Senedd Cymru (Welsh Parliament), 23 October 2019

292 contributions from 46 members. The official report.

Elin Jones (Plaid Cymru, Ceredigion)

I call Members to order.

1. Questions to the Minister for Education

Elin Jones (Plaid Cymru, Ceredigion)

The first item on our agenda this afternoon is questions to the Minister for Education, and the first question is from Alun Davies.

Alun Davies (Labour, Blaenau Gwent)

1. What action is the Welsh Government taking to support mental health provision in schools? OAQ54591

Kirsty Williams (Liberal Democrat, Brecon and Radnorshire)

Thank you, Alun. Today I launched the formal consultation on an updated draft of the school and community-based counselling operating toolkit. This is an integral part of our work to embed a whole-school approach to emotional well-being, led jointly by the Minister for health and myself.

Alun Davies (Labour, Blaenau Gwent)

I'm grateful to you for that, Minister. You will remember a few weeks ago, I was very grateful to you, spending time at my old school, of course, of Tredegar comprehensive. During that visit you spent some time talking with the school council, and you will remember that the thrust of their questions to you were on issues around well-being and mental health. And I thought the conversation you had with the school council was a very good, strong and powerful conversation, and they, I'm sure, will welcome the statement that you made earlier today. But how can you build on this and make a more holistic approach, create a more holistic approach, to ensuring that the mental health and well-being of young people and children in school continues to be a priority both for the schools and for this Government?

Kirsty Williams (Liberal Democrat, Brecon and Radnorshire)

Well, thank you, Alun. I was very pleased to visit Tredegar comprehensive with you, although slightly disappointed not to see your photograph on the wall, amongst other notable ex-pupils of the school. [Laughter.] But I have to say the conversations that I had with the pupils at Tredegar are ones that I have with school pupils constantly. I've yet to go to a school council meeting where the issue of mental health and well-being isn't at the top of the agenda. And we are, of course, aware that the Youth Parliament regards mental health and well-being as one of its priorities for its term. What's important is that this Government is investing, in this year alone, £2.5 million to embed activity across a whole range of whole-school approaches, including additional resources to cut waiting times for school counselling appointments. And, as a Government, we are determined to work with schools, and those in the middle tier who support our schools, to ensure that mental health and well-being is indeed taken as not just an element of the curriculum, but underpins a culture of how education operates in our country.

Mohammad Asghar (Conservative, South Wales East)

Minister, a survey by the mental health charity Mind Cymru of over 3,000 young people aged between 11 and 19 found that one in seven young people described their mental health as either poor or very poor. Almost half of the young people surveyed said that they would not know where to go to access support within their schools, and more than half did not even feel confident approaching a teacher or other school staff if they needed help. Minister, what is your response to Mind Cymru's call that mental health and well-being be made a statutory part of the national curriculum for all learners in schools in Wales?

Kirsty Williams (Liberal Democrat, Brecon and Radnorshire)

Well, Oscar, it's disappointing to hear those statistics because for the academic year 2017-18, over 11,000 young people benefited from the school counselling service. But we do know that, for some young people, there are barriers to accessing that service. That's why we are, as I said, putting new resources forward to local authorities to look at ways in which we can address more collaborative arrangements with other counselling providers rather than just traditional services, for instance, online services, which might make it easier for some children to address and to raise problems that they're experiencing.

With regard to the new curriculum, one of the six areas of learning and experience will be health and well-being, and there will be ample opportunity, and indeed an expectation, that that area of learning and experience will afford teachers and other professionals working alongside our schools to deliver really effective lessons in mental health and well-being, including encouraging a habit of help-seeking behaviour if people feel that they need to seek help.

Leanne Wood (Plaid Cymru, Rhondda)

As you may be aware, I've been looking recently at the issue of neurodevelopmental conditions, and I'm discovering that many children with neurodevelopmental conditions who are on the autism spectrum as well get referred to mental health services—to child and adolescent mental health services. Sometimes there is a co-occurring mental health problem, but often other specialist services are required. So, do you have a policy on screening for neurodevelopmental conditions in schools? Do you think it would make sense to screen pupils who present with serious mental health conditions, or substance use problems, children who are excluded, or at risk of being excluded, screening them for neurodevelopmental conditions? Because there are treatments available, and, for some people, they are very, very effective. But many of our kids who have this need are not having this need being met. They're not getting the screening, they're not getting the right diagnosis, and therefore they're not getting the treatment. Is there something you can do about this?

Kirsty Williams (Liberal Democrat, Brecon and Radnorshire)

Well, I think the first aspect to respond appropriately to the needs of those children is to ensure that their particular learning needs are identified early in their school career. And that's why this Government is spending resources on ensuring that more and more of our professionals are provided with training to spot signs of a range of different factors that could affect a child's well-being and their ability to learn, and to be able to seek help from other professionals, if appropriate, to meet those children's individual learning needs. But I'm happy to meet with the Member to discuss the use of screening tools and whether there is a strong evidence base that that will make a difference.

Paul Davies (Conservative, Preseli Pembrokeshire)

2. Will the Minister make a statement on secondary school budgets in Pembrokeshire? OAQ54562

Kirsty Williams (Liberal Democrat, Brecon and Radnorshire)

As at 31 March 2019, nine secondary schools in Pembrokeshire carried forward a total surplus of £455,000, and one secondary school carried forward a deficit of £120,000. Local authorities are responsible for schools funding and should closely monitor individual schools' budgets.

Paul Davies (Conservative, Preseli Pembrokeshire)

Minister, in this forthcoming financial year, all of the secondary schools in Pembrokeshire are projecting deficit budgets, and the Pembrokeshire association of secondary headteachers has made it clear that this will result in reducing the number of teaching staff, reducing the breadth of the curriculum offered, and a need to increase the number of pupils in classes to enable fewer teachers to deliver to the curriculum. As a large part of the funding for schools comes from the unhypothecated funding local authorities receive from the Welsh Government in the local government settlement, it's vitally important therefore that any money that is passed on to local authorities is used for the purpose it's given and reaches front-line services. Given the importance of ensuring any and all additional funding reaches front-line services in Pembrokeshire—and, indeed, throughout Wales—can you tell us how the Welsh Government is ensuring that any funding for education that's passed on to local authorities is used for that specific purpose?

Kirsty Williams (Liberal Democrat, Brecon and Radnorshire)

Well, the Member is absolutely right to identify the way in which the vast majority of resources that fund our schools is a matter for local authorities. I recently met with the finance distribution sub-group to discuss these issues, as well as the directors of education and the education portfolios, across the 22 local authorities, about my desire to see as much money as possible getting to the front line to support individual schools' budgets. We, of course, have a role to play in that, which is why we announced yesterday an additional £12.8 million, available in-year to help to support the cost of the teachers' pay rise this year. And our expectation is that all that money will go directly to front-line school budgets.

Elin Jones (Plaid Cymru, Ceredigion)

Questions now from the party spokespeople. The Plaid Cymru spokesperson, Bethan Sayed.

Bethan Sayed (Plaid Cymru, South Wales West)

Diolch. Minister, the £2 million your Government announced earlier this year for mental health initiatives in university was much needed and welcomed. And you told me in July that this funding was to develop a whole-school approach that would support staff as well as students. But, at the same time, I believe you gave ColegauCymru just £175,000 for the same purpose, with regard to implementing this in further education colleges, despite there being more students in further education than higher education in Wales. How are you ensuring that students who are accessing further education are able to get the same level of support with regard to this particular mental health initiative?

Kirsty Williams (Liberal Democrat, Brecon and Radnorshire)

The Member is absolutely right—what we're trying to develop in Welsh Government is a whole-system approach to well-being and mental health. In answer to the first questions, you've heard about work we are undertaking in schools. But, obviously, we need to continue that support as individuals make their journey through the education system. Despite constraints on the budget, I am pleased that we were able to make an allocation, both to the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales and to ColegauCymru. Last week, I met with members of ColegauCymru to discuss the need for ongoing support for mental health for FE students, and those discussions also are taking place within Government.

Bethan Sayed (Plaid Cymru, South Wales West)

Okay, and thank you for that update. When you do have more information, it would be useful to share that, because, of course, I know that the same challenges face FE students and their staff, as they do in HE.

Obviously, one of the reasons universities put forward or campaigned for money for mental health initiatives was due to the work that the National Union of Students did in part of that process, working with the Government on it. And I believe student unions are integral to the life of a university. I'm a former sabbatical officer myself at Aberystwyth University, so I know and I saw and I implemented those particular policies. But many in FE are still not experiencing that student voice or are not able to access that student voice as much as their higher education peers. And while we are going to be reducing the vote to 16—we agree on this—they will need to have access to student support services just as people who are in higher education do. So, could you tell me a bit more about what you potentially could do to ensure that there is more parity of esteem where there can be an enhancement of the student voice in further education institutions?

Kirsty Williams (Liberal Democrat, Brecon and Radnorshire)

Student voice is important at all levels of education, and what we seek to do is increase the ability for students to shape their institutions, whether that be at schools, universities or FE. I'm not so pessimistic as the Member is about the contribution that the NUS members are making to our FE. I was recently at the Graig campus at Coleg Sir Gâr in Llanelli, where we had a very productive meeting with the members of the students' union there, who are very much working in partnership with the senior management team of that college to address matters of concern to the student body in that college, and where, for instance, a very effective campaign on mental health and well-being and a very effective campaign on period poverty and period dignity within the entirety of the campuses that make up that college—. Clearly, we will want to take the opportunity of the post-compulsory education and training Bill to reinforce the importance of student voice in all aspects of post-compulsory education and training.

Bethan Sayed (Plaid Cymru, South Wales West)

Thank you for that. Just to clarify, I wasn't saying that they weren't doing their jobs effectively; I was saying they've approached me actually, saying, 'Look, we know we're doing work in further education, but we are struggling because of the patchiness of that', and so it's about how they can be helped to be more effective when they go into those institutions, not to say that they're not trying where they are having access to progressive general managers who want to try and help them.

My final question is with regard to another matter in relation to—. I raised with you institutional racism in higher education back in July, and I recently met with Cardiff University—this week—and it was a really constructive discussion, about you assuring me that there would be strategic equality plans setting out how they would be able to ensure opportunity for students with protected characteristics and these plans would make changes in terms of how people can take individual incidents of racial harassment or bullying through those institutions.

Today, you may have seen that the Equality and Human Rights Commission report has revealed that 13 per cent of students questioned had experienced racial harassment, rising to 24 per cent—almost a quarter—of students from minority ethnic backgrounds. But universities are often unaware of the true extent of the problem on these campuses, and there are huge discrepancies between the proportion of students experiencing incidents, according to the report, and the number recorded by the universities. What assurances can you give me today that those strategic plans that the universities are expected to do are going to change this? What are you doing to work with the sector to ensure that those voices are heard and that they feel that they're being listened to in any structure? They may not get to a point of reporting it formally, but they want to get to a point where they are believed and they are heard and where they can be engaged in a constructive process for the future of the university system.

Kirsty Williams (Liberal Democrat, Brecon and Radnorshire)

I have indeed seen the report. It's an important piece of work, although it is very depressing reading. Once again we have to remind ourselves that Wales is not immune from issues of racism. More than simply seeing the report, I met with the Equality and Human Rights Commission recently, ahead of its publication, to have an early discussion with them about their expectations of what more Welsh Government can do. This morning, I found myself at Cardiff University and took the opportunity of meeting with representatives of HEFCW and the vast majority of Welsh vice-chancellors, who were also at the same meeting to raise this report, and I can assure the Member, and indeed all Members here, that I, Universities Wales and the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales will want to consider very carefully the recommendations of this report and will want to act on them. One way in which I can do that is including reference in my next remit letter of my expectations on universities and HEFCW to address this point, which I intend to do.

Elin Jones (Plaid Cymru, Ceredigion)

Conservative spokesperson, Mohammad Asghar.

Mohammad Asghar (Conservative, South Wales East)

Thank you, Madam Presiding Officer. Minister, last year, an independent panel claimed that the issue of teachers' workloads would only be addressed by looking at the wider structure of schooling. They pointed out that the way our schools work—their routines, patterns and systems—have more or less been unchanged since schooling for every child began in Victorian times. Minister, have you seen this report, and what is your response to its call for a commission to be set up to look at whether changing the system of school days, terms and holidays would lead to changes that would relieve the pressure on teaching staff?

Kirsty Williams (Liberal Democrat, Brecon and Radnorshire)

I have to say, Presiding Officer, it would be helpful if the Member could keep up. That commission was established several months ago under the chairmanship of Mick Waters. It includes headteachers from Wales and school governors from Wales as well as independent experts outside the Welsh education system.

Mohammad Asghar (Conservative, South Wales East)

The National Foundation for Educational Research says that there is an unmet demand from secondary teachers or secondary school teachers wanting to reduce or alter their hours. They estimate that one in six teachers would like to reduce their hours and urge secondary school leaders to do more to accommodate teachers who want to work part-time or flexibly. Minister, can I ask what representations you have received on this matter and what guidance you have issued to schools with regard to part-time and flexible working, the lack of which is an important factor in some teachers leaving the profession in Wales?

Kirsty Williams (Liberal Democrat, Brecon and Radnorshire)

I've not received any representation from the teaching unions about the specifics that the Member mentions around part-time and flexible working, although workload issues in general are a standing item on the agenda every time I meet with the teaching unions. The flexibility that the Member just highlighted is indeed one of the things that the re-imagining the school day commission is actively looking at and to see whether there is a real appetite for change in this regard.

Elin Jones (Plaid Cymru, Ceredigion)

Carry on, Mohammad Asghar.

Mohammad Asghar (Conservative, South Wales East)

Thank you. Data from the annual school census shows that there has been a 7.5 per cent cut to primary-school support staff since 2014 and 2015. There are more than 1,000 fewer standard teaching assistants and 300 special needs support staff working in Welsh primary schools compared to four years ago.

Last week, Wales Online reported that the headteachers were calling on the Welsh Government to provide more cash directly to schools, as the cuts have reached unsustainable levels and schools are at breaking point. Minister, when will you take action to address the crisis in school funding in Wales? As I just read this morning, the real-term funding cuts from 2010 to 2018 are nearly an 8 per cent reduction in funding for primary schools, which is totally not giving the service to schools and the teachers at the same time.

Kirsty Williams (Liberal Democrat, Brecon and Radnorshire)

My ability to respond positively to those issues, of course, would be helped immensely if we were to see an end to austerity originating out of the Member's own party and their Government in Westminster. Later on this afternoon, we will be able to have an extended debate on the work of the Children, Young People and Education Committee around the issue of school funding. I am determined, in the constraints of the money available to this Welsh Government, to do all I can to get as much money to the front line as possible.

Neil McEvoy (Independent, South Wales Central)

3. Will the Minister provide an update on educational funding per pupil in Wales? OAQ54583

Kirsty Williams (Liberal Democrat, Brecon and Radnorshire)

According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies analysis, spending per pupil in Wales is just below £6,000 on average. However, this varies considerably between local authorities, reflecting differences in deprivation and sparsity, as well as choices made by individual local authorities in line with their responsibilities for setting school budgets.

Neil McEvoy (Independent, South Wales Central)

Minister, in the last 10 years, pupil spending per pupil has fallen £500, which is almost 10 per cent. Schools are really struggling financially. They're in a position where they're going to have to be laying staff off. So, as the Minister for Education in Wales, with that backdrop and with that crisis in funding, how can you justify your Government's position and what are you going to do about the problem?

Kirsty Williams (Liberal Democrat, Brecon and Radnorshire)

As I have just explained to Mohammad Asghar, later on this afternoon we will have an opportunity to debate the findings of the CYPE report. I don't want to pre-empt that debate, but the Member will be aware that I've accepted all the recommendations of that report, including its main recommendation, which is to establish an independent review into education funding in Wales, examining the role of the Welsh Government, the middle tier, the local authorities, who have the main responsibility for funding schools, and how we can ensure that we know that enough funding is getting into our education system and that, in the way in which that money is spent, it is used adequately.

Suzy Davies (Conservative, South Wales West)

Minister, of course, the amount per pupil goes up marginally every time there's an announcement of a rise in teachers' pay and pensions. I was very grateful to you for your statement yesterday. I wonder whether you can just confirm that the £12.8 million that you mentioned in that statement is part of the £14 million mentioned last year, or whether it's coming from a completely different source. I'm sure you'll agree that the £195 million announced from the UK Government in the spending round will actually make this easier, going forward, as well, particularly as teachers' pay has now been devolved.

I just want to go back to the question Paul Davies raised with you. You, of course, have no control over this money once it hits the revenue support grant. I'm wondering what steps you will take against councils who don't actually pass this money on to schools, particularly as there's a risk that if they don't do so they will continue to lose teachers, let alone see schools affected by the wider points that, actually, Neil McEvoy was making.

