesday that the Welsh Government is committed to exploring ways forward. We recently published our position statement, and that proposes a new building safety regime that puts the safety and well-being of residents at its heart to ensure that people feel safe in their homes regardless of tenure, and that the ethos applies throughout the design, construction and occupation of those affected buildings. Those reforms will go much further than just making improvements to high-rise buildings; this is about making sure that all residents in Wales are safe.

In terms of that piece of correspondence, clearly it would have had a response from the Minister for Housing and Local Government's department—if it hasn't arrived yet, I'm sure it will be on the way shortly—because obviously the Minister for housing is the appropriate person to address that issue. In the case of Victoria Wharf in Cardiff Bay, I do know that officials are due to meet with the chair of the residents' association shortly to discuss this issue further.

Minister, this is one of the most significant consequentials that the Welsh Government has received in the fifth Senedd, and whilst I can accept that you may not have needed the whole £58 million, because we have a different pattern to England, a substantial amount of that is required. As you dither and, frankly, deflect the concerns of the leaseholders into some sort of long-term plan to improve the system—which I agree with, incidentally—we have an immediate problem now. Fire insurance has gone up tenfold in some of these places, so the tenants are facing a £1,000 bill for their contribution to that aspect of the service charge. It's astonishing. And then the capital costs they face can go from anything from £10,000 upwards towards £40,000, and there is a fire enforcement order imminent. They need help now, you've been given the money, you should pass it on in an appropriate scheme now.

Okay. So, these are serious issues, and I will treat them with the seriousness that they deserve. And, as I said, the Minister's officials will shortly be meeting with the chair of the residents' association to discuss these issues in more depth, as the Minister who is responsible for policy in this area.

In terms of Welsh Government funding, the Member will be aware that, although we received additional capital in the UK Government's March budget, it didn't take account of the £100 million capital that the UK Government took out of our budget, and £100 million of financial transaction capital that the UK Government took out of our budget, right at the end of the financial year. So, I don't think that we can take consequentials quite in such simple terms. 

Land transaction tax revenues in 2019-20 were £260 million. To date, revenues in the current financial year are down 47 per cent compared to the same period last year. The Office for Budget Responsibility will publish a new revenue forecast for the Welsh Government with the draft budget.

Thank you, Minister. The drop in land transaction tax revenue by 47 per cent, I think you said, is indeed worrying but understandable during the lockdown, due to the massive slowdown in the housing market. Getting revenues up depends on getting the market moving, I'm sure you're aware of that. Whilst I welcome your introduction of a stamp duty holiday, I have questioned the threshold of £250,000 that has been introduced. Now, whilst I understand that house prices across Wales are, on average, considerably lower than across the border, certainly compared with the south-east of England, there are nonetheless houses much higher in value than that near the Wales-England border. Will you keep the stamp duty holiday under review, so that if the housing market near the border isn't seen to be picking up as fast as the other side of the border, where there is that holiday of up to £500,000, then action can be taken? Because I'm sure you'd agree with me that it's important that land transaction tax rates in Wales are stabilised and that there isn't too much of a distortion in border areas, where a large proportion of the Welsh population live and where revenue is raised.

Yes, I do keep all rates and thresholds under review, always looking to the market to see what's happening. It is the case, I think—and Nick will agree with me on this—that tax only plays a part in the decision regarding somebody's choice as to where to live, and I'm sure that he will think of 1,000 wonderful reasons to live in his constituency of Monmouthshire as well, but I do understand that house prices in Monmouthshire are much higher than in other parts of the country. 

We do have the opposite situation, then, of course, across the border in north Wales, where houses in Flintshire and Wrexham, for example, are around 25 per cent lower than across the border in Cheshire west, Cheshire and Shropshire. So we do see a very differential picture across Wales, but, yes, I do keep these issues under constant review.

In April, we appointed the Centre for Local Economic Strategies to embed the community wealth building concept, to work with public services boards to deliver progressive procurement approaches, to localise their supply chain and to drive up the engagement of local businesses in public procurement to effect systemic change in local economies across Wales.

Thank you for that answer, Minister. I just want to address the threat that is posed to food security, given the rising possibility of no trade deal with the European Union. As Professor Tim Lang, the food expert, said again today, we are a nation without a food larder. And that statement applies just as much to Wales as to the rest of the UK, with supermarkets operating on a just-in-time basis and huge numbers of families relying on surplus food from food banks. So, lorries parked up at new frontier crossings and the inevitable high prices can but aggravate this fragile food supply chain that we already have. We could and should, in my view, already be strengthening the foundational economy by substituting everyday temperate fruit and veg that we currently import with home-grown produce. So, in light of the work that the Welsh Government has done to streamline procurement frameworks, what consideration have you given to using green procurement deals, particularly in partnership with local government, as highlighted in the recent Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development report as being effective mechanisms used by other European countries to mitigate this threat to our food security?

So, we are working very closely with large public sector bodies such as the NHS to ensure expenditure on food produce can be sourced and procured as locally as possible from within Wales, to try and ensure that kind of security that Jenny Rathbone's talking about. And as part of the foundational economy challenge fund and the manufacturing plan, we have a real focus now on food.

There's a strand of the foundational economy work that is also considering, in partnership with the Centre for Local Economic Strategies, how public sector anchor organisations might be the key shapers of food markets for the future. We also have a relatively new approach in Wales with Caerphilly council now managing the collaborative food frameworks, which were originally led by the Welsh Government National Procurement Service. The Caerphilly food-buying team are really experienced, and they do have a really good proven track record in developing the Welsh food supply. I know that you've previously talked in the Chamber about the Woosnam Dairies example, and I think that they've been involved particularly in that. They're also working with the Minister for Environment, Energy and Rural Affairs and her team to try and explore some further opportunities for securing more locally sourced produce. So, this is certainly a priority area for the team.

I thank the Minister for Finance.

The next item is the questions to the Minister for International Relations and the Welsh Language. The first question is to be answered by the Deputy Minister, and the question comes from Jack Sargeant.

We can't hear you, Deputy Minister. You need to unmute yourself, please.

Dafydd, can you hear me and can you hear that you need to—?

I was under the impression that it was being controlled centrally.

Carry on—we can hear you all right now.

Thank you. I'm very grateful, Jack, for your question. The Welsh Government and Sport Wales, we continue to work with partners to assist the grass-roots sports clubs. We recently announced a £14 million sport and leisure coronavirus recovery fund, and this is intended to support a range of sporting organisations.

Thank you for that answer, Deputy Minister. A constituent of mine, Simon Walker from Connah's Quay Bowling Club, has just been elected to the position of chairman of the BowlsWales development committee. As many will know, grass-roots bowls has huge benefits for people's mental and physical health. Simon tells me that it's the only sport you can play for the whole of your life—a nine-year-old can compete against a 90-year-old. Deputy Minister, would you be willing to meet with Simon on behalf of the development committee to hear first-hand the benefits that bowls can bring to communities and relay that information to Welsh Government colleagues?

I would be very happy to meet with your constituent. He might be able to encourage me to take up the sport. I have, in fact, visited a number of the disabled and other active bowlers' clubs. I remember, in particular, my visit to Pembrokeshire to visit the club there, and I think it's important that we encourage as much diversity and variety of physical activity so that people can participate, so I look forward to arranging a meeting as soon as we can.

Thank you. Russell George. No. No Russell George. Okay.

Question 2, then, is going to be answered by the Deputy Minister for culture. Andrew R.T. Davies.

Sorry, Minister, we can't hear you again, so can you unmute?

I assumed it's clear that if I'm being called to reply to a question that I'm required to be unmuted. Does it mean I have to unmute myself every time?

I think that's—. Yes, I'm being told 'yes'. Sorry, yes, I am. So, sorry about that. Sorry. Carry on. 

All right. That is no longer a matter for me because I don't organise the activities of the Assembly. 

We know that participating in recreational sport has a very positive impact, obviously, for all ages, and we work, as I said, with Sport Wales. We have been using these major organisations of ours to distribute funds and to assess applications and I look forward to applications for recreational sport over the winter period so that we can take further the investment that we already made through the sports council.

Thank you, Minister, for that response. Obviously, some element of Government money has been made available for sports and grass-roots sports, the £14 million that was announced last week, but with the new regulations that are now in place and some politicians mulling over that these regulations could be in place for some considerable time, that's going to put a huge restriction on clubs, especially grass-roots clubs, to get through the winter months, especially like Barry Town FC, for example, Old Pens Rugby Club up in Penarth. How is the Government assessing how the new regulations that have been put in place will impact on grass-roots clubs' ability to operate and survive these coming winter months?

Clearly, we continue to assess the impact of the pandemic on all activities and especially when we have to respond as a Government collectively, with the support of the Assembly, to respond to those situations. The key thing is that we have a full and proper picture of the needs of each sector and I would encourage individual clubs and obviously the governing bodies of sporting clubs to approach Welsh Government directly, so that we can process and consider, with the help of our advisers in the sports council, what is required.

Gweinidog, Newport Cricket Club, as I know you are aware, have done a great job over a period of years in building up their activities and improving their ground. They're volunteer run; they produce some really good girls' cricket teams, players for Glamorgan and have hosted Glamorgan matches. They're in some difficulty at the moment, really, around coronavirus because their winter cricket school used premises at Newport Live, the leisure trust, but Newport Live have now commandeered that space for a socially distanced gym and it's no longer available to the cricket club, which will greatly reduce their income and will risk them losing young players and losing their interest over those winter months. They do have—Newport Cricket Club—old squash courts on their ground that could be adapted for an indoor cricket school through the winter and a feasibility study would be very useful in that regard. I wonder if you could have a look at this, Minister, and consider how Welsh Government might assist them in overcoming these issues.

Well, as you know, I do know the site you refer to and we are very keen in terms of our sports policy for full participation in cricket and in other sports by young men and young women, indeed, people of all ages who wish to participate. We are aware of the need for such a feasibility study and I would be very happy to see further evidence of the relationship that the club is developing with partners, including Sport Wales. I will raise this issue with Sport Wales myself to ensure that there is a continuing discussion with Newport City Council, with Sport Wales and Newport Live.

We have, of course, an issue that relates in this way to the operation of leisure centres by agencies that are no longer part of the local government. So, the situation is not simple, but we are very keen in Welsh Government that we are able to support the activities at the grass roots, as it were—or should I say on the cricket pitch, in this case—to ensure that they do relate to the local community regardless of the governance of the sport.

I now turn to spokespersons' questions. The first this afternoon is the Plaid Cymru spokesperson, Siân Gwenllian.

Thank you very much, Dirprwy Lywydd. The funding problems of the arts sector as a result of COVID continue, and I think that you agree with me that freelance workers are specifically under a great deal of pressure. You told the culture committee of the Senedd that the £7 million for freelance workers in the cultural sector wasn’t sufficient. And I’m sure you’ve seen the comprehensive report of the freelance taskforce for Wales, which brings forward a great deal of important recommendations. This report also includes many concerns with regard to the development of Welsh-medium work in this specific sector. So what plans or schemes do you have to ensure that freelance workers have the support that they need, and would you be willing to work with this taskforce, and with the Arts Council of Wales, and other organisations, to implement the recommendations of the report? What specific plans do you have as a Government to safeguard and grow the Welsh-medium sector during the pandemic?

Well, the Welsh-medium sector, in an officially bilingual nation, and a Senedd where we meet where both languages are official, is central to everything that we do as a Government, of course. So there’s no question that we’re not treating Welsh language provision at the same level as English language provision. And indeed, provision in other languages spoken by the citizens of Wales is also very important to us.

But the other point to emphasise here, I think, which is crucial, is that, in providing our plans as Government, we do ensure that the funding available from us—be that provided from our reallocated budgets, or whether it comes from the UK Government—that those funds are distributed as soon as possible in order to ensure that we meet the need. That’s what we have done, particularly with the £53 million, but with the reallocated internal budget—it’s more than that—that’s being provided for the arts.

What’s important is that applications come through quickly, and the arts council have responded very swiftly, I have to say, in administrating parts of the budget, and we as a Welsh Government will also administer our budget in accordance with that. It’s important that these individuals are given an assurance that there is opportunity for them to maintain their livelihoods, although they will have to discover ways of performing and operating in spaces that are different to what the situation was in the past whilst this public health crisis continues.

Thank you very much. I note that you haven’t answered my question with regard to the freelance taskforce and their recommendations in the report—

I have read their recommendations, but I’m not going to respond directly to any taskforce, because I think it’s a self-appointed taskforce, not a Government taskforce.

May I turn to another issue, namely journalism? I’d like to know what discussions you have had with regard to the future of English-medium print journalism in Wales. Have you been discussing with Reach, for example? I’d like to know how the Government can provide support—at arm’s length of course, but support despite that—to the English-medium print industry.

My first discussion, as it happened, wasn’t with Reach, but with the National Union of Journalists. I have had a discussion with them, and there will be further discussions. I will also be having further discussions with Reach. But what I hope to establish is a model that will be able to provide public funding to English language journalism that corresponds to what is available in literary and journalistic publications through the medium of Welsh. Because it’s always been clear to me, as one interested in both cultures and both languages, that there wasn’t equality of provision in this situation. So I do hope that we can take action through Creative Wales, because that is the new agency that we have within Government. Because of the current situation with this plague that we are suffering, we haven’t been able to make as swift a progress as we would have hoped, but there is a Creative Wales director in place now and he’s a very experienced public official and we will be acting through Creative Wales to establish a funding model. But it will be at arm’s length of Government, because that was what was important to me also. We need a model similar to the arts council model, where artistic decisions and journalistic decisions in this context are made not by politicians but by a quasi-independent body of Government.

Thank you very much. We look forward to seeing that work coming to fruition, because I’m sure you’ll agree that the newspaper industry and having a prosperous sector is vital to public life and democracy in Wales. So, I’m pleased to hear what you say today on that.

May I turn to one other area to conclude? Last Thursday, I believe it was, the Welsh Government announced a fund for support for sport worth £14 million, which is to be welcomed of course, but one of the problems that people in that area have mentioned to me is that some of this funding has to go to innovation plans and they see that as being very difficult because, truth be told, they need to fill the gaps that are arising as a result of a lack of income. So, why have you chosen to focus on innovation rather than focusing on assisting organisations to survive as a result of the lack of income that they’re facing at the moment?

We considered this issue carefully, and one of the things that’s been important to me over the years is that if people are to access public funds, that shouldn’t be available to them free of charge and that it’s just a matter of ticking the boxes, but that we also find new ways of working creatively in order to help to bring people through this crisis that we’re currently facing. That was at the heart of the decision that there should be creative requirements attached to how we make use of public funds. It’s not an attempt to refuse funding to individuals or institutions, but I didn’t want to pour money into old creative institutions that, perhaps, aren’t the kinds of institutions that new audiences will respond and react to. So, that was behind that. And, again, Creative Wales will be responsible for oversight and providing advice on this situation.

Conservative spokesperson, Laura Jones. 

Deputy Minister, I know that a lot of the Chamber follow on social media, as do I, Joe Wicks, who was a physical and mental health hero, I suppose, during the national lockdown period. He posted a video this morning on how he's being affected mentally by all the latest coronavirus regulations and things like that, which I thought was very brave, and he also said how the physical exercise helps him through that.

The last six months have taken their toll on people's physical and mental well-being, something that was addressed earlier in the First Minister's statement, and there's very much a lot of evidence to suggest that physical exercise can actually help mental health. Therefore, I'd like to just reiterate calls by our shadow Minister for health and sport, Andrew R.T. Davies, earlier for more support to be put into recreational sport across Wales.

PE with Joe, which was something that Joe Wicks did, was such a success for whole families, of all ages, and their mental and physical health during the lockdown period, as were the videos they tailored for the elderly, particularly those who were shielding. I'm not suggesting that you and the First Minister start doing exercise videos for the nation, Minister, but it is something that is very good, and maybe we should we look into, because it's a great way of getting into people's houses, helping them to exercise, encouraging them to exercise and maybe it's something that we should look at on a Wales-wide basis and be free for use. 

In areas where we have localised lockdowns, it made me think how are we reaching those people. Because of the obvious restrictions now on people, how are you ensuring that people are still able to take part in physical exercise, and how are you encouraging them to do so?

Well, I have an overall responsibility within Government for encouraging physical activity, which I still do myself. I'm not going to invite you to come and film me in Llandaff fields. I do, but it's a slow jogging process. But I think it's essential that we do, as a Government, repeat these messages, because one of the key things that I'm looking for, as we struggle through the pandemic, is how we develop good practice and better communication, so that the messages that we send out, the health messages that we produce, are ones that people find it easy to respond to. So, it's got to be a choice of which kind of physical activity. We spoke earlier about bowls; it depends what kind of physical activity people opt for—not just one thing or the other. We must make these activities as available as possible, in collaboration, obviously, with our major funders, which, through Welsh Government—it goes to the users of services.

Thank you, Minister. To enable people to partake in sport during the winter months is absolutely essential. It's always been essential, but now more than ever during this pandemic. Rural areas, often deemed affluent by the Welsh Government, are critically poor in a lot of areas when it comes to sporting facilities, especially those that can be used during the winter months to ensure that people and clubs can continue their sporting activities throughout the coldest and rainiest of months. What steps are you taking, Minister, to ensure that everybody across all areas of Wales has access to all-weather sporting facilities within their own communities, so they don't have to travel?

I will take note of that, because it's clearly something we need to ensure that we do provide and do respond to properly. I'm tempted to say we should ensure adequate supplies of thermals for all, but maybe that wouldn't be appropriate coming out of my budget; well, I haven't got much of a budget anyway. But to the extent that we could, I think that the obvious thing is to make people feel comfortable exercising in the interesting and diverse climate that we have in Wales. 

Thank you, Deputy Minister. Finally, the National Trust is facing considerable financial difficulty due to the coronavirus. They are reported to be facing losses of some £200 million as a result of the pandemic, and have had to review every aspect of their charity to make savings in almost every area of activity. One such attraction currently at risk is the roundhouse in the Kymin, which is a major tourist attraction in the area, attracting 65,000 visitors a year. The trust is currently consulting on closing the roundhouse, which would present a major blow to the local economy. Can you confirm that the full amount of funding provided by the UK Government to support arts and culture organisations in Wales is being used for the purpose intended, and what action can you take to ensure sites of historic importance, like the roundhouse, are kept open?

I have visited the Kymin. I think it was one of the early properties—I think it was 1902 that it was a gift to the National Trust. It's a very distinctive site. I have had discussions with the National Trust, and my senior officials, especially the head of Cadw, have had discussions with the National Trust. I think the way to respond to your question is to assure you that I want a stronger partnership between National Trust Cymru and Welsh Government and Cadw, because I think here is an opportunity now, as we reopen, or hopefully gradually reopen sites of this kind, for us to co-operate.

Obviously, we cannot fund the National Trust as if it were just another applicant, but if the National Trust has serious proposals, which would include a partnership with Welsh Government, I would be strongly in favour of that. I do live in the middle of National Trust property in the north; I should declare an interest. Though the actual cottage that we have is not a National Trust property; I don't think the National Trust would want it.

Thank you. Question 3, Russell George.

Sorry, Deputy Presiding Officer, I had an issue earlier on this afternoon. 

Thank you for that. You may be aware that mid Wales, for me, is a very important, central part of the economy and the regional life of Wales. And we have emphasised in our tourism policy that we have, indeed, four regions in Wales, and therefore we encourage visitors whenever we can to mid Wales as a tourism destination, although, clearly, the slogan is still 'Visit Wales. Safely'.

