Senedd Cymru (Welsh Parliament), 23 January 2019

268 contributions from 39 members. The official report.

Elin Jones (Plaid Cymru, Ceredigion)

I call everybody to order.

1. Questions to the Minister for Environment, Energy and Rural Affairs

Elin Jones (Plaid Cymru, Ceredigion)

The first item on our agenda this afternoon is questions to the Minister for Environment, Energy and Rural Affairs, and the first question is from Huw Irranca-Davies.

Huw Irranca-Davies (Labour, Ogmore)

1. Will the Minister make a statement on the Natural Resources Wales approach to reforestation in areas in the South Wales valleys denuded by larch disease? OAQ53261

Lesley Griffiths (Labour, Wrexham)

Thank you. Wales has suffered unprecedented levels of phytophthora ramorum disease, which has forced clearance of large areas of larch, especially in the south Wales Valleys. NRW is restocking these woodland areas using a mixture of species that are appropriate to each location. Wales will then have a more resilient and varied woodland.

Huw Irranca-Davies (Labour, Ogmore)

I thank the Minister for that response. It was very encouraging to see one of the outcomes of the Valleys taskforce work was the idea of a south Wales Valleys woodland and park that would spread across the whole of the Valleys from east to west. Of course, there's amazing potential with that, but the denudation through larch disease has had a significant impact, and I see it in the Llynfi, the Garw and the Ogmore valleys. And I'm wondering, in their approach to reforestation, what discussions, what consultation does NRW do with local communities, what does it do with local landowners, local businesses, including, potentially, if it gets up and running, the Afan adventure park at the top of David Rees's constituency and mine, which has been totally scalped because of larch disease, but they anticipate bringing there, if they get through the planning permission, a Center Parcs with adrenaline, but it will need that reforestation to make it work? So, what support can you give to local communities, to businesses, to engage with the reforestation programme?

Lesley Griffiths (Labour, Wrexham)

Thank you. I do appreciate that having to fell so much woodland in the south Wales Valleys within such a short timescale has had a really devastating impact on the area, and I don't think it's something that NRW would certainly have wanted to do under normal circumstances. NRW do try to minimise the impact of felling on local communities and businesses through having engagement with local communities, and I know they hold public meetings, they hold drop-in sessions as part of their forest operations, so that they can share their proposals with people and also seek their views on them. I certainly would recommend, if you know of any specific community or even individual constituents who would like that level of engagement with NRW, to please contact them, and I'm sure they would engage to see what their views were on proposals for the woodland estate.

Suzy Davies (Conservative, South Wales West)

Yes, it's a very sad sight, and I'm pleased to hear your answer to Huw Irranca-Davies. But, I think, having looked at some of the photographs of how the replanting is being done, some of these mixed saplings are really quite small. And I was wondering if you'd be interested in speaking to the education Minister about the opportunity for children and young people in schools to actually perhaps be part of the replanting plans. I presume it has to go through NRW and a range of other people, but, in terms of this representing a more historically accurate landscape for Wales, there are a lot of places, particularly in the new curriculum, where this could fit quite happily—anything from history through to science, through to anything that's in the well-being area of learning. Thank you.

Lesley Griffiths (Labour, Wrexham)

I certainly think that's a very good suggestion from Suzy Davies, and I'd be very happy to speak to my colleague Kirsty Williams about it.

Helen Mary Jones (Plaid Cymru, Mid and West Wales)

Minister, you'll be aware of the correspondence that you've had between yourself and my colleague Elin Jones with regard to concerns of the residents around the Hafod Estate near Aberystwyth about the nature of the removal of the trees. You'll recall Elin Jones raising concerns with you about the use of pesticides and people's concerns about that potentially affecting both other wildlife and the water table, since many of the homes in that area receive their water from wells rather than from main supplies. You were kind enough to reply to Elin, and I would invite you today to put on record your reassurance to that community, and to any others who may be concerned across Wales about the nature of control, that there is no reason to fear either for human health because of contamination to the water table, or because of any risks to wildlife.

Lesley Griffiths (Labour, Wrexham)

Yes. Thank you for the opportunity to express that reassurance.

David Rees (Labour, Aberavon)

Minister, clearly the Afan valley was one of the first and one of the most severely affected by the larch disease, and my colleague the Member for Ogmore has highlighted the opportunities that come as a consequence of reforestation. Have you had discussions with your colleague the Minister for Economy and Transport about how we can build up the economies of those valleys? Tourism is an agenda that clearly is going to take those valleys forward, but if we don't have the reforestation and if the plans aren't established, that's going to take a hit.

Lesley Griffiths (Labour, Wrexham)

I haven't had specific discussions with the Minister for Economy and Transport, but I'd be very happy to do so. Obviously, my interest in this area is about restocking the woodland areas, as I've just answered to Huw Irranca-Davies. And it's really, I think, important that the mixture of species of trees is very appropriate to each location. I know not every area between your two constituencies will require the same species of trees. So, I think it's really important that that is very specifically appropriate. Again, the objectives for restocking vary according to local forest resource plans. But, as I say, you make a very good point, I think, about tourism, which I'd be very happy to discuss with Ken Skates.

Mark Reckless (Conservative, South Wales East)

2. Will the Minister make a statement on what progress Hybu Cig Cymru have made in developing markets for Welsh red meat beyond the EU? OAQ53244

Lesley Griffiths (Labour, Wrexham)

Thank you. Welsh Government is investing £1.5 million for HCC to maintain European markets, and develop trade further afield. As a direct result, new business has been secured in Singapore. I welcome recent announcements of the lifting of restrictions on importing UK beef and lamb to Japan, and lamb to India and Saudi Arabia, where further HCC activity is planned.

Mark Reckless (Conservative, South Wales East)

I'm pleased to report in that context that, last week, I wrote to the Minister following a meeting I had with an Omani businessman, who is interested in importing Welsh beef and lamb to Oman. As we're looking to diversify our exporting markets, does the Minister welcome this, and will she arrange for whoever is appropriate to meet with them, to facilitate this mutually beneficial trade?

Lesley Griffiths (Labour, Wrexham)

Thank you. I certainly have had sight of your letter. I thought I had signed a letter back to you, telling you what action I planned, and I think that was to arrange a meeting with HCC, to see if there were opportunities to take that forward.

Rhun ap Iorwerth (Plaid Cymru, Ynys Môn)

It’s very interesting to see new markets being developed across the world whilst we are still members of the European Union. And any talk of opportunities of leaving the European Union is empty talk, and we know just how many opportunities there are for the meat industry, for the food industry more widely, and the rural economy more widely, to be part of European structures, including the structural funds. I have seen new research released today by the Conference of Peripheral Maritime Regions—the body that the Government here in Wales is part of—that says that Wales faces losing out on huge sums from the regional structural funds in coming years. They estimate that, if the UK were to remain within the European Union, it would qualify for £13 billion of regional funding between 2021 and 2027, which is 22 per cent of an increase as compared to the period between 2014-20. Does the Minister agree with me, therefore, that this strengthens once again the argument for having a people’s vote, in order to have the chance to make the case for maintaining this for our rural industries?

Lesley Griffiths (Labour, Wrexham)

I'm not quite sure where developing markets for Welsh red meat comes into that question, but I absolutely agree with you about the amount of funding that we will lose. And across my portfolio, you'll be aware of the significant EU funding that comes in. I was just looking at a LIFE project before, and about the funding that those sorts of projects has brought into Wales, and the benefits to our environment. So we're still hopeful that we're certainly not going to have a 'no deal'—we think 'no deal' should be off the table. But even with the deal that was proposed by the Prime Minister, I think this will have a dreadful impact on our jobs and economy.

Elin Jones (Plaid Cymru, Ceredigion)

Questions now from the party spokespeople. The Conservative spokesperson, Andrew R.T. Davies.

Andrew RT Davies (Conservative, South Wales Central)

Thank you, Presiding Officer. Minister, you now have, obviously, overall responsibility for the rural affairs and environment portfolio, and, in particular, Natural Resources Wales. When I've gone around, since taking over the shadow brief, talking to the forestry sector in particular, they are deeply concerned about the management of the forestry estate in Wales, and in particular about their ability to access commercial timber so their operations aren't jeopardised in the future. This is emphasised today with a letter that has appeared in the press—and I appreciate the Welsh Government don't comment on leaks—but, from my personal experience of going around, everything in that letter bears out on the ground. And when you see figures of 12,000 jobs and £100 million-worth of investment, these are big numbers, and unless NRW get their act together and start delivering a forestry sector that can supply our timber businesses, we really will be losing much of this investment and many of these jobs. What confidence can you give us here today that you have confidence in the way NRW are taking forward the forestry sector here in Wales and, in particular, are addressing the concerns that have been expressed to me personally and in the letter that's appeared today?

Lesley Griffiths (Labour, Wrexham)

Thank you. You're quite right—I don't like commenting on leaked correspondence. However, I can confirm to you and to the Chamber that I have received that letter from Confor, and obviously I'll be responding to it in due course. You will be aware, obviously, that I've been in this portfolio now for nearly three years, and I have had concerns around NRW and the way that they've dealt with forestry. However, I do have confidence in NRW.

Just last week, I met with the chief executive and the interim chair to discuss this specific issue, and you'll be aware that I've replaced half the board, for instance, with new members. They've just come in at the tail end of last year. So, obviously, I've had discussions with them. You'll be aware that the chief executive and the interim chair will be in front of the Public Accounts Committee. So, I'm very encouraged that the way forward now is appropriate and that the interim chair and the chief executive absolutely have this as a priority.

Andrew RT Davies (Conservative, South Wales Central)

I think I take that as a vote of confidence in NRW's ability to address the concerns in the letter that has been put forward by 10—and I think it's an unprecedented number—processors here in Wales.

Another point that has come forward is that, obviously, in the response today, there's much emphasis on Grant Thornton's independent inquiry looking at some of the issues that have been flagged historically about NRW. I am told that Grant Thornton have not engaged with many of these processors, if indeed any of these processors, in seeking their views on the way forward on the forestry sector. Can you give confirmation today, and is it your understanding, that the terms of reference for Grant Thornton were to take an analysis of the sector's performance, but, importantly, to engage with stakeholders such as the processors, and, if that hasn't happened, you will instruct NRW to go back to the processors and actually have their input into any recommendations that might emerge from this independent report?

Lesley Griffiths (Labour, Wrexham)

There are several points to that question. There were 10 processors who put their names to that letter. I've also asked NRW to look at the relationships that have been had between those 10 companies and NRW as the contracts have come forward.

I can't, off the top of my head, say word for word what the terms of reference were, but certainly it was very important, and I had this assurance that NRW worked in a very open and transparent way with Grant Thornton, and I would have thought that—. I've made it very clear there must be no room for any irregularity. So, I would expect Grant Thornton, obviously, then to liaise with the processors to get their views.

And the other reassurance I can give you, to go back to your first question, is that there has been a change of personnel around forestry in NRW, which, again, I think will strengthen things going forward.

Andrew RT Davies (Conservative, South Wales Central)

I'd be grateful if you could add any more advice in a written response, if possible, Minister, because I appreciate you might not have known the terms of reference word by word. I wouldn't have expected you to know that, but I think it's a genuine concern, if that engagement hasn't happened, as to what confidence you can have in the final report.

But another point I'd like to press on NRW, if possible: yesterday, in the statement on 'no deal' preparedness, I highlighted to you the £30 million that has come to the Welsh Government in relation to money that the Chancellor has made available to the devolved Governments. I'm assuming some of that £30 million has been allocated to your department, albeit you didn't confirm that in your response to me yesterday. Are you able to confirm today if that money has come to your department, or if part of that money has come to your department, and that you will be making money available to NRW with the regulatory responsibilities and the permitting responsibilities that they will pick up as we move forward in the Brexit process, because I think it is vitally important that, obviously, if responsibilities are passed to an organisation, resource follows as well? And, as I've pointed out, the money has come from the Chancellor—this £30 million—so we need to understand exactly how that's been allocated within Government.

Lesley Griffiths (Labour, Wrexham)

I'd be very happy to send a note to you with the detail of that funding.

Andrew RT Davies (Conservative, South Wales Central)

Thank you.

Elin Jones (Plaid Cymru, Ceredigion)

The Plaid Cymru spokesperson, Llyr Gruffydd.

Llyr Gruffydd (Plaid Cymru, North Wales)

Thank you, Llywydd. As the announcement on suspension of Wylfa Newydd underlines how problematic the development of the next generation of nuclear power stations is, there is a risk now that we find ourselves delaying and waiting, possibly, for years for something to happen, and nobody wants to see the island or, indeed, north Wales more broadly in a state of limbo as a result of that. So, isn't now the time for you, as Minister, and for the Welsh Government along with the UK Government to spark a substantial increase in the investment in renewable energy as a means of fully delivering the huge potential that we have here in Wales in that context, and in so doing, of course, helping to strengthen the economy and to provide swifter and cheaper solutions to energy and climate needs here in Wales?

Lesley Griffiths (Labour, Wrexham)

Obviously, we're very disappointed to hear that the development of Wylfa Newydd has been suspended, and, obviously, the Minister for Economy and Transport answered the emergency question from your colleague Rhun yesterday in great detail. Whilst of course nuclear is part of the energy mix, I certainly don't view it as a renewable energy. It's low carbon, but my commitment to bringing in more renewable energy has not been affected by this. I'm very keen on all forms of renewable energy.

Just this week, I had a very good meeting on Monday about tidal stream, because I think there are lots of opportunities there. So, next week, we're having a marine energy summit in Swansea that the First Minister will be speaking at. I think that shows our commitment to renewable energy, and I'm certainly looking at ways of bringing more renewable energy projects into Wales.

Llyr Gruffydd (Plaid Cymru, North Wales)

I find it interesting that you say that your plans in terms of renewable energy haven’t been affected by this decision. That’s exactly what should have happened, in my view. We need to redouble our efforts in this area in order to deliver the potential that we have. In his manifesto to become leader of the Labour Party in Wales, Mark Drakeford, of course, committed to creating—or to look at creating—a co-operative body, Ynni Cymru/Energy Wales, which would promote local energy production and would provide advice on strategic investment in energy, among other objectives. Can you give us an update on where we are in delivering that? And given the news on Wylfa, will you also commit to locate Ynni Cymru/Energy Wales on our energy island, Ynys Môn?

Lesley Griffiths (Labour, Wrexham)

I can't give that commitment, but certainly I've had very early discussions with the First Minister. I think probably the Monday after he became First Minister I had a discussion around his plans in relation to that and he's asked officials to work on that for him.

Llyr Gruffydd (Plaid Cymru, North Wales)

We had a ministerial statement from you yesterday, of course, about your preparations for the possibility of crashing out of the EU without a deal and the adverse impact that would have on agriculture and other sectors in Wales. In that statement, you said, and I quote, that you're

'committed to working with key sectors to design support mechanisms around these serious challenges'.

Yet today, we see reports that both NFU Cymru and the Farmers Union of Wales have raised concerns about being excluded from your 'no deal' Brexit planning process. Their only involvement so far has been through a single, solitary round-table meeting that was only held last week. Clearly, time is running out, Minister, so surely your Welsh Government contingency planning group should include industry representatives, as happened in the past, of course, during the foot and mouth outbreaks in 2001 and 2007. So, could you explain to us what role those key stakeholders will play in your 'no deal' deliberations over the coming weeks? Because it is only weeks that we have left.

Lesley Griffiths (Labour, Wrexham)

Both the NFU and FUW, as you say, sit on the stakeholder group. We had a very long and detailed presentation around 'no deal' scenario planning last week. I also have, from within that group—and I don't know if NFU and FUW are on that particular sub-group—a scenario-planning sub-group, which has looked in detail at all the scenarios that could come forward as we leave the EU. That group has been sitting, probably, for about two and a half years. They came forward with a very detailed report. Both the NFU and FUW meet with me regularly. I've seen them both this week. I know that officials are engaging with them around 'no deal'. So, I do—. Obviously, as we up the preparedness around 'no deal', which we certainly have over the last few weeks, when it's become much more of a possibility, I'm sure that engagement will increase also.

Elin Jones (Plaid Cymru, Ceredigion)

UKIP spokesperson, Neil Hamilton.

Neil Hamilton (UKIP, Mid and West Wales)

Diolch, Llywydd. The Welsh Government has a target to eradicate TB in cattle and wildlife by 2036 and farmers accept that this involves many restrictions on the way they work and operate and imposes substantial costs upon them as well, but that's absolutely necessary in order to achieve the objective, which we all share. But there's a widespread feeling that whilst farmers are doing a lot to contain and control TB on farms with their cattle, the Welsh Government is not being so energetic in attacking the problem that exists in wildlife. And in the results of the culls that have been authorised in Wales that emerged recently in the leaked letters that were the subject of questions from Paul Davies last week, it emerges that only five badgers have been culled since October 2017, and that compares with 10,000 cattle that had to be slaughtered in the year to last September. So, there are lots of people who think that the Welsh Government's policy on controlling wildlife is simply empty words. I wonder if the Minister will care to update us now on what she intends to do to justify her position.