Kirsty Williams (Liberal Democrat, Brecon and Radnorshire)

Okay. So, the money that was announced yesterday, the £12.8 million in-year to support local authorities with the costs of implementing the teachers' pay rise, is new money, in addition, being made available by my colleague the finance Minister. It should be said that we have received not a single penny of consequentials from the Westminster Government to pay for the teachers' pay rise, because in England it has been paid out of a £50 million underspend within that departmental budget. Going forward, I and the Minister for local government have had conversations with colleagues in local government about the need to spend this additional money on its intended purposes, i.e. support for teachers' pay. My understanding is that both of us have received assurances from local authorities that that money will be spent for that purpose.

Mike Hedges (Labour, Swansea East)

I believe education needs a greater proportion of the Welsh budget, and that a highly educated workforce is the best economic development tool we can have. On the additional money announced for the teachers' pay award, which you announced yesterday, is it going to be distributed via the funding formula to local authorities and then on to schools, which will produce winners and losers, or allocated to schools to meet the increased costs on a cost basis? It does make a huge difference which way you do it, because if you do it by just putting it in the formula, you'll have winners and losers amongst local authorities and winners and losers amongst schools.

Kirsty Williams (Liberal Democrat, Brecon and Radnorshire)

I agree with you, Mike, with regard to the importance of investing in education. It is an investment; it's not a cost. If we want to develop the high skills that we will need for a successful economy in the future, the best thing that we can do is invest in our children and in those who work with them every day. The allocation is agreed between us and the local authorities, and will be done on the basis of their fair share of that additional £12.8 million that we've been able to make available to them.

David Melding (Conservative, South Wales Central)

4. What action is the Welsh Government taking to inform and educate young people about homelessness through the education system? OAQ54595

Kirsty Williams (Liberal Democrat, Brecon and Radnorshire)

Thank you very much. Preventing homelessness requires a holistic approach across all public services. However, within education, the youth service is playing a key role in tackling and preventing homelessness. This is supported through our wider education reform, including our new curriculum and the introduction of a whole-school approach to mental health and well-being.

David Melding (Conservative, South Wales Central)

Thank you for that encouraging answer. I'm sure you'll be encouraged by the Youth Parliament also calling for a greater focus on skills in our educational system. The skill of living, the skill of keeping a tenancy going, and the skill of knowing where to go for help when things break down is an essential one, I would say. In those classes that promote citizenship, social awareness and health and well-being, as you referred to, I really do think we need to focus on this great scourge, because one of the worst things that can happen to you is that you're homeless or, indeed, end up on the streets as a rough-sleeper. I think this is where we need to start to tackle the problem, just making people more aware of what to do, and schools and colleges have a great part to play here.

Kirsty Williams (Liberal Democrat, Brecon and Radnorshire)

I couldn't agree with you more, David; I'm sure all of us with an interest in these issues will have been impressed by the strength of the call from members of our Youth Parliament for reform of the education system, and the need to balance their education system, yes, with subject knowledge and qualifications, but also with those essential skills that they feel they need to be the successful adults that they want to be when they leave school. And I look forward to joining with members of the Youth Parliament on Friday of this week to discuss the contents of that report, and how our reform journey can respond as positively as possible to that call from young people themselves about what they see to be the current deficit in the education model that we have.

We also know, David, that the warning signs of potentially becoming NEET are also a good indicator of a warning sign of a young person that is in danger of becoming homeless. So, there is work that we need to do within schools about ensuring that children are participating in school, attending, and not in danger of dropping out, because that is a very good warning sign to us that they potentially could go on to be homeless. So, there are many things, as I said, that we're doing at the moment, including additional investment, specifically in the youth service, to work alongside schools and young people on a preventing homelessness agenda, which I think will deliver real benefits for children and young people, as well as our wider curriculum reform and the opportunity that affords us to address the issues of skills.

Leanne Wood (Plaid Cymru, Rhondda)

Like austerity, homelessness is a political choice; it's a political choice made by politicians and by Government, and some people are of the view that homeless people themselves choose to be in that predicament, which is obviously complete rubbish. But that view is reinforced by authorities who clear homeless people out of the way, remove their belongings when they want to, and treat people generally with very little understanding and empathy. The only way to change attitudes is through education, and one of the best ways to educate is through direct experience. So, how can homeless people's direct experience help to inform young people to learn about this social disease, and do you think that links with direct experience will help people to become more sympathetic?

Kirsty Williams (Liberal Democrat, Brecon and Radnorshire)

First of all, Leanne, can I say I have never believed, and I will never believe, that homelessness is a choice? It is the result of a set of circumstances that many of us in this Chamber hopefully will never know, but all of us could potentially be. A critical illness, a relationship breakdown, a drug or alcohol misuse problem can lead to this, so we should be very careful when we make those kinds of accusations and assertions about what leads to homelessness. It can happen to everybody regardless of where their starting position in life is, but we do know there are some people who are potentially more vulnerable to homelessness. And you're right that education can be a powerful tool in preventing homelessness, but also developing understanding of that problem for people who experience it.

There is a reason why in our new curriculum we talk about areas of learning and experience, because my expectation of the curriculum is that it will afford the space in the school day for children to exactly experience what you have talked about—to be able to meet with people and to discuss with people who have that direct experience of what it is to live without a secure home, what it is to live out on the streets. And I believe our new curriculum creates that space and the expectation that we can work with voluntary organisations, organisations of survivors of all types of issues, that we can work together in our schools to deliver that broad education that our Youth Parliament is calling upon us to do.

Andrew RT Davies (Conservative, South Wales Central)

5. What discussions has the Minister had with the Minister for Finance and Trefnydd on ensuring that Welsh education bodies receive adequate funding, ahead of the Welsh Government's budget being announced? OAQ54563

Kirsty Williams (Liberal Democrat, Brecon and Radnorshire)

Andrew, I continue to have discussions with the Minister for finance to ensure that the budget settlement for education is sufficient to support delivery of our priorities. This includes ensuring that our education bodies receive adequate funding.

Andrew RT Davies (Conservative, South Wales Central)

Thank you for that answer, Minister. I've had correspondence with the headteacher and chairman of governors from Evenlode Primary School in Penarth who have highlighted the real difficult and challenging financial environment they and many other schools face across Wales. Hopefully, there will be consequentials flowing from the announcements made in Westminster, and some of those consequentials, obviously, are directly in your field of education. Are you confident that those consequentials, when the Welsh Government makes its decisions, will find themselves in the education budget so that the shortage of teachers that are available to fill many of the key posts that primary schools need to fill will be there and the budgets will be there to pay them? The evidence that they provided me has shown that across Wales there are nearly 1,300 extra pupils but there are 278 fewer full-time equivalent teachers and 533 fewer full-time equivalent teaching support staff. So, obviously, if the budget is there, then schools can go out and obviously make these employment choices. So, can we have an assurance that those consequentials will find their way into your budget lines?

Kirsty Williams (Liberal Democrat, Brecon and Radnorshire)

As I said in answer to earlier questions, Andrew, we are working across Government to prioritise front-line services, whether that be education, social services or the range of other public services that the members of the public expect this Welsh Government to deliver. The vast majority of education funding does not come from the education department. It comes, as was identified by your leader earlier on in questions, via the revenue support grant for local government. We will do everything that we can to ensure both education and local government get a great deal in this budget.

Jack Sargeant (Labour, Alyn and Deeside)

Thank you, Andrew, for raising this very important question. Like Andrew R.T. Davies, I too have had many talks with local high schools and primary schools but also with the local authority as well, and I welcome the announcement made yesterday, and that was actually my line of questioning to that. So, I welcome that and thank you, Minister, but can you just reassure the Assembly that those cross-Cabinet conversations will continue over the next few years? It's clearly uncertain and worrying times for local authorities and school providers.

Kirsty Williams (Liberal Democrat, Brecon and Radnorshire)

Presiding Officer, can I thank Jack Sargeant for his welcome of the additional resources that we've been able to make available to help cover the costs of teachers' pay rises? And, yes, I absolutely can confirm that those discussions, on a cross-Cabinet basis, will continue and there is a determination across the entirety of Welsh Government to prioritise front-line spending on those public services that mean the most to our constituents.

Lynne Neagle (Labour, Torfaen)

6. How is the Minister ensuring that the new guidance on talking about suicide is implemented in all schools in Wales? OAQ54602

Kirsty Williams (Liberal Democrat, Brecon and Radnorshire)

Thank you, Lynne. As you know, we launched together on 10 September the new guidance and we will continue to work with partners, including the national advisory group, to ensure that it is promoted extensively amongst professionals, not just in schools but more widely across the system. And as part of our whole-school approach, we will consider how best to monitor its implementation, take-up and impact.

Lynne Neagle (Labour, Torfaen)

Thank you, Minister. I was delighted to join you at the launch and also to welcome the guidance, but, as I said, of course, it is a first step. It's excellent guidance prepared by Professor Ann John, but it will only be as good as the implementation. I wondered, too, whether you were aware of guidance issued this week by Public Health England, which stated that a single suicide in a school should be treated as a potential cluster because of the higher risk to young people. Would you agree with me that that emphasises just how urgent it is that where there has been a suicide in a school, that that school embraces proper postvention measures, such as the Step by Step programme, which is so successful with the Samaritans?

Kirsty Williams (Liberal Democrat, Brecon and Radnorshire)

Yes. I am very well aware of the report that the Member refers to but the Member is also right in saying that the publication of our guidance is only the first step of the process. We will need to ensure, via the ministerial task and finish group, of which Lynne Neagle is a member, to develop robust implementation and monitoring systems, but it is also my intention to co-produce further resources with Professor Ann John and the expert group that sits around her, with a specific emphasis on making resources available for young people themselves. What we've made available in September of this year is very much a resource aimed at professionals working with young people, but it is now my intention to move to the next stage to make sure that there are more resources available for young people themselves.

Nick Ramsay (Conservative, Monmouth)

Minister, I think the fact we are able to discuss this previously taboo subject in the open and transparent way we do shows how far we've come as a country, and I think that's to be welcomed. We, of course, in this Chamber have our own direct experience of losing our much loved colleague, Carl Sargeant, in this tragic way, so I think there's an onus on all of us to do what we can to try and get the message out there, to tell people that they don't have to feel so lost that they have to turn to this course of action.

It's been good to see recently that television programmes such as EastEnders have been dealing with the issue of suicide with the moving storylines surrounding Bex Fowler and her stress over moving on to university. We know that young people are particularly vulnerable at the time of exams and, in a way, it's hard to avoid all of that stress, but it's important that those young people are signposted at the earliest opportunity, and that window of opportunity—and sometimes it is only a window—is taken the most advantage of to reach out to them.

So, can you tell us how you are ensuring, with this guidance that Lynne Neagle has mentioned, and you have mentioned, that young people are signposted as soon there are issues arising, and they do feel that there are people that they can turn to when sometimes they feel that all is lost?

Kirsty Williams (Liberal Democrat, Brecon and Radnorshire)

Well, Nick, I think it is true to say that we have come some way in talking about suicide, but there is still a huge amount of stigma attached to suicide. And there is often a great nervousness amongst professionals to talk about what are very, very sensitive issues. Often they fear that what they may say may make matters worse, and that is the reason why we commissioned these resources in the first place to give confidence to our professionals working with young people about how it is really important to have these conversations—you can't make it worse—and to skill and empower them to have these discussions. But, of course, we need support services around when teachers and young people identify a problem. That's why we are making additional resources available for our counselling service. That's why we've recently announced a decision to extend our child and adolescent mental health services inreach pilot that was supposed to finish in July 2020; that will run now till the end of the year. And there are additional resources going into those pilots as we speak.

It's important that we don't medicalise the process of growing up—that is also a very important point. But we know that for some children who are under stress, we need timely and impactful interventions. Moving into higher education is yet again another potential trigger point: many people living away from home for the first time, having to establish new friendship groups as well as the academic pressures. And that's why we have made, in this year, £2 million available to the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales to support mental health projects in universities.

Mandy Jones (UKIP, North Wales)

Minister, one of my staff members has just completed an ASIST training course—that is, an applied suicide intervention skills training. This involved having very uncomfortable conversations about suicide, and it's aiming to keep people safe for now. Are there any plans to roll this sort of scheme out with your own programmes to teachers and appropriate staff in Welsh schools?

Kirsty Williams (Liberal Democrat, Brecon and Radnorshire)

Well, there are a plethora of training programmes and interventions that are available, and that sometimes causes problems for our schools—knowing which is the best training and the most appropriate and evidence-based approach to undertake. And that's why, as part of our whole-school approach to mental health, we are developing a toolkit for schools and a resource base for schools to try and simplify that process, so that they know what is available, what works and what there is a strong evidence base for. And, of course, we are making available additional resources for professional learning, thus creating the space for teaching professionals and other people working in our schools to undertake that training.

Rhun ap Iorwerth (Plaid Cymru, Ynys Môn)

7. Will the Minister make a statement on teaching international citizenship in schools? OAQ54605

Kirsty Williams (Liberal Democrat, Brecon and Radnorshire)

Diolch yn fawr, Rhun. Learners currently have opportunities to study international citizenship through education for sustainable development and global citizenship, the Welsh baccalaureate, and personal and social education. Ensuring that learners become ethical, informed citizens, who are ready to be citizens of Wales and the world, is, of course, one of our four purposes in our new curriculum.

Rhun ap Iorwerth (Plaid Cymru, Ynys Môn)

Thank you. My supplementary question is slightly different to the one that I had originally intended to ask. I'm pleased to see the Minister for international relations by your side. The original question emerged from a meeting that we had of the cross-party group that I chair, Wales International, where we were discussing the draft international strategy produced by Government. And the question was: in the context of Brexit and that discussion, how can we sell the international strategy to those people who, perhaps, don’t want to work internationally? That question still stands, but what I want to pursue instead—and I changed the emphasis because of what we’ve heard today, that appalling news about 39 people who were found dead in a lorry container that had passed through Holyhead. Some of the comments that I’ve read about the incident are appalling. They characterise the lack of tolerance that has been part of the public discourse over the past few years.

So, how can we ensure that the kind of citizenship education that is presented in Welsh schools does far more to teach people about Wales’s place in the world, its relationship with the rest of the world, and how people interact with each other, so that people don’t feel that it is acceptable to go on social media and make public statements that are quite, quite appalling about events such as the one we’ve heard about today?

Kirsty Williams (Liberal Democrat, Brecon and Radnorshire)

Rhun, there are no adequate words to express the horror of the discovery of those individuals in the back of that lorry. It is a truly shocking thing to have happened, and then to have that reinforced by the comments that you have referred to—I have not seen them myself, but I can well imagine what they have said. As I said in answer to your original question, we are moving to a purpose-led curriculum that articulates the kind of citizens, the attributes, the type of people that we want to emerge as a result of their time in the Welsh education system, and I want them to be those ethical and informed citizens of Wales and the world.

Your comments come on top of the question that was raised by your colleague Bethan Sayed around the report today into racism in our universities. We have a problem here in Wales and we have to use all aspects of Welsh Government public policy to be able to address that. There is a huge responsibility on education to ensure that these views are challenged when they're expressed, and we can give children the opportunity to understand and to develop empathy and respect, and the reasons why those 39 people felt desperate enough to climb into the back of the lorry in the first place.

Mark Isherwood (Conservative, North Wales)

8. What support is available for pupils with additional learning needs in Wales? OAQ54570

Kirsty Williams (Liberal Democrat, Brecon and Radnorshire)

Thank you, Mark. Local authorities are responsible for providing a suitable education for all children and young people, including those with additional learning needs. Our ambitious additional learning needs reforms will completely overhaul the system for supporting learners with ALN, and it will drive improvements and ensure that all learners achieve their full potential, whatever that is.

Mark Isherwood (Conservative, North Wales)

Thank you. At the beginning of this month, all Members received an e-mail from the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists highlighting the risks if speech and language communication is underdeveloped. I'll mention a couple of things they did, but, for example, without effective help, one in three children with speech, language and communication difficulties will need treatment for mental health; 88 per cent of long-term unemployed young men have speech, language and communication needs; and up to 60 per cent of young people in the youth justice estate have similar speech, language and communication needs.

It's nearly two decades since I fought this battle on behalf of one of my children to get interventions that he was otherwise being denied, and two decades later, we're still receiving e-mails with these horrifying statistics. Beyond the ALN Act, what specific action can you take with your colleagues—because this is a cross-departmental issue—to recognise the essential need for speech and language therapy for a wide range of children in the school environment, also recognising Welsh data on the economic value of speech and language therapy, that every £1 invested in enhanced speech and language therapy generates £6.43 through increased lifetime earnings, because it enables access to the curriculum and creates opportunities for individuals, and that every £1 invested in enhanced speech and language therapy for autistic pupils generates £1.46 through lifetime cost savings created by improved communication?