Thank you, Deputy Minister. I'm obviously pleased to hear that. The restoration of the Montgomery canal, which is an important site of interest, has the potential to promote, I believe, mid Wales as a tourist destination and make a significant contribution to the visitor economy. I'm sure you will fondly remember the visit that you and I undertook to the canal just a couple of years ago. 

Indeed.

It is estimated that restoring the canal would generate an annual spend of approximately £5 million and create 128 full-time jobs. We do need, I think, some fresh impetus into the campaign to restore the 'Monty', as it's called and referred to, so I would be grateful to hear about any recent discussions that Welsh Government may have had, perhaps with the UK Government or Powys County Council, in terms of incorporating this project into a potential mid Wales growth deal. I appreciate that might be a little bit outside of your immediate portfolio, Deputy Minister, but would you also agree to set up a project working group to look at how the Welsh Government can take a lead in the canal's restoration and take advantage of a number of funding sources?

I have a huge personal affection and interest in the Welsh waterways. After all, they are the first conduits of our early industrial revolution and they occur now in bits. In fact, I have a map, which I can't reach for, sitting here, of the inland waterways of Wales and of the canal system in particular. The answer to your specific question is: yes, I'm very happy to continue further discussions. 

I have worked in the past with Bwrdd Glandŵr Cymru—the Canal and River Trust—and I'm happy to continue those discussions. Clearly, Powys County Council would have a major role here and I think the development of mid Wales as an area of relaxation, and its very important location as a large border area, is something that I don't think we take sufficiently seriously when we look at what happens in Wales. There's a lot of talk about Snowdonia, about the north-east now, with the excitement in Gwrych castle, about what happens in the south-west and, of course, in the cities—Cardiff, Newport, Swansea—and in the region of south-east Wales. But I think mid Wales, for me—. And I have to tell you because of the fact that—I'm not under lockdown, but I have had a personal lockdown since the beginning of March, but my only visit for recreation was in fact to Vyrnwy, and I felt much better after being there.

Thank you. Huw Irranca-Davies.

Dirprwy Lywydd, my apologies, there was a bit of a delay then because the cursor would not allow me to unmute. 

Minister, once they let me out of Bridgend at some point, when we get on top of this virus, I'm looking forward to getting my gaiters on and heading up the Cambrian Way through mid Wales. It is a great gem and, of course, last year, along with Ramblers Cymru, we launched the Cambrian Way, along with Cicerone, the great route maker that publishes the best routes worldwide. But could you tell me, Minister, in encouraging more people out into the wilds of mid Wales, which are a great undiscovered gem—I have to say, they really are—how do we also make sure that people have respect for the countryside as well and that they leave no trace? I'm old enough to remember the old countryside code as well. How do we make sure that we educate a new generation of people to enjoy the countryside but to look after it as well?

Well, this is a key part of the tourism relationship, of the visitor and host relationship, and people in the countryside clearly have to be positive in their welcome and reception of visitors, but visitors and walkers particularly have to have an understanding of the nature of the countryside communities, and of the misunderstanding very often of the relationship between rights of way, permissive rights and statutory rights—footpaths and so on. So, I think the important thing here is that the messages that we promote through Visit Wales and the messages that we promote through our relationship with agricultural unions and the landowners are messages that look for sustainable tourism and sustainable countryside recreation.

Thank you very much, Mike, and thank you for asking the question in Welsh. Through Cymraeg i Blant, the language charter, Mudiad Meithrin, the Urdd, the mentrau iaith and many other methods, there are many opportunities for children to use the Welsh language. I will also be publishing a policy on transmission of the Welsh language between parents and children before the end of the year, which will again be the basis for a new programme of work.

Thank you for that response, Minister. I, like many others here, am aware of how difficult it is to become fluent in Welsh as an adult. So, what discussions has the Minister had with colleagues on the importance of starting learning Welsh at a young age, particularly in terms of support for Mudiad Meithrin and Ti a Fi and ensuring that they have a positive start through the medium of Welsh?

Thank you very much. That was excellent, Mike, and I think that the questions are very fair too. Of course, what we do try to do to reach 1 million Welsh speakers is to ensure—. To reach that target, we want to ensure that more children receive their education through the medium of Welsh. So, around 20 per cent currently receive their education through the medium of Welsh, and we want that to get to 40 per cent. That's quite a major step and, of course, the way to do that is by starting with nursery provision, and that's why Mudiad Meithrin have opened more settings where there is an opportunity for children to come together to learn Welsh in areas where there is no such provision at the moment. But before that, 20 new Ti a Fi cylchoedd have been established throughout Wales, and they provide an opportunity for people just to step into the Welsh language and try it out before they send their children to those Welsh-medium nursery schools.

So, we try to encourage children to use the Welsh language, but, of course, once they go into Welsh-medium schools, we also have to ensure that they use the Welsh language socially. So, that's why we use initiatives such as the mentrau iaith to ensure that they have opportunities to practice the Welsh language once they're able to speak it.

I'm pleased, Minister, that you mentioned parents because the visible support of parents and carers for the Welsh language is very influential in terms of how a young child accepts bilingualism as part of how he or she sees him or herself, which is very important beyond locations such as the cylchoedd and the ysgolion meithrin. Baby massage and yoga, around the football pitch at a local sports ground, a local shop—these are all friendly areas where parents can use the Welsh language themselves while they are with their own children. And programmes such as Cymraeg i Blant, which you've already mentioned, and Clwb Cwtsh are crucial in the work of supporting parents on their children's journey towards bilingualism. But what else can you suggest that isn't online to enhance parents' experience so that they can become the main promoters of the Welsh language to young children, by actually showing their commitment, and that's very important, as you've said, in the non-Welsh speaking areas?

Thank you very much. I think that's a very important point, because there is a risk that people see the language as something artificial that's only spoken in schools, so it's important that they see that this is a way of life as well. And that's why Cymraeg i Blant is an opportunity for people to do just that, but, of course, at the moment it's difficult, and that's why all of that work has moved online, and it's very important at the moment that we give opportunities for those who don't have opportunities to speak Welsh at home, and who haven't been able to attend school for months—that they have an opportunity to use the Welsh language as well.

We've been sharing ideas through social networks to parents, so that they can see what is out there, so there is 'Llond haf o Gymraeg'—that's a hashtag that people can use to find activities, initiatives, that they can use with the Welsh language. But, of course, what else we're going to do is adopt this idea of language transmission between people within their families. That's really sensitive and really difficult to do, but it is something that we are trying to focus on at the moment, to see how we can get more of those people who don't quite have the confidence, who haven't spoken Welsh for years, since they left school—that they might start using the Welsh language again.

Yes, thank you very much, Darren. The support that we've given to the tourism industry in north Wales is the most generous in the United Kingdom, especially through the economic resilience fund. Tourism businesses in Wales as a whole benefited over £27 million from the first two phases of the economic resilience fund, of which £8 million pounds was spent in north Wales.

Thank you for that answer, Deputy Minister. You'll be aware that Gwrych castle will be the focus of millions of viewers' eyes from November when I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out Of Here! will actually be filmed there, at what is a fairytale venue. Obviously, that gives us a huge opportunity to put north Wales even further on the map for visitors, not just in Wales, but around the world. Can you tell me what action the Welsh Government is taking in order to capitalise on the opportunity that is presented by I'm a Celebrity...Get Me Out Of Here! taking place in Abergele, and can you rule yourself in or out of that camp, and have you been approached by ITV?

I am unable to answer the final part of that question. [Laughter.] But, no, I don't intend to participate, I don't think, and I wouldn't be allowed to as Minister for tourism. I couldn't pretend to be part of a tourist activity myself. But I do know Gwrych Castle, obviously, because I was brought up in the county of Conwy, and I am delighted with the very strong support that is being made available to this project. And I think that we can never underestimate the importance of activity that combines both physical activity in the countryside and heritage interest, which is debatable—whether Gwrych castle is a heritage site in the true sense of the word, but now it certainly will be.

Deputy Minister, I was pleased to support the tourism sector in north Wales over the period of lockdown, and the very real threat to businesses, jobs and livelihoods that was predicted if the sector was not opened up in a timely manner. Tourism means not just accommodation, it's museums, animal sanctuaries, stately homes and all of those things that we as residents know are there but take for granted or haven't seen for decades. Will you please join me in asking all of Wales, as well as our visitors, to fall in love again with where we live and get out to see these sites and enjoy these facilities where the new rules allow? Thank you.

Thank you for that very positive question. It's extremely important that we recognise the value to Wales's tourism of visits from within Wales, as well as within our neighbouring countries, especially from over the border from England, as well as from Ireland. And I hope that the activities at Gwrych castle and the television support that will be provided for that in terms of marketing, and the marketing that will be related to that by Visit Wales as our own tourism marketing organisation, will be able to provide the positive message for people to visit these sites in Wales within the context of public health that we have at the moment.

Diolch, Neil. Ensuring that people can access affordable homes is crucial for the future sustainability of Welsh-speaking communities. This is a complex issue, of which second homes is a significant factor. I've already discussed this with the Minister for Housing and Local Government, and will continue to prioritise this matter.

I strongly urge the Minister to have discussions with Gwynedd Council, because local government can do a lot. In Gwynedd, 7,000 homes are owned by people who don't even live in Wales. Ten per cent of homes in Gwynedd are used as second homes—more than any other county in Wales. Almost 40 per cent of properties sold in Gwynedd from March 2019 to April 2020 were purchased as second homes—again, more than any other county in Wales. Houses are marketed in England for £400,000, £2 million—one £3 million, just down the road from Mynytho, the village where my wife was born and raised. Local people simply cannot afford to buy houses where they live now, with the average wage in Gwynedd being £16,000 a year. The local council in Gwynedd passed a local development plan that enables, unbelievably, family housing to be converted into holiday accommodation. So, the second home issue is an epidemic that has gone on for decades in Welsh language communities, decimating the language. So, my question, really, is: when are you going to start to do something about people avoiding tax on the second properties, when are you going to overhaul the planning system, and especially local development plans, and when is the Government going to end this scandal?

Diolch, Neil. Just, first of all, to let him know that I did have discussions, not just with Gwynedd Council members last week, but also with representatives from all the rural local authorities around Wales, and this was an issue that we discussed. And what's clear is that it's a really complex issue. We are determined to make sure that it is possible for people who are brought up in an area—that they should be able to stay in the area. But the ways of making sure that happens are rather complex.

Of course, one of the things we've done, and we've committed to, and we are delivering on, is building 20,000 new homes. We're the only nation in the UK where local authorities can charge a premium of up to 100 per cent on the standard rate of council tax on second homes. We're the only part of the UK—not even Scotland; they provided a temporary tax reduction for even buy-to-let investors, we didn't do that in Wales, we transferred some of that money into building new homes.

But I think it's really important that there is an understanding that we've been looking at this for quite a while. We're looking for a way to address this really serious issue. We've discussed it in our Welsh language advisory group, and Dr Simon Brooks is currently undertaking a review of how other areas are dealing with second homes as a part of his work with the Hywel Teifi academy, and I'm hoping that his study will help us to drive a way forward here. We have looked at Cornwall, we have looked at Scotland, we have looked at Jersey—all of them have problems associated with them. So, we're looking for an answer and we haven't come to one yet. So, we are absolutely anxious to make sure that we get the communications with Senedd Members going, and I know that the Minister for housing invited Members who were interested in this to speak to her very recently.  

Minister, second homes can be an important part of sustaining the local economy, but there is a very delicate balance to be struck, and I do think that part of the solution is building more—both social housing, which doesn't create this problem, but also it is open to councils, in developing land, to covenant it to a local market. For new build, it does seem to me that that might be an interesting development. I don't think that you can do it retrospectively, because you have to face the fact that these homes are often sold by local people, quite naturally, to the highest bidder, and that's often when they become, then, second homes.

Thank you. Well, I can assure you that we will maintain our support for the social housing grant, and that is the primary source of subsidy for affordable housing in Wales. That is, of course, making a contribution to that 20,000 target. The planning system is something where there is—. We have tried to look at whether there are means of, perhaps, tightening up the planning system so you can't switch from it being a home to a place you can rent. There are some really difficult legal problems associated with that. But, as you say, we have got to get this balance right, because it's also—. Tourism is a really important aspect of those communities, but, at the moment, I think that we have to recognise that the balance in some communities has simply gone too far.

Thank you very much, Minister. 

We move to item 4, which is questions to the Senedd Commission. The first question this afternoon will be answered by Rhun ap Iorwerth. Siân Gwenllian.

I thank Siân Gwenllian for that question. What happened in this case was that the administrative court re-emphasised the principle that legislative texts made by the Senedd in Welsh and in English have the same weight in law. Both languages therefore need to be consulted in order to properly interpret legislation.

Here in the Senedd, we are on strong legislative foundations as a bilingual legislature. Section 156 of the Government of Wales Act 2006 notes that English and Welsh texts have equal status in legislation. In addition to that, the National Assembly for Wales (Official Languages) Act 2012 states that we have two official languages in the Senedd. The official languages scheme outlines how we treat both languages on that basis. So, we welcome the administrative court's decision to highlight and confirm the equal status of the Welsh language within the legislative context.

Thank you very much. Yesterday, I had an opportunity to discuss this significant court judgment with the Counsel General. There are two significant aspects with regard to this judgment and the Welsh language, and one—the one that we were discussing yesterday—is the right to a Welsh education within a reasonable distance of the home.

Now, I'm raising another matter that was part of that judgment with you today, namely that it's the first time for the Welsh language text of legislation to play a significant part in a legal case, and that's relevant to us. The council in Rhondda Cynon Taf disregarded the Welsh version of the School Standards and Organisation (Wales) Act 2013 and was incorrect to do so, according to the justice. There was also a question with regard to a difference in meaning between the Welsh and English versions of the legislation.

So, do you agree that there are important questions arising from this judgment that require due regard to be paid to them by the Government, Commission and external experts such as the Welsh Language Commissioner, and that there are questions such as ensuring the quality of our bilingual legislative processes, the need to upgrade the status of the Welsh language, and the role of the Senedd in driving forward parity of esteem between the Welsh language and the English language, for the sake of the Welsh language? So, I'd ask you for a commitment today to a careful analysis about the significance of this judgment and any changes that should be made as a result of it. 

Thank you for that question. I think Siân Gwenllian is entirely right in emphasising the real significance of this judgment, and I am eager for that to be given proper and detailed attention by the Commission and the Government. I am certain that this is something that will certainly be of interest to the Welsh Language Commissioner's office.

I agree that seeing the Welsh language being confirmed so emphatically in its status should encourage us to ensure that our bilingual legislative processes are robust, and are more robust. It should give us confidence as a Senedd to increase the use of the Welsh language in this Senedd. I invite Members to contribute their ideas on how that can be done as the Members' survey is distributed this week.

And the other point I'd like to make is that the official languages scheme is being reviewed for the sixth Senedd. This adjudication gives that a different context and strengthens the context of that, and I would encourage Members to contribute to that work when the Commission's consultation on it opens.

Thank you.

Thank you. Question 2 and question 3 this afternoon will be answered by the Llywydd. Question 2, Andrew R.T. Davies.

Thank you for the question. Commission staff have been preparing during the recess for holding hybrid committee meetings. The committee rooms have been adapted to enable some Members, officials and witnesses to attend safely in person, with others participating via Zoom. Two meetings of the Equality, Local Government and Communities Committee will now be held on 2 and 9 October to test the format and the facilities. In the light of that experience, the Chairs' forum will be discussing the possibility of making the hybrid format available to other committees in the second half of this term.

Thank you for that, Presiding Officer. I think the answer's pretty complete. It gives me a time frame that we can look forward to as Members. Are you hopeful that any announcement will be made prior to the half-term recess? I appreciate that you said, with the practicalities of delivering it, providing the trial goes well, it would be only in the second half of term, but can we as Members expect some form of announcement out of the trial so that we may understand exactly when it might happen?

Well, in our work in developing new ways of working during this period of coronavirus, as we've developed and trialled new ways of working, we've always done so on the basis of having held pilots, to ensure everything in terms of how the Members are able to take part but also how the IT and the clerking system support us. We do that on the basis of running pilots, as we will be doing with the local government committee in a couple of weeks' time.

Then, the Chairs' forum and the views of Chairs on how their committees are running to date and how they aspire to have their committees working into the future will be essential in how we look to see whether there is an appetite to hold more hybrid committee meetings.

We have now ensured that there is the capacity to hold up to two meetings at the same time in a hybrid format. So, we've done the preparatory work in ensuring that the IT capacity and the space is there for at least that number, but it's a matter of seeing how the first few meetings of the local government committee go in future.

All of this, of course, as we all know, is subject to the coronavirus regulations changing, as we are experiencing at the moment, but we want to enable as much activity in the Senedd as is possible, as we've done to date, and we need to trial new ways of working, and continue to do so. So, thank you for the question.

The first step of the campaign focused mainly on votes at 16. We've developed a range of activities for use in classrooms and youth groups. During the lockdown, these have also been adapted for home use. For the election campaign, staff are developing materials and plans to ensure that our key message about the election, that voting in Senedd 2021 is the way to get your voice heard in your Senedd, reaches all parts of Wales. We will focus on those newly enfranchised by the Senedd and Elections (Wales) Act 2020, but we will also be addressing traditionally underrepresented groups.

Thank you very much, Llywydd. I’m particularly pleased to hear about the work that’s been done with young people. I want to ask what further work the Commission can do to ensure that people who don’t have English or Welsh as their first language understand that they have a right to vote. There will be many people who don’t have official citizenship, but who are Welsh citizens, in our view, who will have the right to vote for the first time. So, would it be possible, perhaps, to provide materials in relevant languages for those people who may have come here as refugees or to work?

We do work with the Welsh Government and the Electoral Commission and with local authorities as well, of course, to ensure that everyone is aware of the new arrangements and the new franchise for the elections. I accept entirely the point that you make, that we need to do this in languages that are spoken by the citizens of Wales. I will ensure that those who work on this issue do so, because I support what you are saying entirely, that the information that is available about the opportunity is available in the languages spoken in Wales.

I think the connection went down there, Llywydd. Did you manage to get to the end?

We got the gist.

Yes. I think probably—. Diolch. Right, thank you. Huw Irranca-Davies.

Diolch, Dirprwy Lywydd. Llywydd, I wonder if I could ask you whether there have been any discussions within the Commission, in your work on informing the electorate about the Senedd elections next year, about the applicability of postal voting, particularly with the coronavirus restrictions that we're increasingly seeing across parts of Wales. I realise that this is predominantly a matter for the Electoral Commission and for electoral officers in discussion as well, but it does seem to me and to other Members of the Senedd increasingly that we may face movement restrictions and, as such, postal voting might be a larger part than normal of the electoral process for next year's Senedd elections.

Thank you for the question. I hope that the broadband connection is now stabler than it was during my previous answer. I'm just outside the Chamber and I would have expected that the broadband connection would have been stable enough to reach a few metres for that.

In terms of the question you raised regarding how the election of May 2021 is to be conducted, these are obviously issues that are now becoming very much discussed between the various players who ensure that the election is to happen—local government, the Electoral Commission, Welsh Government and ourselves in this case, for the Senedd election—and discussions are ongoing as to how coronavirus regulations will mean that there may be different ways of undertaking that election possibly needed. So, we will need to be looking at every single way to make the election as safe as possible, if coronavirus regulations remain in place, but democracy needs to be served and everybody needs to have access to that democracy. So, we will need to be making sure that we are able to work and conduct those elections in a way that enables everybody to take part.

To be answered by Commissioner Suzy Davies. Sorry.