Lesley Griffiths (Labour, Wrexham)

I brought forward the refreshed TB eradication programme in October 2017, and I'm committed to reporting to this Assembly in April once I've got data for the first calendar year. You'll be aware that, through this programme, we are doing bespoke action plans with herds that are in long-term breakdown, so anything over 18 months, and the five badgers to which you refer, which I think has been taken totally out of context, relate to those bespoke action plans. Now, it could be that, once that plan is set up with the farmer, with their private vet, with the Government vet, wildlife is not part of what needs to be done in order to eradicate TB from that herd.

Neil Hamilton (UKIP, Mid and West Wales)

I'm rather astonished to hear that, but there it is. The results of the four-year badger cull that was licensed in England have recently been published, and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs as a result is now extending them into 10 other areas in England. The results closest to us in south-west England, in Gloucestershire—the incidence of TB in wildlife has been reduced from 10.4 per cent to 5.6 per cent and, in Somerset, from 24 per cent to 12 per cent. So, it seems like an overall reduction of 50 per cent. Now, the Farmers Union of Wales has said that England's progress makes Wales's strategy look toothless, given that you have a plan on the shelf, as it were, ready to be brought in if you give the go-ahead to extend badger culling, which, of course, would be an animal welfare policy for badgers as well as for cattle, because TB is a terrible disease, whichever form of animal life has to suffer from it. So, surely, it's now time, in this particular instance at any rate, to think of following England's example.

Lesley Griffiths (Labour, Wrexham)

No, I will not be following England's example. I've ruled out an England-style badger cull from the day I came into this portfolio, following very detailed discussions with the chief veterinary officer. I think it's also right that we point out that 94.6 per cent of herds were TB free at the end of October 2018.

Neil Hamilton (UKIP, Mid and West Wales)

Well, that is certainly true, but this still remains a substantial problem, and there doesn't seem to have been any progress made on containing it—or not very substantial progress at any rate—in recent times. Paul Davies referred last week also to the leak of this correspondence, which could put farmers' lives at risk, given the activities of some animal extremists. So, I wonder if the Minister will care to reflect on her failure to apologise when Paul Davies asked her to do so last time, but more particularly to give us some reassurance that errors of this kind will not be repeated and that effective action has been taken within the department to ensure that unauthorised leaks of this sensitive information can't occur again.

Lesley Griffiths (Labour, Wrexham)

Paul Davies has never asked me to apologise. I apologised when it happened during the summer of last year. I apologised immediately. It was the First Minister who Paul Davies asked to apologise last week, and, as the First Minister very rightly said, the issue was dealt with at the time of the incident, and the matter is now closed. I also want to add that evidence shows that most causes of bovine TB in cattle in Wales result from cattle-to-cattle transmission.

John Griffiths (Labour, Newport East)

3. What further steps will the Welsh Government take to reduce air pollution? OAQ53245

Lesley Griffiths (Labour, Wrexham)

Thank you. Our clean air programme for Wales is considering evidence to inform the development and implementation of actions across Government departments and sectors to reduce the burden of poor air. This work will inform the development of a clean air plan for Wales, which we will publish for consultation this year.

John Griffiths (Labour, Newport East)

Thank you for that, Minister. I wonder if you might say a little more about Welsh Government policy on greening our inner urban areas, whether that be tree planting, such as community orchards, or other greening measures. It seems to me that, partly, that will directly affect air quality and improve air quality, but it's really important that we connect our people in Wales more directly with nature. A lot of what we want to see happen is about behavioural change, and I think if people have quality local environments, then they do become more aware of environmental issues, whether it's moving away from car use to a more integrated transport system, or supporting a range of other progressive environmental measures the Welsh Government has taken, and will take. So, I just wonder to what extent you will be acting on that agenda, Minister, of addressing those inner urban environmental issues.

Lesley Griffiths (Labour, Wrexham)

Thank you. I agree with everything John Griffiths says around people's perception of their environment. We have our forest strategy, 'Woodlands for Wales', and that sets out our vision for forestry and woodland creation in Wales. Our policy remains very clear that we want to obviously see more woodland creation. You'll be aware that the First Minister, in his manifesto, said he wants to see a national forest, and again, I've had early discussions with him around how we take that forward.

I think it's really important, also, that we build on our natural resources policy. That includes supporting the development of resilient ecological networks so that we can maintain and enhance Wales's ecosystems in very-well-located woodlands. And, obviously, urban areas are very important too.

David Melding (Conservative, South Wales Central)

Minister, do you welcome the UK Government's recent decision to commit to air quality standards based on World Health Organization recommendations, which are much tougher than the EU recommendations, and, indeed, to commit to reducing the number of people living in areas that breach WHO guidelines and to reduce it by half, at least, by 2025? I understand the UK Government is about to publish its own report on new targets that can be set on data that would take us through the WHO guidelines and ensure that that rigour is applied to public policy. Is that a course you're likely to follow in Wales?

Lesley Griffiths (Labour, Wrexham)

Well, certainly, I'm very interested to read the report when it does come out. I've had just a very brief discussion with the Minister around it. I'll have a look at what targets they're setting and see what we can learn from it.

David Lloyd (Plaid Cymru, South Wales West)

In terms of tackling the air pollution challenges in Port Talbot, it's clear that action is needed on a number of fronts, including promoting the use of public transport. So, how does your Government square that ambition with the fact that you have cut the level of funding for bus subsidies to local authorities over recent years?

Lesley Griffiths (Labour, Wrexham)

Well, obviously, air quality in Port Talbot is something I'm keeping a very close eye on. It remains a priority for us and we are working with the local authority to see how we can improve and better understand the issues in the area. And, obviously, they will have to consider that as part of their plan to reduce the amount of air pollution.

David Rees (Labour, Aberavon)

Well, as Dai Lloyd has pointed out, Port Talbot has unfortunately got a reputation for bad air quality, but we understand some of the reasons behind it. John Griffiths highlighted that perhaps one solution is trees: more trees along our routes, because we have two major roads passing through it. But you've had discussions with Neath Port Talbot County Borough Council. Have you also had discussions as to where your monitoring comes into play? Because I attended the healthy air cross-party group yesterday and it was clear that the monitoring—actual monitoring and the actual data—was still lacking because we are using models from DEFRA, and that, necessarily, isn't based upon factual data per se. So, what are you doing with the council to actually put monitoring places into situations so we actually have the data so that we can assess what the air quality is and how we can tackle it?

Lesley Griffiths (Labour, Wrexham)

Well, the data is obviously very important, and I know my officials have asked the council to re-examine the short-term action plan to see what approach it's taking, what evidence they have that underpinned it. As I say, the data will be very important too because we need to make sure that that plan is the best way of tackling the poor air quality. They have had an independent peer review with a university—I think it's the University of the West of England—and I think they're expecting that report in the very near future.

Mick Antoniw (Labour, Pontypridd)

Minister, whichever model you use for controlling and dealing with air pollution, I have within my constituency, on the A470 between Nantgarw and Treforest junctions, one of the most polluted areas in the whole of Wales. I know that speed restriction measures have been taken, but I wonder if you could outline the measures that have been taken and what further action could be taken. Because it is not only a massive congested traffic area, but the air conditions there are positively very, very dangerous, and it's an area that needs urgent monitoring and ongoing attention.

Lesley Griffiths (Labour, Wrexham)

Thank you. As you say, there is a 50 mph speed limit that's been imposed there and that will be reviewed periodically. We will leave them in place as long as we think necessary to maintain air quality standards on that part of the road. I think what's really paramount to the effectiveness of these 50 mph speed limits—I've got one in my own constituency—obviously, is compliance. I think we need to be much more upfront about what it is. I've certainly heard people say in Wrexham that they don't understand why they've got that stretch of 50 mph. We've now got a sign saying that it's to reduce emissions. But I think perhaps we need to be even more clear in relation to that.

We will be commissioning a further review of measures that may have the potential to improve air quality at the location of nitrogen dioxide exceedance. We're also taking significant steps around congestion on the A470, and I know that my colleague Ken Skates—his officials have established a pinchpoints programme to look at a range of solutions to address the known problems in that area.

Elin Jones (Plaid Cymru, Ceredigion)

Question 4 [OAQ53257] is withdrawn. Question 5, Mohammad Asghar.

Mohammad Asghar (Conservative, South Wales East)

5. Will the Minister outline the Welsh Government's policy priorities for preserving Welsh wildlife? OAQ53229

Lesley Griffiths (Labour, Wrexham)

Thank you. Our policy priorities for wildlife are contained in our nature recovery action plan, emphasising the important role that biodiversity plays in our well-being. This has, for example, seen us invest £4 million and secure an additional £11 million of EU funding for three important projects for Welsh habitats and wildlife.

Mohammad Asghar (Conservative, South Wales East)

Thank you very much for the reply, Minister. I know that your funding and—Welsh funding and European funding, how long that is going to be sustained. But a recent study into the state of birds in Wales found that one in three types of birds are in significant decline. In some cases, they're in danger of extinction in Wales. One of the reasons for this decline is the destruction of birds' habitats, such as hedgerows. Hedgerows are an important feature of the countryside environment, and I understand that regulations mean that it is against the law to remove most countryside hedges without permission from the local authorities—planning permission. Can I ask you, Minister, what you are doing to encourage the planting of hedgerows as an alternative to building fences to protect our environment and to reverse the worrying decline in our bird populations, please?

Lesley Griffiths (Labour, Wrexham)

I have seen that report, and, certainly, the decline in some native bird species is very worrying. I think there are many factors that will combine together to effect bird population change over time in Wales, and I think we do need to ensure that Welsh habitats are absolutely in the best possible condition to allow bird populations the best chance of recovery.

I haven't specifically done anything about hedgerows, but I'd certainly be very happy to look at it. You'll be aware of the significant amount of hedgerows—. One of the things that struck me when I went out to New Zealand to look at farms out there—. If you go on farms in Wales, the wonderful hedgerows that are there, which obviously encourage bird species here, you just don't see out there. So, I think you're right, hedgerows form part of that work that needs to be done to make sure that we do have the bird population we want here.

Helen Mary Jones (Plaid Cymru, Mid and West Wales)

In your response to Mohammad Asghar, you rightly highlight the importance of the 'State of Birds in Wales 2018' report, and we have, of course, some incredibly internationally important populations—I'm thinking, for example, of the gannetry on Grassholm; I could list a whole load. Obviously, some of the investment that's already been made to protect those habitats is beginning to show success, and ensuring that we adequately fund schemes and initiatives to recover and continue to recover natural environments is key, and that includes enabling Natural Resources Wales to be fully resourced around its conservation remit, which is, of course, a challenge. What discussions have you and your Government had, Minister, to mitigate the risk that we may no longer be able to access the EU funds that you mentioned, including initiatives such as the LIFE funding stream, which has been key in enabling some of the large scale species recovery and environment projects that have been undertaken here? How can that incredibly invaluable investment be replaced and maintained?

Lesley Griffiths (Labour, Wrexham)

It is obviously an area that we have worked with the UK Government on, because, if you remember, we were told by the UK Government that, if we left the European Union, we would not lose a penny of funding. So, currently, we are still in that position where we are telling them, 'You promised us we would not lose a penny', and, certainly, right across my portfolio—as I think I said in an earlier answer to Rhun ap Iorwerth—it's awash with European funding. I think my portfolio probably receives the most. So, it is imperative that we continue to have those discussions, because we know of the impact it would have, not just on agriculture and fisheries, but also on the environment.

Joyce Watson (Labour, Mid and West Wales)

We've all been reading the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds's 'State of Birds in Wales 2018', so the question is quite clearly that birds are going down—there is a rapid decline—and I am a member of the RSPB, so I'll declare that now. So, in terms of the good things that we've done, like banning shooting on NRW land, stopping the shooting of the white-fronted goose—things like that, preserving specifics—they are really good. But I suppose, in terms of land management, my question will be about nitrate vulnerable zones and the impact that some of those have on our wildlife, and what it is, Minister, that you are going to do to make sure that we bring forward a sustainable plan where nitrates aren't in such concentration that they destroy any habitat that tries to live beyond them.

Lesley Griffiths (Labour, Wrexham)

Thank you. So, the Member will be aware of the written statement I brought forward around agriculture pollution and NVZs. I think it's really important that we continue to take forward the nature recovery action plan. It's our national strategy so that we can address the decline in biodiversity. You mentioned a couple of instances around protection of birds, and I do think it is strategies like you've just mentioned around the Greenland white-fronted goose. I think it is also really important that we make good progress to embed the biodiversity and resilience of ecosystems duty with all public authorities. I think there's a big piece of work to be done here, and, again, I know that the First Minister—this is an area he's very keen on, about looking at the decline in the biodiversity, which I do think we have now started to reverse, but we need to do it at a much quicker pace.

Mandy Jones (UKIP, North Wales)

6. Will the Minister make a statement on the uptake of the Welsh Government Energy Service? OAQ53254

Lesley Griffiths (Labour, Wrexham)

Thank you. Since the energy service was launched last year, it has supported public sector organisations and local communities to progress significant energy efficiency and renewable energy schemes. These schemes are expected to result in £16 million of low-cost Welsh Government finance being committed in the current financial year.

Mandy Jones (UKIP, North Wales)

Thank you for that answer. Minister, with large-scale projects like Wylfa and the tidal lagoon struggling to get off the ground, it seems to me that it is now time to focus on smaller, community-based energy generation, so that communities can take charge of their energy production and—more to the point—enjoy the savings. What plans do you have to encourage more public sector bodies, community groups and businesses to take up the energy service?

Lesley Griffiths (Labour, Wrexham)

Thank you. Well, I think it's probably a balance about both. I mentioned that the scheme has only been going for about six months. We've got a pipeline of 257 projects across all the 22 local authorities. There are other public sector bodies and community groups involved in that as well. We've already seen many of them in active development with the energy service. As I say, it's only six months in. We are also supporting the development of four large-scale ground-mounted solar projects in north Wales, so I'm very pleased with the progress that we've made in the first six months.

Mark Isherwood (Conservative, North Wales)

The Welsh Government website says that the energy service aims to develop energy efficiency and renewable energy projects and provides technical, financial and other specialist support for energy projects. You just mentioned working with community groups and others. The original effective pilot, the local affordable warmth scheme launched in Flintshire some years ago, was always built upon a joint working with the third sector and existing energy efficiency schemes. How are you ensuring that that is embedded as this goes forward, and it's not simply a top-down county hall programme? Finally, how are you planning to address concern that, with fluctuating fuel prices, many off-gas-grid homes have recently seen improvements in their energy performance certificates without any alterations being made to their property or any material improvements to the environmental performance of the buildings concerned?

Lesley Griffiths (Labour, Wrexham)

So, in creating the new energy service, we are enabling the public sector to, obviously, decarbonise and make use of this funding, but this service is also supporting local people. It's not just about the public sector. So, local people and local groups are, obviously, coming together to create schemes that will help us deliver against our targets for renewable energy in Wales. I've been to two very good hydro schemes in north Wales run by the community, one in Corwen and one in Bethesda, and, I have to say, to hear individuals say that they know that when they switch their kettle on in their kitchen they are benefiting from that in another way, I think really shows me that this is absolutely the way forward. I know that, quite often, when groups come together, there are lots of technical complexities and we have to do due diligence, obviously, but I do think this scheme is really moving quickly. As I say, it's only been there six months and we've already had many projects coming to fruition.

Huw Irranca-Davies (Labour, Ogmore)

7. Will the Minister make a statement on water quality in the Ogmore constituency? OAQ53262

Lesley Griffiths (Labour, Wrexham)

Thank you. The 2015 river basin management plan has shown the Llynfi and Garw rivers achieve 'moderate' status whilst the Ogmore and its tributaries achieve 'good' status under the water framework directive. Across Wales, 37 per cent of water bodies currently meet 'good' status, with work under way to increase this to 42 per cent by 2021.

Huw Irranca-Davies (Labour, Ogmore)

I thank the Minister for that response, and I'm glad she interpreted my question as river quality, not general water within the Ogmore constituency. So, thank you for that. It's great to see that we are on an upward trajectory, and it's noticeable over the last couple of decades the improvement in the water quality of the rivers within the Ogmore. I can't take all credit for it myself, I have to say: it's been a combination of investment from Dŵr Cymru/Welsh Water and NRW as well, investing in things such as improvements to the river bed quality high up into the rivers so that we now have spawning fish right up into the top of Blaengarw and so on. But we still have more to do.

I note that we'll shortly be out, myself and Chris Elmore, visiting a couple of the projects—over £10 million of investment by Dŵr Cymru on two flagship investments. That includes investment of £3.3 million on a new sewer between Ogmore Vale and Blackmill and also £7 million additional investment into the existing treatment works in Lletty Brongu in Llangynwyd in the Llynfi Valley. This is great to see, but I wonder whether the Minister could either update me now or write to me on the issue of the Garw valley and the combined sewage and water outfalls, which still, I understand—I'm told by the anglers that, when we have very heavy rain, the combined outfall means that we are pumping sewage effluent directly into that very important river. So, I wonder if, perhaps, if she doesn't have the answer now, she could write to me and let me know where we are with investment in the Garw valley as well.