Kirsty Williams (Liberal Democrat, Brecon and Radnorshire)

Well, Mark, I would not want to take issue with you at all about the importance of developing oracy skills at the earliest possible age for our children. We know that a good basis in speaking skills is a platform to success later on in their educational journey.

You say that, apart from the ALN programme, what else is going on, but the ALN transformation programme is absolutely crucial to driving forward better interdepartmental working between education and healthcare professionals, ensuring earlier identification of additional learning needs for every child and creating the expectation, and delivering on that expectation, that those services will be available. I continue to have discussions with colleagues in health—and the Minister for health is in his seat—about how we can ensure, when a school identifies a healthcare need for a particular child, that that support will be there at the appropriate time to influence positive outcomes in terms of learning for that child.

Elin Jones (Plaid Cymru, Ceredigion)

Finally, Alun Davies.

Alun Davies (Labour, Blaenau Gwent)

Thank you very much, Presiding Officer, and can I place my personal interest on the record? You said, Minister, in answer to Mark Isherwood, that all local authorities have responsibility for delivering on this agenda. You know and I know, from your constituency workload and from my constituency workload, that children with additional learning needs are being failed every day of the week in schools in this country. You know and I know that local authorities are not delivering on the support that children with additional learning needs require to fulfil their potential. You and I worked together in Government to deliver a restructured and a new, transformed process for supporting children and young people with additional learning needs. Do you not believe now, Minister, that the time is here for us to ensure that there are ring-fenced resources, specific streams of funding, available to schools to deliver additional learning needs education? Because I do not have the confidence—. My personal experience and, I think, your personal experience, as the Member for Brecon and Radnorshire, tells you and tells me that the current system, even a reformed system, unless there is additional funding in it, specifically ring-fenced funding, will not deliver.

Kirsty Williams (Liberal Democrat, Brecon and Radnorshire)

Presiding Officer, the Member refers to specific incidents in Powys. Members will be aware, if they have an interest in education in Powys, of the findings of the recent Estyn report into the performance of the local education authority. Special mention in that Estyn report was made of support for additional learning needs and special educational needs and the requirement of Powys County Council to do better in this regard. Welsh Government is continuing to discuss with Estyn and with Powys how best we will respond to the contents of that Estyn report, and I foresee an enhanced role for Welsh Government in seeking assurance from Powys around improvements as a result of the Estyn report. I continue to discuss with officials what more we can do on the financial side, on top of the £20 million that is already made available for the ALN transformation programme, to address these issues.

But let me be clear to every single local authority in Wales: whilst we wait for the implementation of the ALN Act, they have legal and statutory responsibilities to children in their schools now, and our expectation is that they will meet the statutory and legal requirements of them in supporting every individual child who has an additional learning need. They don't need to wait for the Act—they have legal responsibilities in the here and now, and I expect them to fulfil them.

Elin Jones (Plaid Cymru, Ceredigion)

Thank you, Minister.

2. Questions to the Minister for Health and Social Services

Elin Jones (Plaid Cymru, Ceredigion)

The next item is questions to the Minister for Health and Social Services, and the first question is from Neil Hamilton.

Neil Hamilton (UKIP, Mid and West Wales)

1. Will the Minister provide an update on waiting times in Welsh hospital emergency departments? OAQ54596

Vaughan Gething (Labour, Cardiff South and Penarth)

Yes. This year has been the busiest on record for Welsh emergency care services. Last month was the busiest September on record for emergency department attendances and for the most urgent ambulance calls. Despite the 7 per cent rise in emergency department attendances compared to last September, we actually saw, treated or discharged more people within four hours, and the median wait was two hours and 35 minutes.

Neil Hamilton (UKIP, Mid and West Wales)

I thank the Minister for that reply, but can I supply a translation for the benefit of the Assembly of what he's just said? The figures released last Friday showed that waiting times in Welsh A&E departments are the worst on record. That is, more people than ever before are waiting longer than the target waiting time set by the Welsh NHS. Twenty-five per cent of admissions to A&E spent more than four hours waiting; the target was 5 per cent. Over 6 per cent of admissions spent more than 12 hours waiting; the target for that is zero. And that was in September, which is, of course, not going to be the biggest challenge in the winter. The Minister has said before that there are real people behind the figures, and he suggested that it was one of the things that keeps him awake at night. Can I suggest that one way to improve his sleep pattern, perhaps, is to resign his office and let somebody else have a go at improving things?

Vaughan Gething (Labour, Cardiff South and Penarth)

Well, that's a fairly predictable and not at all helpful way to try and address a very problem that exists as we face into winter. There are challenges right across the UK system. I'm responsible for the challenges here in Wales. There are a range of measures that are already being taken—for example, work being taken in two boards with a particular challenge, both the Aneurin Bevan University Health Board, and Swansea, who are making use of GP services to assist with some of triage so those people who don't need to be in an emergency department aren't there, and, equally, that people aren't waiting longer than they'd want to be. So, I have an understanding of the very real challenges that our staff face in my regular engagement with them, and an understanding of the very real challenges that members of the public face in getting the care and the treatment and the dignity they deserve. I'm determined to do all I could and should do as a health Minister to improve the position as we face what will inevitably be a difficult winter.

Suzy Davies (Conservative, South Wales West)

Well, perhaps, Minister, part of the answer to this lies in what's happening in the minor injury units, and I look forward to a statement on that fairly shortly. But, in the meantime, I recently visited Bridgend's Princess of Wales Hospital to find out more about why the average time it takes an ambulance to hand over a patient is significantly longer than in other parts of Cwm Taf, and you may remember me raising this with you. Two things came to my attention—the first is that, while the patient may not be in the ambulance, they still remain in the charge of paramedics, in which case those patients are not added to the A&E waiting times, disguising the actual figures, and the second is—and I'm sure this is true of other hospitals—it's sometimes impossible to move patients to a ward elsewhere because there are medically fit people waiting to be discharged occupying acute beds while waiting for a care package, and that means that those individuals are waiting in A&E for follow-up medical treatment when they shouldn't be there. That's tying up A&E beds, and that means that the increasing number, as you say, of walk-in arrivals have to wait longer. The root of the problem still seems to be delayed transfer of care. You've invested in better working between health and social care so why aren't we feeling the benefits in A&E?

Vaughan Gething (Labour, Cardiff South and Penarth)

Actually, on delayed transfers of care, we're at historic lows. When I became the Deputy Minister more than five years ago now, one of the subjects that I did address at that time was the challenge that we had in delayed transfers of care, and that was about bringing health and social care together, about recognising there is a shared challenge, not meeting them separately, and we have seen some sustained improvement. We're starting to see that creep back up, so there's work that I and the Deputy Minister will be doing with health boards and their partners. It is a whole health and social care system issue. That's why, of the £30 million that I made available across the health and social care system this winter, some of it went direct to health boards; £17 million of it, though, went to regional partnership boards to decide together how it should be used across the system. Because every time I visit a hospital and look at the front door, the reality is that I know—and I regularly raise it with each of the hospital directors; I ask how many medically fit patients there are and the challenge of moving them on. Sometimes, that is to the social care system. That is a big part of our challenge. But, equally, there are times when it's within another part of the national health service. So, it's about seeing the whole system, about understanding what more we can do to get people to the right point for the next stage of their care.

The other honest challenge is that we do genuinely have more people who are coming to our emergency departments who are seriously unwell, and, if you had a conversation with each of the health boards about the people coming into their emergency departments, they themselves would say that. They'd also tell you there are more people making their own way to emergency departments; you're having walk-ins who are significantly unwell. It's the challenge we have and it's our ability to keep on extending our ability to meet that right across the whole system that really matters.

David Rees (Labour, Aberavon)

Minister, I appreciate your answers to Suzy Davies, particularly on delayed transfers of care, but also the answer you said to Neil Hamilton in relation to the type of individuals who are going there. But we have a problem, because we are having people who are going to A&E because the out-of-hours service is not delivering for them or they can't get a GP appointment or they now feel, in fact, that it's easier. Because I've been on the phone 45 minutes waiting to get hold of a GP just for an appointment for a five-year-old child. Now, this is causing people to go into A&E. So, the Choose Well agenda you had as to who you should go to is great, but the problem is that you can't get to them—they're not available. Can you therefore look at the actions taken to ensure that, if we are going to choose well, they are available to choose to go to, because that is the big problem?

Vaughan Gething (Labour, Cardiff South and Penarth)

We’ve got a variety of challenges to try and address, and something we are deliberately doing is exactly that on our Choose Well message, and to better equip the wider primary care team to do so, whether that’s the steps we’re taking on eye care, with the emergency eye care service we have, which they don’t have across the border—it’s widely recognised as being a positive—whether that’s about making better use of pharmacy, and the roll-out of Choose Pharmacy, and the minor ailments service is an important part of that. We’re diverting more and more people not just away from GPs and from the emergency department, but to somewhere that is actually appropriate for them to receive the right care and support. And also, as we continue to roll out 111, in each of the areas where the 111 roll-out has taken place, there is a more robust primary care system in hours and out of hours as a result. It is still, as I say, about our ability to constantly keep pace. So, yes, it is something that I look at. It is something that I will look at as I will be meeting a number of the health board and local government departments with the most significant pressures within their systems to understand what is taking place earlier on within the system and how the additional moneys we’ve made available are actually addressing the very real challenges that I know that you’ve set out.

Lynne Neagle (Labour, Torfaen)

2. How is the Minister ensuring access to new cancer treatments for patients in Wales? OAQ54603

Vaughan Gething (Labour, Cardiff South and Penarth)

Thank you. We have an absolute commitment in Wales to the provision of recommended and proven effective cancer treatments. This is achieved through the new treatment fund for medicines. By August of this year the new treatment fund had provided rapid access to 205 medicines, including 86 for cancer, and has cut the time it takes to provide newly-recommended medicines from an average of 90 days to just 12. Whilst there is much focus on new drugs, it is also worth recalling that surgery can be curative as a treatment for cancer. That is often not highlighted within this Chamber. That's why we continue to invest in both improvements in surgery as well, of course, as therapy provision.

Lynne Neagle (Labour, Torfaen)

Minister, I’ve been raising concerns about the individual patient funding process with you throughout your time as Minister. I did the same with your predecessor and the same with his predecessor too. My constituent, Gemma Williams, a young mother with two young children, has stage 3 breast cancer. Her oncologist wants to treat her with Kadcyla to prevent the progression of the disease. Like most patients told she needs a drug for a life-threatening illness, she and, apparently, her oncologist, thought it would be straightforward. Now, after two successive refusals by the IPFR panel in Gwent, Gemma is having to launch a fundraising campaign to raise the money to pay for her treatment. Now, even though the difference in cost between Kadcyla and the drugs she is on—which her clinician has acknowledged are unlikely to help her—is a small difference, she will, of course, have to fundraise the full cost of the treatment, some £45,000. Minister, I still don’t believe that the IPFR process is working for my constituents, and it certainly isn’t working for Gemma Williams. Can I ask you whether you can look again at this to ensure that all patients in Wales, including my constituents, are getting the access to the new treatments that their clinicians believe they need?

Vaughan Gething (Labour, Cardiff South and Penarth)

Look, we had a review at the start of this Assembly term because of issues that Members around the Chamber have raised about the apparent inequalities in access, and people’s inability to understand the system. And, to be fair, the system wasn’t an easy one to understand for clinicians or indeed for members of the public. Following the review, we’ve implemented all of the 27 recommendations that came up, and it’s very clear now the clinician has to support the individual patient funding request to go to a review.

Now, I can’t comment on the individual circumstance that the Member is directly engaged with. Across the system, more than seven in 10 applications for medicines under the IPFR process are agreed. I think it would be helpful if we had yet another conversation with you about what’s happened in this case and about how the health board's IPFR process does and doesn’t work, and about the level of clarity in the explanation provided by both the health board and the clinician about any reasons for refusal and why that is. The awful truth is, from a whole-system point of view, you understand there will be times when there is a refusal to provide a treatment on the national health service. It is always a much more difficult matter to be the individual, to be told by one person in our healthcare system, ‘I think this is what you need’, and to be told overall by the system, ‘You still can’t have it’. I’m happy to sit down to try and understand what that looks like with your constituent, but I really think we need to go back to the clinicians making choices together with the health board, and have real clarity in the decision-making process.

Nick Ramsay (Conservative, Monmouth)

Minister, in yesterday's business statement, I raised the issue of a constituent, Mr Jim Sweet, whose wife passed away on the day she was going to begin treatment for stage 4 ovarian cancer—clearly, a very sensitive issue. There are many people involved, many people suffering from ovarian cancer in Wales, and part of the problem with this cancer is that early diagnosis before stage 4 is more difficult because the disease masquerades as other conditions such as irritable bowel syndrome. So, I wonder if you could tell us what actions you're taking to try and support more research into this particular form of cancer, not as often spoken about as other types of cancer are, but one which leaves victims and families of victims of the disease really struggling with this cancer quite late on in a diagnosis situation, and I think they look to the Assembly and the Welsh Government to see if the situation can be eased a little bit for them.

Vaughan Gething (Labour, Cardiff South and Penarth)

There are a range of cancer groups taking part in the cancer alliance, including those interested in ovarian cancer, and it's part of our research, interest and activity. I'll happily write to the Member with specifics on what we're doing in the research activity in this area, but we're not in control of all that research activity, of course; that depends on where those clinical studies do and don't take place, and the collaboration that takes place right across the UK healthcare and university sectors as well. But I'll happily provide the Member with some more of what I hope will be helpful detail about the nature of that research here in Wales.

Elin Jones (Plaid Cymru, Ceredigion)

Questions now from the party spokespeople. The Conservative spokesperson, Angela Burns.

Angela Burns (Conservative, Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire)

Diolch, Presiding Officer. Minister, you'll be very familiar with the core principles of NHS Wales, and I'm sure that, like me, you will have read the various mission statements and heard the aims being promoted by health boards. Ambitions such as putting people at the heart of everything we do, and caring for people, keeping people well, and my personal favourite and the new mantra that's often quoted at me now is 'to be kind'. And the principles themselves make much of putting patients and users of the service first, then learning from experience, and so on.

My constituent, Georgina, was scheduled for an urgent spinal operation in January of this year. Without it, her spine would deteriorate to such an extent that her temporary paralysis would become permanent. From January, Georgina's operation was cancelled five times by Swansea Bay University Health Board, until we had a result last week, and a result pretty much because members of my staff camped on the door of that hospital. Not only was the quality of her life going forward compromised, but, and I'm now quoting directly from a letter from a consultant who says,

'I regret to inform you that the situation with access to spinal surgery in Swansea is creating such delays that I am witnessing people coming to harm. These cases have been appropriately reported as they occur.'

This is deeply concerning, Minister, for clinical safety. I don't think this is a service that adheres to the principles and mission statements often touted by NHS Wales and our health boards. Do you?

Vaughan Gething (Labour, Cardiff South and Penarth)

Well, obviously, I'm not aware of the individual circumstances the Member has referred to, but I wouldn't try to defend five cancellations for serious surgery. I'd want to understand what's happened and why. And, in each of these cases where our system doesn't deliver the outcomes in the timely manner that we'd want, there is always learning for what to do in the future, as well as a need to reflect back to that person and be honest about the fact that they haven't had the care or support that we would want them to have. But if the Member wants to write to me with more specific details, I'll happily look at it in more detail to understand what has happened in this case, as well as what that tells us in the future. And of course I'm concerned that an individual clinician says that people are coming to harm.

Angela Burns (Conservative, Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire)

Minister, my constituent, Mr Chell, was 91 years old. He fell in St Non's ward, which is situated opposite the main Withybush hospital, and, for those of you who may not know, the distance would be roughly the same from this Chamber to the fifth floor of Tŷ Hywel. Poor Mr Chell, already unwell and very frail, with the added complications of three fractures of the hip, waited on the floor of St Non's ward for five hours until an ambulance came to transport him the 380 yards to Withybush. Mr Chell was then forced to wait in the ambulance for a further two hours because of delays with ambulance handovers. Now, following a freedom of information request, I found out that, at the same time that poor Mr Chell was trying to get to Withybush, there were 13 ambulances waiting to offload at Withybush. I don't think that this is a service that adheres to the principles and mission statements often touted by that particular health board, and by NHS Wales. What do you say to Mr Chell's family, and do you think that this is acceptable service?