Diolch yn fawr, Dirprwy Lywydd. I'm sorry to turn my back on you, Janet. The furniture and fittings budget, such as it is, is used to provide for any ad hoc office furniture needed in Tŷ Hywel and the Senedd for Members of the Senedd, for their staff and Commission staff. The budget gives the Commission flexibility to meet a person's specific needs that go beyond the provision of standard furniture. Surplus but serviceable furniture items can be reused, used to repair or replace any broken or damaged items, or, of course, recycled.

Thank you. As you rightly pointed out, the budget for accommodation and facilities includes an allocation of £60,000 for expenditure on just furniture and fittings over the past four years. That's a total of £240,000 over four years, and we are all aware of major refurbishments to this place, over this term, that have cost millions. Now, this, into our local economy, the difference, if materials and items were procured from Wales, would go a long way.

In the budget published for 2019-20, it is stated that the Commission is developing a strategy for increasing contract opportunities for Welsh based suppliers and that progress will be monitored regularly through key performance indicators, which is set at 43 per cent of supplier spend to be with Welsh based companies. So, I suppose, really, I'm looking at whether that target has been hit and why we are only setting a target for 43 per cent. Why are we not setting a target for 100 per cent? So, next Assembly term, I would like to see that figure increased.

Also, too, you'll be aware of the campaign by the National Farmers Union and the Farmers Union of Wales, and, indeed, farmers across Wales, for us to actually implement the use, more use, of wool, Welsh wool, in certain things such as carpets in public buildings and other initiatives. So, may I have on record, to a degree, some commitment that the Assembly Commission, going forward, when spending money on refurbishments to this place, will actually look to perhaps start looking to provide a larger target of Welsh goods and procurement, and, indeed, as regards refurnishing with new carpets and things, that wool is given the first priority? Thank you.

Thank you very much, Janet. Just on the first point about the target for Welsh-procured products, we have to bear in mind that things like Microsoft and quite a lot of the kit that's probably even in this Chamber just can't be procured from Wales. So, the target of 43 per cent was set as a realistic and achievable target, which, of course, I think I should put you all on notice, is likely to be affected by the fact that we've been shut down for some time, and just simple things like buying food for the canteen just hasn't been possible. But it remains a target; it's a target we intend to hit, if we possibly can, despite COVID, but I'm just hoping that we'll be able to do that.

On the second point, can I just congratulate the NFU and actually, Janet, you yourself, for raising this campaign about using Welsh wool? As you said, the Commission has got targets for both greater procurement from within Wales, but it also has sustainability goals as well, and the use of natural product within the building—buildings, I should say—is something that we should seriously consider. The suggestion you make could be a valuable contribution for both those target areas.

I do need to add, of course, that we need to use our resources wisely—it's one of our strategic goals—so, we would need to be sure that Welsh wool products could meet the spec for long life, high use and efficient cleaning and reasonable cost, and if those products exist, or will exist, then I'm sure we would be very interested to hear about them. Thank you.

Thank you.

Item 5 is topical questions and none have been accepted this week.

Therefore, item 6 is the 90-second statements, and this week we have Helen Mary Jones.

Diolch, Dirprwy Lywydd. This week is Adult Learners' Week. The campaign, led by Learning and Work Cymru, aims to inspire and encourage thousands of adults every year to continue in and return to education and skills development, and to raise awareness of the value of adult learning by celebrating the achievements of learners and providing inspiration to see how adult learning can change their lives.

My constituent Kathryn McLuckie has given me permission to tell her story. She's a 35-year-old learner from Milford Haven and was working as a dinner lady in a local primary school when, very sadly, her relationship broke down. This had a huge emotional impact on her and her children, and she felt lost and alone. One morning, she woke up and decided she needed to do something, so she walked into Pembrokeshire College and enquired about a course that could help her to help others. She has just completed a two-year level 4 course in therapeutic counselling, and she feels like a completely new person. She's just applied for a job as an advocate.

Adult learning and reskilling changes lives. It must be a priority as Wales addresses the challenges of and as we plan to recover as a nation from COVID-19.

Thank you very much. There'll now be a short break, just to allow a change of personnel and for some cleaning. So, we will ring the bell when we are ready to proceed again. Thank you very much.

We will reconvene now on item 7, which is a motion to amend the Standing Orders—oversight of the Electoral Commission. I call on a member of the Business Committee to move that. Rebecca Evans.

Formally.

Thank you. There are no speakers. Therefore, as there is no debate and no speakers, and I take it nobody wants to make an intervention, the proposal is to amend the Standing Orders. Does any Member object? No. That's good. Therefore that motion is agreed in accordance with Standing Order 12.36.

Item 8 on the agenda this afternoon is a motion to establish a committee under Standing Order 16.3—the Llywydd's Committee. Again, I call on Rebecca Evans to move the motion. 

Yes, formally move. 

Thank you. I see no speakers and I take it, then, if there are no speakers there are no interventions. So, the proposal is to agree the motion. Does any Member object? No. That's good. Therefore the motion is agreed in accordance with Standing Order 12.36.

Item 9 on our agenda is a motion to elect a Member to the Equality, Local Government and Communities Committee, and again I call on Rebecca Evans to move the motion.

Formally.

Thank you. Again, no debate, and as I can see no debate, no interventions. Therefore, the proposal is to agree the motion. Does any Member object? No. Therefore the motion is agreed in accordance with Standing Order 12.36.

Item 10 is a motion under Standing Order 17.3 and 18B.4 to elect a Member to the committee. I call on the Member again to move the motion—Rebecca Evans. 

Formally. 

Thank you. No debate again, therefore I take it no interventions. So, the proposal is to agree the motion. Does any Member object? No. Therefore, the motion is agreed in accordance with Standing Order 12.36.

Item 11 on our agenda this afternoon is a debate on the Finance Committee report on the impact of variations in national and sub-national income tax. I call on the Chair of the Finance Committee to move the motion—Llyr Gruffydd. 

Thank you very much, Llywydd. I'm very pleased to open this debate as Chair of the Finance Committee on our inquiry into the impact of variations in national and sub-national income tax. As we know, the prospect of differing income tax rates across the UK is a rather new notion, with the partial devolution of income tax to Wales only being in force since April 2019. To date, the rates have so far remained in line with England and Northern Ireland, and the Welsh Government has committed to not raising the Welsh rates of income tax during this fifth Senedd.

With the end of this Senedd fast approaching, of course, the Finance Committee decided to examine the potential effects of having different income tax rates across the Wales-England border, particularly given the concentration of people living close to that border. I would like to thank all of those who contributed, and the Minister for finance for her response to our report and for accepting all of our recommendations, either in full or in principle.

The likelihood of becoming an income tax payer is lower in Wales than it is in the UK as a whole. According to the 2016-17 survey of personal incomes, 44 per cent of the Welsh population were income tax payers, and this compares to 47 per cent of the UK’s population—partly due to lower employment rates and lower average incomes as well. Growing the Welsh tax base is an important element in raising tax revenue for public spending in Wales and we believe that the Welsh Government should focus on implementing innovative strategies to develop this tax base.

We heard it may be difficult to predict behavioural responses in Wales from the various effects of tax changes in other jurisdictions, but there is a substantial body of literature examining taxpayers’ responsiveness, and that offers valuable guiding principles for us in this area. For example, international studies show that high income earners are particularly responsive to tax rates; that it's easier for some high-earning professions to be mobile; and that the stage of an individual’s career can influence their ability to relocate, too. So, the committee recommends that the Welsh Government develops policy options that will help to attract the most responsive groups to Wales, such as those high income earners and young graduates, of course, in order to boost its tax revenues.

We welcome the Welsh Government-funded research being undertaken to develop more complex economic models of the Welsh economy through which to understand better the potential effects changes in taxation rates might have. However, researchers have highlighted that the main limitation in constructing and developing their model is the availability of Welsh-specific data. We recognise that there are sensitivities, of course, surrounding the disclosure of tax data, but it is crucial that data are improved in order to understand the composition of the Welsh tax base and then to support the further development of economic models. Our report recommends greater collaboration between the Welsh Government and HMRC to improve Welsh data collection and dissemination, as well as exploring how the knowledge, analysis and intelligence division at HMRC could be utilised to support research into tax divergence. The Minister has indicated that, building on the evidence presented to the committee, the Welsh Government is undertaking research with HMRC to estimate the behavioural impacts of tax divergence, and we very much welcome this development as a committee.

Our report also identifies further areas of research that we believe the Welsh Government should undertake. We recommend that the Welsh Government should engage with academics to undertake a longitudinal study on the impact of tax rate divergence across the Wales-England border. The Minister’s response, which signals that the Welsh Government is engaging with HMRC and the Scottish Government to explore the feasibility of a longitudinal data set to measure the behavioural impacts of income tax changes within the UK, is encouraging.

Evidence gathered during our inquiry pointed to the influence of non-tax factors on where an individual chooses to live. These factors include house prices, the cost of living, employment opportunities, which are important, too, of course, the quality of public services, which is an important element, and the quality of life in general, which is vital. We recommend that such factors must be considered as part of any further Welsh Government research relating to the impact of income tax variations across the Wales-England border.

As well as examining the revenue implications of any tax policy changes, witnesses emphasised the importance of considering the spillover effects of tax policy decisions. For example, increasing the additional rate of income tax may yield revenue, but if it reduces the number of additional rate taxpayers in Wales, then that could lead to spillover such as lower wages or fewer employment opportunities. So, we do recommend that future Welsh Government research considers potential spillover effects of Welsh rates of income tax policy on disadvantaged people, such as, for example, those on low incomes and individuals paying income tax whilst being in receipt of universal credit.

As the power to vary income tax rates in Wales applies only to non-savings and non-dividend income, we heard that Wales will be particularly exposed to taxpayers mitigating their liability through switching from earnings to other forms of income. For example, those who are self-employed could respond to tax variations by incorporating their business, in order to pay corporation tax on profits and dividend savings income tax on the withdrawal of profits, instead of paying the Welsh rates of income tax on self-employed earnings. So, we recommend that the Welsh Government commissions research into the impact of mitigating personal income tax through incorporation and changing forms of income, especially given that a significant proportion of higher and additional-rate payers are employed in the private sector in Wales, and therefore capable, of course, of incorporating their activities. We also call on the Welsh Government to give further consideration to seeking the devolution of savings and dividend income to Wales and to assess the benefits and risks of securing this power.

Finally, though we concluded our evidence gathering for this inquiry before the true extent of the COVID-19 pandemic was realised, it is clear that difficult decisions on taxation will need to be made in order to aid Wales’s economic recovery. The Welsh Government needs to consider all economic levers at its disposal, and we urge the Welsh Government to develop policy options for the Welsh rates of income tax and consider contingencies to deal with adverse economic conditions and possible cuts in public spending. So, with those comments, I look forward, Deputy Llywydd, to hearing contributions from Members.

I'm pleased to be able to contribute to today's debate on the impact of variations in national and sub-national income tax. It's not something that trips off the tongue all too easily on a daily basis, but I welcome the Chair's excellent opening contribution, which I think explained the context within which this important piece of work was compiled.

This report was a very interesting one to be involved in, because it looks at an area key to devolution at the moment—the Welsh Government's new tax powers and what it actually means in practice, not just in the theory that we've been talking about for so long. As the report says, the Welsh border is densely populated, with 17 million people living within 50 miles of it. With 44 per cent of the Welsh population paying income tax, compared with 47 per cent of the UK's population, it was apparent to us on the committee that the Welsh Government must consider ways to develop the Welsh income tax base and maximise tax revenues.

If I can just turn to the recommendations briefly. In recommendation 1 we recommend greater collaboration between the Welsh Government and HMRC to improve Welsh data collection and to use HMRC's expertise in this area to support research. Meanwhile, recommendation 3 calls for an improvement in Welsh-specific data, and, of course, we all want to see that. The lack of Welsh data is a recurring challenge for fiscal devolution. In fact, how many debates do we have in this Chamber and on Zoom where the issue of lack of Welsh data doesn't come up? It comes up all the time, and there's a need across many portfolios for that to be improved.

Our report refers to research that was conducted by Cardiff University, 'A Welsh tax haven?'. That certainly makes interesting reading. That report concluded that changes in the basic rate have little effect on migration and tax yields, but changes to the additional and higher rates would have significant impacts. That reminded me—I'm sure it reminds Mike Hedges—of the work that Professor Gerry Holtham did some years back in this area, when he concluded that it was quite difficult in practice to change tax rates and have a positive effect, other than dropping the higher rate of taxation by around 10p in the pound that could encourage entrepreneurs and grow the Welsh tax base. And that is at the core of the economic problem that we face in Wales and have done for some time. Basically, the Welsh tax base is too small. I fully understand why, in earlier questions to the finance Minister and indeed in discussions with the First Minister, there's been a reticence shown in raising taxes, even though during the COVID pandemic there have been discussions about whether that might be inevitable at some point in time. Of course, within Wales, the tax base is weak enough as it is, so any increases would have to be very carefully thought out and could ultimately have a negative effect.

The OBR has already said that the gap between the UK and Welsh tax per person is due to Welsh taxpayers having lower average incomes. Well, 'A Welsh tax haven?' identified that the migration and revenue effects of a higher rate differential become stronger over a longer period, with a reduction in the additional rate from 45 per cent to 40 per cent probably having the biggest impact in increasing Welsh tax revenues by an annual rate of £55 million after 10 years. So, there is an accumulative benefit of tax cuts over time, but, of course, the flip side of that is that reducing the rates means that, at least in the short term, there's a reduction in revenues and public spending, which isn't particularly acceptable, particularly at the time of a pandemic.

Now, there have been some comparisons made with Scotland and modelling has been done up there to see the effect of differential rates of income tax north and south of the border, but the Finance Committee concluded that the Scottish and Welsh situations are simply too different for an effective comparison. Indeed, trying to draw conclusions from tax changes to other countries simply doesn't work. We need more Welsh-specific research in this area and that's going to take time to develop. But the fact we're having this debate today shows how far we've come and how far the tax system here has already evolved. And the current and future devolution of tax powers gives this Senedd a number of opportunities to use that system to encourage entrepreneurship, grow the tax base and stimulate the economy. In the case of lowering taxes, ultimately that could generate more tax revenues and should be looked at closely.

In conclusion, Dirprwy Lywydd, the pandemic clearly makes major changes difficult at the moment, but tax policy is and will continue to be key as we build back better beyond the pandemic. As far as I'm concerned, I think we need to keep taxes in Wales as low as possible and I hope that this is a report that will contribute to a growing body of work so that we have more Welsh-specific data and we can take the decisions in Wales we need to grow the economy and keep the tax base here efficient and effective.

Of course, the power to raise tax and to levy taxes is one of the great powers of a state, along with law-making and the role of a legislator in doing so, and it really is a coming of age, if you like, of this Parliament that we have powers now to levy taxes as well as to legislate. It's about shaping the country that we want to see, about shaping the sort of society and community we want to see in this country in the future, and it's also about the maturity of this place, not only as a place for discussion and debate but also our wider political discourse as a country.

I was very taken by the remarks that we've just heard from Nick Ramsay because, in many ways, the election that we will fight next year is the first mature election and the first mature political debate that Wales will have as a country, because we will not simply be debating expenditure as we have done for the last 20 years—we've had enormous debates over how the money will be spent, but we've never been able to debate how the money will be raised, and that's a fundamentally different debate. It's a fundamentally different politics and it's a great maturing of our politics and it's something that I very much welcome.

I hope that we will be able to have the conversations that Nick Ramsay has just started about the nature of the tax base in Wales, but I think we need to go further than that. I think we need to have a debate about the nature of taxation in Wales, and this report, I think, is a landmark report, quite honestly, and I'm very grateful to Llyr, as Chair, for leading it, and to the secretariat for the support that they were able to provide to the committee over the last period that we did this work. And I say it's a landmark report because it demonstrates very clearly that the barriers that some people may have argued exist to a Welsh taxation policy are simply not there. They aren't there. Where the barrier exists, possibly, is not that determined by the Treaty of Montgomeryshire many a century ago in the border, but in our own minds, and in our own creativity and our own imagination. And I believe that as politicians and leaders in different parts of the country, we need to have a very different debate, and this report I think sets the basis for that. I don't think it's good enough for anybody on any side of the Chamber, wherever they sit in the Chamber, to simply say, 'We're going to build back better as a consequence, post COVID', without saying where the money comes from, and this report demonstrates that we can have that debate.

It isn't good enough simply to say that we need to be able to spend more on the national health service, as every party does, without saying where the money comes from. And we've got a debate later on this afternoon on second homes—a fundamentally important debate about the nature of communities across Wales. What is the role of taxation in tackling that issue? What is the role of taxation in shaping that debate? What is the role of taxation in shaping our response to climate change? I believe that we need to go much, much further in defining taxation as a part of the policy arms of Government, as the armoury of Government is, to enable us to shape different parts of our lives, and climate change is an obvious example of that.

But I also think we need to learn more lessons—[Inaudible.]

We've lost—

Sorry, I pressed the wrong button. [Laughter.] I was getting overexcited with my own rhetoric. [Laughter.]

But we also need to learn lessons. This was in many ways a lesson-learning investigation and inquiry for many of us. The idea of a Welsh tax policy is new to us in Wales, but the idea of differential tax policy within federal states is not a new one across the world. And we need to be looking where different states have different tax policies in different places, levied by different Governments, and how they, taken together, help shape that territory, that community.

And let me finish by saying this: in having this debate, we need to have an honest debate. I've heard speakers in different parts of the Chamber talk about a low-tax Wales versus a high-tax Wales, and we've had that conversation before. The reality is we've got a very low tax base at the moment. We've got both a low tax base and low taxation levels, and we've always fooled ourselves—this extraordinarily dishonest approach that we can have Scandinavian-level services with American levels of taxation. And that's a debate we've not actually had, and we've believed it—we've been daft enough to believe our own rhetoric. And I believe we need to move away from that and to have a very real debate about where taxation lies in Wales, where it should lie. We're always home to the national health service when we want to be proud of it, but are we prepared to spend money on the national health service? We clapped this year, but will we put our hands—

Can you wind up, please?

And that's the sort of debate that we really need to have, and I hope it will be a rich debate. And I'm sorry for testing your patience, Deputy Presiding Officer. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Mike Hedges.

Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. I also welcome the report by the Finance Committee. Can I say I agree with almost everything said by Nick Ramsay and by my friend Alun Davies? The only thing I would hold with Nick Ramsay—. If we were to drop the top rate of income tax by 10 per cent, does he not think that England, across the border, would do exactly the same thing, as we engage in a race to the bottom? That's my concern—that if we enter a tax competition, we as the smaller and weaker part are going to lose.

There are three impacts of varying income tax: individual behaviour, in terms of moving to a lower tax area; impact on quality and level of public services; and the political effect caused by paying more or less than those you work alongside or those living perhaps a few hundred yards away from you. The study we undertook concentrated solely on the first of these options—what people would do. As Wales approaches the third year of partial devolution of income tax and the final year of the current Welsh Government's commitment to not raise Welsh rates of income tax, and an election year, I think it's really appropriate for this to be out there being discussed.

We've got a border, as Nick Ramsay said earlier, with 17 million people living within 50 miles of it. Many people cross the border daily for work. And we also know, and our late friend Steffan Lewis would have said, 'We're not unique in this. Other countries across Europe and across the world have exactly the same things; why do we believe in British uniqueness?' Actually, I think he said that very regularly—I certainly remember it, and I'm sure other Members do. I think that's absolutely true.