Lesley Griffiths (Labour, Wrexham)

I will have to write to the Member in relation to the Garw valley, because I don't have that information to hand, but I think you've highlighted a very important point, particularly around the significant investment that Dŵr Cymru are putting into ensuring that we have a thriving water environment, because, absolutely, that's what we want to see.FootnoteLink

Suzy Davies (Conservative, South Wales West)

8. Will the Minister make a statement on the welfare of pets? OAQ53236

Lesley Griffiths (Labour, Wrexham)

Thank you. I updated Plenary on my plans to improve companion animal welfare in my oral statements in June and November last year. I'm committed to exploring options related to banning third-party sale of puppies and kittens and the consultation for this will be launched on 22 February.

Suzy Davies (Conservative, South Wales West)

Thank you for that answer, Minister. Earlier this month, I was delighted to take Andrew R.T. Davies in his capacity as your shadow to one of my favourite places in my constituency, and, at our meeting at the Bridgend Cats Protection adoption centre, the issue of landlords and residential homes not accepting pets came up again. Now, obviously, you know that that's a real well-being issue, particularly for older people, and also for animals themselves. Last summer, you told me that this was an important issue, something that Welsh Government do need to look at, and that you would make sure you'd start to have conversations about this. It's six months on now, and I wonder if you're in a position to update us on those conversations.

Lesley Griffiths (Labour, Wrexham)

I did have an initial conversation with officials around it. You'll appreciate I haven't got the powers to make sure that happens and, certainly, there are care homes that do allow it, but there are equally care homes that don't allow it. So, I haven't taken it any further forward, but I absolutely agree, and, certainly, having just become—well, my daughter, not me—the owner of a puppy that we took into a care home to see a relative at Christmas, you can see the pleasure that such things bring to people, but, as you say, when somebody moves into a residential or nursing home and they do have a pet, that can obviously cause significant problems. But perhaps you'd like to invite me to the Bridgend Cats Protection league as well.

Bethan Sayed (Plaid Cymru, South Wales West)

In July last year, you said that you weren't minded to follow through with the concept of an animal abuse register for Wales. I'm taking it hard, but there we go, I'll try and move on. But, in that statement, you said that you would look at alternative measures—the RSPCA led that taskforce—you said things in relation to better information sharing between law enforcement, health professionals and animal shelters and organisations. So, could you give me an update on what you're doing from that piece of work?

In other correspondence or oral questions, you seem to be sympathetic to ideas to look at policies in relation to if somebody abuses an animal that they may then transgress by abusing humans. I've not seen as much progress from you as your sentiments indicate in this Chamber, so I'm trying to understand what you're doing on that as well, because we can be stopping perpetrators of domestic abuse if we get them at that early stage.

Lesley Griffiths (Labour, Wrexham)

Two things come to mind straight away. I did have a discussion around this with police officers who are members of the rural crime team up in north Wales. I spent a couple of days with them last year, and this was an area that we discussed and wondered if there was anything further we could do. You will be aware of the work that the RSPCA led on for me, and I do absolutely understand your passion for this. I've also had a discussion and a couple of presentations that the chief veterinary officer arranged for me around what we can do. Certainly, there's a level of work that's done now with vets when they're training to identify, if an animal is brought to them and they're concerned about how that animal was injured, there are questions to be asked and perhaps places they can signpost themselves to for further information. I do think, within the veterinary profession themselves, they are taking this work forward also.

Elin Jones (Plaid Cymru, Ceredigion)

Thank you, Minister.

2. Questions to the Minister for Housing and Local Government

Elin Jones (Plaid Cymru, Ceredigion)

The next item, therefore, is questions to the Minister for Housing and Local Government. The first question is from Mark Reckless.

Mark Reckless (Conservative, South Wales East)

1. Will the Minister make a statement on the Self-Build Wales programme? OAQ53243

Julie James (Labour, Swansea West)

Yes. I am very pleased that, last week, the Minister for Finance and Trefnydd announced £40 million for Self Build Wales. Developed in collaboration with partners across the sector, I am confident this innovative scheme, the first of its kind, will be a huge success when it launches properly later this year.

Mark Reckless (Conservative, South Wales East)

I welcome the Minister to her post. I'm pleased to be able to start by congratulating Welsh Government on what strikes me as a really positive and on the face of it quite generous terms to this initiative. I just wonder, the press release said that loans would be 'repayment free' until the new home was complete and mortgaged, it then says:

'approved applicants can reserve a plot by providing a 25% deposit on the plot cost. The Welsh Government through the Development Bank of Wales will provide the rest of the funding.'

Does that mean that they only pay 25 per cent of the land cost and then all of the construction cost can be borrowed from the development bank? When you say 'repayment free', does that also mean interest free, or will there be interest that then has to be paid back after it's finished?

Julie James (Labour, Swansea West)

The scheme is quite complex, and we are initially starting off on publicly owned land. So, there'll be a conversation to be had about the value of that land and how it's valued for the scheme. What we're doing is we're basically looking to smooth out the process for people who wouldn't have the resource to do that, so we're looking to have plots that are ready to build on so that they'd be offered to a self-builder with a lot of the usual planning considerations and all the rest of it ironed out.

We're looking to have the scheme offer, just to start off with—I have ambitions to be able to take it further than this, but just to start off with—some template houses. So, people can customise them, but broadly we will be able to get the planning consents in place and so on. So, it's not just the loan finance that we're talking about, it's actually providing people with a plot that's ready to go. A lot of that cost will have been taken out of the project in the first place.

There are some conversations to be had around the specifics depending on the circumstances of the individual in question, how much equity they bring in the first place, what that triggers by way of loan finance and so on, which will need to be ironed out, and will be very individual, depending on the plot, its value, the value that the person brings to it, whether they're going to self-build it in the actual sense of putting the bricks up themselves or whether they will need to fund a developer, and so on. So, lots of nuance. We're very excited about it, but it will depend on where the plot is, and so on. I'm very sorry to give you a lawyer's answer, but 'it depends' is the overarching answer to that. But to be reassuring, all of the things that you enumerated are the things we're looking to see, but they will be very individual, depending on the circumstances of the plot and the person coming forward.

Huw Irranca-Davies (Labour, Ogmore)

2. What advice does the Welsh Government provide to local authorities and other housing partners to support small and medium sized house building enterprises? OAQ53260

Julie James (Labour, Swansea West)

The Welsh Government has a strong track record in supporting small and medium-sized house building enterprises. We provide support directly and, where possible, provide advice to local authorities and other housing partners.

Huw Irranca-Davies (Labour, Ogmore)

I thank the Minister very much for that answer. My question partly follows on from the previous question, curiously. Her predecessor announced the £40 million of funding that, because it will quadruple, goes up to £160 million because it's recycled to SMEs over 17 years to help them build more homes in Wales, and I'm really interested in how that is going to be analysed and granulated so that I can see, for example, if not in Ogmore, in the Bridgend area, or even in the Mid Glamorgan area, exactly what effect that is having over time. Now, I know it's still fairly recent, and the announcement was only made in Parc y Scarlets last year. As an Ospreys supporter, I don't mind that, that it was made in Parc y Scarlets. But it would be good, another 12 months down the line, to know what parcels of land have been used within my area or my region, who's been involved in it, and how many of our SMEs have actually been involved in it and have benefited as well, and how many jobs have been created. So, I wonder if we'll be able to do that, not right now, but maybe in 12 months or 24 months.

Julie James (Labour, Swansea West)

Yes, I don't see any reason why we wouldn't be able to do that. I don't think we can do it at the moment, and, frankly, I haven't asked the question at that level of detail, but I will—I'm very happy to do so. But yes, we absolutely will have a record of where we've lent the money and on what sites, and clearly what we're looking to do here is two things simultaneously: we're looking to stimulate the SME sector in Wales, because at the moment we've got a switch around from 15 years ago, so we've got very large house builders doing most of the house building and not so many SMEs, and we'd very much like to see home-grown SMEs stepping into that space. We'd like to assist with that, and we know that the big problems that they face are around cash flow and with expertise. So, we're looking to put various forms of support in place, as I said. There's the property development fund, which is a facility loan from the development bank, for example, that would allow people to overcome their cash flow problems in circumstances they wouldn't otherwise be able to. We have the stalled sites fund, which has a range of other expertise around it to try and sort out some of the planning and infrastructure problems around that. I actually had a meeting only this morning with officials supporting the Infrastructure Commission for Wales around some of the things the commission might do around planning for infrastructure around Wales—all with a view to bringing forward more sites, to making them viable, and to making sure that our SME builders take advantage of it and, as I said in response to Mark Reckless, trying to be as innovative as possible in that space. So it's not a one-size-fits-all approach at all, it's just trying to fit the finance and the scheme around whoever comes forward to take advantage of it, with a view to getting as wide a range of people as possible to do either a self-build or a build of four or five houses that would be possible in a local community where the big house builders are just not interested.

David Melding (Conservative, South Wales Central)

Minister, the flight of SMEs from house building is a UK phenomenon, and it's really stark. In the 1980s, about 40 per cent of house building was conducted by the SME sector; it's as low as 10 per cent in some parts of the country now. We clearly need to turn this around, and I think you're right to look at the stalled sites. Welsh Government research in 2015 said there were nearly 400 such sites in Wales, and many of them, in fact, most of them, would be suitable for the SME sector. We really need to engage that sector. A lot of it is still there and they've gone to other types of building work, but part of the problem has been the unavailability of smaller sites for development, and they're often more efficient in terms of filling in in urban areas, and don't use vast tracts of greenfield land, for instance. So, I really think you're right to identify the stalled sites fund and see some progress in that area, and we need, obviously, if we're going to build at scale again, to re-engage the SME sector.

Julie James (Labour, Swansea West)

Yes, I completely agree with that. There are a number of policy areas that we're hoping to pull together in a more effective way—so, the housing issues that you've already mentioned and that I've mentioned in the previous two answers. But, we've just done the review of 'Planning Policy Wales' in the middle of December, and that shifts to a more place-based approach, in general, to the planning system.

So, we're looking for planning authorities to set locally determined targets for the delivery of housing on small sites, not just housing in general, and to maintain a register of suitable sites to enable the provision of housing by SMEs, registered social landlords and the custom and self-build sector—so that we smooth, if you like, some of the planning difficulties. As I said, we're looking to see that we can map the infrastructure that's already available, and map the infrastructure requirements, and see if we can fit the finance to that. It's exactly for that purpose: to enable the SME sector to be able to step into that place.

The last piece of that is the skills bit. So, we're also looking at how our apprenticeship programmes can facilitate shared apprenticeships, for example, across small builders and small firms because, often, a small firm struggles to give an apprentice the full range of—. But, the shared apprenticeship schemes have been very successful in that space. We need a lot more skill in that area, and as the Member will know, I share the FM's ambition to build social housing at some scale and pace. We need the SME sector to be able to step into that space as well.

Elin Jones (Plaid Cymru, Ceredigion)

Questions now from the party spokespeople. The Plaid Cymru spokesperson—Leanne Wood.

Leanne Wood (Plaid Cymru, Rhondda)

Diolch, Llywydd. Minister, the chief executive of the Huggard Centre has been quoted in the media as calling on people not to donate tents to rough sleepers. Do you agree with him?

Julie James (Labour, Swansea West)

It's a very, very difficult thing, isn't it, to know exactly what to do when you encounter somebody who is street homeless, and I do understand entirely the impulse that people have to do something immediate for somebody in those circumstances. The difficulty is that we know that, once people have a tent of that sort, they actually access other support services less well, and in a strange sort of way, you are enabling the inability of them to access other services that they need to support them into sustained housing. So, I would never want to criticise somebody who actually wants to help somebody who is street homeless, because your heart goes out to them as you walk through.

A better thing, though, is to engage with the StreetLife project and to bring them to the attention of the local authority. We do fund, in Cardiff and other places, a range of projects that will allow people to get into secure housing, including some of the housing first initiatives that allow people who wouldn't be able to cope with, for example, a large hostel to be able to get off the street and into sustainable housing. So, I'm not going to criticise somebody who wants to do that, but there are better ways of helping people who are street homeless.

Leanne Wood (Plaid Cymru, Rhondda)

Well, I'm glad that you disagree with the sentiment, Minister, because it's got to be said that a lot of people are very disappointed with those remarks. They seem to suggest that rough sleeping is a lifestyle choice, as opposed to being a consequence of austerity. The homeless people quoted in the story explained that shelters for homeless people could actually be very dangerous, with a lack of security, lack of support, and substance use being rife. Many shelters too often end up warehousing people who have little supervision, and they can then go on to pose a problem for other people who are vulnerable, particularly women, who may have experienced violence.

Whilst we in Plaid Cymru want to ensure that houses are available for all homeless people, in the short term, shelters are still needed to prevent rough sleepers from freezing to death. So, will you commit today to reviewing the existing provision of shelters and hostels, with a view to removing funding from those shelters that are considered to be unsafe or inadequate, so that it can be used, and the funding can be targeted specifically to fund a variety of types of shelter that offer safe and supportive environments, rather than prop up organisations that still blame homeless people for not wanting to be warehoused?

Julie James (Labour, Swansea West)

We are looking to review the whole concept of priority. We've got a review ongoing at the moment, which I inherited from my predecessor in post, Rebecca Evans. I share entirely the sentiments that the Member is expressing there in terms of homelessness. It's a really complex problem, as she knows. I know that she knows that. I completely agree with the statement about warehousing and so on. It's completely unreasonable to expect somebody to go into a 15-bed hostel with people they don't know, leaving their pet outside, for example, and cope with their substance misuse as well. For some people, that will not be the answer. For others, it is the answer temporarily, because they can access other services. She's right: we need to make sure that we have a housing sector fit for purpose, with a proper pipeline—it's a terrible word, but you know what I mean—the proper path, that's a better word, a proper path of people to get their lives back, with all of the things that they need, and we know that a secure home is the absolute core of that. So, making sure that people get into that secure home as fast as possible, because a hostel, where it is suitable for somebody, will only ever be a temporary stopgap to getting them into that secure home, and, actually, making sure that secure home is a home that that person would actually choose for themselves, so they have some volition in it; they're not just pushed into something that they just would never have chosen.

I visited a housing first project run by the Salvation Army in Cardiff last week—my time sense is very bad, as the Member knows; I think it was last week—and it was very impressive indeed. And I met a gentleman there who said that without the housing first strategy, he personally would never have got from his position—which was actually sleeping in a vehicle, but that's just as rough-sleeping as any other sort—into the permanent and secure housing he had because he would not have been able to access the hostel system. So, I agree entirely. We are looking to reassess our systems and our social housing grant, and see how it can best be used to get that proper path, and to actually build the housing, and assisted housing and sheltered housing that people need sometimes in order to be able to cope with the circumstances they find themselves in.

And just to be absolutely clear and cover off all the bits she said: it's quite obvious that it's not something that somebody's choosing, it's just sometimes they're choosing it because the alternatives available to them are even worse. And that's a completely different use of the word 'choice'.

Leanne Wood (Plaid Cymru, Rhondda)

Thank you for your full answer to that question, Minister. You will know that I've been an advocate for some time of the Welsh Government adopting all of the recommendations in the Crisis report, which outlines very clearly how we can end homelessness. However, we know that deaths among people who are homeless has risen by 24 per cent over the last five years, which isn't surprising given more people are homeless and facing that situation. So, tackling rough-sleeping is a national emergency, and we can't now wait for any more reviews or task and finish groups. So, will you therefore commit today to just adopting one of those recommendations, and that is: will you introduce a duty to provide immediate emergency accommodation to all those with nowhere safe to stay until priority need is abolished?

Julie James (Labour, Swansea West)

I wish that I could say just 'yes' to that—I am looking at it. I'm about to meet with Crisis to talk through where we are with that, and I've commissioned a brief for myself. Housing is a new area for me, and I've only been in post for however many weeks it is—six weeks or something. So, I've commissioned a brief for myself around that report to understand where we are at the moment, and to see what the way forward is. So, I'm going to stop short of committing it today, but I am very seriously looking to see what we can do in that space.

Elin Jones (Plaid Cymru, Ceredigion)

Conservative spokesperson, Mark Isherwood.

Mark Isherwood (Conservative, North Wales)

Diolch, Llywydd. Speaking after the 15 January publication of the Wales Audit Office report on the standards of financial management in community councils, the Welsh Government Trefnydd, or business organiser, said last week:

'I know that the Minister clearly will be considering that report. Members will have the opportunity to question her on that in her question time next week.'

So, here goes. [Laughter.]

In the report, the auditor general called on the Welsh Government for urgent action. He said the current standard of financial management in Government remains disappointing, as too many town and community councils in this financial year had suffered qualified audit opinions, with the number of opinions doubling; that town and community councils continued to manage increasing sums of public money; that income continues to outstrip expenditure as reserves continue to increase; and the report concluded that a significant number of councils failed to comply with their statutory responsibilities for preparing their accounts and ensuring that proper arrangements are made for the statutory audit.