Vaughan Gething (Labour, Cardiff South and Penarth)

Again, I can't obviously comment on an individual case that I haven't heard about before. But, again, I'm not going to try and defend what doesn't sound like appropriate care and what doesn't sound like the sort of experience or outcome that any of us would want to have. I'm interested in understanding the individual's circumstances and what that tells us about the whole system. And, as you know, it is entirely possible to have a very poor experience, and yet the system overall delivers high-quality care the overwhelming majority of the time. We know from the national survey that most people's experience of the health service, in hospital or in primary care, much more than 90 per cent of the time, is a very positive one. That does not mean that we ignore those cases where that doesn't happen, and it does not mean we ignore the pressure within our system, and, of course, our responsibility to improve that.

Angela Burns (Conservative, Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire)

Minister, I've been an Assembly Member for 12 and a half years, and in that 12 and a half years I've had a pretty good life, actually. But one of my constituents—and you know her—Ayla Haines, in 12 and a half years has been treated more like a prisoner than a person in need of healthcare. She was a young lady when I first met her—she was 17 years old. She's now 25. She's in a secure unit in Northampton. She was sent there in 2016 to get her off her medications. Since she has been up there, her health has deteriorated. She is self-harming, she is losing weight, she has been assaulted, so she's fighting back, so now she's an assaulter as well as an assaulted. Staff know that she has OCD, for example, but tell her to hurry up and try to stop her from the middle of doing a routine, so she then gets worse. She's losing weight, she's on worse medication and tougher medication than she was on when she went there. Her physical being is being compromised.

But what really, really, really gets me, and why I've brought this to you today, is because I cannot, after 12 and a half years, get anybody to admit to saying, 'This problem, this girl, is on my desk and I'm going to sort out her issue.' I've written to you, the Welsh Health Specialised Services Committee, Hywel Dda University Health Board—all of them: 'Not my problem, not my problem, not my problem'. You, thankfully—thank you—have finally said her placement in Northampton is under the direct oversight of Hywel Dda health board. Right. Meetings are held; nobody from Wales goes, nobody from the health board goes, her advocate doesn't go, her parents aren't allowed to go—they've been marginalised. That girl's mental health, frail then, is even worse now, because she's over 200 miles away from her support network. Her family are not very wealthy, they live in Llansteffan, they cannot afford to go up there and see her. By the way, they're not allowed to, because they're told by Northampton that her telephone calls are monitored, they're cancelled at short notice, they're not allowed visits, they've got to be supervised. This girl is being driven into a small hole.

I don't know, clinically, what's wrong with her, but what I do know is that nobody here in Wales is actually taking the responsibility for monitoring that, for oversight, to make sure that she's constantly in the right place, being seen, with the right treatment, by the right people. Everyone's washed their hands of her—she's hundreds of miles away, she doesn't matter anymore. But she does matter—she matters to me, because I think of her most weeks. You said the other day, on television, that it keeps you awake at night, wondering about the waiting times for certain things. Well, Ayla Haines keeps me awake at night. She's 25; how many more years is she going to spend there? And all I want is one person in Wales who says, 'She is my job. I'm just going to check that she is having the best possible treatment'. The lack of accountability, the lack of responsibility—. And I'll tell you what it is: it's the consequence of being one. If you've got a big problem, like we have in Cwm Taf—task and finish groups, ad infinitum. But, as one poor person, there's no-one who'll actually advocate for them. Please, Minister, will you look at this? These health boards spend all their time telling us that they put people at the centre of what they do. But again, and again, and again, and again, they fail. That's three failures—everybody here will be able to tell you of more. At some point, we've got to hold these people to account. That's your job—please do so.

Vaughan Gething (Labour, Cardiff South and Penarth)

Well, I think it was unfortunate in the reference to Cwm Taf, because we're dealing with a system failure there with real individual harm it's caused, and we're looking at it at a system level. There's never been an incident where I've tried to say that the healthcare system does not have responsibility to individuals throughout it, and I expect our system to be able to deal with those.

In the figures that I referred to earlier, about satisfaction with the health service, those themselves don't say that every single person says that every single interaction has left them satisfied. There is always learning in where things go wrong. And in the individual case that you referred to, again, you know that I can't comment on it. I am, of course, interested in every single person who has cause to complain and cause for concern about the health service. But it does not matter whether they are physically being treated or cared for in England or within Wales. I expect people who commission and have responsibility for that care to maintain their interest in the quality of the care that's being provided as well, because a number of the statements you've made today are of real concern, about the quality of care and about what the relevant inspectorates both here and in England should be interested in, given the seriousness that you've outlined.

I will check through my office about the interest that the health board continues to take and the responses to the concerns being raised by your constituent, her family and her advocates. I recognise that I have responsibility for the whole system, both the good and the part that needs improving. I don't walk away from that, and I'll certainly take up the individual matters. I'd be grateful if you could raise all three of them in writing with me and I'll make sure that they are dealt with.

Elin Jones (Plaid Cymru, Ceredigion)

The Plaid Cymru spokesperson, Helen Mary Jones.

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

Diolch yn fawr, Llywydd. I'd like to take the Minister back again to the situation in Cwm Taf. I am aware, of course, that a further statement was made to this Assembly a fortnight ago—I think it was a fortnight ago. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to be present then, but I have had the opportunity to read the Record. And I do accept, as the Minister said in his response to the remarks of my colleague Dr Dai Lloyd, that it isn't possible to entirely transform a culture in a matter of months, but I wonder if the Minister will accept that it's very difficult for people to understand why a service can't be made safe within six months. And can the Minister tell us today when he expects to be able to reassure the people of Merthyr Tydfil and the surrounding areas that that service is safe?

Vaughan Gething (Labour, Cardiff South and Penarth)

Well, I've set out a process of intervention to provide the appropriate reassurance that everyone would want to have, whether they live within the Cwm Taf area or not, about the safety and the prospects for the future of that service, and I've set out not just the independent oversight panel, but the work being done around the board. And I will make statements when I'm in a position to do so. It's really important that I don't give artificial timelines that are about the convenience for me, rather than actually providing the robust reassurance that people would expect and want to see. There's regular engagement that is ongoing between officials and the Government and the health board and between the oversight panel, and, with their next quarterly report, we'll have a view of what's happened within the last quarter as well. That's the honest and objective process set up and it's the one that I'll stick to.

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

I accept what the Minister says, of course, about not wanting to create artificial timelines, but I certainly know that if I was a woman of child-bearing age living in that region, I would want to know that there was a timeline and that at some point I could expect that service to be safe.

I've received representations, and I know that other colleagues have, suggesting to me—well, proving to me—that the cultural issues, which again I accept can't be changed overnight, in Cwm Taf extend well beyond maternity services. I recently met a family who gave me evidence of grave issues regarding the treatment of both of their elderly parents separately in different parts of the Cwm Taf service over a period of a couple of years. Now, these issues raise similar themes as to some of the issues around women's experiences in the maternity service—issues around lack of respect, around not listening to patients and their families, lack of basic care, like supporting eating and drinking for older people. This family then went on to have a very unsatisfactory experience, again similar to some of those who used maternity services, of the complaints procedure. Can I ask the Minister today whether his current interventions that he has put in place in Cwm Taf will pick up wider concerns like these about culture within the organisation beyond maternity services? And does he accept that there may be a need for him to extend his intervention if such issues are made public?

Vaughan Gething (Labour, Cardiff South and Penarth)

In terms of the work that's already being done, you will no doubt have read the comments made by not just the independent oversight panel, but they do extend and they do recognise the more broad improvements that are being made under the leadership of the interim chief executive, and that change in culture is taking place at board level, from the reports provided by David Jenkins. I'm not sure if he's actually given his evidence yet to the health committee. If he hasn't, then I know that's imminent. And you'll understand that there is a real recognition that they need to look across the services provided to reassure themselves at board level that the work they are doing to put right, in particular, challenges in the complaints function actually addresses also the culture and the provision of the service. That's both for staff within the system as well as the people that they care for.

Now, I'm not going to give a hostage to fortune about what may or may not happen in the future. I am, of course, guided and make judgments based on advice, advice given by officials, but also about the tripartite process, along with the chief executive of NHS Wales, Healthcare Inspectorate Wales and the Wales Audit Office. If new issues come to light that require further intervention, then I will do that. If those issues do not require further intervention, but still require improvement, I expect that improvement to take place without the need for direct Government intervention.

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

I'm grateful to the Minister for his response and I'm glad that he mentions the health board himself. I don't know if the Minister has had an opportunity to review the proceedings of last week's health committee, but I can't be the only person who was shocked by some of what David Jenkins, the independent adviser, had to say about the state of the local health board. He was very clear that the scrutiny was profoundly inadequate and when pressed on that, he said that the independent members were only human and could be expected to be told what they believed.

These people are employed to scrutinise the executives. The chair gets paid a minimum of £55,000 a year; the vice-chair a minimum of £45,000; and there are seven independent members paid £10,000 a year each. And yet, David Jenkins was very clear that they were not fit—they are not able to effectively scrutinise. They now, as I understand it—and just as an example of their inability to effectively scrutinise—this summer, let the failed chief executive walk away scot free with no stain on her character whatsoever.

I understand that the board is now being given a 12-month development programme, provided by Deloitte UK. I can't imagine that's coming cheap and I understand that that comes out of the Minister's budget. I have to say that I am at a loss to understand how this number of people who were not capable of scrutinising their executive were allowed to be appointed in the first place. Again, in response to questions from the committee, David Jenkins said that he felt that there were real issues with the appointments process. But, Presiding Officer, I have to say that the Minister has to take responsibility for this. He appointed all those people. He sets the process and yet, they were only human and could be expected to believe what they were told.

Now, we have a situation where we have five out of the seven local health boards in some kind of special measures—

Vaughan Gething (Labour, Cardiff South and Penarth)

That isn't true.

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

—we have people being appointed, who clearly cannot do their job, and then have to have a very, very expensive intervention to enable them to do it. Is it not time for the Minister to acknowledge that the local health board system isn't working? The whole point of it was to have independent scrutiny to be able to scrutinise the professionals. It's clearly not working. Isn't it time for a radical rethink about how our health and care services are governed?

Vaughan Gething (Labour, Cardiff South and Penarth)

Well, I really do regret the tone and the content of a significant amount of what the Member said.

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

I bet you do.

Vaughan Gething (Labour, Cardiff South and Penarth)

When the Member says that five health boards are in a form of special measures, that is simply not true—simply not true—

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

Well, it's what your independent adviser said.

Vaughan Gething (Labour, Cardiff South and Penarth)

The Member should deal with the range of the facts of the matter and the reality of the commitment to improvement and the reality of what is said. I don't take the Member's recollection and recounting for all of the exact language used by David Jenkins, but I do know, in the meetings that I've had directly with him, his view is that they've done all you could expect them to do to make the improvements that are required. They've shown insight; they've shown a commitment to behave differently and they are behaving differently in the level of scrutiny and oversight you would expect them to have.

We have made changes to the induction process and to how independent members understand the nature of their role and their job. So, we are listening to and learning about what is happening within our system. I don't share the Member's view that a wholesale reorganisation of the way we deliver healthcare and oversight is required. That is exactly what the health service in Wales does not require. And, in fact, all of the independent reviews we've had into our healthcare system, including of course the parliamentary review, have said that actually that is not what we need to do to deliver improvements in our service. I'm committed to improvement in the healthcare system for our staff and the public they serve and I look forward to doing so with all reasonable people across the Chamber and outside it.

Elin Jones (Plaid Cymru, Ceredigion)

Brexit Party spokesperson, Caroline Jones.

Caroline Jones (UKIP, South Wales West)

Diolch, Llywydd. Minister, we are, once again, battling an outbreak of measles and mumps amongst university students. Around 30 suspected cases of mumps have hit students at Cardiff University, Cardiff Metropolitan University and the University of South Wales. This follows the loss of the UK's measles-free status earlier this year, just three years after we were rid of one of the world's most contagious diseases. The rise of these terrible diseases can be attributed to too few people getting vaccinated. We are ahead of the rest of the UK in vaccine rates, with 92 per cent of the children in Wales receiving the MMR vaccine, but this is still below the target. Minister, what new measures are you considering to increase vaccination rates in Wales, particularly amongst university students?

Vaughan Gething (Labour, Cardiff South and Penarth)

Actually, the first port of call is to look at the childhood immunisation rates in addition to the potential for catch-up, because if we do safely vaccinate an even higher portion of the population, then that is the best protection for all of us. Public Health Wales, working together with colleagues and public health teams in each of the health boards, are looking again at what to do to raise again the high level of vaccination we already have to improve that even further. But the reason why the UK lost its measles-free status from the World Health Organization was because of the particularly low level of vaccinations being achieved over a period of time in England, where they're down to about 85 per cent. And it does show both the impact of investing in the earlier years part of our health and care system, but it also shows the real damage that has been done by the anti-vaxxer movement, and in particular by the legacy of Dr Wakefield, who is now disgraced and has been struck off, but there are still people prepared to support and promote his work. The real impact is in the compromise that that has left on public health right across United Kingdom, in particular in England, but there are parts of Wales where there are real gaps as well.

Caroline Jones (UKIP, South Wales West)

Thank you for that answer, Minister. Of course, one of the biggest hurdles to increasing vaccination rates is the rise of online misinformation and, as you mentioned, the anti-vax movement. When celebrities and so-called experts are spreading myths and indeed telling lies about vaccines on Facebook and Twitter, it makes the job of Public Health Wales so much harder. Minister, what discussions have you had with your counterparts in the rest of the UK to tackle the misinformation about vaccines, and have you considered a public information campaign to talk about the safety and efficacy of vaccines?

Vaughan Gething (Labour, Cardiff South and Penarth)

We regularly provide statements to reassure the public about the safety and efficacy of all the vaccines that are provided and the science and the evidence base behind them, as opposed to the suspicion and the growth of fake news in particular, a range of its proponents in a variety of different positions of influence. We're not in a position where we need to consider what Matt Hancock has talked about in terms of trying to make vaccination compulsory. I think that is very difficult to achieve and I think that may cause more harm than good for those who are already not having their children vaccinated, it may drive them even further away.

I think it is about how we persuade and provide evidence from people that they trust, which is why again investing in our earliest years and in services when people are pregnant really matters, about the level of trust that is provided and the assurance about what that means for doing the right thing for them and their children. We'll continue to do so. I think the challenge with wider public information campaigns is that often there's a very poor return. We need to understand where people get their information and who they're likely to be persuaded by to have the biggest return on any investment that we make.

David Melding (Conservative, South Wales Central)

3. What is the Welsh Government's response to the Carers Wales 'Track the Act' report? OAQ54593

Julie Morgan (Labour, Cardiff North)

It is essential that there is good information about carers' experiences, which is why we funded Carers Wales to produce the 'Track the Act' survey. The recommendations and data are being considered and will be used to shape national carers policy and our work with service providers and stakeholders.

David Melding (Conservative, South Wales Central)

Can I just congratulate Carers Wales, and indeed the Government, on the approach to having post-legislative scrutiny not done by us but done by a key charity? The findings really are quite sobering, saying that parts of the Act are not yet working as we would like. The Minister may have seen that only 45 per cent of those who responded said they'd seen or been given information to help them care, that's a real failing, and that was a drop of 8 per cent on last year. Additionally, 57 per cent of carers responding to the survey said they did not get any support, and indeed only 4 per cent said their own support had come from a package as a result of a carers assessment.

We know unpaid carers are at the heart of our care system, and it's a vital group to be supported. We have good legislation, but we've got to ensure that the support is coming forward. I'm particularly concerned to see even basic things like information giving are still not at a level that we can expect. So, I do hope the Government will be responding thoroughly to the 'Track the Act' report, and that we will get that response and the chance to debate it again here in the Chamber.

Julie Morgan (Labour, Cardiff North)

I thank David Melding very much for that question. The information that has come from 'Track the Act' is, obviously, absolutely crucial in taking forward our policies. Some of the recommendations that 'Track the Act' has made we are already carrying out or are committed to. For example, they're very concerned that we do make people more aware of their rights as carers, and we are planning a campaign on awareness this autumn. We're also improving the way that we are able to get data. There's going to be a new performance and improvement framework, which will improve the collection of data from April 2020. We consulted on that in the summer. So, we are taking up many of the recommendations.

Obviously, the reality of how carers experience their day-to-day life is absolutely vital for us, because we want to, as a Government, acknowledge our huge indebtedness to the love and care of carers who, of course, make a huge contribution to Wales. So, all that is in 'Track the Act', and it's the third time we've funded this survey, and of course the other measurements that we're taking, for example, Measuring the Mountain, which again reveals the day-to-day experience of carers. All of that has got to inform our policies.

Of course, some of the figures and some of the issues are very disappointing, really, I think. We're obviously taking that into account. There are other, better figures that have emerged from other reports, for example, the Wales Audit Office report, which did show that, I think, 70 per cent of those who were looking for information, advice and assistance felt that it was an easy thing to do to approach the local authority. So, there are other statistics as well, but I think there's absolutely no doubt that we've got to take into account the views of carers.