And we can look at what's happening in international studies or what happens in other places, and we probably have fewer people commuting than places like Luxembourg and the Benelux countries, and also some of the Länder in Germany. But international studies show that high-income earners are responsive to tax rates. They can decide where they live, where they have multiple homes, and they can decide which one is going to be their main home. Some professions, like barristers, are highly mobile. We also know that tax considerations are not the sole determinants of migration. The influence of non-tax factors—wages, family, house prices, and I would say especially house prices, and quality of life—cannot be underestimated, and must form part of future Welsh Government research on the impact of tax diversions across the Wales-England border. 

We were told a change in the basic rate of income tax had little effect on migration. Well, why would it? Because saving those small sums of money is not going to get you to move many miles. We know from council tax that we have huge variations in the number in each band, and we also have huge variations in the amount paid. Now, let's compare Blaenau Gwent and Monmouth. Blaenau Gwent have over half their properties in band A; Monmouth has just over 1 per cent of their properties in band A, and almost 6 per cent in the top two bands. The precept of a band D in Blaenau Gwent is 1,712. In Newport 1,198, and Monmouth 1,381. There's a substantial difference. But if you look at property prices and mortgage costs—they also vary considerably. I went on Zoopla—other places are available—to look at purchasing houses: £150,000 gets you a very nice three-bedroomed semi in Tredegar. It also gets you a one-bedroomed apartment in Monmouth.

We know from the OECD that tax competition is widespread and occurs in most countries. Taxes on capital income are most prone to tax base mobility, followed by personal income taxes. Other factors also affect tax competition and tax base mobility, such as house prices, spending on public services and easier travel to work. Also, people often live in an area where they get non-financial benefits—access to family support, family childcare, parks, beaches and leisure facilities. The political effect of increasing taxes over those of England would, I believe, be very serious. 'Why am I paying more than someone in England on the same income?' It will affect how people vote.

Whilst we know that the 'yes Wales' group are prepared to see all Welsh taxes increase by over 20 per cent, I do not believe this is a view that is universally held. Also, we know that a 1 per cent increase in the basic rate would raise £200 million. That sounds like a large sum of money, but if you put it in perspective, the Wales Audit Office has shown that over the course of the last three years, Wales's seven health boards were £352 million in the red.

Scotland had the ability to vary income tax for very many years—it did not take it. It could move up or down by plus or minus 3 per cent. What happens? Increasing income tax raises little money, makes people angry, and unless the rise is large has no appreciable effect on public expenditure. Reducing income tax costs little money but reduces spending on services. That's why Scotland kept it the same, and I'm sure we're going to.

Thank you. Can I now call the Minister for Finance and Trefnydd, Rebecca Evans?

Thank you. And I thank the Finance Committee for undertaking this inquiry and producing its report. The inquiry considered some really important issues. Differences in income tax in different parts of the UK is a relatively new concept for us to contemplate, and we're just beginning to understand the possible impacts on our communities. Having this report, along with access to the relevant data and analysis, is critical to our evidence-based approach to policy making in Wales. 

To be clear, this Government has committed not to changing the Welsh rates of income tax for the lifetime of this Senedd. However, it is essential that we consider the evidence on the likely effect of any variations on Welsh taxpayers, and their possible behavioural responses, as we consider our future devolved tax policy.

The recent outturn and projected outturn for Scotland has shown that there are potentially big differences in revenue growth between different parts of the UK, largely concentrated at the top end of the income distribution. I therefore welcome the committee's report and accept all of the committee's recommendations in full or in principle. Indeed, as my written response to the committee makes clear, many of the recommendations in the report are consistent with the existing Welsh Government tax strategy framework and reinforces that our current taxation strategy principles are the right ones for Wales.

I recognise that much more work is needed to fully understand the likely impact of variations in income tax on the population of Wales. This is an evolving area of research in the UK context, and the Finance Committee's report will add to the growing body of evidence. The Welsh Government will continue to assess how the current arrangements in Wales perform, ensuring an appropriate balance between devolved tax levers and exposure to fiscal risk. The balance between investment in public services, the competitiveness of the Welsh economy and the impact on taxpayers will be at the forefront of decisions on devolved taxes. So will how we use taxes as a lever to advance fairness and equality, enabling us to tackle social issues, including justice and economic security.

So, turning to some of the specific recommendations, the Welsh Government continues to collaborate closely and constructively with analysts across the UK Government, including HMRC. The service-level agreement between Welsh Government and HMRC includes performance measures designed to ensure that there's a continued focus on identifying and maintaining an accurate and robust record of the Welsh taxpayer population.

The outturn data for the latest tax year—the first full year of Welsh income tax devolution—will start to become available from summer 2020-21, and a detailed data set for that year will be available in 2022. The Welsh Government is working closely with HMRC to ensure that that data can be provided in an accessible and useful way for researchers. Moreover, the Welsh Government is already undertaking research with HMRC into the possible effects of tax divergence. This work builds on the evidence already presented to the committee by Welsh Government officials for this inquiry.

As the report recognises, tax considerations are not the sole determinants of migration. Non-tax factors, such as wages, family, house prices and quality of life must and will form part of any future research on the impact of tax divergence across the Wales-England border. Therefore, part of our work includes consideration of a longitudinal data set to provide more sophisticated research into the behavioural impact of income tax changes and potential differences within the UK. By collaborating with HMRC, we will look to generate a data set that would be appropriate for both Government and non-Government researchers, while still respecting tax data confidentiality.

The committee recommends giving further consideration to the issue of devolving tax on savings and dividend income to Wales. I agree that this is something that should be considered. It is, of course, still early days for income tax devolution here in Wales, but, nevertheless, we should be open to further developments in tax devolution where the evidence suggests that there is a case for change.

The committee says that the current climate means difficult decisions on taxation will need to be made in order to aid economic recovery. The temporary increase to the land transaction tax residential starting threshold for homebuyers demonstrates our ability and our willingness to use our tax policies alongside other fiscal levers to aid Wales's recovery from the global pandemic.

So, as we go forward, the evidence contained in this report will help to shape future tax policies in Wales, and the role played by devolved taxes in exploring the opportunities and responding to the challenges that we face in Wales. Thank you.

Thank you. Nobody has indicated that they wish to make an intervention. Therefore, I call on Llyr Gruffydd to reply to the debate. Llyr. 

Thank you very much. Deputy Presiding Officer. May I thank everyone who has contributed to this debate—particularly to the Minister, as she mentioned earlier, for accepting all of the recommendations, either in full or in principle? We note, of course, that she is open to further devolution on taxation powers to Wales.

Mike Hedges has drawn attention, of course, to the fact that, when Nick Ramsay mentioned how many people crossed the border between Wales and England on a daily basis, that is not something that's unique to Wales. Certainly, if anything, I would think that it happens on a higher level in other countries worldwide. So, it's no reason for us not to get to grips with changes of tax rates. I don't think Nick suggested that was a barrier, but that is something that we need to be aware of. But, as Alun Davies and others said, there are examples across the world of where this has happened and where this is being effectively managed. So, I do think that—there is a risk that that could appear more of a problem than it should, and I think that we should be aware of that. 

Nick also referred to the unwillingness of the Welsh Government to consider tax divergence at the moment. I understand perhaps why they are doing that, but certainly the discussion and this report and this debate are part of this national conversation that we do need to have. Because, as Alun reminded us, it is a sign of a Senedd coming of age that we do have taxation oolicies or powers, but that dimension will add a very new dimension to the election in front of us in some months' time, with parties publishing their manifestos. I hope that the committee's work in this field will assist that discussion and debate within the parties, and more widely in Wales, in terms of our direction of travel from the point of view of tax policy. Because, as was mentioned, it's one thing to talk about how one spends money, but it's an entirely different discussion when you need to discuss how you spend the money that you're raising, and how you're levying that funding yourself to meet your expenditure commitments.

The varying factors have been referred to. Taxation is one element of what impacts on people's mobility, and Members have been entirely right to refer to such things as wage levels, house prices, quality of life and family networks, of course, which are just as important for a number of people.

One thing that is obvious, of course, is that there is a great deal more work that needs to be done, and that includes having a clearer picture of the Welsh tax base. The Minister referred to the need to examine the outturn from the first year of the Welsh rates of income tax next summer. We need to improve the work of collecting data in Wales and the dissemination of those data in Wales, and that has come through clearly in this debate, and to consider what drives taxpayer behaviour and how we can attract more of those groups that need to be attracted to boost revenues. 

But these are still early days in our tax devolution journey, and we recognise the challenges faced by the Welsh Government in seeking to anticipate taxpayers' migratory avoidance and economic responses to potential income tax rates changes in Wales. 

But it's important to recognise the role that the Welsh rates of income tax can play in developing the Welsh economy. It's an opportunity perhaps for us to think differently, to be innovative, and to develop policies that support the economic recovery in this current situation. 

But, as I say, I hope that the committee's report and this debate  this afternoon have contributed to that conversation that needs to be had, and that conversation will continue until the election in May and beyond.

Thank you very much. The proposal is to note the committee's report. Does any Member object? No. Therefore, in accordance with Standing Order 12.36, the motion is agreed.

We now move to the Welsh Conservatives debate this afternoon, which is on higher education, and I call on Suzy Davies to move the motion—Suzy.

Diolch, Dirprwy Lywydd. Welcome to everyone who's going to take part in this debate, and I move the motion, which is actually about more than higher education, but it's certainly part of what we'll be talking about today. 

I'm looking forward to an informative and useful debate about something that I think, in essence, we can agree about. There's certainly been no attempt to amend the first couple of parts of the motion, so I get a real sense that, in fact, the other parties and the Government had to think quite hard about how they wanted to amend this motion, for this very reason that we're all sailing in the same direction when it comes to a good future for our further education and higher education sectors. 

But what I think these amendments all demonstrate is this—that they're looking at the importance of higher and further education institutions from the point of view of those institutions. And this time, we're inviting the Welsh Parliament to look at the challenges from the point of view of the student. And I'm afraid that's why we can't support most of the amendments—nothing to disagree with them in particular, but they delete and they detract from the proposition that we need at least one debate where the student voice is to the fore. And in the case of university students, of course, those voices are nervous with the prospect of hefty personal debt.

Plaid, you get away with amendment 4, as you characterise it as a new sub-point. To be clear, just because we welcome Welsh Government's resources, it doesn't mean that we think it's enough. I'm not even convinced that they're additional, but I'll come to that in due course. But let's start with point 2 of our motion:

'students deserve value for money in return for the investment they make in their higher and further education.'

How has COVID affected the college student? Well, we still might be seeing higher numbers of entrants choosing to stay at home at a time of great uncertainty about travel, lockdown and, of course, employment. Some may not want to run the risk of running up the debts that come with going to university just when the jobs market, particularly for young people, is looking more fragile. And what will they get? In the evidence to the Children, Young People and Education Committee, ColegauCymru said that there were expensive challenges ahead, especially if the number of entrants was to go up. The £23 million from the Welsh Government to meet the COVID need will certainly have helped with challenges such as achieving social distancing or meeting IT equipment needs, but you can't summon up more experienced tutors out of nowhere to meet the need that is created by social distancing. The use of some of that money to transfer some teaching online is better than not having it at all, but it's still not the same as a face-to-face experience. And while online learning may suit some students—I don't think we should overlook that fact—how is it going to impact on those courses with a high level of practical teaching or experience in the workplace?

Let's not forget either that Welsh Government was planning to cut the money going to further education's contract partners for work-based learning—something highlighted by the Welsh Conservatives—reducing even further the scope for students to really benefit from building relationships and skills with employers from a wide range of businesses and innovators. If Welsh Government can't guarantee enough funding for appropriate equipment, software, licences, connectivity for students to work on campus or at home, it certainly has no business undermining colleges' own commercial activities, which could be funding them instead.

The value-for-money question is perhaps even more acutely defined for university students. If you are going to accrue a minimum of £27,000-worth of debt for tuition in order to do an undergraduate course, you're going to want £27,000-worth of quality education. And again, blended learning may be part of that quality offer, but, as I say, if you're paying that kind of money, I think you really want to be able to see the whites of your tutor's eyes and to have them there to engage in discussion. And that's why we put the emphasis, in point 6(b) of our motion, on live streaming, which is for colleges as well, by the way. By all means, make lectures and seminars available on catch-up, but, for supervised learning, you need the immediacy of human interaction for it to be worthy of the description 'supervised'. And what we can't have is 10 hours of live tuition replaced by three hours of recorded online lectures, as was recently reported to me is happening in one of our universities. I'm sure that that's a one-off, but it has happened. And while we might all find the fact that QAA frameworks offer quality assurance for university courses, there's not really yet been the opportunity to formally evaluate the effect on quality of the different delivery of those courses.

Meanwhile, the National Union of Students survey told us that 27 per cent of university students couldn't access online learning even if they have the equipment; 15 per cent said they didn't even have the equipment; 38 per cent said that the quality of online provision was not of a good standard; and, unsurprisingly, two thirds of students said that COVID was negatively affecting the vocational elements of their courses. Some of these university students, of course, will also have felt the effect of lecturers' strikes, depriving them of hours of supervised learning for which they have paid. So, it's little wonder that some are demanding refunds. 

This part of the motion doesn't just talk about value for money, it talks about investment, and I hope that we will hear from the Minister a response to the question, if you like, about human investment. Again the NUS pointed out that none of the money coming from Welsh Government was ring-fenced for student hardship. And while I am genuinely pleased that there's been no clawback of maintenance finance, the inability of students to work during this period to supplement their income has resulted in some real hardship, especially for those from poorer backgrounds, those with a poor relationship with their family or who simply live too far away from the family home to leave their university town during lockdown.

Members, I'm going to have to leave point 6(c) of the motion to others, I'm afraid. I hope the Minister will say a few words on it in her response, but if I'm going to progress my final point, and give others a moment to say something, I'm going to have to come back to it at a different time.

My final point is this: colleges and universities need money to provide the best quality education. They have taken a financial hammering over COVID, despite £50 million being effectively reclaimed from the COVID pot by the education Minister, and distributed accordingly to the universities and our further education institutions. That certainly helped with easing cash-flow problems. The student finance brought forward by the UK Government has also helped with cash-flow problems, so it's been a welcome intervention. But the most recent prediction for Welsh universities, for the coming academic year, is a loss of £400 million to £500 million, which is an extraordinary sum by anybody's measure.

The £23 million for FE and £27 million for HE mask the fact that the education budget itself was cut by £47 million to go into the Welsh Government COVID pot—completely understandably—along with various consequentials from the additional UK money found for education. And I hope that the Minister will be able to confirm, hopefully with some evidence, about how much of the consequential for FE and HE has been passed on to those sectors.

The Plaid amendment suggests that the Welsh Government must make sure that the sectors have enough money to do what they need to do and provide that quality education, and, yes, we agree. That is not the same, however, as saying that Welsh Government, and even the UK Government, should be responsible for finding all that money. Both these sectors can, and do, make money for themselves, and Welsh Government decisions should make it easier, not harder, for them to do that. I've already mentioned the threat to one income stream for further education, but Welsh universities are still waiting, after Professor Reid's recommendations all those years ago, for help to facilitate the kind of strategic partnership bids that would give them much better access to a high level of innovation or QR funding from UK Government, and elsewhere.

It would still be fair to say that both sectors have been underfunded by Welsh Government over the years, and FE has been more exposed to that, I think, especially at the end of the last Assembly term and the beginning of this one, because it's more directly dependent on the public purse. Universities have more scope for commercial work, but they've also overborrowed, and that leaves them with a different vulnerability. Some universities, however, may want to explain why they're holding on to such phenomenal unrestricted reserves, some of them more than 100 per cent of their income.

The argument that I expect to hear during the course of this debate will be that giving students a rebate will just add to the financial worries of the institutions. What I want to know is: why should it be students who have to carry the cost of COVID when, despite undoubted efforts by leaders in both sectors, students themselves fear that they are not getting the full education they were promised and so many of them will be getting into debt to do that? Thank you.

Thank you. I have selected the four amendments to the motion. If amendment 2 is agreed, amendments 3 and 4 will be deselected. So, I call on Helen Mary Jones to move amendments 1, 3 and 4, tabled in the name of Siân Gwenllian.

Diolch yn fawr, Dirprwy Lywydd, and can I thank the Conservatives for tabling this important debate today? There is much in the motion that we can support, but, as Suzy Davies has rightly highlighted, we are approaching the issues from a slightly different perspective. So, given the constraints of time, Dirprwy Lywydd, I'll confine my remarks to advocating for our amendments.

Our first amendment seeks to delete clause 4. While any additional resources for this important sector are always welcome, the parlous financial state of many of our universities makes it impossible for us to give an unqualified welcome to the extra resources that Welsh Government has made available so far, such as they are. The Wales Governance Centre, back in May this year, were warning of a loss of fee income to Welsh universities of between £100 million and £140 million this academic year. That, of course, was a prediction. As Suzy Davies has just pointed out, HEFCW was recently predicting a loss of over £400 million—a shortfall—in universities' incomes this year, while putting, potentially, up to 5,000 jobs at risk.

This is on top of an already fragile position for some of our institutions. I think it's fair to say they are autonomous institutions, and some of them have to take some responsibility for that. But whether or not they take that responsibility, the impact on our communities of losing some of those institutions, or of losing many jobs in those institutions, would be drastic. The Minister may say that she doesn't recognise this picture. If she doesn't, that's unfortunate, because that's the reality. The £27 million that the Welsh Government have given so far feels like a small drop in a very large ocean, and I'm sorry if the Government feels that it's churlish, but we don't feel that that should be welcomed in and of itself.

Our amendment 3 seeks to replace point 6(a). We do understand, of course, that some students are unhappy with paying the same level of fees as they would in an ordinary year when their learning experience will be very different, and we sympathise. But we do not believe that when the sector is under such financial pressure that this is the right time to further reduce the income that's available to institutions. I take what Suzy Davies says about how individual students shouldn't have to carry the can, and I am sympathetic with that position, but the importance of these institutions in our communities and to our economy is such that we don't support any reduction further of the income that reducing fees would mean.

We do believe that the Government should be working closely with the sector to ensure, and  'ensure' is the key word—perhaps we could have said 'enable'. We're not suggesting that the Welsh Government should be funding all of these institutions, higher or further education institutions, but they have to create the right climate where other income can be found, and this, again, is something where we simply don't see that there's enough activity and enough communication. The Government must ensure that there are sufficient resources in both sectors to maintain standards, including teaching standards, and to continue to widen access, and that's where our amendment comes from.

Amendment 4 seeks to strengthen the motion with a further specific reference to further education and particularly to work-based learning. The original motion does mention colleges as well as universities throughout, but we wanted to draw out that further education element a little further. Further education faces particular and different challenges, as Suzy Davies has rightly identified, and these must be addressed; work-based learning providers face different challenges yet again.

I am aware that they are in a different portfolio, but I think that all education providers, all learning providers have a right to expect a consistent approach from the Government across the board. So, work-based learning providers have been told by Welsh Government that all trainees are to return to face-to-face learning from 1 October, in sharp contrast to the Welsh Government's support for flexible and blended learning in higher education and further education institutions. This doesn't make sense. It is, of course, the fact that they won't get paid if their trainees don't turn up.

We hear a lot about parity of esteem between vocational and academic learning. We submit that this is an opportunity for the Welsh Government to engage with the sector across portfolios and to ensure that this supposed parity of esteem of which we've heard so much is actually reflected in how vocational learning opportunities are supported and resourced by the Government, and this is far from the case, hence our amendment 4.

Llywydd, I look forward to hearing the rest of the debate, I look forward to the Government's response, and I commend amendments 1, 3 and 4 to this Senedd.

Thank you. Can I ask the Minister for Education to formally move amendment 2, tabled in the name of Rebecca Evans?

Formally.