Well, obviously, a number of days have elapsed since then. Have you reached any conclusions? What actions do you propose, and will you potentially revisit the reserved powers available to you under the 2011 Local Government (Wales) Measure, to introduce a statutory scheme for the accreditation of quality in community government?

Julie James (Labour, Swansea West)

It's a very interesting report. As you know, I've only been in post six weeks, so I haven't had the time, in any way, to fully—. I've skim-read it—that's the best I could do in the time I had available. I do, however, plan to read it thoroughly and to take it into account. I have a number of views of my own around town and community councils, which I'm happy to share with the Member, and with the Senedd in general. Some of them are excellent. We have examples across Wales of excellent town councils. Some of them are very far from that because they haven't got the governance strength, if you like, to be able to conduct themselves. That report is pointing that out. What we need to do is look to see whether we have the best fit for our town and community councils across Wales, whether their own communities support them, and what we can do to strengthen the governance arrangements. So, I find nothing that I disagree with, in a quick read of the report. I'm not yet in a position to respond fully to it. But I will tell the Member that I will be responding fully to it, and it raises a number of issues that I have myself personal concerns with, from previous experience in life.

Mark Isherwood (Conservative, North Wales)

Thank you. And of course when I was a community councillor it was an excellent community council—despite me, but nonetheless. Clearly, it's not a universal problem, but it's a serious enough problem to have been flagged up in this way. The independent review panel's final report on community and town councils in Wales was presented to your predecessor on 3 October. It had many recommendations, including the belief that there should be a comprehensive review of boundaries of community and town councils, without delay; it called upon all community and town councils to be working towards meeting a criteria to be able to exercise the general power of competence; a recommendation that community and town councils, or a representative of them, should become a statutorily invited participant on all public service boards. I'll just give one other example: it recommended that all clerks must hold or be working towards a professional qualification.

The Welsh Government's response, by your predecessor, took the form of a written statement on 30 November, and said that:

'Some of the issues identified…merit further consideration…I look forward to exploring these wider ranging and, in some cases, more contested ideas…I see this as a start of a conversation'.

How do you respond to the county councillors, after attending a workshop recently in north Wales, who wrote to me concerned that they had been advised, quote, that it seems the Welsh Government is now minded not to enact any legislation to implement any of the recommendations the IRP panel set out?

Julie James (Labour, Swansea West)

Well, I certainly haven't reached that conclusion. As I said to you, I haven't fully considered the recent WAO report. I have had slightly more time to consider the findings of the review. I think it's a good basis on which to move forward, and it certainly will inform our policy approach moving forward. There are a number of issues with town and community councils—around size and capacity and so on—which need to be looked at. In some areas of Wales, we don't have any town and community councils; in others, we have lots and lots. So, clearly, a one-size-fits-all approach has not grown up organically, and we need to have a look to see whether a one-size-fits-all approach is necessary, whether the boundaries—or whether, actually, a community that feels like a community is best represented in a much smaller council. But then that council wouldn't necessarily be well placed to have the resource to sit on, for example, a public services board. So, I just think it's impossible to respond to that by saying all community councils should have a place on a public services board, because, frankly, if they represent a tiny village somewhere, they're just not going to have the capacity to do that, although it may be a perfectly well-functioning council for all kinds of other reasons. So, I think we want to look very carefully at where we know there is good practice, what that might look like. But I think, actually, in the end, a community council should be what it says it is—a council for its community—and we should allow communities to make those choices in accordance with the local democracy that they ought to enjoy.

Mark Isherwood (Conservative, North Wales)

Well, this recommendation did include a representative of town and community councils, rather than necessarily—

Julie James (Labour, Swansea West)

I take the point the Member makes, but there are capacity issues there, and how you get that—

Elin Jones (Plaid Cymru, Ceredigion)

Allow the Member to finish his third question. You're overexcited in your new ministerial brief, it's obvious.

Julie James (Labour, Swansea West)

I beg your pardon.

Elin Jones (Plaid Cymru, Ceredigion)

Allow Mark Isherwood to continue.

Julie James (Labour, Swansea West)

I'm overcome by enthusiasm.

Mark Isherwood (Conservative, North Wales)

As you've heard mentioned by more than one Member in the Chamber, last November, Flintshire council launched its #BacktheAsk campaign in full council, and received full and unanimous cross-party support to, quote, take the fight down to the local government department in Cardiff to get a fair share of national funds. In a subsequent letter to the Welsh Government, he stated, alongside the chief executive, that disparity in formula-based funding inevitably creates a wide variation in the financial risks in councils in Wales, and Flintshire is at the extreme end. I've now been copied in on a series of e-mails between councillors of all parties—including the leader—where they're proposing to come down, as a cross-party group, here, to, quote,

'Take our budget grievances direct to Cardiff'.

And the e-mail from the leader states that he will be seeking a meeting with Ministers during that visit. Will you be willing to meet the Flintshire councillors who come down, to discuss their, quote, 'grievances', and see whether there are any grounds for addressing those together?

Julie James (Labour, Swansea West)

I'm afraid I don't know the date on which they're planning to come down. If it's possible for me to meet them, I certainly will. However, I've just come from the finance sub-group of the partnership council for Wales this morning where the leader of Flintshire council was a participant. I think we had a very amicable and useful conversation there about the way that the formula works.

I specifically asked if there were any areas of the formula that people wanted to revisit. We're very open to revisiting the formula, as long as it produces the kinds of results that all of local government want to see, which is a fair and equitable distribution mechanism, which irons out some of the winners and losers, and, as you know, we fully fund the funding floor on the basis of that. That meeting went very well and there were no dissenting voices to that. The distribution sub-group that works on the formula will be meeting. Today's meeting was able to sign-off the work programme for the distribution sub-group. So, I don't really recognise the picture that the Member paints there.

There's obviously a completely different and perhaps misunderstanding issue around the size of the pot in the first place on which the distribution formula takes effect. And the size of the pot in the first place is, of course, driven by the austerity measures of the Conservative Government in the UK. So, we are only able to distribute the funds that we have available to us, and so I don't think that I'm going to be taking any lessons from the Member opposite about how to deal with the fund overall. But if he's talking about the distribution mechanism, then Aaron Shotton was one of the members of the group. The group was amicable, the Deputy Minister and I attended it, and we had a very useful meeting with local government. I was very grateful to them for the friendliness of their approach and no issues were raised with me of that sort.

Elin Jones (Plaid Cymru, Ceredigion)

UKIP spokesperson, Gareth Bennett.

Gareth Bennett (UKIP, South Wales Central)

Diolch, Llywydd. I'd like to welcome the Minister to her new post. Minister, I see that planning is now part of your portfolio, it wasn't previously included with the local government and housing department's responsibilities. I appreciate what you've said today that you've only been in office for six weeks, but do you have any initial thoughts on how well the planning process works in Wales?

Julie James (Labour, Swansea West)

So, the reason that we've combined planning into this portfolio is that we can bring together as many of the levers that we have here in the Welsh Government to solve some of the endemic problems that we have with, for example, building sufficient housing or some infrastructure issues. I'm looking forward to being able to use all of those levers together in the process. We did just reissue 'Planning Policy Wales' back in December, so it's early days to see yet whether that's working effectively.

Gareth Bennett (UKIP, South Wales Central)

Thank you for clarifying some of the reasons why the planning element has been brought into the department. I think, certainly from my point of view, it's probably useful. I always thought that planning was something that straddles a couple of different possible departments. But I always thought putting it together with housing would perhaps make things easier.

Of course, we do need to respond to housing need, but there is also an argument that the planning system isn't always responsive to local needs going the other way, when sometimes we have planning decisions made that have been rejected sometimes by local councils, but which then get approved by the planning inspector going against that. Now, obviously, I'm not going to bring in any specific cases, because you wouldn't be able to comment on them, but do you think that there is a valid argument that planning isn't responsive enough to local needs?

Julie James (Labour, Swansea West)

So, the planning system is extremely complex, and the quasi-judicial nature of it makes it very difficult to comment on particular cases. The Member will be very well aware that at local authority level the local authority sets the local development plan, and they are enabled, through that plan, to take full account of the democratic wishes of the people they represent in setting out the spatial needs of their area, with a set of planning rules, part of which are 'Planning Policy Wales', but a set of planning rules stemming from various planning Acts at UK level, as well as at Welsh level.

We have a system of call-in to the Welsh Government, which works, because we take a very careful judicial view of whether the very specific criteria for call-in do or don't work. And where something is called in, it is handed over to professional inspectors for them to take a view on behalf of the Government. I think that works perfectly well. I do think there are capacity issues, sometimes, with the speed of that, but I don't see any reason to upend the legal part of that. However, it's very important that the policy parts of that interact correctly with it and that we set the policy agenda properly within which the quasi-judicial system can work.

Gareth Bennett (UKIP, South Wales Central)

Thanks for you assessment of how it works with the call-in system. I'm glad you've given your thoughts on that. How about the issue of how effective the local development plans are as a measure of setting local needs, because there has been criticism of the LDP system itself in recent years?

Julie James (Labour, Swansea West)

I think that the issue with the LDPs sometimes is the speed and the capacity with which local authorities are able to put them together. We have been working very closely with local authorities across Wales to ensure that they have the expertise to put the local development plans in place. It's something we are always keeping under review around the capacity to do that and the way that we have the agreements with the local authorities about the timescale for doing that.

I think personally that there's room for improvement in the liaison between ourselves and local authorities around how they structure their LDPs and what provision we help them with in order to accelerate some of those processes, because a local authority that doesn't have a local development plan in place will find real problems in controlling its development-control functions and being able to resist planning applications outwith its plan. So, it's not a good plan not to have a plan—sorry, that seems really obvious—but it isn't a good plan, and I think we could work with our local authorities better to accelerate that process.

Andrew RT Davies (Conservative, South Wales Central)

3. Will the Minister outline the Welsh Government's policy on local government reorganisation? OAQ53242

Julie James (Labour, Swansea West)

Yes. The First Minister has made it clear we will retain the 22 local authorities we have in Wales. Where voluntary merger proposals come forward, we will act to support them.

Andrew RT Davies (Conservative, South Wales Central)

Thank you for that, Minister. It's well documented that your predecessor had a sometimes challenging relationship with the Welsh Local Government Association and local government in general. In fact, your special adviser is quoted in the news now saying that the previous Minister relied on alternative facts very often on which to base his policy-making decisions. Can you confirm that you will not be relying on alternative facts and that, actually, you will be informing your decisions on what is in the best interest of communities the length and breadth of Wales and that security for local government is one of the key cornerstones for them to be able to deliver the services they are charged with delivering?

Julie James (Labour, Swansea West)

Yes, I'm not in the habit of relying on alternative facts, so I can assure the Member that I won't be taking up the practice any time soon. I'm a long-term fan of local government. Members in the Chamber will know that I spent a very large part of my career in local government. I think they do a good job in constrained circumstances. They require help and assistance, and, sometimes, they could collaborate better, and sometimes we have caused them problems in the way that we've laid collaborations on top of them. I'm very pleased to be working with a working group of local government, looking to see how we can best maximise the combined talent of local government for the best effect for the people of Wales. But, in general, I'm a big fan of local government and I intend to stay that way.

David Lloyd (Plaid Cymru, South Wales West)

Clearly, the continued talk of reorganisation breeds uncertainty and a certain paralysis of development. What are you going to do differently to your predecessors in this post to change that?

Julie James (Labour, Swansea West)

As I said, I've already had a very good meeting this morning with the finance sub-committee, talking about the funding formula. I'm meeting with the WLGA on Friday. We have a working group, which is being chaired by Derek Vaughan, looking at the way that we do regional working together, and I'm looking forward to having a good and productive relationship with local authorities across the piece.

Mike Hedges (Labour, Swansea East)

[Inaudible.]—with you in local government. Does the Minister accept that council mergers will be extremely costly, taking money out of front-line services, remembering that the only council that failed in Britain was Northamptonshire, with a population of over three times that of Cardiff? Every time people talk about mergers, I think of Betsi Cadwaladr University Local Health Board and Natural Resources Wales.

Julie James (Labour, Swansea West)

I just don't think that one size fits all at all. There are very good examples across Britain and across the world of both large and small local authorities that work very effectively. It's about harnessing local resources for local people and harnessing the power of local democratic decisions in order to do so. So, my own view is that if two local authorities thought they would work better as a single one, I would not be standing in the way of that, and if they think they're better to do regional collaborations and some things individually, I'd be looking to see what we could do to facilitate those working arrangements.

Caroline Jones (UKIP, South Wales West)

Minister, do you accept that Wales does not need 22 separate local authorities and that previous Ministers' attempts to solve the issue without actually reorganising local government has led to massive waste and bureaucracy?

On Monday, I met with a group of headteachers from my region to discuss the funding crisis in education, and one of their primary concerns was with the extra tier of governance added by the regional consortia and the waste it introduced. Minister, do you agree with the Williams commission that Wales would be better served by fewer, larger councils, doing away with the need for regional consortia?

Julie James (Labour, Swansea West)

No, I don’t, and I think I said very clearly that I didn’t. I think no one size fits all at all. What we need to do is work closely with local government to agree a shared vision for the future in which we make sure that the expertise available to it is deployed to the best effect for the people of Wales. Sometimes, that expertise will sit in one authority and it needs to be shared with another. At other times, it might be spread out. As I say, no one size fits all. What we need to do is get a shared vision together on the table, agree the working arrangements and stick to them. What isn’t helpful is where we do have regional arrangements and people seek to undermine them constantly, and so they can't be relied upon. Reliability and certainty, as Dai Lloyd pointed out, is one of the absolute maxims of good local administration, and I plan to make sure that we can go forward together with local government to ensure that we have that.

Mick Antoniw (Labour, Pontypridd)

4. Will the Minister make a statement on how the planning process can be improved to better assess the cumulative impact of multiple residential development applications in the same locality? OAQ53237

Julie James (Labour, Swansea West)

Yes, indeed. Up-to-date local development plans provide the local context to assess the cumulative impact of multiple residential development applications in the same locality. LDPs should ensure sufficient land is available in appropriate and sustainable locations to meet the projected housing need identified by the local planning authority.

Mick Antoniw (Labour, Pontypridd)

Thank you for that answer, Minister, and can I also welcome the shift in Government policy towards a more spatial approach to planning? But, in my constituency, in Llantwit Fardre, we have three significant residential planning applications within a 700m radius. They're all at different stages in the planning process, and I’m not asking you to comment on those—the ones at Ystrad Barwig, Cwm Isaf farm, and Tynant common—but what we know is that the highway infrastructure is under considerable strain, and local GPs tell me that they are struggling to maintain a good service to existing patients. People need houses, but do you agree with me that the planning process must place a greater emphasis on the cumulative impact of adjacent development on people’s well-being and access to key services?

Julie James (Labour, Swansea West)

Yes. A good local development plan should plan not only for its housing need, but for the infrastructure needs associated with the housing need. Clearly, that is a range of services, you know, from prosaic highway infrastructure, to digital connectivity, to access to GPs and schools, local bus services, sustainable transport, and so on. It’s a very complex picture. Each place should be planning to have its place properly served by its plan, and I do think councils should be very ambitious and innovative in setting out their requirements of developers through the various agreements they make through the planning process—section 106s, for one example, or the Highways Act agreements that they make, and so on—to maximise the benefit to the local population of particular developments and to ensure that they don’t concentrate everything in one area to the detriment of the other services. Indeed, that’s the purpose of the LDP—to go through an inquiry stage in which local people get to have their say in that way. And I’m very pleased that 'Planning Policy Wales' has focused on place making and has put that at the heart of our national planning policy, because I think that is in line with the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015 and the way that we want to take Wales forward into the future.

Darren Millar (Conservative, Clwyd West)

I've got a similar situation, Minister, in my own constituency, in the town of Abergele, where there are many hundreds of new homes planned for that area as part of the local development plan. And Abergele, as the Minister may be aware, is just a short distance from Bodelwyddan, which is in the neighbouring local authority, where there are a couple of thousand new homes planned. So, within that small area, around 3,000 new homes are proposed, and yet we already have a situation where our infrastructure is creaking at the seams, the traffic is often gridlocked in Abergele, the schools are already oversubscribed—the primary schools—and, indeed, we have problems with our health service and people being able to access GPs as well.

Now, I heard very carefully what you have said about the responsibilities that local authorities have, but what do you do as a Welsh Government when there are irresponsible decisions being taken by local authorities that are having scant regard, sometimes, for the transport and other infrastructure needs in their communities and potentially exacerbating them by giving permission to significant housing developments? Furthermore, what guidance are you issuing to local authorities in order that they have regard to local development plans in neighbouring local authority areas, because Bodelwyddan, of course, is in Denbighshire, and Abergele is in Conwy?

Julie James (Labour, Swansea West)

I want to make it plain immediately that I'm not going to comment on any specifics, and my remarks are not directed to the particular development that the Member has raised—so, in general terms. We have provisions in the Planning (Wales) Act 2015 to enable local planning authorities to bring forward strategic development plans and therefore to work more regionally. We are looking to have local authorities do that for the exact reason that the Member pointed out, so that spatial planning across local authority boundaries can be better.