Jayne Bryant (Labour, Newport West)

Unpaid carers are our unsung heroes. Group such as the Newport Carers Forum provide incredibly important work in supporting local carers and their families. They also provide an invaluable platform for carers to support each other and share their experiences. It was a great pleasure for me, along with John Griffiths, to welcome the Deputy Minister to the forum last month to hear first-hand how vital the group is to so many. I know the forum were incredibly grateful that you listened to their concerns and were taking carers' real experiences on board.

One of the issues that was raised was the importance of carers knowing their rights. I'm pleased to hear that there will be a campaign in the autumn, but what further action will the Minister take to ensure that our carers are equipped and that they can find out the information they need when they need it?

Julie Morgan (Labour, Cardiff North)

I thank Jayne Bryant for that question. I found visiting the Newport carers, along with Jayne and John Griffiths, such a valuable occasion. The information, again, directly from carers' experiences is probably the most powerful thing in terms of shaping Government policy.

We are planning, as Jayne has said, to have an awareness campaign on carers' rights. But, we've also revived our ministerial advisory group, with the plan of having an action plan for carers that will be launched next year. One of the key points I hope that we will have in that action plan is maybe a charter or something of that nature, so that carers can be absolutely aware of what all their rights are. I think there are many carers who are not aware of their rights, and we've got to do all we possibly can.

I'd like to thank Jayne and John for the support they're obviously giving to that group and the trust that the members of the group did have in them. I hope that we will be able to use the proposals that they made when we move forward with our action plan.

Vikki Howells (Labour, Cynon Valley)

4. Will the Minister outline how the Welsh Government is supporting digital innovation within health and care services? OAQ54576

Vaughan Gething (Labour, Cardiff South and Penarth)

Yes, thank you. Digital innovation is a key driver of change. 'A Healthier Wales' sets out our commitment to support the use of digital technologies to improve health and care services in Wales. This includes significant additional investment in digital priorities and builds on existing support for technology innovation and adoption.

Vikki Howells (Labour, Cynon Valley)

Thank you, Minister. I was pleased to read your written statement from 30 September on digital health and care and showing that progress is being made, and it's certainly something that I see as making a real difference on the front line in visits that I have carried out to various projects within my constituency. I've previously raised issues around how digital health and care can support my constituents through things like electronic referrals, but also exciting examples that I've seen such as the neighbourhood nursing model, using the Malinko software, which is being piloted in the north Cynon cluster. I note in your written statement your comments around ensuring that stakeholders are fully signed up to this agenda, and it seems to me that we have a plethora of good practice in certain areas in Wales. So, I'd be interested to learn more about how you intend to ensure that this good practice can be spread, and that all stakeholders can be signed up to this really important agenda.

Vaughan Gething (Labour, Cardiff South and Penarth)

Some of it is looking at how we are reforming our digital architecture in Wales, the successor role to NHS Wales Informatics Service, as part of a special health authority, but more broadly, again, about the culture, and the role that we think that the chief digital officer for health and care can play to both advise the Government on future strategy, but also to lead the digital health and care profession in Wales and to be a champion for the future of digital health and care here in Wales. It also goes into one of the recommendations from the Health and Social Care Committee inquiry into community and district nursing—the one we accepted about making sure there's proper investment to enable people to have hand-held devices with appropriate technology to enable them to do their job more effectively. So, this is not necessarily about innovation that is entirely new and different; it's actually about how we help them to be even more effective in their job with the way that we go about living our everyday lives and using hand-held devices. You can expect to see more of that and to see it more consistently adopted through our system. The challenge will be not to choke off innovation, but to be able to make choices in—[Inaudible]—to make sure we really do have adaptability between each of the different parts of our health and care system.

Janet Finch-Saunders (Conservative, Aberconwy)

Minister, I do actually acknowledge the work that you have undertaken to digitalise some patient records through the Welsh community care information system. However, serious problems do remain. During a recent meeting of elected Members in north Wales with the health board, there was unanimous support for the need to take action to address the fact that hospitals are simply not able to communicate with each other. For instance, if I was to go into Ysbyty Gwynedd with an issue, and perhaps I'd been in Ysbyty Glan Clwyd a couple of weeks ago, the notes in Bangor wouldn't pick up on the fact. In other words, the hospitals don't talk to one another. The health board chief exec and the chairman of the board have said it's a real problem when wanting to deliver safe and practical healthcare.

But in addition to hospitals struggling, I know that care homes are struggling to access patient information too, and nursing homes. That just sounds in this day and age really bizarre, and this could actually be negatively affecting over 15,000 people aged 65 or over who actually are residing in care homes. So, what consideration have you given to ensuring that our care homes and nursing homes are able to tap into the health systems on their patients, and also that they have relevant access to digital patient records and that, most importantly, we do have clear digitalised information that is able to translate across all our hospitals.

Vaughan Gething (Labour, Cardiff South and Penarth)

There are two quite different things that the Member said there. One is about making sure that parts of our healthcare system can talk to each other—in particular, in the hospital-based part of the system. That certainly is work that is ongoing with further investment and expectations being made, and I've actually seen examples of innovation in exactly this space on my recent visit to north Wales.

The second point you made I think is rather more confusing and, actually, to make sure that we get a proper answer, it might be helpful to be really clear about what the Member's asking for. So, I'd ask you to follow up in writing, because access to care homes, and who in a care home has access to that—well, you need to understand who that actually is. Are you talking about registered healthcare professionals providing direct care or healthcare, or are you talking about the management level? It's really important to understand who has ownership of that data, if it's the person, and how that data is shared, and our systems to allow that to be undertaken, with proper information governance around that. It might be helpful if the Member wrote to me on the particular issue that she sees, and then I'll get her a proper answer to deal with that.

Russell George (Conservative, Montgomeryshire)

5. Will the Minister make a statement on the accessibility of facilities for those with physical disabilities in Powys? OAQ54571

Julie Morgan (Labour, Cardiff North)

We're committed to ensuring equal access to facilities for disabled people in Wales, in line with our recently published framework of action on independent living. I understand Powys Teaching Health Board is undertaking some positive work across its sites to improve access to facilities for disabled people.

Russell George (Conservative, Montgomeryshire)

Thank you for your answer, Deputy Minister. No doubt you will agree with me that the standard accessible toilet does not meet the needs of all people with physical disabilities, such as those suffering from spinal injuries or multiple sclerosis, for example, and, often, people, of course, need the extra equipment and space to allow them to use a toilet safely and comfortably. My understanding is that in NHS trusts in England there is specific funding that can be applied for to install changing places, toilet facilities. I wonder if could you outline, Deputy Minister, what the Welsh Government is doing to improve the accessibility of Changing Places toilet facilities for use by those people who have physical or multiple learning difficulties, which, I think, are certainly few and far between across Wales. That's certainly the case in my Montgomeryshire constituency.

Julie Morgan (Labour, Cardiff North)

I thank Russell George for that question. It is obviously very important that we do have Changing Places widely available for people who do need them and I'm pleased to say that we've got one in the National Assembly for Wales and we've got one in Aberystwyth, in our building in Aberystwyth. I believe there are 45 across Wales, and I know that in your local health board that there's a Changing Places at Brecon hospital, which is the first fully accessible facility across Powys's hospital sites. So, that is progress, and also I understand as part of major refurbishment works at Llandrindod.

But it's obviously really important that we do enable and help this to happen. Building regulations are already encouraging in certain buildings the provision of enlarged, unisex toilets, incorporating an adult changing table, and my colleague Julie James, the Minister for Housing and Regeneration, has instructed officials to consider options to increase the provision of Changing Places toilets where the building regulations apply. So, it is possible to use the building regulations to ensure that Changing Places toilets are available.

Hefin David (Labour, Caerphilly)

6. Will the Minister make a statement on the Welsh Government's support for people in Wales diagnosed with Parkinson's disease? OAQ54592

Vaughan Gething (Labour, Cardiff South and Penarth)

Yes. I recognise the challenges that people living with Parkinson’s disease face and the impact it has on carers, friends and families. That is why we are working with our health board’s specialist Parkinson’s teams to help people living with Parkinson’s disease and their carers to get the support they need and deserve.

Hefin David (Labour, Caerphilly)

I was recently made aware of an organisation called the Cure Parkinson's Trust, which funds significant research in its mission to improve therapies and ultimately find a cure for Parkinson's disease. My grandfather passed away with Parkinson's disease many years ago. A constituent, David Murray, who is a former member of Newport City Council, is a trustee of the organisation. He lives himself with Parkinson's. I went to see him just the other day. He campaigns tirelessly for people with this condition. The trust is holding an important research update meeting in London next Monday, 28 October, and the life sciences sector is an increasingly important part of Wales's economy and there's a need to develop and better co-ordinate joint neurological research efforts for the benefit of the people of Wales with those that are going on across the border, and that's part of the purpose of the meeting that's taking place. I appreciate it's very short notice for the Minister, but would he be willing to either attend that meeting himself or send officials to that meeting in order to hold discussions about how approaches to research into Parkinson's can be better co-ordinated?

Vaughan Gething (Labour, Cardiff South and Penarth)

Yes, I can confirm that I've got a full programme of ministerial business that means that I won't be able to attend myself. I'll check with my officials about the level of our engagement with the Cure Parkinson's Trust. I don't think there has been official engagement with officials at present, but I want to say it's not just about whether they can or can't attend the short-notice event next week, but to understand the ongoing work that is already going in this field and a potential role, or otherwise, for the Cure Parkinson's Trust.

I think it is important to recognise that with the range of conditions we have today, it is possible there will be not just treatments to slow down the progression of the disease but actually the potential for curative treatments in the future. So, I will maintain an interest and I'll ask my officials to keep me up to date. And I'll happily meet the Member afterwards to get him up to date on where we are together with the Cure Parkinson's Trust.FootnoteLink

Joyce Watson (Labour, Mid and West Wales)

7. How is the Welsh Government supporting mental health services in Mid and West Wales? OAQ54585

Vaughan Gething (Labour, Cardiff South and Penarth)

We're providing support in a number of ways, including increasing our investment in the mental health ring fence across Wales to £679 million in 2019-20. We're also investing in prevention and early intervention in mid and west Wales, for example through our schools inreach and social prescribing pilots.

Joyce Watson (Labour, Mid and West Wales)

Thank you for that answer, but this month the innovative out-of-hours mental health service, the Twilight Sanctuary, is being launched in Llanelli, and the service that is run by Mind and Hafal was commissioned by Hywel Dda health board, Dyfed-Powys Police and Carmarthenshire council. And it's one of the first projects from the transforming mental health programme and the first of its kind in Wales. It's a great example of what can be achieved by working collaboratively. It'll allow people with deteriorating mental health to access help when services are usually closed, and that would be Thursday to Sunday, between 6 p.m. and 2 a.m. in the morning. Minister, what I'd be keen to know is if you are aware, after this pilot—if that's what it is—has been assessed, to launch similar programmes across mid and west Wales.

Vaughan Gething (Labour, Cardiff South and Penarth)

Yes, I will be interested in the evaluation from the pilot to understand not if it's applicable to mid and west Wales but, actually, if it's potential national learning as well. In the transformation fund that we launched alongside 'A Healthier Wales', we were really clear about wanting to understand projects that weren't just applicable to a small community but had the potential to scale up to a region and across the country. I'm always interested in supporting and understanding innovation, including understanding when that innovation may not lead to that wider spread, but to understand what learning we can take from that and what we do about the whole system. It is worth noting that the transforming mental health services programme that Hywel Dda started and launched in September 2017 is aligned with the vision and the values that underpin 'A Healthier Wales'. So, yes, I'll maintain an interest and, at some point, it may be possible to visit together with the constituency Member.

Elin Jones (Plaid Cymru, Ceredigion)

Finally, question 8, Llyr Gruffydd.

Llyr Gruffydd (Plaid Cymru, North Wales)

8. Will the Minister make a statement on the use of external consultants by Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board? OAQ54597

Vaughan Gething (Labour, Cardiff South and Penarth)

The health board uses external consultants to provide additional expertise in specific areas. This has recently included specialist turnaround expertise to urgently address its financial position and deliver on the recommendations and feedback from the Public Accounts Committee and the finance delivery unit.

Llyr Gruffydd (Plaid Cymru, North Wales)

Well, one of those people is Philip Burns, who has been employed by the board, it would seem, to be part of the process of identifying opportunities to save money. Now, apparently, he is paid £2,000 per day, along with travel costs back and forth from Marbella. I’ve asked the health board to confirm whether this is true for over a month, and I’ve not received a response, and therefore I’ve been forced to present a freedom of information request.

Now, this is the man who is, apparently, behind the intention to change nursing rotas, apparently, which is something that’s caused great concern among nurses in north Wales and does undermine much of the goodwill that has existed between nurses and their employers. Now, it appears that his salary is greater than the savings that that would generate. But never mind about that, my question is: shouldn’t there be more transparency around the way these external consultants are employed? And wouldn’t you agree with me that it’s entirely unacceptable that I contacted the board over a month ago to ask for those details but still haven’t had a response?

Vaughan Gething (Labour, Cardiff South and Penarth)

I think there are a couple of different points. I'm not at all aware whether the interim recovery director is responsible for the ongoing consultation with trade unions around nursing rosters. I don't think that's a fair point to make in this debate.

There is an entirely legitimate question, though, about the transparency on information about the terms on which consultants are engaged and the costs of them. I should point out, though, that the costs in terms of the annual increase are higher within the Welsh system, pretty expected within the English system. We need to deliver a significant turnaround and recovery in the finance function of Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board, and we're at a point where the previous interventions have not worked to deliver the real traction that is required. I expect that health board to deliver against that—not just to come up with a list of opportunities that have not been taken, but actually to make progress on opportunities that do exist to improve their finance function. That does not mean that every single one of those compromises the ability to deliver healthcare of the quality that you and everyone else in this Chamber expects.

Yes, I will, though, talk to the health board about the provision of information, because you should not have to ask over quite such a long period of time for them to provide information that should be available to you and other public representatives.

Elin Jones (Plaid Cymru, Ceredigion)

Thank you, Minister.

3. Topical Questions

Elin Jones (Plaid Cymru, Ceredigion)

The next item is the topical questions and the first question is to be answered by the Brexit Minister, and the question is to be asked by Andrew R.T. Davies.

Andrew RT Davies (Conservative, South Wales Central)

1. In light of the House of Commons last night approving a Brexit deal for the first time since the referendum in the form of the Prime Minister's Withdrawal Agreement Bill, will the Counsel General make a statement to the Assembly? 356

Jeremy Miles (Labour, Neath)

Parliament did not approve the damaging Brexit deal. It merely voted in favour of the legislation to progress to the next phase, where I fully expect significant amendments to be made. I'm pleased that Parliament has agreed with this National Assembly that we reject the attempt to bounce this legislation through just to satisfy an artificial deadline set by the Prime Minister.

Andrew RT Davies (Conservative, South Wales Central)

What was pleasing last night was the Prime Minister recognising, in his closing remarks, that, for the first time since the referendum, Parliament had actually agreed something in wanting the withdrawal agreement to go forward to further stages. What is not entirely clear is exactly why the First Minister here is so hell bent on blocking any progress on this particular issue. Today, for example, he has stood shoulder to shoulder with Nicola Sturgeon, the First Minister of Scotland, and called the withdrawal agreement either 'in purgatory', but it is 'not yet dead'—those are his words that he used at the press conference. Do you not think a more appropriate description of the Bill is that:

'One way or another we will leave the EU with this deal to which this House has just given its assent',

which is what the Prime Minister has said? And, instead of blocking the will of the Welsh people, which was shown in the referendum of 2016, the First Minister should be putting his shoulder to the wheel and working with the Prime Minister to deliver on that referendum result and to deliver on this withdrawal agreement that is agreed with the European Union and is endorsed by the Republic of Ireland as well?

Jeremy Miles (Labour, Neath)

Can I just first gently welcome the fact that the Member is choosing to bring a matter related to Brexit to the Chamber? He has spent the last few weeks decrying the fact that the Welsh Government has sought opportunities to discuss Brexit here, so I welcome his conversion to the cause of scrutiny and transparency in the context of Brexit, and maybe he could seek—[Interruption.]—maybe he could seek to persuade his colleagues in Parliament of the virtues of scrutiny and transparency in the same way.

I don't know what it is about this deal that the Member thinks is remotely in the interests of Wales. We would like to be able to debate this on the basis of economic evidence, but, of course, the UK Government hasn't provided that. But what we do know is that the deal does not contain any meaningful guarantee of alignment with the kind of rights that people in Wales are entitled to expect. It contains a 'no deal' trapdoor at the end of 2020 and a deferred 'no deal' prospect. And it fails to provide for the kind of final say on this deal, which, if the Prime Minister had any confidence in the strength of his deal, he'd have no hesitation in putting to the people.