Sorry, I had a problem with the unmute. A lot of what I'll say now will echo what our Conservative shadow Minister for education has already said, but I do think it's important to reiterate some of the points that she made.

The coronavirus pandemic has resulted in widespread disruption to so many sectors of our Welsh economy. Some of the economic damage being inflicted will be irreparable, and for everyone in full-time education, decisions being taken here and now will cast a long shadow. Young people currently taking qualifications get one shot at their education, and the impact on their studies has already caused significant distress.

Students entering universities and colleges this month faced the ordeal of school closures just weeks before they were due to take their A-level examinations, where many of them will have almost concluded five terms of study. Having suffered the emotional turmoil of the results fiasco earlier this month, young people face fresh hurdles as many of them begin further or higher education. Young people have missed out on so many rites of passage, and we all need to do all we can to ensure that they miss out on as very little as possible. One of the best experiences of going to university is learning to live independently and make some new friends, yet the restrictions on social interaction will limit these opportunities.

As point 5 of our motion makes clear, there has been no proposed reduction in tuition fees this year, even though many students won't even be setting foot in a classroom or a lecture theatre. Of course, there are ways to embrace new technology and use of virtual meetings like this as a way to complement learning, but it shouldn't be a wholesale replacement. Students should expect some face-to-face contact, but clearly it's for universities and colleges, with robust guidance from our Welsh Government, to establish the safest ways of operating. The overriding priority has to be ensuring that learning is continuous and that there are rigorous plans in place to ensure continuity of courses, even if COVID regulations become stricter and, in a worst-case scenario, we face another lockdown.

We all recognise the critical role that FE colleges and universities have in upskilling our workforce to meet the gargantuan challenge of rebuilding the Welsh economy in, hopefully, a post-COVID world, and we all need to recognise that Wales post COVID will look and feel very different from what it was before. The growth in online social interaction is almost certainly here to stay, and that in itself represents challenges in ensuring we have a workforce with the skills to meet demand. Nearly half of employers surveyed by the Open University acknowledged that apprenticeship and work-based learning initiatives would be vital to their organisation's coronavirus recovery over the next year. It is essential, therefore, that disruption to our students' education is kept to a minimum.

Point 6 of our motion will call for action from Welsh Government. Students need to have confidence that what they are paying for in fees is fair for what they are actually getting. Critically, we need swift measures to tackle digital exclusion and ensure that all learners have a means of accessing all aspects of their course. ColegauCymru has noted that there continue to be significant shortfalls of provision of ICT equipment, software and connectivity, and when it comes to the risk of increasing the digital divide, that's something that's very apparent and a worry of my constituents, I know, in South Wales East. They go on to say that, despite the best efforts to maintain learning, it is inevitable that some of the outcomes of traineeships, apprenticeships and programmes such as Jobs Growth Wales will be disrupted. A recent survey from the National Union of Students showed that more than a quarter of university students were unable to access online learning, whilst more than a third did not consider that the online provision was a good standard or quality. It's something that we need to be concerned about.

I'd also like to hear from the Minister about the implications of any changes to the syllabus for key stage 5, specifically for entry requirements for further and higher education, as now is the time that current year 13 pupils will be making decisions about their next steps. The past few months have been a horrendous ordeal for so many of our young people, and as Andrew R.T. Davies said earlier today, it must have had a severe impact on a lot of their mental health. So, I hope the outcome of today's debate is that we can all agree and come up with ways to make it fairer for them. I commend the motion.

Thank you very much for bringing this debate. I think it's really important to both our students, but also to our overall economy. First, I want to congratulate Cardiff Metropolitan University, which has been designated Welsh university of the year by The Times and The Sunday Times, which is focused on its courses that are designed for hands-on learning, including the very important food technology department, which I recall was visited by the vice premier of China. On his very short visit, he decided to go there. That is typical of the type of work that Cardiff Met does. It's very practice-focused, professionally oriented education, which is vital for developing the sort of graduates that we need to regenerate our economy.

I'm delighted that one of its 37 new degrees is going to be in early years education, which is probably the most neglected and most important aspect of pedagogy, yet more traditional universities regard this as not very important. The courses in applied entrepreneurship and innovation management that are going to be starting in the next academic year of course are exactly the sorts of courses that we need to help us tackle our historic low productivity, which has dogged us for all time. So, I have to acknowledge that all universities are reeling from the impact of COVID, but I think it is unrealistic to think that the Welsh Government is going to be able to meet that £500 million gap estimated by the Institute for Fiscal Studies. 

Cardiff University is particularly vulnerable to the massive drop in international student enrolments. Previously, they used to benefit from over two fifths of the overall income coming to Wales from international students. And it's perfectly evident anecdotally that these students have not arrived in the sort of numbers you would normally expect at this time of year, as they normally arrive earlier than UK students, just to familiarise themselves with the area. Cardiff predicts that it will only take in 60 per cent of its original target for international undergraduates and 40 per cent of its postgraduates.

These are worrying figures for lots of reasons. First of all, it will obviously increase pressure on the deficit in the pension funds, and also it means less money for research. And of the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales innovation and recovery fund, none was allocated to Cardiff, presumably because it is, overall, stronger than many other universities. At the moment, Cardiff predicts a £67 million deficit—that comes from its chief financial officer—and it's going to have to bridge it by a raid on its reserves. Luckily it's got those sort of reserves to enable it to do that, but it does make it very vulnerable, going forward, in future years.

Cardiff is our largest university and our only Russell Group university. Overall, Cardiff's contribution to the Welsh economy is very significant. It previously constituted nearly half the £5 billion that it is thought universities contribute to the Welsh economy. And it isn't just the consequences of the COVID pandemic; it is the double whammy of both COVID and leaving the EU, which is really very worrying for the loss of research and innovation funding, which used to come particularly from foreign students, but also the European regional development fund money, which obviously will cease as a result of our leaving the European Union. And the reason why ERDF money is so important—its contribution to Wales has been £334 million, according to Professor Kevin Morgan—is because ERDF money is allocated on the basis of need, and had the overt objective to raise Welsh prosperity to the average for the rest of Europe. In future, the UK research and innovation money that Cardiff and all the other universities will have to bid for could be allocated simply on the basis of open competition, which means that them that have get more. And we know that Oxbridge gets a far bigger slice of the overall pie and takes in far fewer state-educated students.

Lastly, I just want to highlight the crucial role that universities play in our regional economic development. That is a point that was emphasised by Professor Morgan in a recent webinar. If we don't have the research-based evidence of what works and doesn't work, we're going to be in a much more difficult place to ensure that we have the most strategically impactful regional economic policies that we need to have. So we all need to worry about the financial health of our universities, but unfortunately, I think it's unreal to think that the Welsh Government is going to be able to bridge the gap. We face very difficult times ahead.  

Deputy Presiding Officer, I'm delighted to follow that speech from Jenny Rathbone, because I'm proud to say I'm a graduate of Cardiff University. I derived great pleasure and some learning from my time there, between 1981 and 1984, and I'm pleased to say that, since I left, the university has flourished—continued to flourish is what I meant to say. As Jenny has outlined, it is now a Russell Group university and, in terms of research, by some margin our strongest university, with a huge part to play in several areas.

I'm glad that Jenny talked about economics and social sciences and the research that Cardiff will do as we build the recovery after COVID, and it will be incredibly important. But I wanted to look at the research on medical matters, and COVID in particular. I hope Members will indulge me that I'm just going to use all the examples from Cardiff University, because I just think they're so innovative.

In July, Cardiff University announced a UK-wide project looking at COVID and the impact on the diagnosis of cancer, and how often have we heard in our debates the implications of not having early diagnosis for cancer, because people are too afraid to access diagnostics at the moment because of COVID? This study is in collaboration with Cancer Research UK and a couple of other universities in England, and will explore public behaviour and attitudes. What I think is really important here is not only is that hugely significant, but its aim, really, is to facilitate better public health messaging, because what is really important here is that people realise the risks that they run if they do not have significant symptoms investigated. So, I think that's one indicator of the worth of Cardiff University in this specific crisis.

Another project is looking at whether our immune system determines whether we suffer from severe COVID, as does seem likely. And again, we need the wonders of science and really outstanding research to give us the weapons to fight the disease. What we sometimes think intuitively is right is not always right, and that's why we need such in-depth, rigorous science.

A project earlier in the year, I think in April, looked at the levels of mental health concerns among nurses and midwives in the UK. The findings were quite stark: 74 per cent felt their clinical responsibilities put their health at risk during COVID and 92 per cent were afraid that these risks would be passed on to family members. Isn't that an incredibly human finding, as well, that their own health and risk—74 per cent, naturally—? But even more of them—92 per cent—feared that, actually, what could happen, what they feared most, was they'd pass it to a loved one. And then 33 per cent had experienced severe depression or anxiety.

It's in managing the emotional and well-being needs of our health workers that we will get through this crisis. But I think, for the first couple of months, many people in our health services were just overwhelmed by the magnitude of what they were dealing with, and it's really important to remember how they need to be helped to be as resilient as possible—the workforce—and to know where to turn when they have some really tough experiences, and then just need to have that chance to talk about them and know the techniques of at least mitigating them somewhat. So, a really practical study again.

I think many of us will remember the study launched at the University Hospital of Wales on the effect of giving blood plasma to COVID patients, again in collaboration with a major English university, and collaboration is so important. As I understand, that study is going on, and it made worldwide news—something happening here at Cardiff University and at UHW. That's what is really important in our university. I remember with great gratitude my undergraduate experiences. Obviously, I've been outlining postgraduate work and the work of the faculties—some of the finest minds of their generation. Long may it continue, and we will need to look at imaginative ways to sustaining the world-beating excellence at Cardiff University.

Can I thank the Conservative Party for bringing this very important debate to the Chamber today? I shall note at the beginning that we shall be supporting the Conservative motion.

I would also wish to take this opportunity to acknowledge that the coronavirus issue is likely to impact most severely on vocational students, due, of course, to the very nature of their learning practices. So, can we ask you, Minister, to outline what special measures are being put in place to ensure the least possible interruption to elements of their courses that would make social distancing et cetera very difficult or even impossible? This would, of course, apply to apprenticeship courses in particular, many of which are often part or wholly funded by business. So can I also ask what specific support has the Welsh Government offered to those businesses who may already be feeling considerable financial problems due to the COVID restrictions?

We have to acknowledge that the Welsh Government has made huge strides over recent years to reinvigorate the vocational sector. Indeed, we have heard this week that the employer referral service set up by the Welsh Government has just signed up its five-hundredth apprentice. I hope I'm right in assuming that the embargo on this information was removed, Minister, at 12 o'clock today. It would be a great pity—it really would be a great pity—if we should lose the substantial gains made in this sector, Minister, because of this pandemic.

I would like to start with a big thank you to all higher and further education staff and, of course, pupils for their efforts during this catastrophic pandemic, in particular in north Wales. Despite all these difficulties, I have been rather interested to see scientists at Bangor University work with Dŵr Cymru and United Utilities to monitor the background levels of coronavirus in waste water; students like Caitlin Garrett of Coleg Llandrillo continue to look to the future and to practice and develop her skills at home; Busnes@LlandrilloMenai announce that its 50 plus professional training programmes would now be subsidised, up to 100 per cent of the training cost until 31 August 2021. 

Through the most challenging of circumstances, students have continued to study and colleges have continued to be creative. That has to give us some hope for the future. However, it is true that COVID-19 has hit this sector hard. A recent survey from the NUS showed that more than a quarter of university students were unable to access online learning, more than a third did not consider the online provision to be good, and that 15 per cent of students do not have the necessary equipment to access online learning. I regard this as extremely serious and would like some assurances from the Minister today that she is co-operating, that she is interacting with the universities to ensure that steps are in place to enable every student to access online learning if it is required. The need for such action is supported by ColegauCymru, who commented that there continues to be significant shortfalls for the provision of ICT equipment, software and connectivity, and with it comes the risk of increasing the digital divide. So, Minister, would you clarify what measures are you taking to ensure that the £3.2 million provided for digital equipment such as laptops for FE students has actually been effectively used?

Now, undoubtedly, I do welcome the fact that the Welsh Government have allocated additional financial resources. However, concerns continue to be raised, again by ColegauCymru, who have stated that the additional funding agreed to date is not sufficient to secure the futureproofing of the FE sector as well as being able to plan for a potential second lockdown. They raise a very valid point: what lessons have been learned from the first wave that will benefit our students and educational professionals should we face these further impending lockdown measures?

Given my belief that education should be fairly funded, students must have value for money in return for the investment that they're making. The pandemic has highlighted fee inequalities, so there needs to be fairness across the sector. How can it be right that whilst there is an honours degree online course at the Open University for around £2,000 a year, some students will be paying £9,000 for primarily online learning? Welsh Government should work with universities, perhaps, to provide students with a partial refund of some of their fees. Now, this would be a positive boost for the 78 per cent of students in Wales worried about their finances because of coronavirus. However, even I appreciate this is not straightforward. A reduction in fees would result in a reduced income. In fact, tuition fees account for £892 million. That's 54.7 per cent of universities' income in Wales. Similarly, Welsh universities have already suffered very significant income losses in respect of accommodation, conferences and events activity. Nonetheless, there must be fairness, and consideration given not only by the Welsh Government as to how fees could be sustainably reduced, but colleges and universities to reviewing remuneration of chancellors and utilising reserves. Bangor University holds unrestricted reserves totalling 144 per cent of their income. So, there has to be some innovation and some radical thinking here.

Any change has to be introduced carefully, because it is a fact that Welsh universities generate a knock-on impact of over £5 billion for the Welsh economy and they support almost 50,000 jobs in Wales. This cannot be threatened, which brings me to my final point: the future of the arts cannot be threatened either. Now, the Minister has admitted concern about some music activities within schools. This could have an effect on students pursuing these creative courses. As such, I support calls to address concerns in relation to a narrowing of the syllabus of some courses, which will then contribute towards allowing a better entry requirement for colleges and universities. Thank you.

I thank the Welsh Conservatives for bringing forward this debate on the impact COVID is having on further and higher education and I will be supporting them today. The coronavirus pandemic has affected everyone's lives, but perhaps none more so than our young people—young people who have had their education put on hold, their social development hampered, and who are facing one of the toughest job markets experienced for generations.

In spite of the setbacks faced by many, many young people following the GCSE and the A-level fiasco over the summer, this week will see them starting college or university. Freshers' fairs across the country will be unrecognisable from the events of the past. University is not just about gaining academic achievement, but also teaches young people, giving valuable life skills and aids in their social developments. Restrictions designed to prevent the spread of COVID-19 will mean a very different semester for students. Gone are the social events, gone are the cultural events and gone are the sporting events. Even classes aren't safe, with many going online. All these changes, although necessary, have left today's students short-changed.

Students have to pay the same tuition fees for a lesser experience, and this is why I will not be supporting any of the amendments. While I have sympathy with the universities, it is the students who are suffering the most. My biggest concern is the impact on the mental health of students. Rules mean students will have to stay within their accommodation groupings, stay with people who may not share their interests—academic or otherwise. This could lead to large numbers of students feeling isolated and lonely and particularly overseas students. Welsh Government and the higher education institutions need to place a greater emphasis on pastoral care for all students, not just those deemed vulnerable. Students will find this academic year one of the toughest ever faced. Everything is being done to ensure students don't suffer academically, but not enough is being done to ensure and protect their mental health well-being.

Lockdown created a mental health crisis in the wider community, and now measures to stop the spread of COVID across university campuses threaten a mental health crisis in the student body. University authorities must ensure weekly mental and physical check-ups for all students. They must also do everything they can to facilitate and encourage a wider variety of virtual social engagements. All students will find this academic year extremely challenging, and it's up to the Government and the university authorities to ensure that all students are equipped to meet those challenges. We owe it to our young people to take every possible measure to make this academic year as painless as possible, and I wish each and every one of them very good luck and all the best. Thank you. Diolch yn fawr.

Thank you. Can I now call the Minister for Education, Kirsty Williams?

Thank you very much, Deputy Presiding Officer. And I'd like to thank colleagues for the opportunity to discuss our higher and further education sectors, both of which I am incredibly proud to have worked alongside during these most difficult of times. And that is why, Deputy Presiding Officer, I am tabling the Government's amendment, which extends our thanks, as a Parliament, to the efforts of students, colleges and universities in Wales, for their resilience, their adaptability and their persistence in meeting the challenges created by this pandemic.

Like our schools, colleges and universities did not close during the initial lockdown period. Since March, they have continued to deliver teaching, assessment and research remotely. But they have also gone above and beyond to support our national response to COVID-19, through new training programmes with local health boards, providing accommodation to key workers and providing vital equipment and PPE to our hospitals. And I'd like to thank David Melding for his contribution, highlighting the research that has been going on, throughout this period, to help us as a nation and, indeed, the United Kingdom to better understand the impacts of COVID-19 and what we must do to support our nation as we continue to face these challenges. 

We fully recognise the disruption that has been caused to learning, particularly in further education colleges, and that is why we have provided an additional £11 million to colleges to cover the additional costs of teaching support for learners who may have missed learning earlier in the year. And that is coupled with a further £4 million to school sixth forms as well. And I have to say to my Conservative colleagues that catch-up money in England deliberately excluded the FE sector, and we have not done that here in Wales.

We have also allocated a further £5 million to support vocational learners to return to college to help them achieve their licence to practice qualifications, and another £3.2 million for post-16 learners in colleges and adult learning to provide digital equipment to facilitate online learning. And I have to say that during the pandemic, in my many meetings with vice-chancellors, they spoke very highly of their ability to engage learners online, and they told me, ad nauseam, that they were very proud of the fact that they were able to deliver and engage so many of their learners in online activities. And that's what college principals were saying in the height of the pandemic. 

And in higher education, part of our additional funding will be for investment in learning technologies and blended learning facilities to help universities maintain a high quality of student experience. Now, I understand that some students will have concerns about their university and college's ability to ensure continuity of a high-quality, equitable and enriching education as a result of the disruption that has come, and is likely to come, as a result of this pandemic. In colleges we were already on the road towards a vision for post-16 learning that blended face-to-face and digital activities well before COVID-19. I want this to accelerate during this academic year, building on the many examples of exciting and innovative teaching that we have seen during the lockdown period.

Our universities have committed to providing an innovative and supportive learning environment this term, through a mix of online and face-to-face provision. And I am very confident, even if some people in this Chamber are not, that they can deliver on this commitment. Given the national student surveys have shown in recent years that Welsh universities lead the way in student satisfaction, indeed, surveys during the pandemic showed that students domiciled in Wales felt that their university had supported them better during the lockdown than students in other parts of the United Kingdom. And can I make it clear to Laura Anne, all Welsh universities, every single one of them, will deliver blended learning during this period?

Now, in line with other Governments, we would advise higher education students, who may feel that their provision has not been of a sufficient quality during this time, to consider their institution's own processes for redress, and those of the Office of the Independent Adjudicator for Higher Education. And I and my officials maintain a close working relationships with the OIAHE, to monitor the volume and the nature of any students' complaints coming from Wales.

I would also like to remind Conservative Members that both their colleagues in the UK Government and the Westminster Petitions Committee have rejected calls for a universal reduction in tuition fees as a result of the pandemic. The reality is that a universal reduction in fees or debt cancellation would only harm—harm—the quality of education and student services that our universities can provide, unless, of course, the UK Government would be willing to provide the necessary funding to offset any fee reduction, and I don't see any of that coming soon.

Furthermore, we know that, by themselves, fee cuts or debt write-offs primarily benefit the wealthiest students and the highest earning graduates. It does nothing to put money in students' pockets in the here and now, unlike our new reformed student packages, which put grant funding directly into students' pockets to support them with living costs.