We're working to prepare our first national development framework to provide a national context within which that can sit, and I had a useful meeting this morning with the officials supporting the infrastructure commission for Wales around how they can fit into some of that national planning.

I am hoping that we will be able to put in place the first strategic development plan down in south-east Wales this spring, shortly, and I'm looking to have that system spread out across Wales so that we can take cross-border issues properly into consideration.

But in the local development plan and in developing the local development plan, of course it is a proper consideration to consider where developments are taking place along the borders and elsewhere, and to map out provision for other services and so on, in order to ensure that people who are at the heart of the local democratic process that the LDP is put in place by are at the very heart of that decision-making process. If the process isn't about the people who are going to live in it, what is it about? Plans should keep in mind, at all times, that the people are at the heart of the process.

Llyr Gruffydd (Plaid Cymru, North Wales)

But there's an even more fundamental issue here, of course: what is the local housing need? Your Government has actually told local authorities now that your population projections are outdated, and they were the basis, of course, for the local development plans that people are concerned about, and we've seen the allocation of additional land for housing and a need that, clearly, simply just doesn't exist. So, will you accept that that was wrong? And will you also now, therefore, instruct your officials to allow councils to de-allocate greenfield sites in order to protect our environment and communities?

Julie James (Labour, Swansea West)

I don't have a picture of Wales in my head around the different population projections, so I can't talk in specifics, but I'm very keen to make sure that we have the right projections in place, and that we actually respond to the need in the right places.

I'm also actually very keen to ensure that developments are the right size and fitted for the area they serve. So, what we want to do is encourage, as I said, small housing developers from across Wales to bring forward small sites that suit local need and not have to have large allocations. And that's not to criticise any council; as I say, I'm speaking in generalities. But I'm hoping to look again at what we are projecting, both in terms of the local government formula overall and in terms of projected need, in order to see where we can go.

Nick Ramsay (Conservative, Monmouth)

5. What discussions has the Minister had with the Minister for Finance about the sustainability of the local government funding formula? OAQ53240

Julie James (Labour, Swansea West)

Well, indeed, the finance Minister and I both met with local government at this morning’s finance sub-group meeting to discuss finance matters, the main topic of which was the sustainability of the local government funding formula. So, we're both fresh from that very meeting.

Nick Ramsay (Conservative, Monmouth)

I think there must be an echo in this Chamber—I know that you discussed this fully with my colleague Mark Isherwood earlier. This was a question that I and my colleague Janet Finch-Saunders regularly posed to your predecessor, Alun Davies, when he was in the local government role, and I'm pleased that we've set the ball rolling again today on this important issue. Now, I understand that there is a measure of disagreement here and that the Welsh Government believes that the funding formula in its current form can continue. So, can I just ask you, in a spirt of openness, that you do continue those discussions with the finance Minister and, indeed, local government? And although I know, each year, the WLGA agree to the funding formula in some form or other, I do think there is scope within the formula to tinker with it, if you will, and try and make sure that local authorities do get a slightly better deal. I'm thinking particularly about those authorities in rural areas that cover a large rural area and sometimes feel that they're not getting quite that level of support that would help them deliver services in those large rural areas.

Julie James (Labour, Swansea West)

We had a full discussion about the way that the formula works and any issues that anyone in the room had with them, and I invited suggestions from the local government leaders in the room and, indeed, from the wider local government community as to any suggested changes to the formula that might be something that we could all support. So, I'm very open to that. I have to say, nothing has come forward yet that significantly changes the formula. As you know, we put a funding floor in place in order to protect councils that are particularly affected by sudden changes in the way that the distribution works—so, by population change, for example, or by big differences in free-school-meals provision, or whatever it is. But we had a very good discussion this morning, and, as I said in earlier remarks, I'm not aware of what the disagreement is. There certainly wasn't any disagreement in the room this morning.

Jack Sargeant (Labour, Alyn and Deeside)

Can I start by thanking my good friend from across the Chamber, Nick Ramsay, for tabling this very important question? And I'm pleased to hear that the Minister has sat down this morning with the finance Minister to discuss this very important issue, which is raised with me on almost every occasion when I meet with members of local government in north Wales. This, of course, is a vital part of how local councils get their resources to fund the very important local services that, every day, people deserve, and of course we are all suffering at the moment from the UK austerity set by the Tory Government. Now, remembering that Welsh Government does not set the formula, but it is set on expert advice and agreed by local government, would the Minister welcome the initiation of research work by Members of the Assembly from north Wales into the effectiveness and fairness of the current formula?

Julie James (Labour, Swansea West)

Yes. As I said, I'm very open to any suggestion to change the current funding formula that can be agreed through the local government group. It's very much something that we agree together with local government. We very much wanted to be something that the whole of local government is able to buy into and that the Welsh Government also buys into. So, I absolutely welcome any suggestions or any research that shows us any different way of doing it.

Mohammad Asghar (Conservative, South Wales East)

6. What measures will the Minister introduce to increase the diversity of local councillors? OAQ53228

Julie James (Labour, Swansea West)

The forthcoming local government and elections Bill will introduce several measures to further encourage diversity, such as enabling job sharing by executive members.

Mohammad Asghar (Conservative, South Wales East)

Thank you very much, Minister. People with disabilities are likely to face greater costs when seeking elected office due to their disabilities. Last month, the UK Government launched an interim fund to help with disability-related expenses to encourage and support people to stand in elections. The EnAble fund for elected office will run until 2020 and will cater for candidates for the local and police commissioner elections in England. What consideration has the Minister given to introducing a similar scheme in Wales to empower more people with disabilities to stand for election to represent their communities in Wales, please?

Julie James (Labour, Swansea West)

We are about to introduce into the Assembly the local government and elections Bill, and the Llywydd is very interested, I know, in the one for the Assembly. We'd be very happy to have discussions about any scheme that enables any broader diversity of Members to come forward, from wherever that comes, and as part of the discussions as we take the Bill through its committee stages, I'd be more than happy to engage with the Member about any other provisions that he thinks might do just that.

Siân Gwenllian (Plaid Cymru, Arfon)

7. What assessment has the Minister made to ensure that the social housing letting policies of local government and housing partnerships across Wales are fit for purpose? OAQ53259

Julie James (Labour, Swansea West)

In a world where demand for social housing very much outstrips supply, it's essential that lettings policies reflect a fair and strategic approach to meeting housing needs. Local housing partnerships have a responsibility to make best use of available social housing and provide applicants with the widest choice of accommodation.

Siân Gwenllian (Plaid Cymru, Arfon)

The process of registering for social housing can be complex, and once an individual is on the list, then, very often, the system that is used to decide who is allocated which house can lead to outcomes that are unfair. Gwynedd Council has just started a consultation and is considering a change from a points system to a banding system, which will give consideration to need, but also to local connections and links for prospective tenants. Do you believe that we need to create social housing systems that are more fit for purpose across Wales?

Julie James (Labour, Swansea West)

Yes, I'm very interested in the Gwynedd banding system. I believe they're out for a three-month consultation and trial and that the decision's in April. We'll be looking very closely to see how that works. Clearly, we want people in priority need to be housed, but Gwynedd's system is about enabling local people to be housed locally. So, I'm very interested in seeing where we can get the right balance between encouraging local people to stay local and being sure that people in priority need get their needs met. Very often, people have a very real need to be in the community that they feel part of. So, it's about the balance. I'd be very interested in how Gwynedd works that out and to see what we can do around looking at that across Wales.

David Rees (Labour, Aberavon)

8. What discussions has the Minister had with Neath Port Talbot County Borough Council regarding the financial settlement for local government? OAQ53265

Julie James (Labour, Swansea West)

None yet. I haven't had any specific meetings with Neath Port Talbot council. I'm embarking on the usual, as I understand it, ministerial tour of Wales when you get put into this portfolio. So, over the course of the next few months, I will be having individual meetings with every local authority in Wales, and I'm attending the meeting of the WLGA on Friday, where I'll be able to speak with a group of local authority leaders. I've of course met the leadership of Neath Port Talbot council on a number of occasions, but not yet in this portfolio.

David Rees (Labour, Aberavon)

I look forward to when you do meet them and raise the issues, and look to support them as much as possible, because NPT council clearly is, like every other council in Wales, facing challenging times because of the austerity ideology that is being driven through by Westminster. But in doing so, they're obviously looking very carefully at how they manage their bank balance and their funding, particularly the budgets.

Minister, also, on top of the revenue support grant, we see grants being allocated to local authorities. Now, when I met with the local authority before Christmas, in the area at the time of the budget, we were being told that, in fact, some of those grants were way out of time being paid; they were some six months, nine months delayed in payment. That was causing difficulties for local authorities in actually delivering services. Will you ensure that any grants that are allocated—and I know some are being put into the RSG, and that's been welcomed—are paid on time so that the authorities can actually deliver and ensure they're not being caught for finances?

Julie James (Labour, Swansea West)

Well, of course we always aim to pay grants in accordance with grant conditions. If the Member wants to bring any specific instances forward, I'm happy to look at that. I will be looking to work across the Government with ministerial colleagues who have big-spending local government portfolios—they're all really obvious: the health and social services and education colleagues and so on are big spending portfolios in terms of local government—to make sure that we present as clear and open a picture to local government as is possible, given the difficulties that they are having in terms of the austerity agenda. It's obvious that they need to be able to plan their expenditure as ably as is possible for us to be able to make them do.

Elin Jones (Plaid Cymru, Ceredigion)

Thank you, Minister.

3. Topical Questions

Elin Jones (Plaid Cymru, Ceredigion)

The next item is topical questions, but no topical questions were accepted this week.

4. 90-second Statements

Elin Jones (Plaid Cymru, Ceredigion)

That brings us to the 90-second statements, and the first today is from David Rowlands.

David Rowlands (UKIP, South Wales East)

On 10 January 1879, three columns of British soldiers crossed the Buffalo river into Zululand, South Africa, leaving some 1,800 soldiers of the 24th Regiment of Foot in camp at Isandlwana. On 22 January, the forces of Zulu King Cetshwayo, numbering some 20,000, encircled the British camp. The following battle resulted in one of the worst defeats ever recorded by the British army. Over 1,300 of the camp defenders were slaughtered.

On the evening of 22 January, some 3,000 Zulu warriors, fresh from the massacre at Isandlwana, descended on Rorke's Drift, defended by a force of just 140 men, which included soldiers of the 24th Regiment of Foot, the South Wales Borderers. The ensuing battle lasted through the night and into the day of 23 January. The events of that night and following day were to be one of the British army's finest moments. Against overwhelming odds, the garrison at Rorke's Drift repulsed attack after attack from some of the most ferocious and courageous native fighters in the whole of Africa.

Hostilities only came to an end when, in a demonstration of great humanity, and in acknowledgement of the bravery of fellow warriors, the Zulu prince Dabulamanzi called off his troops, saluted the garrison and withdrew. Subsequently, 11 Victoria Crosses were awarded for the gallant defence at Rorke's Drift, the highest number of Victoria Crosses ever awarded for a single action. On this day, the one hundred and fortieth anniversary of that battle, it is fitting that we remember those on both sides who showed such exceptional courage.

Dawn Bowden (Labour, Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney)

This week, in the lead-up to the 2019 Holocaust Memorial Day, I was privileged to join members of the community in Merthyr Tydfil who gathered to mark the completion of the Holocaust memorial garden at the rear of Merthyr Tydfil library. It's one small but important example of how a community, starting out with a grant from the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust, then with the assistance of several local groups of volunteers, can be part of the international effort of remembrance, research and education about Holocaust.

This year, we will reflect on the theme of Holocaust Memorial Day, torn from home, the challenges of being torn from home in the face of war, conflict and persecution and the basic desire for a better, safer life. This year also, I can't help but add a personal note of remembrance, having just returned from a visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau. We should never forget the horrors of Holocaust and we should use this time to reflect on the conditions that allowed such barbaric acts to occur—not just Nazi persecution, but genocide in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia, and Darfur.

My recent visit reinforced to me the value of each of our acts of remembrance, whether it's in Merthyr Tydfil, or whether it's here in the National Assembly, as we did at our vigil on the Senedd steps this lunchtime, or across our nation. In these testing times, let each of us reflect on our words, our thoughts and our actions, and let us remember those torn from home and pledge again that we will play our part in sustaining the conditions that ensure that the horrors of Holocaust are not repeated.

5. Motion under Standing Order 26.91 seeking the Assembly's agreement to introduce a Member Bill on Older People's Rights

Elin Jones (Plaid Cymru, Ceredigion)

The next item is the motion under Standing Order 26.91 seeking the Assembly's agreement to introduce a Member Bill on older people's rights. I call on Darren Millar to move the motion.

Darren Millar (Conservative, Clwyd West)

Diolch, Llywydd. I move the motion seeking the Assembly's agreement to allow me to introduce a Member Bill on older people's rights.

As a nation, we can be very proud that many of us are living longer and are healthier in our old age than ever before. And we can be proud of the excellent track record that we have in championing and supporting our older people here in Wales. We were the first nation in the world to appoint an older people's commissioner, the first UK nation to incorporate the UN conventions on the rights of the child and older people into domestic law, and the first to establish the public sector equality duty under the Equality Act 2010. Today, the National Assembly for Wales has the opportunity, once again, to lead the way by supporting proposals for an older people's rights Bill.

We have the highest proportion of older people in the UK—one in four people living here in Wales is over the age of 60—and that demographic rise is set to continue. It's estimated by Age Alliance that, by 2030, the number of people aged over 65 living in Wales will increase by more than a third. And, when it comes to the over-85s, that's going to increase by a staggering 80 per cent. Now, some have complained that such an increase in older people is placing a burden on society, yet these people never mention the enormous contribution that older people make to our country. The Royal Voluntary Service has estimated that people aged over 65 make a contribution of over £1 billion annually to the Welsh economy, and that's net of pension, health and social care costs. Age Alliance have suggested that the value of childcare provided by grandparents in Wales is over £0.25 billion per year, and the value of their volunteering is estimated to be just shy of £0.5 billion. Yet, in spite of this huge contribution, it's true to say that some of our older people may need extra support or assistance, when compared to the rest of the population.

Many are frequent users of public services; they can be more dependent on the care of others and they may be—and often are—subject to age discrimination. Older people can be disproportionately impacted by the closure of facilities such as public conveniences, banks, libraries, post offices, hospitals or the withdrawal of public transport such as bus services. And at a time when more and more key services are only available online, more than half of adults, we must remember, over the age of 75, have never ever used the internet. All of this can make older people more vulnerable and more likely to lose their independence, and therefore they are at greater risk of their rights being violated.

Many older people are carers and compared to the rest of the UK, Wales has a higher number of older carers who are often in poorer health themselves. Living with a long-term illness or disability is challenging at the best of times, but all the more so when you have a caring responsibility. But many older people do not have anybody close by to support them. Loneliness and isolation are daily realities for many older people, and it's tragic that, according to Age Cymru, around 75,000 older people in Wales have reported—and I quote—'always or often feeling lonely'. Lonely people are more likely to suffer poor health, become vulnerable, and have their rights violated.

Research has also indicated that Wales has the highest prevalence of elder abuse in the UK. Action on Elder Abuse have found that 12.5 per cent of those over 65 in Wales have been subject to abuse, representing almost 100,000 people a year, but the current system isn't sufficiently identifying abuse cases, and victims often don't feel empowered to tell people, and perhaps this is why fewer than 1 per cent of cases result in a successful criminal conviction.

And then we have the problem of ageism. It's an issue that we rarely talk about, but its impact upon older people can be just as devastating as racism, sexism or homophobia. Negative stereotypes of older people are still common, as is the derogatory and disrespectful language that is often used to describe people once they reach a certain age.

It's for all of these reasons that I'm seeking permission from the Assembly today to introduce an older people's rights Bill. The purpose of the Bill is to build on Wales's excellent track record to date by embedding a rights-based approach in the development, planning and delivery of public services that affect older people in Wales. If given permission, I will seek to consult with stakeholders to develop a Bill that will further enshrine the rights of older people within Welsh law, by placing a duty on Welsh Ministers to have regard to the United Nations Principles for Older Persons when making decisions that may impact upon older people in Wales; that will provide for the ability to extend that due-regard duty to local authorities, health boards and other Welsh public authorities; that will place a duty on Welsh Ministers to promote knowledge of and understanding of the UN Principles for Older Persons; and that will require Welsh Ministers to publish annual reports on their compliance with their older people's rights schemes—something that doesn't happen at the moment.

Now, this approach might sound familiar to some people in this Chamber, and that's because the duties are very similar to those that have been set out in the Rights of Children and Young Persons (Wales) Measure 2011. That legislation, of course, was very well received by stakeholders, and it's made a positive impact on children's experiences and in raising awareness of children's rights across the country. Now, I'm very confident that we can secure some similar results through legislation on older people's rights.