Delyth Jewell (Plaid Cymru, South Wales East)

Minister, I don't know whether you had a chance to watch Prime Minister's Questions before today's Plenary session. If you did, you will have seen the SNP Westminster leader ask the Prime Minister whether he conceded that the consent of the devolved Parliaments would be necessary for the withdrawal agreement Bill to proceed. Now, we in this Chamber would normally take that for granted, since they've actually contacted us asking for our explicit consent for the withdrawal agreement Bill to go on, which is what we would expect under the Sewel convention. But Boris Johnson told the House of Commons that the Scottish Parliament, and by extension the Senedd, have no role in approving the deal.

Now, let's be clear what this entails. He's asked this place to give its explicit consent, but he's already now said that he will take no heed of what we say before we've even voted on the LCM, which has only just been published. So, that's really a serious breach of the Sewel convention. Actually, I'd go so far as to say it's constitutional vandalism by a Prime Minister willing to destroy the principles of devolution just to get what he wants—this billionaire's Brexit. So, I'd ask you, Minister—you recently published a set of minimum reforms that should be put in place to save the union. These included putting Sewel on a statutory, even codified, footing, so that Westminster could not legislate in devolved areas without our permission. Do you agree with me that Boris Johnson's trashing of Sewel today means that your proposals, however well meaning, have not only been ignored, but maliciously undermined?

Now, Plaid Cymru's solution to this is clear: we want an independence referendum so all decisions affecting Wales can be made in Wales, guaranteeing that no Westminster Government can damage our country ever again. I know you don't agree with independence, Minister, but could you tell me how you will react to this blatant attack on the Senedd's powers? I'm not talking of words, I'm talking of actions: what will you do to protect our institutional integrity in the face of these continual assaults on devolution by Boris Johnson's morally bankrupt Government?

Jeremy Miles (Labour, Neath)

Well, the UK Government has, of course, written to the Welsh Government seeking the consent of the National Assembly in relation to the withdrawal agreement Bill, and, as she will know from the legislative consent memorandum that the Government has laid, the Government's view is that there are a range of other consents beyond those that the UK Government has sought from the Assembly that we are entitled to expect to be considered. I just don't know, quite candidly, what grasp the Prime Minister has of any of this. It seems to me that he has scant regard for any of the things that we would have regarded as constitutionally uncontroversial at any point in the last century. His attempt to exclude Parliament from consideration of these matters was itself extraordinary, and it comes as no surprise to me that he fails to understand the actions taken by other parts of his Government to seek the consent of this Assembly.

She is right to say that the Welsh Government's position is that Sewel needs reform, and I appreciate her reference to the First Minister's paper published two weeks ago. I think the case made in that document is strengthened by the remarks that she has just reported to this Assembly.

Neil Hamilton (UKIP, Mid and West Wales)

Whilst I share the Welsh Government's reservations about having a line drawn in the middle of the Irish sea, and therefore making Northern Ireland effectively part of the EU, rather than the UK, for trade purposes, isn't the real problem here that the Labour Party, and indeed all of the remainer-supporting parties in the House of Commons, fundamentally will do everything they possibly can—they will use every excuse, however tawdry, threadbare or moth-eaten—to try to prevent Brexit actually being delivered? The people of this country, as he knows, voted in 2016— 17.5 million of them—in the largest democratic vote ever in Britain, to leave the EU. We have remainer Parliaments at Westminster, in Edinburgh and here in Wales, and they are the ones who are putting a spanner in the works. So, all the excuses that he gives for opposing this agreement must be seen in the light of that. Whatever the Government presents, they will be against it, because they want Britain to remain in the EU, unlike the people of this country, who voted to leave.

Jeremy Miles (Labour, Neath)

I think there's something quite remarkable about elected representatives and parliamentarians who are prepared to connive and attempt to deny elected representatives the opportunity to scrutinise important legislation. I just think that fails to meet up to the standards the public expect of us. I'll remind the Member, if he needs reminding, that not a single member of the public have been asked to vote on the deal that he has agreed with the European Union—not a single member of the public had that deal in front of them when they cast their vote in 2016, and, if the Prime Minister is as confident as he claims to be about the virtues and value of that deal to the UK, it's about time he put it to the public.

Elin Jones (Plaid Cymru, Ceredigion)

Thank you to the Brexit Minister.

The next question is to be asked of the Minister for Economy and Transport, and the question is to be asked by Rhun ap Iorwerth.

Rhun ap Iorwerth (Plaid Cymru, Ynys Môn)

2. What discussions will the Welsh Government hold with the relevant authorities in light of the tragic news that the bodies of 39 people were found in a lorry container in Essex, having entered the UK via Holyhead? 357

Ken Skates (Labour, Clwyd South)

Llywydd, I'd like to begin by putting on the record the thoughts of myself and the entire Welsh Government—our thoughts are with the families who are suffering truly horrific news today. You'll understand that I don't have all of the details of this terrible incident, and I think it is right and proper that a full police investigation takes place into the incident. Suffice it to say that, as a Welsh Government, we will, of course, play our full and collaborative part in that investigation relating to our areas of responsibility, in any passage that the vehicle involved may have made through Wales.

Rhun ap Iorwerth (Plaid Cymru, Ynys Môn)

Thank you for that response, Minister. This is a heartbreaking case, that 39 people felt the need to put their lives at risk in this way and that those 39 people lost their lives in such a horrific manner. My sympathies are with them and their families. No matter how far from home they may have been, the grief is the same. Now, there are many questions arising from this—humanitarian questions, certainly, about why these individuals had been driven to take this step, but there are also practical questions arising too.

Rhun ap Iorwerth (Plaid Cymru, Ynys Môn)

What we need to do immediately, I think, is to start to ask some of the practical questions about how and why. These questions need to be asked alongside the police investigations that clearly will be beginning immediately. How is it that this lorry was able to pass through Holyhead undetected in this way? Why did those on board, or others associated with this tragedy, decide that Dublin-Holyhead was to be the chosen crossing? I've heard people complain that somehow EU membership was to blame for Holyhead being a rather too open border. Let me say that decisions to cut jobs over the years at Holyhead have been nothing to do with the EU and far predate any discussions on Brexit; they've been about cuts and austerity and nothing else. So, what assurances have you sought, Minister, about the level of border control staffing at Holyhead, including a lack of permanent immigration enforcement officers? I and others, like the Police and Crime Commissioner for North Wales, Arfon Jones, have long raised concerns about fears of a lack of border resources at Holyhead. The commissioner got a response from the Home Office when he pursued this, saying the Government is aware of the vulnerabilities of the common travel area—aware, perhaps, but what did they do about it in terms of increasing resource?

Alex Carlile QC, when he was a reviewer of anti-terror legislation, was raising issues around border policing and anti-terror measures at Holyhead 20 years ago. In so many ways, Holyhead has been overlooked as a port, I fear. Whilst Dover is firmly on the agenda as the UK's busiest roll-on, roll-off ferry port, Holyhead seems ignored as the second busiest, with about 400,000 lorries passing through annually. This is not acceptable, either in the context of Brexit and the ignoring of Holyhead in the Yellowhammer document, for example, or now in the context of immigration and this tragic loss of human life. As we know, it's thought that the lorry came from Bulgaria and arrived in Wales on Saturday in Holyhead. Seamus Leheny, Northern Ireland policy manager for the Freight Transport Association, is quoted by the Press Association today as saying:

'If the lorry came from Bulgaria,'—

as we believe it did—

'getting into Britain via Holyhead is an unorthodox route.'

He went on to say:

'People have been saying that security and checks have been increased at places like Dover and Calais, so it might be seen as an easier way to get in by going from Cherbourg or Roscoff over to Rosslare, then up the road to Dublin.'

It's a long way around, he said, and it'll add an extra day to the journey. The question I think we need to ask is: has a lack of resource put in by the Home Office in Holyhead made our ports vulnerable and in so doing added to the already significant vulnerability of these 39 who have now been found dead? I spoke with one Holyhead councillor earlier today, Councillor Trefor Lloyd Hughes, about how he too had been raising these concerns for some time. Will you join him and me in inviting Home Office Ministers to Holyhead to see for themselves why this port needs real investment and to impress on the Home Office the prioritisation that Holyhead deserves as Wales's busiest and the UK's second-busiest roll-on, roll-off ferry port?

Ken Skates (Labour, Clwyd South)

Can I thank Rhun ap Iorwerth for his questions? Of course we will be inviting Home Office Ministers to Holyhead port. Is the port vulnerable? Well, let's allow the investigators to answer that following a thorough inquiry into what's happened. But I can say that, from my experience, there is no lack of professionalism at Holyhead with border security. Whether there is a question about capacity, well, let's let the investigators look closely into that.

I think Rhun ap Iorwerth raises a very serious question of why did 39 people apparently feel the need to put their lives at risk. I do hope that we take time just to acknowledge the terrible loss of life and the damage that this is causing to many families. We don’t know where yet. We don't know their identities, we don't know whether they were indeed from Bulgaria. But I would say this: sometimes it's easy for us to talk about borders in abstract and artificial ways, but the reality is that borders and the arrangements at them are also about people; they're about human lives. And we should, I think, never forget the grave seriousness and the tragic human costs that can occur at those points of crossing. We saw back in 2000 a significant number of lives lost again when more than 50 people, I believe it was, suffocated in the back of a lorry and were discovered in Dover. Numerous people have died in lorries since, and I think we should reflect on the reasons why, most often because people are escaping from appalling conditions.

Llywydd, I don't wish to speculate on the reasons why the lorry appears to have entered the UK through Holyhead. I know that there are certain comments being made by transport experts about it being an unorthodox route, if it was found that the lorry went through Cherbourg to Rosslare then up to Dublin. I really do feel that it's right and proper that the police should investigate the circumstances surrounding this absolute tragedy.

Mark Isherwood (Conservative, North Wales)

Of course, I share your sentiments and pass on my condolences to the families of these people who've suffered a terrible, terrible experience, whatever their motivations in coming here might have been. It's actually several years since I first raised in this Chamber a concern raised with me that Holyhead was a soft spot for people smuggling into the UK. Haven of Light, a non-profit organisation focused on prevention, awareness-raising and support for survivors of modern slavery and human trafficking in north Wales, told me in May that they'd never been able to find any real answers as to whether or not the crossing from Ireland to Holyhead and vice versa are safe, though what they're being told by members of the public and senior clergy is that there are often suspicions that people are being brought into the UK by the ferries at Holyhead. They'd previously told me that the main smuggling lines through Holyhead came from eastern Europe, particularly Romania and Bulgaria, and also from Vietnam, and they also told me that they were told last October that Holyhead was now sorted.

Kevin Hyland OBE, the United Kingdom's first Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner, having previously been the head of the London Metropolitan Police's human trafficking unit, told me that cases referred in Wales last year included, specifically, 10 victims from Vietnam. He now works for the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe on support for victims and survivors, and is Ireland's representative on the Council of Europe's group of experts on action against trafficking in human beings. He also speaks at the UN Security Council on these matters. And, again, he told me personally that across the UK and globally, denial around the issue of what human trafficking manifests itself as is paramount. He said that there's too much back-slapping, when 99.6 to 99.7 per cent of victims are missed across the world, and only 0.35 per cent of perpetrators were convicted last year globally.

So, I've got two questions: one, would you be willing, or with appropriate colleagues, to meet Kevin Hyland, who is perhaps the leading global expert on this matter, who is very eager to engage with the Welsh—[Inaudible.]—and Welsh Government on this matter? And, in the shorter term, perhaps you can give a quicker answer: what dialogue has the Welsh Government's own anti-slavery co-ordinator had with Stena Line and Irish Ferries, not just today or since this tragic news, but over recent months and years since this soft spot was first highlighted?

Ken Skates (Labour, Clwyd South)

Can I thank Mark Isherwood for his questions? Yes, I would be more than willing to meet with Kevin Hyland, but I think it would also be helpful if a Minister from the Home Office were to agree to do so as well. I think it's important to stress right at this moment that we are yet to receive any firm information that would confirm that this case is linked to people smuggling, modern slavery or another crime, but obviously, the facts speak for themselves: 39 people have found dead in a lorry that travelled from eastern Europe.

In cases of modern slavery, our Welsh Government anti-slavery co-ordinator works with the key agencies to identify any lessons that will help us to tackle this form of horrendous crime. We are in touch with the Home Office. We are in touch with the investigators to learn as much as we possibly can, and to apply any lessons we can glean from this incident, and apply them as soon possible.

Elin Jones (Plaid Cymru, Ceredigion)

I thank the Minister.

4. 90-second Statements

Elin Jones (Plaid Cymru, Ceredigion)

The next item is the 90-second statements. And the first statement is from Jayne Bryant.

Jayne Bryant (Labour, Newport West)

Diolch, Llywydd. This November marks 180 years of the Newport rising, which saw Chartists march from the Gwent valleys to Newport. The shooting of Chartists outside the Westgate Hotel in the centre of Newport, on 4 November 1839, marks a pivotal moment in our democratic history. We have commemorated the events of 1839 in Newport for many years, and it's wonderful to see how much this has grown. This year promises to be the best to date, with a grass-roots festival, which will include film, poetry, readings, live music, talks and, of course, a march. It's particularly special that some of these events will be held in the historic Westgate Hotel. In July this year, the hotel held the first of these events, with the publication of a new graphic novel by Josh Cranton, which was inspired by that march.

On 14 November, I'm looking forward to welcoming young people from schools across Newport to the Senedd, to celebrate the sacrifices, achievements and legacy of the Chartists, to ensure that people, not just in Newport but across Wales, understand our history and the significance. Of course, it's with huge thanks and appreciation to our dedicated volunteers of our Chartist heritage for the work they do, all year round, and I hope that Members and the public will join us to make Newport Rising 2019 the best it can be.

Delyth Jewell (Plaid Cymru, South Wales East)

Fifty-three years ago, on the morning of 21 October, a shadow fell on Aberfan. A spoil tip collapsed, killing 116 children and 28 adults. My grandfather, Ken, was one of many hundreds who went to help with the rescue, the only day my grandmother ever remembered him crying. While they worked desperately with shovels, with anything they could find, he said that whispers would spring up that a young boy had been found alive, unharmed, had dusted himself down, and run down the street. It wasn't true, but it kept the rescue workers going, it kept their hope alive on that darkest of days. My grandfather was a Catholic, and he said that, until that day, he had never believed in the devil.

There was a bitter injustice in the wake of this avoidable disaster too. Despite a public inquiry uncovering unforgivable negligence, no criminal proceedings were ever brought, no-one lost their job or received any sanction. But there were also stories of hope, of unbelievable courage; teachers who gave their lives trying to save the children. So when we remember Aberfan, we remember the loss, the betrayal, but we also remember courage and the resilience that that village showed on that day and every day since. We remember Aberfan—53 years that don't lessen the loss.

5. Member Debate under Standing Order 11.21(iv): Tackling LGBT Hate Crime

Elin Jones (Plaid Cymru, Ceredigion)

The next item is a Member debate under Standing Order 11.21(iv) on tackling LGBT hate crime. I call on Siân Gwenllian to move the motion.

Siân Gwenllian (Plaid Cymru, Arfon)

Thank you, Llywydd. And thank you to my fellow Members, Leanne Wood and Mick Antoniw, for allowing this debate to take place today.

I was inspired to look into the issue of hate crimes against the lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans community across Wales as a result of events in a town in my constituency. The charity GISDA has been supporting vulnerable young people in Arfon over decades, and I remember working with Brian Thirsk and the first group of volunteers, back in the 1980s, when it became apparent that some of the young people in the area needed support. The charity is now an important and well-known part of our communities, and recently it was identified that there was a need to establish a safe meeting place for some young LGBT people in the area. A youth club was created and there was an opportunity for young people from that community to socialise and share experiences, and to do so through the medium of Welsh.

But, unfortunately, some members of the group and the youth club have suffered homophobic prejudice. Indeed, there was an attack on one young person whilst waiting for a bus having attended the club. This was an appalling homophobic attack. Other members of the club suffered verbal attacks too. Now, as a result of that, some of the young people felt that they could no longer attend the club, but agencies were brought together and there were discussions as to what steps needed to be taken to allow the club to continue to meet for the future.