I have to say that, despite all the uncertainty, we are seeing record numbers of students from disadvantaged backgrounds benefit from this support, with the average Welsh-domiciled student getting £7,000 a year as a non-repayable grant. The same students would receive nothing if they lived across the border. On top of that, only this morning I was hearing from the Coleg Cymraeg Cenedlaethol, which has allocated a record number of scholarships to Welsh students to allow them to pursue their higher education through the medium of Welsh—in excess of 300 scholarships paid for this academic year.

Helping students deal with hardship now is what student representatives in Wales are telling me is their priority. We know absolutely that some students have suffered financially during the pandemic. That is why we have asked HEFCW to ensure that some of the additional funding made available to the sector supports institutions to provide hardship funding to students, based on where we see a clear need for such funding.  

We are very fortunate in Wales that, during a great time of financial difficulty for many, we have recently implemented the most generous student maintenance support package in Europe, which will particularly support adults, part-time students and postgraduates to enter higher education to improve their knowledge and skills in a challenging labour market environment. And that's before we talk about the extension of the individual learning accounts, which we will now push out across the whole of Wales, allowing those people who have had their job prospects—or, indeed, their income—affected by COVID-19 to be able to undertake additional learning.

Despite how different and unusual the student experience might be this year, I'm encouraged that 18-year-old entry rates for higher education have surpassed 30 per cent for the very first time for Welsh applicants. We have also seen a 2 per cent increase in the number of students placed through UCAS at Welsh higher education institutions. That is a real vote of confidence in the quality of Welsh higher education. When we still see a dip in the demographic of 18-year-olds, we've still been able to increase the number of people that have chosen to come and study here in Wales.

These encouraging numbers will help our sector to improve its financial position, which will be further bolstered by the £27 million higher education investment and recovery fund that we have recently remitted to HEFCW. Plaid Cymru might not welcome it, but I can assure you that HEFCW, the institutions and vice-chancellors certainly do welcome it. I expect this funding to maintain critical teaching and research capacity where we are seeing a temporary downturn in revenue, and to support research and education activities that will contribute to our wider economic recovery.

This additional funding brings our total HEFCW funding this year to £203 million. That is up from £117.5 million when I first became the Minister for Education. Suzy Davies talked about consequentials from the Westminster Government in regard to HE. Let me tell Suzy: money that had been made available to English institutions has been on the basis of loans. We are giving hard cash to our universities, and we don't expect them to pay it back, which again is very different from the attitude taken across the border.

Looking ahead, we know that the coming term will be a challenge for universities and colleges. We have co-produced guidance with the sector so that they can operate safely. Colleges have notified us of a small number of staff and student cases that have already occurred this term, but I have been absolutely confident that they have followed to a tee the protocols for test, trace, protect to keep these cases under control. The feedback that I've had from colleges is that students are generally complying very well with rules around social distancing, hygiene and face coverings. Many, if not all, of our institutions have now put in place social contracts or added COVID security measures to existing social and behavioural contracts to make it clear that our students have a personal role to play in helping keep themselves and others safe. But, clearly, we will monitor the situation in universities closely as students return to campuses this week. I'm delighted to say that a testing centre on the grounds of the University of South Wales in Pontypridd is being built as we speak, Deputy Presiding Officer, to provide additional testing facilities in that institution and that area. 

I conclude by urging everyone involved in higher education and further education to stay safe, maintain social distancing, wash your hands more often, wear a face covering, avoid socialising indoors with people outside of your household, and stay home if you or anyone else in your household has symptoms, and if you do, then please get yourself a test. But, as someone said, I wish all of our students, whether they be in schools, FE colleges, or coming to our universities, the very best of luck for the new academic year. Diolch yn fawr. 

Thank you. As communicated to Members, I'll now call those Members who've requested to make an intervention of up to one minute. Suzy Davies. 

Diolch, Dirprwy Lywydd. Just briefly, Minister, I'm still very curious to know why you've decided you want to delete part of our motion when actually the points that you raised were things that we could have supported had you not deleted them. Perhaps I could ask you, though, if you would undertake to write to Members with the evidence to support the claim that we know that a fee rebate would benefit students from wealthier backgrounds rather than any others. So, I'd appreciate it if you could make that commitment. 

I'm very happy to make that commitment. What we know is that, actually, a very small proportion of students will ever pay back the loans that they have taken out to pay for their higher education—they are the top earning graduates, and actually a fee cut at this stage will benefit those individual students—[Interruption.] Well, no, it is a fact. 

Can you not have a conversation across the Chamber, because it's not fair to those who are not in the Chamber, to have that? So, that's fine. Can I now call on Angela Burns to reply to the debate? Angela.

Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. Well, that was interesting. Minister, you were so affronted that I had to skip back and reread our motion because I thought that perhaps we had put in it things that I had missed. But, no, I don't see anything there that says that we do not think that higher education and further education institutions haven't stepped up to the plate. I mean, we do—they've been outstanding, they have delivered an enormous amount for our students over the last few months. You seem to think that we were basically tabling this entire debate to have a serious pop at them and to say that everything is pretty bad. Yes, I think our motion says, 'Well done, Welsh Government, for giving money.' We absolutely welcome that, are delighted to see it, and think that it's going to make a difference. But, I think the real point is that Suzy Davies caught you on the hop, and she caught you on the hop because you thought it would be about that, and actually it's about our students—it's about the young men and women, girls and boys throughout Wales who've been caught with this pandemic and have struggled and suffered so much. 

I want to pay absolute tribute to Caroline Jones. I thought that her contribution was outstanding because, Caroline, you got right into the nub of it, the nub of what these young people are going through. They're living through a time that they never expected. Their education's been disrupted, and, as you rightly said, education is more than just about the books or the numbers; it's about that whole learning experience, that whole social experience, having your sharp edges rubbed off you, learning how to interact with other people, how to live with people.

And we know that mental health has been a really major issue for a lot of our students. Some of the ones who are perhaps less robust have found it very difficult, and even those who pride themselves on being pretty tough have found the whole thing very, very distressful. The ones who've moved from A-levels to go into university or further education of some form or other, in particular, they've sort of had a double whammy of it, if you like. And I think that we mustn't underestimate that mental health impact, and that's why Suzy tabled this debate on behalf of the Welsh Conservatives that was very much focused from the students' point of view. 

Now, I don't disagree, Minister, with much of what you said about the whole of the FE sector and the higher education sector—their ambition, your ambition, where you're trying to go. And, you know, I want to pick up on one of the points that David Melding made: Cardiff University constantly amazes me with their research and development; they are utterly fantastic. And in the medical sector, they have come out with extraordinary—extraordinary—advances that we need to celebrate. And in order to do that, they need the money—of course they do—they need the stability and they need to know that they are sustainable going into the future.

But I don't think there's anything wrong with the Welsh Conservatives gently reminding you and some of the institutions within Wales that they've got an awful lot of money, some of them, squirrelled away in their pockets, and we're in a crisis. You know, you haven't got an endless pocket of money, the UK Government doesn't have an endless pocket of money and our poor students certainly don't, so those institutions that do have money, now is the time to start deploying it, now is the time to start reinforcing some of those courses, sustaining some of the teaching staff and making sure that we are fit to exit this coronavirus pandemic with a strong sector and with a strong student workforce.

David Rowlands, you also picked up an exceptionally good point that I thought was lost in the mix, about the fact that vocational courses are going to be one of the big areas that get hit. I've talked to a number of students in my constituency who are on such vocational courses, and it's very difficult for them; they can't go out and do the fieldwork, they can't go out and work in certain types of business. It's very difficult for them to get the things that they need in order to be able to move forward and I think that we shouldn't forget that at all, and realise that, for those individuals, it's going to elongate their entire education process and not give it the richness and the depth that many of us were fortunate enough to have.

All we've asked is that our students should be spoken to and talked to about the financial elements and other associated costs of being able to do their courses. We've certainly talked to them, Minister, and they are really concerned. We have many, many students who can't do online learning because they don't have the digital infrastructure at home, or they don't live in a convenient part of Wales that has a great digital infrastructure. Over 15 per cent of the students that were in the survey were very clear that they don't have the IT at home, and that's a lot of students who are unable to access online learning. Some students just simply can't cope with that kind of process. And that's what the whole point of this debate was about—that was what we were trying to encourage you to look at and encourage you to put into the mix when you think your way forward and about where you're going to go.

So, our three quick asks: we want you to ensure that the fees reflect the impact that the coronavirus is having on them and their courses; we want you to ensure that students are given every support, funding availability and encouragement to access learning, whether it's through live streaming, other online methods of teaching, or, wherever possible, in person. I mean, I was written to by one student in my patch who is doing archaeology and he's going to have real difficulty in going on an archaeological dig from over the internet—good luck to him, poor soul. And finally, we do want you to address the concerns of students, employers and further and higher education providers in relation to that narrowing of the syllabus that we talked about, of courses that contribute towards the entry requirements for colleges and universities. This is what this is about. Ultimately, our No. 1 priority shouldn't be about preserving the big institutions ad infinitum; it's about growing our youth, it's about protecting the young people of Wales, it's about giving them that education, helping them develop into robust citizens who can do the jobs of their dreams, can become robust adults, can hold down jobs and can have a good life going forward. We owe it to them, because, do you know what, it's called 'their future'—we must support it.

Thank you. The proposal is to agree the motion without amendment. Does any Member object? [Objection.] Thank you. Therefore, we defer voting under this item until voting time.

We will now suspend proceedings for a short break to allow changeovers in the Chamber and also for some cleaning if necessary.

So, we recommence our discussions, and the next item on the agenda is the Plaid Cymru debate on second homes. I call on Delyth Jewell to move the motion—Delyth Jewell.

Thank you, Llywydd. Everyone should be able to live in the community in which they were brought up. The past few months have highlighted just how important it is to have a comfortable home to live in, not just four walls and a roof, but somewhere safe, somewhere comfortable, a home. Not a place, but a refuge. And a home is also part of the broader fabric of society, giving people an opportunity to protect each other and share life experiences.

But in some areas of Wales, an increasing number of homes are disappearing, as they return to being remote four walls and a roof, empty properties in every sense of the words. The problem is huge and is getting worse. Indeed, the situation is becoming critical. Young people can't afford to buy a house in the area where they were brought up because prices have become so inflated by people from outside of those areas buying the homes for leisure purposes over the summer: four walls and a roof, an escape and nothing else; a bolthole, as described by the Daily Mail.

Llywydd, this is a fundamental issue of social justice. The housing market shouldn't allow people to buy secondary properties at the expense of the communities and the people who live in those communities every day of the year. There is something wrong in the market at the moment, and we need intervention. We are talking here about a crisis, and I will outline why this is a crisis. Last year, one in every three homes sold in Gwynedd and Anglesey were sold as second properties. Twelve per cent of Gwynedd's housing stock are houses where the owners live outside the area. This rate is among the highest in Europe.

The purpose of devolution was to empower us as Members of the Senedd to take action for the benefit of the people of Wales when they need us to do so. They need us to do so now. But, at the moment, as Professor Richard Wyn Jones mentioned in a recent article in Barn, there is a powerlessness from Welsh Government. The Government acknowledges that there is a problem, but they are not taking any steps to resolve that problem.

It is disappointing, but not surprising that the Welsh Government, as usual, has decided to delete all of our motion and to put in its place a number of vacuous statements claiming credit for themselves. Point 6 of the amendment talks of having a review of the situation, but the facts are already known. They also talk about taking action as a result of the findings of this review, which is sure to take ages, when this work has already been done by Plaid Cymru. We need action now, not a task and finish group.

In our paper today, Plaid Cymru proposes a number of steps in order to mitigate the situation. These include changes to planning in order to enable communities to limit the numbers of properties that can be bought as second home;, enabling councils to raise a higher council tax premium on second homes and holiday homes; to close the loophole that enables the owners of such homes to register their homes as businesses; increasing the land transaction tax on the purchase of second homes; introducing restrictions on companies such as Airbnb to control the number of homes that are used for short-term accommodation purposes; to look at the possibility of placing local conditions on housing in certain areas; and to redefine affordable housing so it doesn't include homes that cost over £0.25 million.

Not one of these is a silver bullet, and not one is contentious, but, taken together, they could divert the power of the market away from wealthy investors towards ordinary people on low incomes. Wales wouldn't be alone in taking such steps. Indeed, we in Wales are an exception in the fact that we allow this injustice to continue. Nations across the world have taken action in the face of similar circumstances. For example, New Zealand and Denmark have prohibited the sale of homes to people who aren't citizens, and Bolzano in Italy has restricted the sale of holiday homes to people from outside that region. These are just a few examples, and, if Members would want to know more, then Mabon ap Gwynfor from Dwyfor Meirionnydd has done excellent research, sharing dozens of examples on his social media channels.

We call on the Welsh Government to reconsider their intention to delete all of our motion with their amendment. Don't you see that there is a crisis here? Why wouldn't you be willing to use the executive power that you have to help the people and communities who are crying out in pain? Why will you not stand with us? After all, the steps that we are suggesting not only respond to a specific problem; they can also help the Government to deliver some of its current objectives. For example, with the long-term ambition to have 30 per cent of people working from home, by implementing these recommendations, young people could return to their native areas and rejuvenate them, as long as there is affordable housing there for them so that they can live there. And towns that are busy throughout the year are better for the economy than those that simply come to life for a month—places such as Abersoch. This is a plan that makes economic sense as well as social good sense. The Welsh Government needs to wake up from its slumber and to take action in order to ensure that some of our communities don't become towns and villages where most of the properties are empty and where young people find it impossible to purchase a home. We need to rebuild our communities, and we need to take these steps now.

There is a challenge for Government this evening, Llywydd: take action now or injustice for young people will remain, our culture will be dimmed, and, like Capel Celyn, some of our communities will sink into the pit of history. You have the power. Use that power.

I have selected the three amendments to the motion. If amendment 1 is agreed, amendments 2 and 3 will be deselected. If amendment 2 is agreed, amendment 3 will be deselected. I call on Mark Isherwood to move amendment 1, tabled in the name of Darren Millar. Mark Isherwood.

I move amendment 1. 

From 2003, I've campaigned for the sector, warning the Welsh Government that Wales faced an affordable housing supply crisis unless urgent action was taken. We heard this when we took evidence on Pen Llŷn, 15 years ago. Instead, the Labour Welsh Government cut the number of social homes by over 70 per cent during the first three Assembly terms, as waiting lists mushroomed. The 2012 UK housing review stated it was the Welsh Government itself that gave housing lower priority in its overall budgets, so that, by 2009-10, it had by far the lowest proportional level of housing expenditure of any of the four UK countries. Even last year, 2019, the highest year for UK new home registrations since 2007, the numbers in Wales fell by over 12 per cent. We cannot therefore support the Welsh Government amendment, which pretends that the Welsh Government has had a long-standing commitment to the provision of good quality affordable housing. 

The Labour amendment states that the Welsh Government will meet its 20,000 affordable homes target by the end of this Senedd term, but fails to mention that, although independent reports state that Wales needs 20,000 social homes over a Senedd term, their target includes not just social homes, but intermediate rent, low-cost home ownership and anything else they can squeeze in, hence our amendment calling for clarification of what constitutes an affordable home. 

I do welcome the Labour amendment's call on the Welsh Government to undertake an evidenced, thorough review of second-home ownership in Wales and the measures that might be necessary to ensure the needs of individuals, communities and the economy, in particular the visitor economy. However, as our amendment states, this must include working with the tourism sector and the Valuation Office Agency to establish an evidence base for policy regarding eligibility for self-catering accommodation to be recorded on the non-domestic rating list. Past Welsh Government proposals to change the qualifying criteria for self-catering accommodation generated widespread concern amongst trade bodies, including the Wales Association of Self-catering Operators and Wales Tourism Alliance members. The subsequent Non-Domestic Rating (Definition of Domestic Property) (Wales) Order 2010 stated that, to qualify as self-catering accommodation, a dwelling must be available to let for at least 140 days in a 12-month period and actually let for at least 70 days. The Order was revised and strengthened by the Welsh Government in 2016, and the qualification periods were retained, reflecting the public consultation responses. 

As the 2019 Equality, Local Government and Communities Committee report on empty properties states:

'criteria for self-catering accommodation strike a balance.... Dwellings which meet the criteria may be recorded on the non-domestic rating list.... For a property to be defined as self-catering accommodation...the owner must provide evidence to the Valuation Office Agency that the property meets the criteria.'

And, particularly,

'If a local authority believes a property should be listed for council tax and has evidence of this, it is obliged to share such information with the Agency'.

After the Welsh Government announced tighter business grant eligibility criteria for holiday-let businesses in April, I was contacted by large numbers of concerned owners stating, for example, 'They already know which businesses pay business rates and who pays council tax. Those on business rates should automatically have received a grant.' All but two of them lived in north Wales, and one of the others was first-language Welsh, born and raised in Gwynedd, who kept a home in Abersoch. I thank Gwynedd, Anglesey and Conwy councils for using their discretionary powers to ultimately give grants to each of these people. Only Flintshire is still insisting that the Welsh Government requires local authorities to withhold the grants from legitimate businesses not meeting the revised criteria.

The Housing (Wales) Act 2014 added discretionary powers for local authorities to apply council tax premiums of up to 100 per cent to second homes. I warned at the time that this would not generate additional supply for people who need affordable homes in their communities and that enabling local authorities to charge second home owners additional council tax would risk unintended consequences. As the sector has told me, this prompted many who had not known they were already eligible for small business rate relief to switch, and others to start letting out their homes to help with costs.

Most of the second homes purchased in holiday hotspots like Abersoch were already second homes—built as second homes over more than a century, and remaining so ever since. However, overdue action is needed to provide local affordable housing for local people, including purchasing suitable empty homes for social housing, developing homes with effective local market clauses attached, and reintroducing a reformed right to buy for council house tenants, with 100 per cent of sale receipts reinvested into new social housing for local people, because increasing the number of households with their own affordable front door is good housing economics. Diolch yn fawr. 

I call on the Minister for Housing and Local Government to formally move amendment 2, tabled in the name of Rebecca Evans.

Formally.

I call on Neil McEvoy to move amendment 3, tabled in his name. Neil McEvoy.

Diolch, Llywydd. I've introduced a simple amendment today, stating that, where necessary, compulsory purchase should be used by local authorities to meet the needs of social housing. I've advocated compulsory purchase for some time. I've also long advocated a simple concept for housing, which is local housing based on local need. It's a position that the Labour Party just does not understand. They prefer to build expensive housing beyond the means of local people on greenfield sites—in Cardiff, on greenfield sites they said they would protect.

But I can't say that Plaid Cymru are doing much better. Gwynedd is being ravaged. As we've heard from the Plaid Cymru person moving the motion, it's being ravaged by second-home ownership, and yet the local development plan in Plaid-run Gwynedd enables family homes to be converted into holiday accommodation. Now, they didn't need to do that, but they did. 

So, there's a shortage of homes for people to buy locally, and there's a problem with affordability, and yet Plaid Cymru, the movers of this motion, in power in Gwynedd, decide to make the problem worse. Now, the leader of Plaid is shaking his head—maybe have a word with your group in Gwynedd and get them to change the local development plan. Because that is what the Welsh National Party is campaigning to do: change the development plan in Gwynedd.

Because Plaid Cymru's local development plan in Gwynedd is unacceptable. 