I first suggested a Bill of this kind during a short debate back in January of 2012, and since then a great deal has happened. Later that year, the First Minister established an advisory group—the then First Minister—to explore the development of a Welsh declaration of rights for older people. And then, in 2014, the Social Services and Well-being (Wales) Act 2014 finally embedded the UN Principles for Older Persons into Welsh law for the very first time. We then had the Welsh declaration of the rights of older people, which was finally published in 2014. In the following year, 2015, the older people's commissioner at the time, Sarah Rochira, called for better protection of older people's rights, and she went on, in January of 2016, to publish 'Making rights real in public services', which provided guidance to leaders in the public sector on how they could embed the human rights of older people into their public services. Now, all of this progress, of course, is very, very welcome. In January 2016 as well, this National Assembly voted for an amended motion that called on the Welsh Government to, and I quote,

'work with the Older People's Commissioner to bring forward legislation to protect and promote the rights of older people.'

And it was the then health Minister at the time—now the First Minister—who accepted that amended motion, and all political parties in the Senedd voted for it. I regret, though, that the outcome of that vote has never, ever been fully implemented, and that the progress that we have made has stalled. [Interruption.] I'll happily take an intervention, yes.

Huw Irranca-Davies (Labour, Ogmore)

Thanks so much for giving way, and my apologies for coming in late. I was watching on the monitor—. Llywydd, my apologies; my timing went to pot there. But I've listened with interest, including on the monitor as I was watching, and I welcome the very temperate way that he's laid out his case there. One significant change that has actually taken place subsequent to the timeline he talked about was last June, when Sarah Rochira, the previous older people's commissioner, actually left the post, and she stood in the Senedd just above us and she welcomed the work that had gone on with my officials at the time, which had led to a very tangible, concrete set of actions—tangible actions—that are now being worked on, which went far beyond what had gone before in words and so on, and that is still being taken through. So, I simply ask him to acknowledge that, actually, not only did Sarah recognise that, but my subsequent meeting with the new older people's commissioner also recognised that the approach being taken within Welsh Government is very proactive now.

Darren Millar (Conservative, Clwyd West)

I very much welcome the progress that's been made, but it's not underpinned by legislation, which is the point of the Bill that I'm proposing, and we have an opportunity to further that cause—the cause that, I think, we all share in terms of wanting to promote older people's rights—by supporting this Bill today. And, of course, that's why the older people's commissioner—the current older people's commissioner—and the Equalities and Human Rights Commission are both backing my proposals for a Bill. I know a whole host of other organisations and stakeholders are backing this Bill, including Action on Elder Abuse Cymru, Age Alliance Wales, Age Connects Wales, Age Cymru, the Alzheimer's Society Cymru, Care and Repair Cymru, the Carers Trust Wales, Carers Wales, Cymru Older People's Alliance, Prime Cymru, the British Geriatric Society, the Centre for Ageing and Dementia Research—I could go on and on and on with more and more people on that list, but I think it shows the huge support that there is out there for a Bill of this kind.

Just a very brief word on the potential financial implications of the Bill: the closest comparator in terms of legislation and associated costings is, of course, the Rights of Children and Young Persons (Wales) Measure 2011. Now, the regulatory impact assessment for that Measure suggested that the costs over a three-year period of implementation were around £1.5 million. If we increase those by inflation, then it suggests that the costs for this sort of Bill might be around £1.75 million. However, the reality is that some of those costs are already being borne by Government because of the duties that are already contained, as I mentioned before, in the social services and well-being Act. So, it's likely to be much less than that. So, these costs, of course, will need further clarification in the future and more detailed consideration, but it suggests to me that this is an extremely affordable thing for us to be able to do.

In closing, then, Llywydd, I just want to remind people that we have a historic opportunity today. We embarked upon this journey a number of years ago and we can deliver and pioneer a new rights-based approach for older people's rights here in Wales. We've got an opportunity to develop legislation that will result in practical improvements in the decision making and delivery of public services, that will raise awareness of older people's rights and give them recognition and status, and that will empower those hundreds of thousands of older people across Wales to access those rights, and I urge Members to support the motion.

Elin Jones (Plaid Cymru, Ceredigion)

I call on the Deputy Minister for Health and Social Services, Julie Morgan.

Julie Morgan (Labour, Cardiff North)

Thank you, Presiding Officer. Everyone in Wales deserves to have their rights recognised and made real, and raising the awareness of older people about the rights they already have and making sure those rights are embedded in both the way public services are delivered, and, indeed, in society more broadly, is of the utmost importance, and I do believe it is this concern that has prompted Darren Millar to bring this Bill proposed today, and I certainly agree strongly with the sentiments that lie behind the proposed Bill.

Wales has a long history of working with and for older people, as Darren Millar has acknowledged, from the introduction of the first strategy for older people in Wales in 2003 to establishing the world's first older people's commissioner in 2008, and this work continues today with a renewed focus on older people's rights, as Huw Irranca-Davies has mentioned. Current work to embed older people's rights across the Welsh public services includes the following: producing practical guidance to demonstrate how public bodies can have due regard to the UN Principles for Older Persons, as required by the Social Services and Well-being (Wales) Act 2014; updating the 2009 guidance on escalating concerns on the closure of care homes; planning for a social care awareness-raising campaign in spring 2019, which will include awareness raising about older people's rights under existing law; and working closely with older people, public bodies, third sector organisations and leading academics to co-produce a strategy for an ageing society—and early work on this is being overseen by the ministerial advisory forum on ageing. It will adopt a rights-based approach that is placing older people at the heart of policy making. That's not an exhaustive list, but I think it does demonstrate the Welsh Government's commitment to protect and uphold older persons' rights.

In addition to this work on making rights real, Welsh Government has taken many actions to support older people on a wider basis. This includes free swimming, free bus passes, boosting advocacy services, engaging older people through a ministerial advisory forum, funding falls prevention initiatives, improving the quality of care homes, funding a dementia action plan, tackling loneliness and isolation, increasing the capital limit for residential care, and investing significantly in health and care, including through the integrated care fund.

So, when we consider the merits of this proposed legislation, we must put it in context. Older people's rights are already enshrined in the UK Human Rights Act 1998, and age is a protected characteristic under the Equality Act 2010. Specifically in Wales, the social services and well-being Act requires local authorities to have due regard to the UN Principles for Older People and gives older people a strong voice in the arrangements for any care they may need. [Interruption.] Yes, certainly.

Huw Irranca-Davies (Labour, Ogmore)

Oh—

Elin Jones (Plaid Cymru, Ceredigion)

I think Suzy Davies was first.

Julie Morgan (Labour, Cardiff North)

Sorry, I didn't see you, Suzy.

Suzy Davies (Conservative, South Wales West)

Sorry, Deputy Minister, perhaps you didn't see me. Thank you very much for taking the intervention. Before you conclude your speech, I wonder if you could explain what remedies are available to people who expect their rights to be observed, but actually are failed.

Julie Morgan (Labour, Cardiff North)

I will be going on to that in my speech. So, I will be covering that.

Huw Irranca-Davies (Labour, Ogmore)

Thank you, Suzy. Would—? Sorry, this is the first opportunity I've had to welcome you formally to your post, and I know you'll do a superb job, an absolutely superb job. Could I just ask you, though—? The acid test—whether it is legislation or whether it is the current Government's agenda of making these rights real—is when you walk into a group of older people and they tell you, 'I know what my rights are'. They tell you, in terms of the social services and well-being Act, 'I understand that the start of any conversation should be what matters to me', in the same way that you have when you walk into primary schools with children. Now, we haven't got there yet, and it's a moot point about whether a law is needed or not, I have to say. My personal preference is that we should continue embedding it in this way. But that's the acid test—when you walk into a group of older people and they say eloquently, articulately, 'I know my rights. I demand my rights.'

Julie Morgan (Labour, Cardiff North)

I absolutely agree with Huw Irranca-Davies and I'd like to thank him for all that he's done to further this agenda. But we do also know that there are other groups in society who suffer inequality and deserve to have their rights become the reality much more consistently.

We already know that there have been calls to enact the Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women, CEDAW, and also to bring into Welsh law the UN convention on the rights of disabled people. But, acting upon the cases made for legislation put forward on behalf of different groups would risk a piecemeal approach to legislation, and I think an uneven approach would be confusing to the public bodies that have duties put on them, as it would be for the people of Wales.

As a Welsh Government, we are also concerned that, following Brexit, the UK Government may well seek to weaken or even repeal the UK Human Rights Act. Here today it's not possible to foresee whether these concerns will come to fruition, but as a Government we must take an approach that gives flexibility to respond to these potential circumstances. I see that all these arguments are arguments for taking a more ambitious, holistic approach to legislating for human rights that is proofed against potential circumstances. So, to develop our preferred approach, steps have already been taken towards commissioning independent research to examine how we can incorporate the seven UN rights treaties and the UN Principles for Older People into Welsh law, enact the socioeconomic duty and strengthen existing regulations or guidance.

Ministers will be meeting with a wide range of stakeholders, including the older people's commissioner and other commissioners and their representatives on 6 February, and I know the Member putting this Bill forward has also been invited to go to that seminar to discuss these issues. We intend to consult on the legislative models that emerge from the research and aim to come up with proposals by the end of this year. All this will be done with the involvement of older people and their representatives, amongst others.

So, to conclude, while I strongly support the sentiments behind this Bill, the time is not right for this particular bit of legislation. When we do legislate, we should do that holistically for the whole of society and in a way that identifies the needs of all disadvantaged groups. In not being able to support this Bill today, I would aim to work closely with the Member in charge, the older person's commissioner and other important partners and stakeholders, whatever the outcomes of the vote later today, to make rights real for older people. I don't think there's any disagreement here at all about the principles, but rather the desire from the Government to see a more ambitious, holistic and strategic approach, which I don't think is the proposal in front of us today.

Helen Mary Jones (Plaid Cymru, Mid and West Wales)

It would be—[Interruption.] If I may proceed, if the Member would allow me, given that I'm standing at this particular point in this process to support the Member's proposal, and to recommend to the Assembly that we allow this legislation to proceed at this stage. I should say that in the Plaid Cymru group, we will be having a free vote on this, and Members will, as I feel is appropriate for backbench legislation, decide on the merits in their own views.

I think there is merit in principle to what Darren Millar is proposing. We do have evidence of the effectiveness of the partial incorporation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, and Members are aware, as the Minister has already alluded, of my proposal that we consider incorporating the convention on the rights of disabled people. As the Minister has said, I entirely concur with her, and the case that Darren Millar has set out, about the serious discrimination that older people suffer in many circumstances, though we must also acknowledge that older people are sometimes among the most privileged and the most financially successful, so this isn't universal. But I've been shocked, for example, to see the parlous state of some services for older people with mental health needs, and some of the care homes that I've visited have been profoundly shocking. I should also say that I've visited some settings that have been exceptional, and those settings have often not been the glossy ones, not the most expensive ones, but ones where the care is of the highest quality.

So, I do recognise Darren Millar's description of some of the challenges that we face in ensuring that older people are able to access their rights. And the question for this Assembly will be: is this piece of legislation—or will this piece of legislation, because, of course, we haven't seen it yet—will this piece of legislation be the most effective and the most likely to succeed in addressing that wide range of challenges that Darren Millar rightly sets out?

I've been very grateful for the discussions that I've had with Welsh Ministers, with Julie James and with Jane Hutt, following my proposal with regard to the disabled people's convention, about the broader agenda to incorporate that the Minister has set out for us today, and I've been very interested to read the Counsel General's views on this. As the Minister has rightly said, we do not yet know, if and when Brexit happens, how that will affect the equality legislation, because the UK legislation, of course, is predicated on an ultimate appeal to European courts, and that would no longer be the case. So, there are many unknowns in this situation. And I would be very disappointed if the work that the Minister has outlined were to be hampered in any way by the progress of this proposed Bill. However, where I do not agree with the Minister at present is that I don't accept that allowing this Bill to progress to the next stage would necessarily need to derail that work. Indeed, I could imagine a situation where we might proceed with this legislation, and at a further stage, the Government might choose to take it on board and to build it in to further work that they were doing, as was done, for example, when, in a previous Assembly, I introduced a carers' rights Measure that was then taken on by the Government and put into a broader piece of work that they were doing to promote carers' rights.

I want to make very clear today to the Government that I do not think that we can use the future generations and well-being Act, as it stands now, to move this agenda forward. There is no redress for the individual under the future generations and well-being Act, and the commissioner herself has made it very clear that she can do nothing other than name and shame. And I know that Ministers are looking at the inconsistency between the powers of our various commissioners, and also looking at the way in which those powers have or have not been used. And, again, I know that that will be built into the work that the Minister has outlined today. But, again, I do not see that that is a reason necessarily, at this stage, for this Assembly not to allow Darren Millar's proposal to proceed.

I will be very interested to see the detail of the Bill. I am very interested in the issue that Suzy Davies raised around enforceability because we know—and I look to Jane Hutt, our Minister for equality, who knows very well that unless individuals have mechanisms that they can use, that do not depend on the Government, that do not depend on an independent commissioner, but that they can use themselves to enforce those rights, those rights at their very end may not be enforced. And we have experience trying to implement sex equality legislation that makes that clear.

We are, I think—we can see from this debate—all united in our wish, in this Chamber, to address the discrimination that older people undoubtedly face. I believe that we should wait and see the detail of this Bill before we come to a conclusion as to whether or not this is the right way to proceed. And on that basis, I commend Darren Millar's motion to the house.

Janet Finch-Saunders (Conservative, Aberconwy)

It is a privilege today to participate in what really could be a historic moment for our older people in Wales, and indeed our future generations. Whilst Wales is home to less than 1 per cent of the world’s population, the Bill brought forward today by my colleague, Darren Millar AM, could really be a global game changer. It would set an important precedent for other nations to follow—the need to embed a rights-based approach in the development, planning and delivery of public services that affect our older people.

Whilst I must acknowledge that Wales has been a pioneering nation for the interests of older people in many ways, such as with the creation of the world’s first older people’s commissioner role, in 2006, more can and should be done. We should all ask ourselves why we would not want to help forge a nation where there is a legal duty on Ministers and Welsh public authorities to consider the 18 United Nations principles for older persons. Personally, I see no possible excuse for hindering these, as the principles have the best interest and respect of older people at heart.

Just consider this: if this Bill did receive Royal Assent, it could almost immediately set about transforming the lives of over 800,000 older people in Wales, as, for example, it would go a long way in empowering older people to take charge of decisions that affect their lives, including the quality of their care. Now, the need for this was highlighted in the ‘A Place to Call Home?’ report, where a worrying reality was outlined—that too many older people living in care homes have an unacceptable quality of life. For example, it was found that older people see their personal identity and individuality rapidly diminish, and lose choice and control over their lives, once in a care home. They are often not receiving the level of care they have a right to expect, and the culture of care homes is often built upon a dependency model, which often fails to prevent physical decline, and does not allow people to sustain or regain their independence. Now, in my opinion, the Bill would help individuals and authorities tackle such devastating inequalities. I'm not saying all this—the report said that.

Additionally, for rural constituencies like mine, Aberconwy, which forms part of the county council with the highest proportion of over-65s in Wales, it is true that this Bill would achieve a great deal, through helping to protect the interests of elderly residents when changes to local facilities are being made. For example, over the last few months, I have been involved in a campaign to save bus services, which provide key lifelines to communities, and especially elderly residents. If this legislation was in place, I am confident that there would be greater consideration of, and greater weight placed on, the impact of changes on the older person—in my constituency, and, indeed, all of our constituencies and regions. The need for this is apparent, as the closure of 189 public toilets, one in six libraries, and 29 GP practices in Wales coincide with an extremely high rate of isolation and loneliness. Indeed, according to Age Cymru, 75,000 older people in Wales have reported always or often feeling lonely—a problem that is exacerbated by the withdrawal of local services. And this is happening under a Welsh Labour Government.

Undoubtedly, when considering that it is the older generation who make up the majority of Wales's army of volunteers, and that grandparents alone save Welsh parents £259 million a year, it is clear to me that this Bill is the least that we could give them back in return. So I do hope, Deputy Minister, that you have a change of heart, and, indeed, your backbenchers and your Cabinet colleagues. Because, do you know what, it is the same Chamber, but different legislation, on a different week. This is all because, I'm afraid, it is a Conservative-led piece of legislation. What hope does it give to backbenchers like myself? What hope does it give to new and aspiring Assembly candidates and Members that they can be picked in a ballot and then it gets as far as the floor of this Senedd, only to be turned down from pure tribalism and party politics?

David Rowlands (UKIP, South Wales East)

Well, I feel obviously, given my age, I should declare an interest at this point. [Laughter.] While our rights should not change as we grow older, older people often face negative attitudes and age discrimination, in particular, in access to healthcare, employment, goods and services, information and education. Older people also face increasing barriers to their participation, become more dependent on others and lose some, or all, of their personal autonomy. These threats to their dignity can make them more susceptible to neglect, abuse and violation of their rights.

It is my belief that this proposed Bill would ensure the rights of older people are strengthened. it would also safeguard the principle that, just as older people are at the centre of many of our families, they will also be at the forefront of our thinking when it comes to key issues, such as access to healthcare, financial inclusion and public services.