Siân Gwenllian (Plaid Cymru, Arfon)

This story highlights why we must tackle the increase in hate crimes against the LGBT community in Wales and that we need to do that as a matter of urgency. Over the past year, almost 4,000 hate crimes were recorded in Wales, the highest number yet for hate crimes in this country and almost double the figure recorded in 2013. It’s disappointing to see the levels increasing again across all the protected characteristics: race, religion, disability, and crimes against the LGBT community. Hate crimes against this community specifically have increased 12 per cent, from 670 to 751 recorded cases over the last year, and the number of hate crimes against the trans community have increased from 64 to 120. That’s almost a doubling in the number. It appears that there are a number of reasons for this increase, including a willingness to come forward to report these incidents and better ways of recording the information, but we must also accept that there is prejudice at the root of this increase in hate crimes, and we must address that prejudice if we are to create a civilised society in Wales—one that embraces difference and respects the rights of individuals in terms of their sexuality.

I would say that all of this is a worthy argument for the devolution of justice to Wales, giving us an opportunity to review the whole process of dealing with hate crimes, and Leanne Wood will address this issue in her contribution. In the meantime, before we can devolve justice to Wales, we do need to tackle the lack of resources. There is huge concern about the lack of resources available to tackle hate crimes, and there is inequality in terms of support across Wales, which means that the resources are patchy and subject to a postcode lottery. For example, the youth club I mentioned in GISDA is the only one of its kind in the whole of Gwynedd and the only one, as far as I know, that provides a space for Welsh-speaking members.

There is good work happening and I am pleased that our police and crime commissioner in north Wales, Arfon Jones, is doing laudable work. North Wales Police have two hate crime diversity officers providing training to new officers to identify hate crimes. And the hate crime justice board has also been doing good work across Wales. Therefore, although the increase in the number of hate crimes recorded by the police is heartbreaking, this may mean that there is greater awareness and that that increase is emerging because of greater awareness among the police and the public and that that has led to an increase in reporting. And, of course, it is better for a victim to be supported through these services, rather than suffering in silence.

But I do have to say that I do feel that the Welsh Government has failed to truly comprehend the need to give priority to this issue and to get to the heart of the problem in dealing with hate crime. There has been a framework drawn up to tackle hate crime, but we haven’t received a great deal of information about that and no update on it for almost two years. And, of course, we do need to give long-term consideration to this issue, so that we see hate crime levels reducing once and for all. And this does mean that we have to consider preventative measures, starting in our schools.

Education in relationship and sex education would mean that children would gain a clear understanding of the diversity of people and healthy relationships. They would learn about different kinds of families, friendships, professional relationships and sexual relationships as well as tolerance and being inclusive in terms of identity. It is crucial, in my view, and I know that the education Minister would agree, that this education is provided to each and every child in Wales.

Stonewall Cymru have said very clearly that sex and relationship education that is inclusive and effective does ensure that every young person receives the information that they need to stay safe, to make informed decisions, to have healthy relationships, and to prepare for life in Wales in the twenty-first century.

It is crucial that all of the possible resources and every support are provided for our schools so that we can ensure that they are confident in presenting sex and relationship education effectively. And it is good to see that including this element—sex and relationship education—in the curriculum is one that has received clear support across parties in this Chamber.

I am pleased that we as a Senedd today can discuss this issue and can make a strong stand together on these grave issues that get to the heart of our society. We do have to look after each other, and I look forward to hearing the contributions of fellow Members on the motion before us today.

Nick Ramsay (Conservative, Monmouth)

I'm pleased to contribute to this debate today. Diolch yn fawr, Siân, for opening. I think it's a sad indictment of the times in which we live that reports of hate crimes against LGBT people in England and Wales have rocketed according to new data, which was just mentioned, compiled by the Home Office and other organisations. In fact, looking at the statistics, I think that I'm right in saying that there's been a 25 per cent rise in hate crimes based on sexual orientation alone—25 per cent.

This is a deeply worrying statistic, but, of course, behind the statistics, there are heart-wrenching individual stories. And, Siân, you mentioned one of the most recent, which has been publicised, which was in Gwynedd, in your constituency, I believe, which left a teen hospitalised. As you said, that was a youth club member—only 13. He was assaulted at a local bus stop while being verbally abused. I understand that, at a meeting, the founder Aled Griffiths called for members—he said allies should stand together for equality. And I think all of us who are allies in this Chamber and in this institution would agree and support those views—we all need to stand together, as you said at the end of your speech on that. Of course, that's one example. There are many more. In another instance, a man punched his neighbour and hurled horrific homophobic abuse at his—I mean, it's horrific even reading the details of this. It's unbelievable that this is happening in today's society, but he punched his neighbour and hurled horrific homophobic abuse at him after allegedly assaulting his partner. So, multiple people were involved in that attack.

So, the purpose of this debate is to call on the Welsh Government to work with local authorities, with schools and the police to try and eradicate the prejudice and the violence that our LGBT constituents across Wales face on a day-to-day basis.

If you dig down into the statistics, it gets even more worrying. Anti-trans hate crime has more than quadrupled in the last five years. So, these really are breathtaking statistics that you wouldn't accept in any other line of life or line of criminal statistics. So, this really does need to be addressed as soon as possible.

You've mentioned the devolution of justice, and I think you said that Leanne Wood was going to go further into that. And I'm certainly not averse to devolution of further powers to this place where necessary. I think it's quite desirable, in many respects, that we do actually have, as the finance Secretary and, indeed, the former First Minister said, the tools of the toolbox in order to deal with these issues. I would urge a word of caution, in that, of course, further powers are not always the answer. We do have to, as I think you said, know what we're going to do with those powers, which is why I think point 3 calls on the Welsh Government to come forward with a strategy of how all of these disparate areas can be joined up to try and make things work better. So, I would be concerned if the focus was taken off using the powers that the Welsh Government currently have on a discussion—important as it may be—about the future design of powers for this place, because I think, at this moment in time, LGBT people across Wales need to know that we are out there looking out for them and doing what we can at the moment to support them.

You did mention education, and the education Minister is in the Camber today, and it seems to me that you cannot deal with this issue of hate crime and homophobia, and all sorts of other phobias, without actually addressing that early on. Often the seeds of crimes later in life are sown very early on, and it comes down to malign influences that young people might have early on that aren’t addressed and that they don’t always have a good example to follow, so I think that schools and education have an important role to play. And I would say, large strides have been made in that area—there are issued that are talked about now in schools that were never mentioned before, so that is progress, but we need to go far further in dealing with this issue to make sure that, in future, LGBT people, trans people—indeed, all the people that we represent—can feel safe and can feel free, in youth clubs or wherever it might be, to express themselves and live the sort of lives that they want to live and which they deserve to be able to live freely and without prejudice in Wales.

Leanne Wood (Plaid Cymru, Rhondda)

Whilst social attitudes and the law has progressed a lot over recent decades, many young people still do not feel accepted for who they are in their own communities. Many people still face daily prejudice, abuse, harassment and hostility. How can we assure young people that they will be accepted when they come out when we cannot protect them from hate crimes? In the last year alone, there have been almost 4,000 recorded hate crimes in Wales on the grounds of race, religion, sexual orientation, disability and transgender. This is Wales’s highest figure yet, and it represents a near doubling of the figures over the last six years.

Black, Asian and minority ethnic LGBT people are hit by double discrimination. According to Stonewall, half of black, Asian and minority ethnic LGBT people have experienced discrimination or poor treatment because of their ethnicity from others in their own local LGBT community, and this number rises to three in five black LGBT people. And a third of lesbian, gay and bi people of faith aren’t open with anyone in their faith community about their sexual orientation.

Hate crimes don’t exist in a vacuum. Society has become more polarised and political discourse has become more toxic. And when the UK Prime Minister compares Muslim women who wear the burqa and calls them 'letterboxes', and when he can walk away free from any reprimand or consequence, then we have got work to do.

Wales is not immune to this or these latest statistics, and they show that our society is neither yet wholly accepting or fair. They show that prejudice is a problem, and they show that, despite the many gains that Wales has made in terms of LGBT equality, we are not there yet. Social attitudes may have changed a lot over recent decades, and although changes in law mean more schools and public services are taking notice of and tackling anti-LGBT discrimination, we must still push further.

Of the many equality hurdles we must overcome, present discourse around trans rights is of deep concern to me. Trans people in Wales and throughout the world face prejudice and discrimination on the basis of their gender identity. Fifty-nine percent of trans women and 56 of trans men say they avoid expressing their gender identity for fear of a negative reaction from others. For non-binary respondents, the figure was much higher, at 76 per cent. Trans people are also at higher risk of homelessness and suicide, and have had to travel to London to get basic healthcare. Trans people should have an inalienable right to live free from prejudice, discrimination and persecution. Why can’t we have an ambition for Wales to be a world leader in high-quality trans healthcare and access to services and facilities in accordance with their gender identity?

Real, long-term change can also come from a better justice system. The current England and Wales criminal justice system is failing our communities—it doesn’t work for people here. We need change and full power and responsibility over criminal justice to create a system that will benefit all of our communities, to properly tackle LGBT hate crime and protecting LGBT people. We could review hate crime laws so that hate crimes based on sexual orientation, gender identity or disability and neurodiversity are treated equally to those based on race and faith, by making them aggravated offences. We could better train all police and prosecutors on anti-LGBT hate crimes, on and offline. We could successfully track prosecutions to develop best practice, and provide targeted support to victims.

In a wider context, we must tackle the ingrained prejudice that sees imprisonment rates among BAME communities much more disproportionate, relative to the population, in Wales than in England. If you are a young person of colour in Wales, you are both more likely to be in imprisoned and to receive a longer sentence. That is not acceptable.

We are thankfully far from the days of section 28 and the anti-equal marriage lobby, but we still have so much more to do before LGBT people can feel safe and accepted without exception in Wales today, and for hate crimes to be a thing of the past.

Jenny Rathbone (Labour, Cardiff Central)

Thank you very much to Leanne and Siân for bringing this debate, along with Mick Antoniw, because I think it's a very interesting debate and one that we don't often address. I want to talk about some positives, because I think we can all agree that there are lots of deplorable things going on in society.

I want to highlight Just a Ball Game?, which is a charity that is combating LGBTQI phobia in sport, which is often one of the places where people feel their inhibitions are laid aside and people feel they can behave on the terraces in a way that is different to how they would behave in the street. I remember hosting a memorable meeting last year in the Pierhead with Just a Ball Game?, organised in collaboration with my late lamented constituent Bob Woods, a distinguished social worker and LGBT rights campaigner. Amongst those attending, to my delight, were five members of the St Teilo's LGBT group, pupils who meet monthly in order to discuss matters of common concern, who were brought, with the consent of their parents, by a member of staff. The speakers included Neville Southall, one of the top 100 football players of the twentieth century—as football fans will know he played for both Everton and Wales—and Gareth Thomas, the second-highest try scorer, behind Shane Williams, and one of the most distinguished rugby union and rugby league players in Wales and Britain. Both of them are icons of their games who have played prominent parts in combating homophobic hate crime in sport.

Shamefully, just under a year ago, Gareth Thomas was the subject of a homophobic attack whilst on a night out in my constituency, in Cardiff. It was to his credit that Gareth Thomas opted to go down the restorative justice route, rather than prosecute the 16-year-old and give him a criminal record—something that Neville Southall commended him for. I'm sure that that is a much more effective way of getting this 16-year-old to rethink his ideas about his prejudice, which he no doubt had picked up from other people in his family.

I also want to speak about the Cardiff Dragons Football Club, which is Wales's first and only LGBTQI football team. It was set up in 2008 by football fans who wanted to create a team free from homophobia and play football in a safe and supportive space. They still have difficulty getting pitches in the winter months, which are normally taken up by other clubs. So, if anybody knows of a winter weather football space that they could offer them, please do get in touch.

Their mission statement is to promote participation in and awareness of football, social cohesion and healthy lifestyles within the LGBTQI community in Cardiff, south Wales and beyond. They take part, playing in the Gay Football Supporters' Network league against teams from all over the UK. The supporters network was set up in 1989 by fans of the sport, and it has extended from simply following the game to campaigning for LGBTQI rights and freedom from abuse while they go to matches as well as also playing. The Cardiff team also plays in straight leagues as well, where they are, from time to time, subject to abusive comments from opposition teams. Whilst these complaints tend to be quickly dealt with by the league, we nevertheless have to understand that homophobia, just like racism, is, unfortunately, something that we have still a lot of work to do on in sport, particularly in football.

So, the Cardiff Dragons are in talks with Cardiff City to set up a Cardiff City LGBT supporters network, which they're hoping to launch in February next year to coincide with Football v Homophobia Month, and I will be delighted to support that.

The Wales team doesn't have an LGBT supporters network at the moment either, so these are important initiatives to normalise respect for difference in sport, which is one of the arenas where people do feel that they can start to air their prejudice.

We have to be constantly vigilant about, and intolerant of, homophobia and racism in sport. We have to ensure that the next generation is enabled to combat the inherited prejudices that were enshrined in law in the past. And section 28 has already been mentioned as a really shameful period in our history. I can recall that, over a decade after decriminalisation, my own uncle had several scrapes with the law simply because homophobic policemen had nothing better to do than harass gay people who were meeting furtively in public places rather than having the confidence to meet out in the open on the same terms as heterosexual people.

Ann Jones (Labour, Vale of Clwyd)

Can you wind up, please?

Jenny Rathbone (Labour, Cardiff Central)

Siân Gwenllian has already mentioned the importance of the relationships and sexuality curriculum, and I do hope that this will be a game changer in ensuring that the next generation really does understand respect for difference and ensuring that people are not consumed by their prejudices, which can lead to lifelong mental health problems.

Mark Reckless (Conservative, South Wales East)

May I congratulate Siân Gwenllian on getting this debate and leading it in the way she has, and on her work in her constituency? I was particularly interested in the story around the youth club there, GISDA.

She did say at one point in her speech that prejudice was the root of the increase. We heard from Leanne Wood that, I think quite rightly, social attitudes have progressed a lot in recent decades. I just don't know whether it's right to say that prejudice is the root of the increase, which, to me, implies that prejudice has got worse. I don't know if that is the case in the near term. Certainly, in the longer term, my impression, as with Leanne, is that things have got better—clearly, not good enough and there are problems that we need to address.

We have these statistics, and the focus has been on those reported to the police and the way they've recorded the crimes, and the 17 per cent increase in Wales and the 10 per cent across England and Wales in the past year. When someone reports a hate crime, it's very important that the police record them in a consistent way. Until recently, unfortunately, there's evidence that that hasn't been the case, and it's important that the standards of crime recording are set centrally.

The way it's done is, if someone alleges a crime has been committed, reports an incident, then it's recorded as a crime. If that person, or indeed anyone else, says that they consider race or another protected characteristic to be a motivating factor, then, again, it must be recorded as a hate crime. I think that is right and proper, but it's also right that we understand that and how that wasn't reliably the case in the past. And not all of these cases were necessarily proved to be that, and we haven't heard from other people there, or particularly a defendant, as to what they might say. I think 13 per cent of these cases lead to a charge or a summons, which is a somewhat higher proportion than for crime overall.

What I think is a useful corrective, though, is to check the police recorded crime statistics against what we see from the British crime survey. The trend in that has been different. On these issues, we've got the waves of the survey, and the first I'll refer to is in 2007 to 2009, and that, grossed up from the survey number to total population, suggested 69,000 hate crimes related to sexual orientation across the UK. And then, in 2010-12, that fell from 69,000 to 42,000 on the British crime survey, and then in 2013-15 fell again to 29,000. There is a small uptick in 2016-18 from 29,000 to 30,000, but not statistically significant on the basis of the numbers in the survey. On the transgender hate crimes, they didn't ask the relevant questions back in the first two surveys. They did in the latter two, but they have a sort of asterisk response, saying that the numbers were too small for them reliably to gross up and give an estimate for the country as a whole. One hate crime is too many, and these transgender hate crimes—. Clearly, transgender people and having that identity has become greater, and it's talked about in a way that it wasn't even almost a decade or so ago. People may debate what are the arrangements for sport or what are the arrangements for lavatories, but it's inexcusable when there are crimes, often crimes of violence, simply for, or at least motivated by, someone's identity.

So, I agree with much of what's been said in this debate, but I would just put that corrective of looking at the British crime survey, as well as the recorded police statistics. I would say that, when you compare the police statistics across the UK, overall, the Welsh forces aren't coming in the top 10 for hate crimes, but there's one exception to that, and that area is sexual orientation, where two of the Welsh forces—Gwent, in my region, and south Wales, which touches on part of my region—are fourth and fifth out of the 43, at 26 hate crimes on sexual orientation per 100,000. So, it may suggest at least in south Wales there is a particular issue there in Wales that we should be concerned about and interrogate why that is, and look to see how we can improve it, even if, overall, on the other hate crimes, we don't see Wales to the fore.