We're in a position now, if we're talking Gwynedd—. Abersoch—it's come up earlier, and the school has to close, the primary school, because of a lack of numbers, directly related to second-home ownership. Now, with decades of being in power—my in-laws live just up the road—with decades of being power, what has Plaid done in Gwynedd to resolve this problem? Next to nothing—bron dim byd. And this is the best ever, this one; this is the best. It's worth remembering that it was a Plaid Cymru Minister here, when in Government—Jocelyn Davies—who accepted the flawed population figures from London, which paved the way for local development plans all over Wales, gobbling up our green fields and decimating our language. Plaid, in power, once again caving in. 

And it's the Plaid Cymru group in this Senedd that has no less than 40 per cent of its members registering an interest in at least one second home. And that's higher than the Labour Party; it's higher than the Conservative group here. Only the Brexit Party has a higher percentage. And I'll contrast that with the same politicians—multiple home-owning politicians—voting not so long ago to prevent people owning their own council house. So, it's okay for one person to own three, and yet constituents of mine are not allowed to buy one single council house they want to buy. 

I will be voting in favour of the motion, but I've just been unable not to call out the hypocrisy of Plaid Cymru here, who have failed to tackle the issue in Gwynedd, in Ceredigion, and who own so many second homes themselves. 

We cannot continue to have communities that are empty for much of the year, where there are so few children that the schools close. We need a system based on the primary principle of local housing for local people, local needs. And we need—we desperately need—a new planning system, and we need some, I'd say, innovation in local government as well to address these most serious problems. And that is what the Welsh National Party is campaigning for. Diolch yn fawr. 

We have brought forward a detailed and comprehensive motion before the Senedd today, and the intention is to move the debate away from the problem and to the solutions and the need to take urgent action at a time where there are clear signs that the issue is intensifying. We know that local people are being shut out of the housing market in communities across Wales and that that is increasing. There are over 6,000 second homes in the county where I live, in Gwynedd—12 per cent of the housing stock, one of the poorest percentages in all of Europe. And the COVID period has brought the tensions that such a situation cause to the fore once again. Ultimately there is a need for major structural changes, to the economy, to fiscal policy, to housing policy, to get to grips with the situation. There is no clearer sign of how unequal life is in these nations. There is something seriously wrong where so many of my constituents are earning lower wages and living in inadequate housing—damp, too small, without exterior space—while there are increasing numbers of luxury homes empty for long periods of time during the year while the wealthier owners are in their main homes in another part of an unequal United Kingdom.

Yes, we need major changes, and I long for the day that the Senedd in Wales will be in a place to implement these structural changes in an independent nation. In the meantime, there are a number of measures that are possible and in the gift of the Welsh Government. In our motion, we set out a package of measures that could make a difference in terms of planning, in terms of budgets and in terms of licensing. What is needed is the political will to take urgent action. I was pleased to hear the First Minister saying that there is a need for legislation to decrease the problem of second homes. Plaid Cymru is very willing to collaborate with his Government to pass urgent legislation in the coming months. This is an issue that needs to be solved immediately, not kicked down the road to be included in a manifesto for the May elections next year. Taking specific steps now, starting the work of creating change, would be a clear and unambiguous sign for communities facing a great deal of pressure that the Government and Senedd of our nation is taking this seriously and believes that we need to take action urgently.

This isn’t a problem that’s unique to Wales; there are problems worldwide and nations worldwide facing similar issues. In the report that we published today, we include measures that are being put in place successfully in other parts of the world, and closer to home, with Northumberland, for example, considering changes to their planning policy that would prohibit the sale of property for people outside of the area, in areas where there are too many second homes. We need to take action and we need to move the debate forward from the problem to what can be done to solve the problem. We would encourage everyone who is watching this debate to read the Plaid Cymru report and we would be very pleased to have your response, your comments and your further practical ideas about how to solve this crisis that is facing an increasing number of our communities.

I believe there's something fundamentally wrong in a society where there are some people with no home, or are living in completely inadequate housing—overcrowded, damp, cold—and others who have two or more homes, at least one of which they use infrequently. I think that's morally wrong.

Can I say I support the Welsh Government's amendments, one of which welcomes the Welsh Government's long-standing commitment to the provision of good-quality, affordable housing, recognising its fundamental role as the bedrock of strong, sustainable communities? Can I go further? I think we need more council housing and more social housing, but especially council housing. I speak as one of those who grew up in a council house in the 1960s. It changed my life and it changed the life of my family. I think that council housing is a wonderful means of providing housing for people that is affordable and of a good quality. 

I also follow the concern of the Welsh Government about empty homes. According to data obtained by ITN News last year, there were 43,028 empty homes in Wales, with at least 18,000 empty for more than six months. That works out at about 450 per constituency. Those include all kinds of properties, with houses in sought-after areas being left empty for several years. Empty homes are a wasted resource at a time of substantial housing demand. They can also cause nuisance and environmental problems, where empty homes can be a focus for increased levels of crime, vandalism, anti-social behaviour, drug abuse, overgrown gardens, unsteady boundary fences or walls, and where you've got a shared wall, either in terraced or semi-detached houses, you can end up with damp coming through from it. They also represent a potential housing resource that is currently unused. Bringing empty homes back into use can help address several housing and social issues by increasing supply in areas where there are housing shortages and pressure. It's an opportunity to link suitable empty homes with housing needs.

It has to be pointed out that if all efforts to persuade owners and landlords to bring their properties back into use fail and such properties continue to be a nuisance or in poor condition, councils need to consider their enforcement powers. But councils also need more enforcement powers and the ability to actually take over those houses. They really do need to be able to say, 'This house has been left here for 18 months to two years; it's deteriorating. We will compulsory purchase it at its market value', and then they can repair it and put it up for sale to the private sector or to housing associations—I don't really care which. It's just about bringing one more house back into use.

The Welsh Government, to its credit, introduced Houses into Homes loans to renovate empty properties and make them fit to live in. The loans are interest-free, they can pay for work on houses, but not enough has been made of it; not enough people have taken it up, and we still have those empty properties. I could take you around my constituency, and you'll walk down a street of terraced houses and there'll be one or two. If you walk down a street of semi-detached houses in sought-after areas, there'll be some empty houses. You can walk down an area where there are large, detached houses, and one of them will be left empty. This cannot be allowed to continue and I think that the Government do need to start taking firmer action. Yes, it's okay to condemn it, but we need action as well.

I welcome part (c) of the Plaid Cymru motion with regard to modernising legislation that currently means that not a penny of council tax is paid on second homes. I do not blame those who take advantage of tax loopholes. It's up to us to close those loopholes. Council tax should be paid on every residential property. Small business tax relief should not be available on properties that have been used previously or built as residential properties. If it was built as a residential property, that's what it should be. I'm sure some people will say that it will affect holiday lets and tourism. If that is true, it tells me something: that the lets are not economically viable. If paying council tax of £1,000 is going to make those lets unviable, then there's something wrong with the lets. It'll also provide more property for local people. I think that we all know of areas where there are shortages of houses to buy or rent.

Finally, can I go back to a cân actol by a group from Eryri at the Urdd Eisteddfod, I think in Llandudno? It was about a village that wanted to protect the Welsh language and their community and were vociferously against selling homes to be second homes. It ended with the most vociferous couple selling to the highest bidder who wanted it as a second home. It made the point that it's local people who are selling these houses to be second homes. They are the ones who are not keeping these homes in their community. If only second homes were sold as second homes, we wouldn't be seeing this increase. And I think it is something on which we really need to say, 'Please, in your local community, if you care about your community, don't sell to people from Cardiff or London, but sell to people who are local'.

I'm pleased to participate in this debate. I'm fortunate to have been selected for a short debate next week. I had considered doing that short debate on second homes, but I'm pleased to have an opportunity to discuss my ideas a week earlier.

This issue has been of great importance to many of us in the Senedd for many years. I remember a Cymdeithas yr Iaith poster, 'Nid yw Cymru ar werth' on the wall of my bedroom in the 1980s. But the lockdown and the fact that people have got to know their communities better, they've noticed people moving back and forth to second homes, trying to register with GP surgeries and so on, has given a new impetus to this, has raised the level of concerns and has increased the desire among the public to see us do something to resolve this problem. Parts of Wales—many parts of Wales—still feel that they are for sale to the highest bidder and, too often, our young people and people on low salaries in our communities simply can't compete. 

It's difficult to know where to start with the examples that I see on Anglesey. Some four of every 10 homes are holiday homes in places like Rhosneigr. You see ideal family homes going for absurd prices, way beyond the reach of the local community, and the result is that those homes are withdrawn from the housing market forever: a small cottage that's doubled in value in a few years; the house on an estate in Llangaffo rented out for £1,800 a month on a website in London; old terrace houses and council houses becoming holiday homes. For some, they are homes to be used occasionally. I see no fault on people who want to do that; Anglesey is a wonderful place to spend a weekend. But there are implications to this: it pushes prices up and it changes the nature of communities, and we know how lifeless many communities with a high number of holiday homes are throughout the year.

Many people do buy second homes as holiday lets, and many of these are local people. But the implications are the same. Websites such as Airbnb have made this even more attractive and easier. But it's no coincidence that so many areas and cities across the world have prohibited or placed strict restrictions on Airbnb lets now. A constituent recently got in touch to complain that one house on their estate had parties every evening, as people came in for short holidays. That's not the kind of community that people expect to live in on these estates in our villages. 

As others have suggested, there are ways of introducing rules and regulations to stop this. Make it a requirement to have planing consent to turn a permanent home into a home that is let for brief periods. It's not rejecting all holiday lets. Self-catering can be an important part of our tourism offer but, at the moment, it's out of control. We need to be able to decide how many to allow within any community and how many holiday homes too. And that means placing a cap and allowing no more than that cap in some communities. 

I'll turn to the loophole that Mike Hedges mentioned—the taxation loophole that we've been asking the Welsh Government to close for years now, but with no joy. A loophole where people register a holiday home as a holiday let, and therefore do not pay council tax, which has a premium, of course, as a second home in certain counties, and then are given full business rate relief. The threshold for change of use is far too low and it costs as much as £1 million per annum for a council such as Anglesey, and it has to stop. It's as simple as that. It's a disgrace that the Labour Government has refused to acknowledge the problem. The problem became even more apparent at the beginning of this pandemic when £10,000 in support was available for small businesses. It's wonderful that real businesses do receive that support, but it's disgraceful to see people trying to take advantage of that. 

With the clock against against me, let me just say this, in conclusion: there is nothing unique to Wales, as we've heard already, in what we're discussing. Concerns about the impact of the ownership of second homes and holiday homes has led to legislative changes and robust steps across the world. So, let's do what others have realised has to be done. It's not an attack on tourism, by the way, but tourism without control is something that happens to a community, it's very different to tourism which is controlled, where there is real ownership and which is sustainable within our communities.

I'll leave it there. We know that Plaid Cymru want to see action. We're urging this Government to start to take action now, because we are in a crisis. 

I thank Plaid Cymru for tabling this debate today. It's an interesting topic, which has had some raised profile over the period of the lockdown, and I do applaud the sentiments of 'local homes for local people' behind it. I must declare an interest in that I inherited my late father's house when he died, and I rent it out to a local family, and I note from the register of Members' interests that many other Members in the Chamber do too. As a result of the requirements of Rent Smart Wales, I've had to register and I employ an agent to manage the property. If I wanted to make real money and was put off by the bureaucracy of being a private landlord in Wales, I may be attracted to the Airbnb route.

The recent announcement of the extension to the six-month notice period for tenants has been received with some consternation by private landlords, many of whom don't sit at home counting their money—they worry about how to keep up with the mortgage payments. So, the Welsh Government needs to proceed with caution because some may no longer wish to offer long-term rentals to local people, and I'm sure this would be an unintended consequence, and a bad one at that.

Looking at the motion that's tabled by Plaid, it does feel like all stick and no carrot: control planning, punitive council tax bills, increasing land transaction tax. On a practical level, I would suggest that if you can afford a second home, you can probably afford to pay more council tax and pay more land transaction tax—that wouldn't be a problem for most of those people. And while we may wish to promote local home occupation and discourage holiday homes, second homes are just one part of a very complex housing market. For that reason, I am attracted to the part of the Labour motion that suggests an audit of the number of second homes and holiday homes in Wales, so that we can see the full scale of the issue. Perception often does not mirror reality, and facts and not feelings are what are important here.

I accept and acknowledge that there is indeed a housing crisis, but, just like the climate crisis, Governments of any colour, anywhere don't appear to be managing the crisis in any effective way at all. I applaud the Welsh Labour Government's prediction of hitting their own target on affordable homes, but the fact of the matter is that 20,000 homes over five years is nowhere near enough when estimates suggest that we need a lot, as we've got 65,000 families here on our waiting lists. I understand councils are now free to build and that the public sector in Wales still holds vast swathes of land. So, what is the barrier to building or creating as many homes as Wales needs? I know that there have been periodic drivers to repurpose empty homes, but any walk, as Mike Hedges said, around any area will turn up various properties that lay empty and unused. So, more can certainly be done.

I'd be interested to hear what the Welsh Government intends to do to embed this sort of approach into housing policy now. We saw at the start of lockdown that where there is a political will, big things, like getting all the homeless into housing, can actually be done. So, where is the political will to create a housing programme for Wales that will ensure that the citizens of Wales have the homes that they need and that they deserve?

I welcome the prospect of looking at the definition of 'affordable', but I'd also be interested in what the definition of 'local' is. I came to Wales in 1986 from the midlands. I've contributed to my community, brought my kids up in rural Wales, and I love Wales. After being here for 34 years plus, would I be considered local if I were to do this now? There is much merit in a serious look at housing in Wales and there is much merit in this motion and many of the amendments. I hope that the Welsh Government, and indeed all parties thinking about manifesto promises, give housing the serious thought it needs and the people of Wales deserve. Thank you.

The Minister for Housing and Local Government, Julie James.

Diolch, Llywydd. As we've heard from a large number of the contributors to this debate, second homes and all the related issues thereof are both emotive and have a long and complicated history. I'm very grateful to Plaid Cymru for the opportunity to discuss this important and complex matter that has been raised several times in the Senedd over the past few weeks, and I'm happy to reiterate and start my remarks with the offer I'll also end them with, that we do not have all the good ideas in Wales, and I'm very happy to work with interested Members across the Senedd on a number of the issues that have been raised tonight to see where we can go with it.

As a number of contributors have also said, the pandemic has impacted on how we see and value our homes. We spend more time in our homes, working as well as living and relaxing there. Home has been for many of us, the lucky ones, our haven during these difficult times. And for some, the option to relocate to a second home has also been inviting, however we can see the tensions that that has caused in some communities, resurfacing long-held concerns about affordability, access to housing for local people and sustainability of communities whose populations grow and shrink significantly according to season.

These communities often thrive thanks to the visitor economy, but of course we need to strike the right balance between that economy and the communities that host it. A vibrant community needs jobs and its people need homes; it needs sustainable infrastructure and a sense of place. This Welsh Government is proud of its placemaking. Only this morning I launched the new placemaking charter for Wales, which enshrines our approach to sustainable communities across Wales and works with our partners across the industry and across the regulatory sector to make achieving more sustainable communities the enshrined goal across Wales. And achieving that of course means balancing permanent homes and those occupied for part of the year or let as businesses.

We need all community members, whether full or part-time, to contribute fairly, and we need to ensure that local people are not priced out of local housing. This Government has made permanent affordable homes accessible across Wales a priority and I'm very proud of our record of a £2 billion investment in housing. We are on track to deliver our 20,000 additional affordable homes during this term—we were on track to do more than that, but, of course, the pandemic has had some effect—and within that figure homes for social rent make up the largest proportion, but we've also helped people buy their own homes through Help to Buy and through rent to own.

Increasing the supply of affordable homes will help local people struggling to stay local because of high property prices and rents in their community. Members will many times have heard me say that I share the concern that local people cannot—local young people in particular—stay in the communities in which they grew up to make their lives and their families. So, it's important that we have a sharp focus on increasing the supply of housing but also getting the balance right is vital. It's also important that second home owners make fair contributions to the communities in which they buy and do not price local people out of the market. As I've said, being unable to work and live in the area you've grown up in is not how we see a future Wales. It's a problem that we have across Wales in a large number of our communities; it's not just confined to the north and west. We have very beautiful communities across Wales and they are increasingly attractive to people, and we should be rightly proud of that.

I also entirely agree with Mike Hedges that the situation—and others, actually; he brought it up first—is not helped where properties stand empty. We've encouraged, equipped and funded local authorities to use their powers to ensure that's not the case. Indeed, again, only this week we initiated a new training programme for local authorities and next month fresh guidance will be issued on the use of compulsory purchase orders to ensure councils can exercise them where needed. We also have a number of schemes to assist home owners to bring houses back into use, either for their own use or to hand them over to social landlords in order to increase our social house supply. And, Llywydd, I have many times mentioned these schemes in the Senedd; I'm just drawing people's attention to them. I can talk, as you know, for at least an hour on any one of those schemes, so I won't try your patience by doing so.

We're also aware of the major contribution of the visitor economy. Our new tourism strategy, 'Welcome to Wales: 2020—2025', recognises its economic importance. Crucially, it also acknowledges that in parts of Wales there is potential for over-tourism and that we need to grow tourism in ways that benefit Wales, listening to residents, visitors and businesses. We've started those conversations and have already instigated a number of ways to help achieve that proper balance.

The foundational economy, too, is particularly important to communities that are more reliant on tourism and recognises that many of the challenges raised in this debate cannot be solved just through the housing supply alone. There are large numbers of other concerns, especially jobs, distributed infrastructure and so on that need to be taken into account.

In terms of tax and fair contribution, we've taken a distinct position. Unlike other UK administrations, the Welsh Government did not provide a temporary tax reduction for buy-to-let investors, investors in furnished holiday lets or buyers of second homes. July's temporary reduction to the residential land transaction tax rates raised the starting threshold from £180,000 to £250,000. Consequently, around 80 per cent of Welsh homebuyers pay no tax, up from 60 per cent for the £180,000 threshold. However, second home buyers in Wales pay higher rates of land transaction tax compared to homebuyers, paying 3 per cent on top of each rate that a homebuyer would pay. This temporary change does not apply to residential transactions subject to the higher rates of LTT, and that ensures that the reduction is targeted at homebuyers who may need additional support to buy their homes in these uncertain economic times, and it is not available to second home buyers and buy-to-let investment properties. That contrasts with the UK and Scottish Governments, who have provided tax reductions on the purchase of such properties as part of the temporary changes to property transaction tax. It also reflects our active commitment to a progressive regime that expects those with the broadest shoulders to contribute the largest share in tax. That includes those in a position to be able to purchase more than one residential property. And I should say, Llywydd, after the conversation about who owns what, that I do not own a second residential property or any other property. I still have a mortgage on my own home.

We very much need to make sure that we build the right kinds of housing across Wales, and I'll just remind Members that, of course, we directed £30 million of the money available for the land transaction tax to phase 2 of our homelessness programme, making sure that it goes towards building many more social homes for rent. Wales is also the only nation to give local authorities a chance to charge a premium of up to 100 per cent on council tax rates to second homes. At present, eight authorities are charging premiums ranging from 25 per cent to 50 per cent. None are applying the maximum premium available, and in the absence of further evidence and consultation, I'm not convinced, given that they aren't charging even the maximum that we currently allow, that doubling that premium is a good thing. From a tax perspective, it's also important to assess the evidence from viewing how tax supports communities across Wales. LTT, for example, brings significant revenue to the Welsh Government, revenue spent on providing public services in Wales. We also explore a future permissive power for local authorities to enact a tourism tax, so tourists can contribute directly to costs borne by local authorities as a result of the tourism there.