We often hear news stories about how we have an ageing population. There are around 800,000 older people in Wales, and the number of people aged 65 and over is projected to increase by 232,000, that's 36 per cent, by 2041. Last week, we debated the cost of paying for social care, and it is, of course, important that we plan for the future. But we must do so in a way that promotes ageing well and with a dignified and respectful conversation.

Although social care is a major factor when it comes to discussing how we plan for the future, there are many other considerations. In my region, older people have told me how they are adversely affected by library and day care centre cuts or changes to post office services. There are heart-breaking cases, of course, of older people who have fallen victim to scams. I, like other Members, will have also heard from constituents who have difficulty in accessing GP services. I believe this Bill would go a long way in helping to promote the understanding of older people's rights and alleviating some of these very real difficulties.

Ensuring that older people are not disadvantaged simply by reason of age is one of the greatest challenges of modern times. That challenge is to ensure that all of our older people are able to live fulfilling lives, and that they are not seen as a burden, but recognised for the contribution they have made throughout their lives to the economy and community as a whole, and also to acknowledge that many of them still contribute to the society in many ways, often being the backbone of many charities and social activities.

It is therefore incumbent on statutory authorities to ensure that the core mainstream services are available to older residents in the same way that they are for other people. For that reason, we in UKIP will be supporting the Bill today, and we encourage all sides of the Chamber to do likewise. If children are protected in law, why not the other most vulnerable group, the old?

Caroline Jones (UKIP, South Wales West)

I would like to thank Darren for bringing forward his proposal for an older people’s rights Bill. I fully support the intention behind Darren’s proposals, and will do all I can to help ensure this Bill becomes an Act of this Assembly. I'm passionate about tackling loneliness and isolation and I have spoken in this Chamber many times on the subject. Protecting the rights of older people will go a long way in addressing the core causes of isolation in our older population.

Unfortunately, ageism still exists in our society, and has become institutionalised in many aspects. I have received several calls from people over the age of 75 whose car insurance has doubled or even tripled simply because of their age, not because of them being unsafe to drive or having accidents, but just because of their age—and if this isn't ageism, nothing is—effectively pricing them out of the market, denying them their freedom and contributing to increased loneliness and isolation. It’s not just the insurance companies that display institutionalised ageism. Services from banks to utility companies are increasingly moving online, further isolating a generation for whom computers were the size of large buildings and only owned by Governments and universities.

Unfortunately, digital exclusion is highest in the over-65s and its effects are exacerbated by Governments moving services online, by banks closing and utility companies going paperless. It is a sad fact that in twenty-first century Wales, people are treated differently because they're older.

Ageism has been fuelled in recent years with discussion over the future of pensions and social care. This has sometimes been discussed insensitively and this has had the consequence of sometimes pitting generations against each other, blaming the over-65s for the tribulations of those born at the tail end of the twentieth century.

The older generations have paid tax and national insurance for over 50 years; they have more than paid for their care and welfare during their retirement. And it was up to successive Governments to plan and make provisions for social care and pensions.

It is clear to me that we need to enshrine in law the rights of older people in Wales, to underline the UN principles for older persons, which promote independence, participation, care, self-fulfilment and, importantly, dignity. These principles should underpin the delivery of services, both public and private, to older people in Wales. Placing a duty on Welsh Ministers to have due regard for the UN principles will have a dramatic impact on older people’s rights in Wales.

A rights-based approach to public services is the right approach. So, I welcome Darren’s proposals for this Bill and support him wholeheartedly, and I urge Members from across this Chamber to support this motion—a motion that has overwhelming support from the public and the third sector. So, let us all work together, across this Chamber, to enshrine, in law, the rights of older people in Wales. Diolch yn fawr.

Jenny Rathbone (Labour, Cardiff Central)

Like Huw Irranca, I'd very much like to welcome Julie Morgan to the post of Deputy Minister because I'm sure that your huge experience will bring to bear excellence in this particular portfolio.

I suppose I need to declare an interest as well: as a grandmother twice over, I have to probably be in the category of an older person, and we all face that music in due course. I think some of the statistics that Darren Millar has produced are, of course, very sobering. The fact that 75,000 people feel lonely most of the time is a wake-up call for all of us. But I really do wonder how this legislation would address that. It's something we all need to address, but I really don't see how legislation is going to do it.

I was concerned that you didn't mention the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015 in your introduction. And that was even before Helen Mary had said she didn't see that it had anything to do with it. I am concerned—

Helen Mary Jones (Plaid Cymru, Mid and West Wales)

Will you give way?

Jenny Rathbone (Labour, Cardiff Central)

No. I think I'm in the middle of saying something at the moment. I'll take it in a second, yes.

I'm concerned that we're in the process of potentially lopping off bits of this very holistic approach to the way we determine our priorities, which was a path-breaking piece of legislation and that, potentially, this could undermine that holistic approach.

So, I'm happy to take the intervention.

Helen Mary Jones (Plaid Cymru, Mid and West Wales)

Just to clarify, Jenny Rathbone, for you benefit, I did not say that it had nothing to do with it. What I said was that the well-being of future generations Act did not give individuals enforceable rights and, therefore, it was not the appropriate vehicle to deal with all the issues that Darren Millar raised. That is not to say that it's not a valuable piece of legislation that can do other very useful jobs.

Jenny Rathbone (Labour, Cardiff Central)

Thank you, Helen Mary, for reminding me of what you actually said, because what I was going to say in response to that is that older people already have access to complain to the older person's commissioner if they don't think that they're being treated fairly, as well as all the other ways in which we can all complain. I think I have some concerns that we're focusing on one particular group—one particular group that hasn't done as badly out of the austerity programme since 2010 as other people. The people who have most suffered from the austerity programme are children, who have no voice and very, very little power. So, I'm concerned about the balance of our approach, and as Darren Millar says, he thinks it would cost £1.75 million to implement, and I wonder if there aren't better ways of reshaping services to better meet people's needs than simply having new legislation. It's action we need, not words. If we need to put more money into older people's services, we're going to have to find ways of generating it. And I just wondered why the Holtham proposals are arguing that, if we're going to have social care free at the point of need, and free at the point of delivery, we are going to have to find another mechanism for putting more money into the system, because at the moment we simply don't pay people enough for doing the very important job they're doing.

Unlike Helen Mary Jones, I have seen very good practice in my constituency. I've also seen examples of poor practice, and these have been dealt with by CIW, and they've been closed down as a result. That's how it should be. But I think that it's a disgrace that we don't pay people more, but I think that we need to address why we aren't putting more money into the system as a society to ensure that older people have an excellent old age. Some people will choose to go into a residential nursing home, or a residential home, but others will want to stay in their own home, and that is where I would like to see a great deal more focus.

So, in terms of what Caroline was saying about car insurance companies discriminating against older people—you know, these are private companies. They will endeavour to charge the maximum that they can get away with, and people need to challenge them and try and go elsewhere. Older people don't all come in the same shapes and sizes. Some older people are perfectly capable of arguing their case, just as some younger people are very inadequate at arguing their case. I'll take the intervention—

Ann Jones (Labour, Vale of Clwyd)

Well, you're out of time, actually, so if you'd like to wind up your speech, then we'll move on.

Jenny Rathbone (Labour, Cardiff Central)

I'd like to wind up and say that I'm concerned about this piecemeal approach to human rights, and I'd like to see a much broader approach being taken. We're probably going to have to legislate, if we leave the European Court of Human Rights, and that seems to me a much better approach.

Ann Jones (Labour, Vale of Clwyd)

Thank you. Can I now call Darren Millar to reply to the debate?

Darren Millar (Conservative, Clwyd West)

Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. I've listened very carefully to what people have been saying, and I'm very grateful for the support that I've had, certainly on the opposition benches, to the proposal that I want to take forward. I'm obviously very disappointed that the Government doesn't see eye to eye with me in this regard, about this being an appropriate way to take forward the rights-based agenda for older people. The Government, of course, has made reference to a piecemeal approach. Well, we have a piecemeal approach now, which was started by the Government in respect of children and young people's rights, and that is something that we all felt it was necessary to address. And as David Rowlands quite rightly said, young people have their rights protected in Welsh law and older people deserve to have theirs protected too.

Mark Reckless (Conservative, South Wales East)

Will the Member give way?

Darren Millar (Conservative, Clwyd West)

Yes, very briefly.

Mark Reckless (Conservative, South Wales East)

He says it's piecemeal and gives one example, but I think another example was inferred just now in that insurance companies—our older people will just rely on competition. You can't have an insurance company discriminate on the basis of gender. Why should they be able to do it on the basis of age?

Darren Millar (Conservative, Clwyd West)

It's absolutely right. Any discrimination on the grounds of age is something that shouldn't be tolerated, but, unfortunately, too many people are getting away with it. I think there will be a perception that there may be some political tribalism going on here. I can't guarantee that that's what the perception will be, but I think some people will perceive it as that. It's certainly been implied, I think, by the fact that one party is taking a different approach than the others. And I was very supportive of the need to do things on the wider rights agenda, which is why I've accepted the invitation to be with you at the meeting on 6 February, although we know that that was a very hastily arranged meeting. The older people's commissioner only received an invitation yesterday, as did I, in an attempt to thwart this particular proposal from making progress in this Chamber. We know that that is the case, so I am a little bit disappointed that there have been these last-minute attempts to nudge people in a direction against the Bill.

Jenny Rathbone, you made an interesting speech, but you didn't stick to the theme here. You were talking about the whole paying-for-care agenda and the Holtham agenda, but of course I'm focused here purely on rights: making sure that those rights are accessible to older people; that they can realise their rights; and that they can have some redress to make sure that their rights are protected, promoted and respected by everybody in Wales, particularly in our public services. That isn't the case at the moment. All too often, older people are not given the opportunity to be consulted, for example, on huge things going on in their local communities. Usually, it's purely via web portals that people have the opportunity to look at consultation documents and respond to them. So, I think that there is a concern in that regard.

As Huw Irranca-Davies quite rightly pointed out—he spent time holding the older people's brief, and I wish Julie Morgan all the very best in taking this on—he knows, as well as I do, that when you go around speaking to older people, they are not aware of what their rights are. Young people are because of the success of the Rights of Children and Young Persons (Wales) Measure 2011, but older people have no idea. So, it's all very well saying they've got an older people's commissioner who can help them and deal with their complaints, but if they don't know what their entitlements are, they can't realise those entitlements and make a complaint when they feel that they're being breached. I'll take the intervention from Huw Irranca.

Huw Irranca-Davies (Labour, Ogmore)

I thank you, Darren, for taking the intervention. You make a very good point, and I agree with that absolutely. We don't know how the vote is going to go today, but could I ask him: if the vote was going—. If his proposal for a Bill isn't taken forward—and based on the offer to take forward not only what is within the spirit and the intent and the detail of his proposal, but also the wider rights agenda—would he, I ask in all reasonableness, be willing then to work with the Minister, with the Government, in order to accomplish that? Because I do actually see the bigger prize as well here. Whether it's on disabled persons' rights, older people's rights, children's rights—there's a huge agenda here going forward. I think that the Government probably—and the Minister has signalled—would welcome your involvement in taking that forward: a different means to the same ends.

Darren Millar (Conservative, Clwyd West)

I've already given a commitment to engage with the Government on that agenda. I'm a member of the cross-party group on human rights. I'm committed to human rights, and I want to further their cause all the way. I think that my concern about the approach being taken by the Government is that it's in its very early stages—it's embryonic. There's absolutely no hope whatsoever of us getting something onto the statute book by the end of this Assembly, whereas with my older people's Bill, there is. There's a lot of groundwork being done within Government, by the older people's commissioner and others on this agenda. We have the opportunity to get this through this Assembly by December 2020. That's the indication that I've had from the clerks supporting me with this Bill. Doing this does not preclude doing the other. There's still the opportunity to take a twin-track approach. We're always going to have unique arrangements for children and older people, by virtue of the fact that we have commissioners for those particular rights-based agendas. We don't for anything else in terms of human rights, but we do for children and older people. That's why I'm advocating this approach, and I very much hope that there will be some people on those Labour benches, on the Government benches, that will just think again before rejecting this proposal today.

Ann Jones (Labour, Vale of Clwyd)

Thank you. The proposal is to agree the motion. Does any Member object? [Objection.] Therefore, we defer voting under this item until voting time.

6. Member Debate under Standing Order 11.21(iv): Allied Steel and Wire Pensions

Ann Jones (Labour, Vale of Clwyd)

Item 6 on the agenda is the Member debate under Standing Order 11.21(iv) on Allied Steel and Wire pensions and I call on Bethan Sayed to move the motion. Bethan.

Bethan Sayed (Plaid Cymru, South Wales West)

Diolch. I'd like to first of all thank the campaigners, especially John Benson, who, despite years of fighting for their rights and basic fairness and justice, have not given up hope and have not caved in to Governments at Westminster that have either treated them with contempt or with basic ignorance and silence over the years. We don't want to bring this debate again to the Assembly. When I talked to somebody this morning, they said, 'Oh, that debate again. That issue again.' Well, the only reason we're bringing this debate here today is because things have not been rectified, things have not been sorted in relation to the Allied Steel workers’ pensions.

Bethan Sayed (Plaid Cymru, South Wales West)

So, this issue has been going on for many, many years. The workers at Allied Steel and Wire in Cardiff first found themselves facing a loss of their pensions in 2002. ASW was a big employer in Cardiff, and it’s easy to forget now, with the changes that have taken place in this city, how we did attract those big industrial employers. Some of the workers here today worked at ASW for 40 years prior to its collapse. They had paid into pensions that they assumed were going to be safe. They believed that they would be rewarded for their years of hard work with a retirement pension that would reflect their years of service, and they were wrong.

I understand that this is a debate that we've had before in this Assembly. In fact, I set up a cross-party group with many of you in this Chamber in the last Assembly term to try and grapple with this issue. And I also understand that this is not a devolved issue. I genuinely would hope that if it were a devolved issue, we would have corrected this injustice and that we would have done something very, very different indeed. But it isn’t, and the point of this debate here today is to try and work with the campaigners and to raise this up the political agenda again. I’ve said in numerous debates that we've had—be it on international affairs, be it on issues that are non-devolved—that we have to show moral leadership on these issues if we can’t make the political decisions here in Wales.

Now, when I was involved with the former Visteon pensions dispute—or Ford, as many of the campaigners at the time would have called it—I and others said that a pension was a salary deferred. It is not a cushy bonus, it is not a severance payment, it is not a golden parachute. It is a worker contribution deferred salary to ensure security and stability in old age. We all expect that. We all want that. In fact, that’s what we were debating in the previous debate here today, about how we want that respect when we are all older. But why do we not do it in this regard to ASW workers who deserve the right to have that pension? So, for people such as ASW pensioners, the Visteon workers, or those involved with Equitable Life and so many other companies who have lost part of their pensions, this is what we should call it; we should call it theft by those companies who take the well-earned salaries, the well-earned pensions out of the pockets of the people that they should have been supporting. And we should keep that in mind throughout this debate.

I think it’s worth going through the timeline, very briefly, of this campaign, so we can remind ourselves just how much of a tough slog it’s been for those campaigners. So, ASW collapsed and went into receivership in 2002. The majority of the workers were made redundant, and although the plant was acquired by the Spanish firm Celsa a year later, it was too late for many of those previously employed. It emerged during the course of talks between ASW, the then Welsh Assembly Government and the UK Government that there was a £21 million shortfall in the company pension funds. Despite a buyer being found for the facility, this did not include a return of guaranteed pension for workers made redundant. Eventually, most workers were offered around 40 per cent of their expected pension value—nothing at all close to what they deserved. So, a campaign was started, and many believed it had been successful when the then UK Labour Government announced the financial assistance scheme and, a year later, the pension protection fund.

Now, it’s easy to forget that, in 2002, the current system we have did not exist. At the time, there was a growing spectre of so-called wind-ups—workers no longer being paid the pensions they were promised and paid into based on length of service and their final salary at retirement, instead receiving whatever the schemes could afford to pay after the pensions of existing pensioners had been secured. The point of a wind-up was a sharp and immediate cost-cutting measure on the backs of workers, stealing from the workers, some of whom had paid into the pension schemes from many, many years. Tens of thousands of workers across the UK in various industries were affected in some way by closures, by companies and how they collapsed, and that was how their pensions were treated so disrespectfully.

So, the fact that the ASW workers’ strong and public campaign, backed by people such as Ros—now Baroness—Altmann, was successful in changing the law and introducing Government-backed pension security schemes is a huge achievement. Members here today, I know, will shudder to think of what might have happened to large numbers of Welsh workers had a scheme like the PPF not been set up, however imperfect that scheme is. But the ASW workers have not been given a fair share or fair treatment by successive UK Governments, despite the hard work of campaigners. So, the situation remains today that campaigners have not received anywhere close to the 90 per cent of the value of their pensions. In fact, the campaigners who are now in the FAS get no inflation indexation protection for their pre-1997 contributions, they get very little for post-1997 contributions, and have to suffer a payment cap also. The longer someone worked for this company, the worst position they are likely to find themselves in. There are people in this campaign group who gave 40 years of service to steelworking in Cardiff—and not just in Cardiff. There are people in Kent for whom this situation is just as real, for people who worked hard all their lives in good, skilled jobs with a good salary, to find, in their later years, what was one of financial worry. And I think this is an outrage. An outrage that was born in the original legislation and one that has not been corrected the UK Government.

Now, I am conscious of time and I'd like to close by reading a quote from John Benson who has been diligent in keeping in touch with me and other AMs in this room on this issue. I know that although I don't represent his region, pension justice is something that I care passionately about, although I'm not in pensionable age yet. Despite that fact, I've worked diligently, as hard as I possibly can, with this campaign and with the Visteon pensioners in the past to try and fight for the pensions that they deserve. And it's phenomenal being part of the Visteon campaign—people were just spending all of their time in retirement on campaigning as opposed to actually enjoying the fruit of their labour. So, this is what John said, and then I'll finish with this: 'Almost 17 people have passed away and they're still being robbed of the pensions the Governments encouraged them to save in. That retirement dream has been shattered by Governments' flawed legislation. Many of these decent, hardworking men and women, it must be said, have been inhumanely betrayed by successive Governments. They don't deserve to be treated so unfairly; they put their trust in Governments and that trust was betrayed.'

We have a duty to support and help those former ASW steelworks. I hope that we can do justice to their cause and continue to raise this issue on the highest levels of political engagement, make sure that action is taken, and support John and people like him.

Andrew RT Davies (Conservative, South Wales Central)

I welcome the opportunity to speak in this debate and, in particular, the initiative that the Presiding Officer did at the start of this Assembly to bring these formats of debates forward so that Members can bring issues like this, which aren't in the devolved competence, but do affect many of our constituents and we do have a view on it. And I do pay a special tribute to John and Phil who are up in the gallery this afternoon, and in particular the campaigners as well who have surrounded themselves in this campaign, because it is about justice and it is about natural justice here.

When I was looking into this issue over the last couple of days, refreshing my memory of the campaign, I read that the UK Government said that payments were following the legal requirements. Well, there's a moral requirement here, I have to say, and successive Governments have failed to live up to their moral obligations in this particular area.

Bethan, in her closing comments, said, 'I'm not a pensioner yet', and I don't mean this in a derogatory way in any shape or form, but we all think about what we want in our retirement, and many, if not all of us, try and put some form of provision in place, and the workers that are affected—by this shortfall that has happened, in one breath, if you want to be kind; robbery in another breath if you want to be brutally honest—have had their future taken away from them. The individuals concerned did what was right—they put a percentage of their income into a pot. That pot was, they thought, secure, and when they came to retirement age, that would have provided the creature comforts and the ability to have a retirement that they'd planned for all their working lives.

And across the workforce, some would have had more than others to lose, but each and every one of the workers at ASW, and many other operations across the United Kingdom, not just here in Wales, have had that retirement taken away from them. And there's an obligation on politicians, whatever walk they come from, and from whatever political party they come from, to actually live up to the moral obligation that we need to correct this injustice. And I believe passionately in this, because I've met the campaigners, and John in particular, and Phil, on several occasions and I just cannot see a logical argument that can be put back to them when you see the points that they make. And it's not right that people are having their pension eaten into because they do not have inflation protection built into the compensation package that was put in place. Inflation is a brutal enemy of retirement. Once you move on to that very fixed income of the pension that you have and you physically, obviously are in your—many people stay very active in later life, but it is a fact that you're not doing the same amount of work or having the same opportunities as when you were 20, 30 or 40, and your earning potential is constrained, and you're on that fixed income.

And so there is an obligation, I believe, for the UK Government to reopen this. And I know it's a Conservative Government up there today. It was a Conservative/Lib Dem Government before that, and it was a Labour Government before that. And I accept that in the early to mid 2000s, various remedies were put in place, but those remedies have come up short and have come up short in a big way, and it cannot be right that, because a period of time has passed, people in positions of influence and power believe that that time will allow this to be brushed under the carpet and washed away. It will not be allowed to be brushed away and it will not be allowed to be washed away, because, as I've said, the individuals concerned by this injustice did what was right and, as a society, we need to do what's right by them by giving back their pensions and that security that is required in later life.

We knew that these things were happening in the 1990s and the 1980s. We only need to look at what happened with the Robert Maxwell pension scandal that was going on at Mirror Group Newspapers. This wasn't something that was unknown, and at the time regulators and politicians didn't step in and correct it. Well, we now know where those anomalies existed. Safeguards have been built into the system, but those caught by the inadequacies of the previous system shouldn't be penalised in their retirement. And I wholeheartedly endorse the sentiments on the order paper today of this motion, and I very much look forward to continuing to campaign with the campaigners to make sure that we give them justice, that we give them their pension back—pensions that they paid into. It is their money, and they deserve it, and we will not allow the passage of time to allow this injustice just to fall away. And so I welcome working across parties in this Chamber to make sure that their voices are not forgotten, and I will work with colleagues, wherever they sit, to make sure that we get the changes to the scheme that are required.

Mick Antoniw (Labour, Pontypridd)

I want to speak in support of the Allied Steel and Wire workers, because they have a very just case. They are entitled to justice, and the campaign that they've been running is also one that reflects anomalies in the whole pension industry, going back to the early 1980s. And I go back to the 1980s—I mean, thank God at least then you at least had one baseline, which was the pensions directive from the European Union, and, of course, some of these protections we may actually lose in the future. I had a passing involvement as a trade union lawyer in, of course, the legal action on behalf of a community that went to the European Court, which was partly successful in the sense that the court recognised that the UK Government was in breach of its obligations but, of course, didn't impose a requirement for a system of compensation of 100 per cent, and that was the failure, and that was what subsequent regulation was meant to correct.

We need to go back also to the fact that this whole area of deregulation of the pension industry was a specific campaign by the insurance industry and an insurance industry that continues to have far too much and far too overbearing control and involvement in Government policies and particular current policies. And we have to remember also that it was the 1986 Act, under Margaret Thatcher, that resulted in that deregulation, and that deregulation—we need to think very carefully about what it actually did. It allowed companies to opt out of the obligation to provide occupational pensions. It allowed companies to take money out of surpluses of pensions, and it failed to provide for the risks that would arise in respect of companies becoming insolvent. And the reason those risks were disregarded was because it was an insurance industry that had the Government in its pocket. And we have to look, for example, at what happened to the Mineworkers' Pension Scheme, and of course there was a campaign ongoing with that with regard to the National Union of Mineworkers.

And what happened because of that deregulation, and because of the pit closures at the time, was miners were being told, 'There you are, you can take your pension funds out, you can now transfer them'—from what is probably one of the world's most successful pension funds—'and put them in private pension funds.' And this is the way the industry worked. Insurance representatives went round the individual miners and they said, 'Oh, no, no, put your money into this fund, it'll be much, much better', but what they didn't tell the miner was that, for the first five years, they'd be paying money to the actual financial services people. And then, after five years, when they would start accumulating some benefit, someone would come along and say, 'Oh, so-and-so has gone now, I think we need to review', and then they'd do the same thing again. So, the miners were being continually robbed. And there were many other groups of workers who were in that same position. And, in fact, there was an assessment done by professional pension advisers—these are the professional advisers—69 per cent of them basically said that one of the consequences of Margaret Thatcher's deregulation was that she not only failed to see the effect of her regulations on pension schemes, but how much at risk members of these schemes would be in the event of the firms going into liquidation, and that is exactly what happened.

Now, various measures were put in place to try and assist since then, but what is very clear is we have a quagmire of regulations, and we now have whole groups of people where a surplus is being taken out of pensions when it suits either the employer, the Government, or a particular industry, and then, when there are subsequent gaps in there, it is the workers, the people who pay in their pensions over all those many years, who then actually suffer. So, we actually have—. We have the Allied Steel and Wire workers, many of whom are now massively reduced in terms of the amount of pension they are entitled to by virtue of their contributions. We have the Women Against State Pension Inequality, where Government changed regulations and suddenly you have people now having to work another five, six, seven years because of changes in terms of the pensions. And we have a Government taking billions of pounds out of the most successful workers' pension scheme in the world, the mineworkers pension scheme, and the Government refusing to negotiate over a rearrangement—not an abolition of those arrangements, but a rearrangement.

So, I support this because not only are the ASW workers right, but there is a need for a wholesale review of what has been happening with pensions, what continues to happen—the legislation coming through now restricting the rights of people to compensation in favour of the insurance industry, an insurance industry that benefits from every piece of legislation, and there is no evidence of people actually benefiting from that. And the fact that we have a Government that is in the pocket of the insurance industry I think is really very, very worrying. So, I think a royal commission on pensions, a review of pensions—something that basically sets the objective of restoring justice—but also re-establishing a proper pension scheme so that, when workers pay into those pension schemes, they're entitled to what they paid in when they get to the entitlement to a pension.

David Lloyd (Plaid Cymru, South Wales West)

It's a pleasure to take part in this debate, although I wish this debate wasn't necessary. Some of us have been Members of this National Assembly for a very long time—since day one, in fact—as was my former Plaid Cymru colleague Owen John Thomas, who was strident in his support for the Allied Steel and Wire pension campaigners all along.

In 2003—that's 16 years ago—Plaid Cymru secured a minority party debate in Tŷ Hywel— remember; we were in the old building then—on the scandal of what had happened to pensions of Allied Steel and Wire. He said, in that debate:

'This is a perfect opportunity for this Labour Government to demonstrate its determination to give workers a fair deal. It was Tory legislation, introduced by Margaret Thatcher, that caused this mess by introducing rules that allow companies to pay off all other creditors before honouring their pension commitments when the company was wound up.'

That was a long time ago and we're still here. The Government-backed pension security scheme was a significant achievement at the time, and this legislation was apparently a progressive change by a Labour Government. It has not turned out that way, and, for years, the Blair and Brown Governments did absolutely nothing to correct the injustices faced by those in the financial assistance scheme. In fact, Baroness Ros Altmann left the Labour Party because of this issue in 2007, which she called 'a scandal'. There was only marginal improvement in the financial assistance scheme after the Government at the time was taken to court, after appealing after being found guilty by the ombudsman of misleading pensioners. The previous Labour Government's treatment of pensioners was not a strong mark of credit for them. The campaign for plain English slammed the Government at the time for its duplicity. The Conservatives came to power in 2010 with the expectation that they would correct the problems in the law when the financial assistance scheme was set up. In fact, they did nothing but offer sympathy. They appointed Baroness Altmann to be a pensions Minister, but would not provide restitution to this campaign and others in the financial assistance scheme. The worrying thing is that this current UK Government has not done anything to ensure the long-term health of private pensions.

The Allied Steel and Wire campaigners are not demanding extras; they simply want fairness. They want their pre-1997 contributions inflation-proofed. They want those in the financial assistance scheme to be treated with the same level of fairness and protection as those in the pension protection fund, and a removal of payment caps and restitution so that they can have what was taken from them returned. As others have said—. We've had some pretty powerful contributions this afternoon: Bethan, great in opening the debate; Andrew R.T. and Mick, tremendous. There are still powerful emotions out there about this, and, as Bethan said, quoting many down the years, a pension contribution is not a bonus at the end of work, it is a deferred part of someone's salary; to take it is theft.

Plaid Cymru's been fighting for justice for these workers and others for years, as we've heard. Those were the comments of Owen John Thomas in 2003. He was still at it in 2007, and I quote—in a debate then, Owen John, still around:

'The UK Government must make changes to the Financial Assistance Scheme so that former ASW workers receive what they would have been entitled to. There is a terrible injustice particularly for those who are under 50 but may have worked up to 35 years at the steelworks, but will miss out on any financial assistance.'

That was 12 years ago. That, in itself, was five years after this issue first arose, and Allied Steel and Wire, a huge factory, only a stone's throw from here—. What can we do about it? Diolch yn fawr.

Ann Jones (Labour, Vale of Clwyd)

Thank you. I call on the Minister for Finance and the Trefnydd to speak to the debate—Rebecca Evans.

Rebecca Evans (Labour, Gower)

Thank you. I'd like to thank all Members who have brought forward this important issue to the floor of the Assembly today, and for giving that opportunity to give voice to the concerns of ASW pensioners. I will say from the outset that ASW pensioners have been subject to what is a really grave injustice. People have worked hard, they've paid in, they've planned for their futures, they did the right thing, and, through no fault of their own, they've found that they are denied what they could just reasonably have expected.

Members will be aware, of course, as we've heard, that pension matters are not devolved to Wales, but, nonetheless, we support the former ASW employees in their campaign for pension reinstatement. The Welsh Government is pleased to vote in favour of this cross-party motion today and we hope that the Assembly will send a clear and unanimous message to the UK Government.

From the outset, the Welsh Government has been consistent in its support for ASW employees prior to and following the closure of the Cardiff works in 2002. Our support included extensive activity around the closure of ASW, with a strong personal involvement by the then First Minister, including the chairing of meetings with ASW's administrators and employee representatives, plus separate meetings with the independent trustees of the ASW pension schemes to discuss issues raised by members; practical support to ASW's administrators in seeking interested parties for the Cardiff works as a going concern, leading to the successful reopening of the works by Celsa in 2003; and Welsh Ministers making numerous representations to the UK Government on behalf of all ASW pension scheme members.

Welsh Ministers first wrote to the UK Government Ministers responsible for pension matters in August 2002 to highlight the circumstances of the former ASW employees and to ask that all avenues of potential support and assistance within the pensions and employment regime be fully explored. In June 2003, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions announced a proposal for the pensions protection fund—the PPF, which we've heard of in this debate—to protect accrued pension rights for defined benefit schemes that began to wind up after April 2005. The Welsh Government subsequently pressed the UK Government to seriously consider retrospective arrangements to enable pension schemes like ASW's to be eligible for inclusion.

Working closely with the independent trustees of the ASW pension schemes and the democratically elected representatives of the former ASW workforce, the Welsh Government continued to support the case for the pension scheme members through correspondence and meetings with UK Government Ministers responsible for pension matters.

Welsh Ministers also met with former ASW employees to hear their concerns first hand. The Welsh Government welcomed the May 2004 announcement by the pensions Secretary of an amendment to the Pensions Bill to provide for the financial assistance scheme, the FAS. The FAS was intended to provide assistance to members of pension schemes where the employer became insolvent before the establishment of the PPF.

The Welsh Government also welcomed the inclusion of the ASW pension scheme into the FAS in October 2005. However, it became apparent that the financial assistance scheme would benefit only a very small percentage of ASW pension scheme members. At the time, the scheme was restricted to offering assistance to qualifying members within three years of their scheme's normal retirement age. They would receive top-ups to around 80 per cent of their expected pension, paid from the age of 65 regardless of scheme retirement age, and this was subject to a cap of £12,000. The Welsh Government pressed the UK Government for improvements to the FAS, including provision for those who were more than three years from retirement age, of which there were many within the ASW scheme.

There were also calls to reassess the level of funding for the FAS. Extensions to the financial assistance scheme were announced by the UK Government in 2006 and 2007. The most notable was the December 2007 announcement that all FAS members would receive 90 per cent of their accrued pension at the date of commencement of wind-up, subject to a cap, which at the time was £26,000, and, as of April 2018, is now £35,256. Assistance would also be paid from the scheme's normal retirement age, subject to a lower age limit of 60.

I think what all this shows is that sustained lobbying over the long term by ASW employees and others has led to incremental improvements, which is why we will not give up and we will not stop making the case. And I would like to recognise—.

Andrew RT Davies (Conservative, South Wales Central)

I'm grateful to the Minister for taking an intervention. I might be reading this wrong, but I think this motion will pass with unanimous support this afternoon. I appreciate these votes don't tend to get whipped—these Members' debates don't—so if the vote does pass with unanimous approval—and the Government have indicated their support—will you commit as a Minister to raise this with the Chief Secretary to the Treasury in London when you next meet her, and, in particular, the Department of Work and Pensions, from a Government point of view? Because, as you're quite rightly identifying, extensive lobbying and a continuation of the campaign has borne fruit in the past, and we can't just let this debate be a 'noted' in the minutes of the Assembly.

Rebecca Evans (Labour, Gower)

No, you're absolutely right, and you pre-empted my final paragraph of my speech this afternoon. But, before I do get to that point, I would like to recognise the cross-party support that there has been for this issue across the years, and recognise, for example, the letter that was signed by leaders of all four parties within the Assembly at the time in 2012, to mark what was 10 years after ASW went into administration.

So, although the position for FAS members has improved from the early days of that scheme, it is still the case that for many people, including former ASW employees, significant shortcomings do remain in relation to the support that is provided.

So, to close, on behalf of those affected, the Welsh Government does, once more, urge the UK Government to reconsider the concerns raised by financial assistance scheme members and their representatives to achieve a rightful and positive outcome. And I am pleased to give that commitment today that I will raise this matter directly with the Chief Secretary to the Treasury when we meet in early February, and I will certainly reflect all of the comments that we've had within this debate this afternoon.