But we will not reconcile the issues and interests through tax alone. We also have the rural strategic group for rural housing, because we know that rural areas have particular housing challenges that centre mainly on high house prices to income ratios, and low levels of affordable housing delivery. Rural areas have many different needs, and each area has its own unique challenges and opportunities, and therefore we lead a rural strategic group which consists of rural housing enablers, housing associations, local authorities, Community Housing Cymru and the Welsh Local Government Association. It meets quarterly and provides a forum to exchange and test ideas and share good practice. And you can see from the range of things that we're doing that we do not think that there are any easy answers or quick fixes, and a number of contributors acknowledged that. I'm really keen to understand the various views, application and effect of current powers and take account of the evidence. We need to strike the right balance between the valuable role of the visitor economy, people's rights to enjoy property, access to affordable housing that sustains and energises our communities, and the contribution that all tenures of home ownership make and should make to our communities.

The Welsh Government certainly has the will and appetite to engage across the piece to take forward that work and further assessments of options and their impact, and I will willingly work with Members, and I started my speech by saying, 'Llywydd, that I will willingly work with Members across the Senedd to that end. And, indeed, I'm in the process of arranging meetings with a number of Members who have already come forward to do just that. And therefore, Members, I ask you to support the Government amendment, which provides a sufficiently broad base from which to achieve all that. Diolch.

Llyr Gruffydd to reply to the debate. Llyr Gruffydd.

Thank you very much, Llywydd, and thank you to everyone who's contributed to this debate. The intention from Plaid Cymru in putting forward this debate was to ensure that there was an understanding that the current situation has reached a crisis point in terms of affordable homes—a situation that is intensifying, particularly because of the circumstances we're currently living under. I was very pleased to see the Minister acknowledging that it's not just a problem for the north and the west—it's a problem for the whole of Wales. But in listing some of the things that the Government is doing, one does have to remind oneself that the steps that have been taken are insufficient because the crisis wouldn't have reached the pitch that it has. So, as the Minister will recognise, I'm sure, there is a great deal more that needs to be done, because we are seeing another wave coming towards us—people are buying homes in rural areas, pushing local people out of the local market, and as a result they're pushing people out of their local communities. And as was said at the very beginning of this debate, it's an issue of social justice as much as anything else.

The Labour and Conservative amendments are disappointing, and you just have to look at the first two words of both amendments, which is to delete everything—'delete all'. Through supporting the Labour amendment, we wouldn't be acknowledging the crisis and there would be too ambiguous a promise made, then, to deal with the problems later on, and in supporting the Conservative amendment, we would be deleting any specific reference to using the planning system and the taxation system to get to grips with the problem. Well, those are the two most powerful tools that we have to get to grips with the issues.

From the point of view of using taxation powers, there is an opportunity to do two things: first of all, making the purchase of a second home to be used as a holiday home less attractive, and, as a result, ensuring that there is more housing available within the residential housing stock. But, if they are then purchased as second homes, we should ensure that revenue is there to compensate the local community for things such as investment in social housing. And from the point of view of the planning system, we've seen it happening in other areas, and I am particularly eager for us to reform the classification of use in the planning system, as has happened in Scotland, in Northern Ireland, and as should happen, of course, in Wales.

In 2016, the classification of specific use for HMOs was created to differentiate between them and residential properties. And then, of course, you can start to control how many HMOs you have in a particular community. Well, it's the same principle exactly here in the proposals with regard to second homes, too. That would enable you then to set a cap, in consultation with the local community, to recognise what the appropriate level is, which will vary from one part of the nation to the other, but the principle is the same.

Now, Rhun referred to one factor that is becoming an increasing problem, namely the huge increase that we've seen in properties listed as holiday homes on Airbnb and other platforms, and some of the statistics are frightening. According to one analysis, there are approximately 3,800 homes being used for that kind of use in Gwynedd alone, 3,400 in Pembrokeshire and 1,500 in Cardiff. There are only 2,700 in the whole of Greater Manchester, which has a population similar to that of Wales. So, that points to level of the problem. Analysis suggest that that 3,800 has increased in just 12 months from 2,000 in Gwynedd, so it's almost doubled in a year. And we've already heard that almost 40 per cent of the homes sold in Gwynedd last year were bought as second homes. So, if that isn't the basis to consider something as a crisis, then I don't know what people's definition of a crisis is. 

And there are solutions worldwide. We've heard about many of them, and I could add Amsterdam, Palma, Prague, Paris, Berlin, Barcelona—they've all got to grips with specific issues with regard to Airbnb. But more widely in terms of second homes: Singapore, Israel, Ontario in Canada, Aotearoa, Switzerland—of course, we know what's happened in some of the cantons there—Denmark, as we heard earlier, Austria, Bolzano in Italy. Closer to home, Guernsey, of course, has created a housing market that has two tiers, and I think that's an option worth looking at. And Cornwall is also an example that is referred to very often. Other nations and regions have taken action and they've shown that there are solutions that we could adopt.

I don't know how many of you saw the article in The Times a few weeks ago—perhaps you can't see this clearly, but what it says is:

'Buy-to-let is over: invest in a holiday home instead'.

Now, there's a heartbreaking title for a generation of young people in Wales who can't afford their own home. Now, this is a crisis—it's a crisis that is driven by economic inequality, and there are serious implications as a result of that for the sustainability of communities across Wales.

The purpose of devolution is to bring power and the ability to take action closer to those communities impacted by the problems that we've referred to this afternoon. We do have the powers that we need to get to grips with many of these problems, and we've heard about some of the solutions. If we don't use those powers that we already have to safeguard our communities at their time of need, then people will have a right to ask what the purpose of devolution is. Support our motion. 

The proposal is to agree the motion without amendments. Does any Member object? [Objection.] I will, therefore, defer voting until voting time.

And we will now take a break until we move to voting time.

The first vote is on the Welsh Conservatives' debate on higher education, and I call for a vote on the motion, tabled in the name of Darren Millar. Open the vote. Close the vote. In favour 14, two abstentions, 36 against. And therefore, the motion is not agreed.

The next vote is on amendment 1, tabled in the name of Siân Gwenllian. Open the vote. Close the vote. In favour 10, no abstentions, 42 against. Therefore, amendment 1 is not agreed.

The next vote is on amendment 2 and if amendment 2 is agreed, amendments 3 and 4 will be deselected. I call for a vote on amendment 2, tabled in the name of Rebecca Evans. Open the vote. Close the vote. In favour 28, one abstention, 23 against, and therefore amendment 2 is agreed, and amendments 3 and 4 are deselected.

I now call for a vote on the motion as amended. 

Open the vote. Close the vote. In favour 30, no abstentions, 22 against. Therefore, the motion is agreed.

The next votes are on the Plaid Cymru debate on second homes. I call for a vote on the motion, tabled in the name of Siân Gwenllian. Open the vote. Close the vote. In favour 10, no abstentions, 42 against.

The next vote is on amendment 1, and if amendment 1 is agreed, amendments 2 and 3 will be deselected. I call for a vote on amendment 1, tabled in the name of Darren Millar. Open the vote. Close the vote. In favour 13, no abstentions, 39 against. Therefore, the amendment is not agreed.

Amendment 2 is the next amendment and if amendment 2 is agreed, amendment 3 will be deselected. I call for a vote on amendment 2, tabled in the name of Rebecca Evans. Close the vote. In favour 27, four abstentions, 21 against, and therefore amendment 2 is agreed.

Amendment 3 is deselected.

The vote—[Interruption.]

Who was speaking to me there?

Sorry, Llywydd. Huw Irranca-Davies here. As we're going through this, I'm conscious that, for the record, amendment 3 in the previous set of voting is being shown as passed before the prime amendment. So, for accuracy of the record, I just want to make sure that's okay.

I'm told that that will be disregarded. But thank you for—[Inaudible.] So, finally, then, where have I got to now? Have I got to the motion unamended? As amended. Yes. So, the next vote is on the final motion as amended. 

And I'm opening the vote. Close the vote.

In favour 26, three abstentions, 23 against, and therefore the motion is agreed.

That brings us to the end of voting time and the end of the session. No, I do apologise. We don't come to the end of the session.

I forgot the short debate. I am very sorry. I'll ask some of you leaving to leave quietly, and I will find the short debate.

My apologies, Mark Isherwood. You must have been wondering what was happening there. My mistake. So, I'm calling Mark Isherwood to introduce the short debate. Mark Isherwood.

Diolch, Llywydd. I speak today as the chair of the cross-party group on neurological conditions. There are more than 250 recognised neurological conditions. In Wales, approximately 100,000 people are living with a neurological condition that has a significant impact on their lives.

From 2011 onwards, the Welsh Government published a number of health delivery plans. The neurological conditions delivery plan, or NCDP, was published in 2014. In 2019, people with neurological conditions, clinicians and charities raised concerns that the NCDP, which had been revised in 2017, had not yet resulted in the degree of change that should be expected. They questioned whether the implementation of the plan had been effective in ensuring that treatment and care sufficiently meets the needs of all people living with neurological conditions in Wales. Consequently, the cross-party group on neurological conditions took action to conduct a short inquiry. Its purpose was to gather evidence and to present both the health and social care committee and the Welsh Government with recommendations for action to improve the implementation of the current plan and deliver a long-term strategic approach to raising standards in treatment and services and support for people with neurological conditions in Wales.

Many of the organisations and individuals who submitted evidence to the inquiry focused on opportunities, concerns and challenges related to the way in which the plan has been implemented. Some felt that it's highly likely that the outcomes and performance measures in each chapter of the NCDP will be met by 2020. 

The role of the neurological conditions implementation group, or NCIG, is clearly defined within the NCDP. However, when the NCDP was first introduced, there was little or no co-ordination across neurological services at an all-Wales level. Networks for conditions such as cancer, cardiac and renal services were well established by that stage, but this was not the case for neurological services. As a result, the task that NCIG faced was complex and difficult.

The majority of evidence that was submitted to the cross-party group's report with regard to progress in raising awareness under the NCDP related to activity rather than outcomes or impacts. Co-production activity between NCIG, third sector organisations and individuals with neurological conditions was welcomed. In particular, contributors cited the joint working between NCIG and the Wales Neurological Alliance to create a patient-reported experience measure, or PREM, as a positive step. Discrete educational activity was cited by NCIG as a positive. However, as the report states:

'Contributors questioned the extent to which the plan had enabled genuine coproduction and participation with people with neurological conditions and carers. They expressed disappointment with the lack of discernible progress in setting up a Neurological Conditions Service User Forum in every LHB. One third sector organisation told this inquiry "Neurological Service User Forums have not been established acros Wales as intended by the plan. It is not evident whether Health Boards or NCIG have drawn on feedback from service user forums".'

Although the report states that partnership working with

'Third sector involvement in NCIG was perceived as positive',

it also states that 

'concerns were shared that third sector involvement generally is patchy, inconsistent and not equitable across Wales or by condition.'

The greatest success of the NCDP is that it's created a focus on the needs of people with neurological conditions in Wales. It has thrown a spotlight on the factors that have been missing in terms of strategic delivery of services for neurological conditions, for example, networks such as those that exist for cancer, cardiac and other conditions. Furthermore, it has provided an opportunity and structure for individuals and third sector organisations to share their concerns and poor experiences. As a result, it has allowed those involved in implementation to begin to take action to address unmet need and to find solutions to challenges.

The appointment of a clinical lead role for neurological conditions is welcomed. The clinical lead has begun defining the areas of required intervention and identifying clinical pathways underpinning clinical services and principles. However, the appointment was made relatively late in the implementation process and it only has one day per week of ring-fenced funding.

NCIG has worked hard to establish a baseline and is beginning to promote good practice and to marshal pragmatic improvement activity. However, it's vital that this group should continue to exist and be embedded more permanently in order to deliver a better network approach to promoting ongoing improvement and efficiency across Wales. There are so many challenges that need to be resolved. It is clear that this focus should be sustained.

Remaining challenges pertaining to the implementation of NCDP include maintaining the work of NCIG, for it would be extremely detrimental to lose the focus on service improvements and networked approach that they've introduced; funded posts for a clinical lead and a co-ordinator, emphasising the seriousness of intent for the delivery plan to effect real change; accountability for delivery—NCIG monitors the progress of the NCDP, but does not have a mandate to hold local health boards to account for critical elements of implementation like workforce development strategy; if this is indeed not the role of NCIG, it could be suggested that this accountability should be provided by another means in order to effectively incentivise service change.  

Communication about delivery to stakeholders and the wider public needs to be improved. Establishing a national communication platform is critically important, cascading information to the people who are actually on the ground. Key management data in terms of readmission rates, waiting times, length of stay in hospital and so on is collected and analysed at local health board level, but all-Wales data of this kind was not provided as evidence to this inquiry. Lack of management data related to the outcome indicators of the plan and the delivery of diagnosis, treatment, services and support for people with neurological conditions is a significant problem. It's impossible to track improvements over time without a properly resourced mechanism to gather and publish this kind of data.

The removal of the requirement for individual health boards to publish annual neurological delivery plans and annual reports has resulted in it being more difficult to consistently consider progress generally or at an individual health board level. Local health board integrated medium-term plans have not been effective at driving change on NCDP priorities. They often lack neurological-specific sections and any neurological service references can be dispersed under different IMTP sections. Patients and carers have not been genuinely given the opportunity to take part in service improvement. Financial restraints have had a negative impact on neurological services, access to treatment, services and support. This has increased travel time and costs for individuals with neurological conditions, which has a very negative physical, emotional and financial impact on people, and can result in them not accessing that treatment and care that they all need.

The cross-party group on neurological conditions urges Welsh Government to accept the recommendations and commit to taking the necessary actions identified in the report. These include ending the chronic underfunding of neurological services within investment in health and social care services to meet the needs of people in Wales, and creating a new neurological condition strategy and action plan, with clearer outcomes and a stronger accountability structure.

Due to the low starting baseline, the NCIG has yet to deliver anything like the scale of change required to ensure that people with neurological conditions across the whole of Wales have safe, timely and equitable access to treatment, services and support.

While the current approach has begun to yield positive results, it will not be possible to create the step change that is needed without wider strategic commitment from across NHS Wales, from Welsh Government and from local authorities at a senior level. Improving services and support for people with neurological conditions must be sustained if we're to make real change to people's lives. It's also evident that people with neurological conditions and carers must be partners in this process. While the focus on increasing support for rehabilitation in the community is welcomed, the poor experiences that are reported show that sustained focus and continued investment is necessary. This is urgently required given the damaging impact of shielding or self-isolating due to the coronavirus pandemic on many people living with a neurological condition.

The Wales Neurological Alliance survey on the impact of the coronavirus pandemic revealed that it has significantly impacted on people living with neurological conditions, and has had major ramifications on the provision of health and social care services for them. Although people with neurological conditions have needed to continue to access specialist services during the outbreak and beyond to maintain their well-being, isolation and shielding has increased anxiety and impacted on the mental health of people living with neurological conditions, triggering or exacerbating their symptoms or condition. Rehabilitation and mental health services have not adapted to meet the meet the needs of people living with neurological conditions. Services and treatment have been delayed or stopped during the pandemic. The NHS in Wales must apply strong leadership and set out its priorities for restarting services for people living with neurological conditions as soon as it is clinically safe to do so.

Our report is based entirely upon the extensive written and oral evidence we received from a wide range of stakeholders, including individuals living with neurological conditions and carers, charities representing people affected by neurological conditions, specialist clinicians, the royal colleges, the Wales Neurological Alliance and the neurological conditions implementation group. We commend our report to the Welsh Government and we look forward to their response. Thank you. Diolch.

Thank you. I now call on the Minister for Health and Social Services to reply to the debate—Vaughan Gething. 

Thank you, Deputy Llywydd. I want to thank Mark Isherwood for bringing the cross-party group's report to the Chamber. I have listened carefully to what he has to say, and there are a range of valid points that I would agree with and I hope that I manage to touch on in the response. I am grateful to the cross-party group and to all those who took the time to share their professional and personal experience, as well as the expertise of people with neurological conditions, carers, the royal colleges, the NHS and the third sector. The report and the recommendations will be considered at the neurological conditions implementation group, due to meet on 7 October. I will write to Members following that meeting, with the Welsh Government and the implementation group's joint response to the report. 

I firmly believe that providing good-quality services for people living with neurological conditions is vital, and that of course needs to be balanced with keeping people safe and well. As with many other major health conditions, some services were temporarily suspended or reduced as resources were diverted and as the first stage of the pandemic took hold. Health boards, as part of their quarterly planning, were required to redesign the care environment to ensure that those patients with or suspected of having COVID were and are kept separate from other patients. Where services stopped or reduced, consultants have been asked to go through their waiting lists to risk stratify and prioritise each patient. The aim and objective is that, when it was possible to safely reintroduce relevant services, those with the most urgent need were seen first. Health boards continue to hold virtual and telephone consultations with patients and, where it is necessary and in the best interests of the patient, they are also seen face to face. 

Last week, I published the winter protection plan. That plan sets out what is needed next to provide safe and effective health and social care services and support patients and our workforce over the months ahead. It's important to recognise that the challenges of this winter will be even greater than any normal winter, given the need to respond to the COVID outbreak and the resurgence of the virus that we have seen over the recent weeks. As such, the recommendations within the cross-party group report must be considered alongside the significant pressure that health and social care services continue to face. However, the Welsh Government remains committed to ensuring that anyone with a neurological condition should have access to the best possible care. I'm pleased the cross-party group report highlights the good work that has been taken forward in Wales by both health boards and the implementation group. 

The neurological conditions delivery plan, which sets out the Welsh Government's vision for people living with neurological conditions in Wales, is one that I chose to extend to March 2022, while successful approaches to implementation groups and delivery plans are developed. This will allow for a period of reflection on the lessons learned and new models of care used during the pandemic, whilst also allowing for alignment with the development of the national clinical framework that we set out in 'A Healthier Wales'. Any successor approach will consider the recommendations of the cross-party group report. In the meantime, we continue to invest £1.2 million annually to improve access for all patients needing neurorehab services in Wales. We continue to implement our commitment to improve access to psychological therapies, and have provided an additional £4 million to health boards to support this area. We've also committed to further invest in psychological therapies next year, as part of our budget proposals.

The implementation group will continue to work closely with Michelle Price, our national clinical lead for neurological conditions, to take forward the group's priorities. We will do so with a co-productive approach, as Mark Isherwood indicated, to increase awareness of neurological conditions, service development and developing clear pathways and models of care, based on best practice and research evidence and, of course, lived experience. 

The implementation group currently has three sub-groups for the areas identified: adult neurological, paediatric and seizures. The seizures group is a multiprofessional group whose primary focus is to develop an all-Wales seamless patient pathway across primary, secondary and tertiary care. The pediatric group is also multiprofessional, and looks at pediatric rehabilitation in particular. The neurorehab group is focusing on self-management, community neurorehab, technology and rehabilitation, and in-patient rehabilitation. These groups will be kept under review and refocused as priorities change and develop. 

As I indicated, the patient voice is fundamental if we're to improve the quality of our services across health and care, and, of course, that includes the neurological conditions implementation group. They have always had service user representation from its inception. The implementation group has also extended funding to the Wales Neurological Alliance, so that their project manager can develop a network of service users across Wales to inform awareness raising and raising support for future service improvements. The Wales Neurological Alliance plays a crucial role in raising awareness and signposting information for each condition where appropriate. I'm grateful to the alliance, and other healthcare third sector organisations, for providing regular patient feedback on essential services during the pandemic. 

In conclusion, I believe we have made good progress to improve neurological services in Wales throughout the last three years. However, we recognise that there is more that we should and must do. The recommendations of the cross-party group report will help to provide additional focus, as we continue to strive for excellence in this area of healthcare. Thank you. 

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