I'll just say that I'm not yet convinced of the link to points 2 and 3 of the motion, and for that reason I don't propose to support the motion today. It's unfortunate in terms of timing, because I'm very much looking forward to hearing Lord Thomas tomorrow; I think he's launching his commissioner's report on the Justice Commission for Wales from 8:30 tomorrow in the Pierhead. I hope to see some colleagues there, and I really want to listen to, read and digest that report before considering our position on devolution of justice. We're not yet convinced of it; in particular, I'd worry if we were then to go from police and crime commissioners who are elected to a Wales-wide force. I know that Wales's Government is doing some good things in some areas here, but that of itself doesn't strike me as a sufficient reason to devolve the whole of justice, but I will be reading very, very carefully what Lord Thomas and his team say tomorrow. Thank you.

Joyce Watson (Labour, Mid and West Wales)

Diolch, Llywydd, and I'm really pleased to be speaking in this debate. There's a famous line in the 1976 film, Network: 'I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore'. It's a statement for our time, isn't it? So much anger, especially from the keyboard warriors online. But, at the same time, people aren't prepared to take it anymore. Victims of abuse are reporting crimes, calling out the trolls and the bullies in record numbers. So, that's why we must encourage and support the reporting mechanisms, as Welsh Government is doing through the National Hate Crime Report and Support centre, as well as the new hate crime minority communities grant.

The police stats for the last year do show a 17 per cent increase in reported hate crimes in Wales compared to the year before. Today, we are focusing on crimes against the LGBT community and, as has already been said, they do account for nearly a quarter of all recorded offences. The charity Stonewall says that it's just the tip of the iceberg, and according to their research four in five anti-LGBT hate crimes go unreported, with younger people particularly reluctant to go to the police. So, it seems that it's impossible to tackle this pervasive problem through the criminal justice system alone. It is society's problem and it demands social solutions.

Next month, I'll be organising a series of White Ribbon campaign events to raise awareness against domestic abuse, and the big focus for me is engaging with young people by linking that to healthy relationships that are taught at school. The only fears we're born with The only fears we're born with are of heights and loud noises. Everything else is learned behaviour. In other words, children are innately tolerant. It's us, the adults, that are the problem, quite frankly. With social media so central to their lives today, young people are perhaps uniquely vulnerable to being attacked for who they are, what they believe in and who they love. That is why we must defend LGBT-inclusive lessons now more than ever. We've seen on the news how schools in Birmingham trying to teach the No Outsiders programme have been attacked on supposedly religious grounds. It's sad to see adults preaching bigotry outside school gates. It reminds me of the ugly images from another Birmingham—Birmingham, Alabama in the 1960s. That was a different prejudice, driven by the same narrow-mindedness. I hope, then, that the Welsh Government will back our schools and our education authorities to the hilt against any such campaigns, should they arise in Wales.

Ann Jones (Labour, Vale of Clwyd)

Thank you. Can I now call the Deputy Minister and Chief Whip, Jane Hutt?

Jane Hutt (Labour, Vale of Glamorgan)

Thank you, Dirprwy Lywydd. I want to start by thanking Members for bringing forward this debate today, which the Welsh Government welcomes. It does contribute to our drive to secure greater equality and inclusion for all people in Wales. Intolerance, hate speech and instances of hate crime have no place in our society. We're determined to root them out, and the debate today has shown the strength of feeling on those points across the Chamber. Any incident of hate crime, regardless of its type or manner, is unacceptable. I've written to the Home Secretary to urge the UK Government to acknowledge hate crime motivated by hostility based on sexual orientation be recognised as an aggravated offence, in line with race and faith hate crime, and, in addition, I will be writing to the Home Secretary urging hate crime motivated by hostility based on transgender identity and disability also be recognised as an aggravated offence.

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

Will the Minister take an intervention? I'm really pleased to hear you say that you'll be making those representations. Of course, one of the protected characteristics where violence against the persons holding that protected characteristic is not treated as a hate crime is violence against women. Do you believe that there may be a case? I wouldn't ask you to postpone—I'd ask you to consider the action on the others—but I'd ask you to consider whether the time has come to make violence against women treatable as a hate crime as well, because, after all, misogyny is one of the deepest and most deep-rooted prejudices in our society today.

Jane Hutt (Labour, Vale of Glamorgan)

Yes. Well, I'm grateful to Helen Mary Jones for raising that point. Of course, there is an interaction, and I think the fact that hate crime—. This has been brought up today. Intersectionality has been particularly problematic as well. For example, there could be a disabled person who has also experienced hate crime and violence as well, and all of the protected characteristics need to be applicable in terms of recognising hate crime perpetrated on the basis of several protected characteristics.

But we must recognise that last week we did see a rise, a disappointing rise, in hate crime. The statistics published by the Home Office, as Siân Gwenllian said, show a 17 per cent increase in recorded hate crimes across Wales compared to 2017-18, and, of the 3,932 recorded hate crimes across the four Welsh police force areas, 19 per cent were sexual orientation hate crimes and 3 per cent transgender hate crimes, and although hate crimes related to LGBT+ individuals represent roughly 22 per cent of these crimes, this appears to be increasing. We have done a significant amount of work to increase awareness of hate crime and to urge victims to come forward and report, so the increase is likely to be partly due to an improvement in reporting, but these statistics remind us how we need to reflect on what more can be done—and that has to be the outcome of this debate—to ensure no-one is targeted because of their identity. So, the police forces across Wales also have worked hard to ensure they're correctly identifying hateful motivations for crime, and this may be driving some of the apparent increases in recorded hate crime, but we need to remember, as Nick Ramsay said, that behind each statistic is an individual with a story of hostility or trauma. Working with the four Welsh police forces and the hate crime criminal justice board, we have robust systems in place to investigate hate crimes, support victims and ensure perpetrators face justice. But we also have to review the effectiveness of those systems.

Jane Hutt (Labour, Vale of Glamorgan)

Through the European transition fund, we are providing an additional £360,000 over the next two years to the national hate crime report and support centre, run by Victim Support Cymru. That is important, as Joyce Watson said, it is also about how we're addressing this, raising awareness and supporting victims. The funding is going to be used to train volunteers and raise awareness of how to report hate crime. I visited the centre last week, along with organisations such as Stonewall Cymru and Pride, when we were looking at how we could ensure, support and advise the national hate crime report and support centre about the issues and that we were now able to extend their services with this funding.

Supporting victims is crucial, but we need to prevent hateful attitudes from forming in the first place. So, that's why we're also, through the EU transition funding, providing £350,000 to the Welsh Local Government Association for the hate crime in schools project. This project is designed to encourage children to develop their critical thinking skills, to question hateful speech and behaviour, and dissuade them from becoming perpetrators of hate crime in the future. So, activities will equip staff with the skills to challenge hate crime and support victims in school. And it is through this and the wider work on the new curriculum, which has already been mentioned, that we aim to support teaching staff to ensure that schools nurture ethical, informed citizens who contribute to more cohesive society.

We are developing a Wales-wide anti-hate crime communications campaign. We're gathering the views of people affected by hate crime to help shape the campaign. But I'm also pleased we've seen the growth of LGBT+ self-organised student groups in many of our schools. You've mentioned St Teilo's, Jenny Rathbone, the school group, and there are student-led bodies that are having a positive impact on their school communities and the attitudes and values of future generations of Welsh citizens.

I met with the GISDA project recently in north Wales. I'm horrified to hear about the assaults and the daily attitudes that those young people have faced. I raised this immediately with North Wales Police and community safety agencies, and I think there now is support coming forward.

But we do need to do all we can to advance LGBT rights through policy, funding and visible support. This can be also done through the events that we hold throughout the year—Pride events. In fact, in September, I had the honour of opening the first ever Barry Pride, and Pride events are happening in towns across Wales. The First Minister led the Pride Cymru parade in Cardiff. They do raise awareness of equality and diversity in the most visible way, and we provided £21,000 for Pride Cymru for this year's event.

I think it is important that the funding that we're giving to Stonewall Cymru, which we gave in 2017 for the equality inclusion grant, does include appointing a new education youth officer to work within schools across Wales, taking forward their school role models programme. And those role models will visit schools across Wales to tell their stories and raise awareness of LGBT people's experience. But they also have specific funding for a trans engagement officer.

So, it is through early-intervention prevention work, it's our community cohesion programme—£1.52 million over the next two years—supporting small teams in each of our eight community cohesion regions of Wales that we can improve and intensify our preventative work. And I do hope, also, that we can work together in terms of not just Welsh Government, local authorities, third sector, with the hate crime criminal justice board, but it also has to be with the UK Government.

So, we do look forward to seeing Lord Thomas's commission's report when it's published tomorrow. We'll be looking carefully at those recommendations and seeing what more we can do to improve justice outcomes. But I hope the reflection on wider issues will inform our consideration of how we can better tackle LGBT+ hate crime. We need a justice system that works for Wales, aligned with our policy drivers and commitment.

So, in closing, I want to reiterate that we are committed to creating a society where diversity is valued and respected and where everyone can flourish. I want to have a Government debate next year on hate crime to provide that progress report you called for and to ensure that we can be held to account for the work we're doing to drive this forward.

Ann Jones (Labour, Vale of Clwyd)

Thank you. Can I now call on Mick Antoniw to reply to the debate?

Mick Antoniw (Labour, Pontypridd)

Thank you, Deputy Llywydd. First, I start by thanking Siân Gwenllian for bringing forward and instigating this debate—I think a very timely debate. Siân, of course, has a long history of campaigning on these issues, as have quite a number of people within this Chamber, so it was good to see these coming together for this debate today.

It isn't my intention, as is sometimes traditional with these, to summarise what everyone has said, because the points have been made so powerfully; the statistics are there. So, I really just thought that it might be an opportunity to reflect, actually, on where we have come from, because certainly those of my generation and anyone brought up in school in the late 1950s and early 1960s will know that, in school, racism, homophobia and antisemitism were part of the culture of schools. The actual changes that have taken place through the 1960s, the 1970s, the 1980s to today are quite phenomenal and I think it's important to recognise them, because in recognising those, we're also able to identify what the current challenges still are.

I remember when I was a student, when the National Union of Students Wales was formed, they were one of the bodies that first, actually, went over the barricades in order to take forward the campaign for gay rights then, which was not popular. It was not a welcoming campaign that people approached with open arms. But it was one that I think young people coming up in the 1970s felt was a necessary one that had to be fought; it was part of the change in society. And in Wales, in fact, it was the Welsh national institutions that produced, I think, the first Welsh translation of the campaign—'ymgyrch hawliau hoyw'—and distributed badges at the 1976 or 1977 Eisteddfod. And it was very interesting to see all these people going around thinking they were supporting a happy campaign, but it opened the door and it was the first step to confronting the inherent cultural prejudice that existed in so many communities and in those generations.

Of course, it's also important to recognise where we came from in respect of the numbers of people who, until the laws were changed, were prosecuted and actually jailed because of their sexual orientation. In 1945, 800 men were prosecuted, because it was regarded as a male offence. In 1955, 2,500 were prosecuted, of whom 700 were jailed. So, the actual significance of what was being done in the 1950s by leaders like Bertrand Russell, Clem Attlee and Isaiah Berlin to actually bring forward the concept of law reform and to challenge those—. It's quite sad within our society sometimes that we end up with correcting so many injustices posthumously. So, Alan Turing, when Gordon Brown actually apologised, supported by David Cameron at the time, for that. So many of these issues are ones that we have to deal with in that posthumous way. And the idea of chemical castration as being part of the norm of a treatment for a criminal offence would be something we would just regard as something that was fascistic.

Of course, we lived through the 1980s campaign, the section 28 campaign, where there was a mobilisation of Conservative forces to actually re-establish norms of restriction on gay rights, and a campaign to actually fight against that. And then the action that was taken to lower the age of consent from 21 to 18, which was, in fact, the campaign to lower it to 16, but of course, because of the objections there, it was only 18 at the time. I think everyone was amazed then, again, at the real breakthrough in legislation, which was the Civil Partnership Act 2004, which I think really opened the door.

But, we can't ignore that there is a substantial growth of prejudice and bigotry that was perhaps underlying there that now re-emerges within the toxicity that exists within our politics, not just within Wales or the UK, but across Europe and internationally. It is, in part, fuelled by the growth of the far right, and it is, in part, fuelled by inequality. If you look at the situation that gay people face now in Putin's Russia, the actual physical persecution that still exists, and we deal, as Governments, with these people, so the whole issue of how our international ethics need to change to actually combat this, rather than what effectively happens internationally, which is the turning of the blind eye to those unethical events.

I was so impressed—I know I can rarely make a speech without mentioning Ukraine because of my background—that they had the Pride demonstration for the first time in Kyiv where there were no events on it and politicians joined it. To see that comparator between what is happening there and then what is happening in Moscow, I think is important, because we live within this global world, yet there are still 73 countries where being gay is still not legal. So, I won't go through the statements on that, but clearly there are major issues within our communities in terms of sex education, training and the role that that actually plays. And I think we all still know that there is an enormous, long way to go, an undercurrent.

I not very long ago had a phone call during one of the election campaigns, someone lobbying me to ask me about what we were going to do about the obscenity of homosexuality that was being taught within our schools. The only way I thought I could respond was by saying, 'Well, my son is gay, what do you suggest I say to him?' and the phone was put down. But there is that undercurrent that feels more capable of talking in that particular way, and I think there are links between the forms of prejudice, of racism and bigotry that have emerged.

Can I also say—? In my past role, working as a trade union lawyer, the work that the trade union reps have done and the gay reps have done within our trade unions to actually give voice and representation. I'll never forget one representative who I was talking to and giving advice to on something was telling me that in his capacity as rep, his parents had never spoken to him since he declared that he was gay, and that there were still people like that, who basically don't have those sorts of family connections anymore.

We saw recently the attack on Owen Jones, the journalist, which was clearly a provoked gay attack on him, and because of his outspoken positions. So, I very much welcome how far we have come, but it is important to understand how far we still have to go. So, I very much look forward to what Lord Thomas is going to say tomorrow, because the key thing about devolution and the legal system—it's not about law for law's sake, but it's about laws being there to enable policy to actually work, to be implemented and enforced, and it's creating that framework.

I welcome all the speeches that have been made today. I'm just going to concentrate on a couple, because I thought Joyce—

Ann Jones (Labour, Vale of Clwyd)

No, no, I think you're going to have to be quick.

Mick Antoniw (Labour, Pontypridd)

I'll conclude now. Joyce Watson has made a couple of very important points: the impact of social media, the importance of reporting mechanisms, the points from Stonewall about the tip of the iceberg and, for example, what has been happening in Birmingham and the lessons we must be aware of and learn from that. And to welcome very much what the Minister has said in terms of the funding, the reporting and the campaigns. But as the old National Union of Miners miners have always said, the price of freedom is eternal vigilance, and we need to be vigilant in this area as in so many other areas at this very difficult, toxic political time and situation that we live in. Thank you.

Ann Jones (Labour, Vale of Clwyd)

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

6. Debate on the Children, Young People and Education Committee Report: School Funding in Wales

Ann Jones (Labour, Vale of Clwyd)

We now move on to the debate on the Children, Young People and Education Committee report, 'School Funding in Wales', and I call on the Chair of the committee to move the motion. Lynne Neagle.

Lynne Neagle (Labour, Torfaen)

Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. I'm pleased to open this debate today on the Children, Young People and Education Committee’s report into school funding in Wales. Access to high-quality education is a fundamental right for all our children and young people. It should not depend on where you live, on your social background or the language in which you learn.

Lynne Neagle (Labour, Torfaen)

A good education is one of the most important building blocks a child can receive. However, all too often we hear about the huge pressures being faced by schools in trying to manage their budgets where the funding they receive is not sufficient. This is clearly having a negative effect on the provision of education, including schools having to make staff cuts in order to balance their budgets.

Issues had also been raised about the level of transparency and variation in the distribution of funding for schools and there has been debate over the balance between unhypothecated funding for local government and the more targeted funding aimed specifically at Welsh Government education priorities. More recently, we have heard widespread concern that insufficient school budgets would inhibit the delivery of the Welsh Government’s education reform agenda.

There is an immense and unprecedented level of reform going on in education. We have the radical new curriculum for Wales, a major new additional learning needs Act, the delivery of the whole-school approach to mental health and wide-ranging reforms to professional learning underpinning them all. We cannot expect these major reforms to succeed without adequate funding.

In light of this, the committee agreed to undertake the inquiry to look specifically at both the sufficiency of school funding in Wales and the way in which school budgets are determined and allocated. In taking the inquiry forward, we took evidence from a wide range of stakeholders across the sector. We also undertook detailed case studies with three schools, in which we met with people at all levels—pupils and parents, teachers and school leaders, local authorities and school governors. What we heard in all three schools was very hard-hitting, and, on occasions, alarming. Seeing directly the effect of budget constraints on those on the front line highlighted just how urgently this situation needs to be addressed. I would like to thank all those who took the time to meet with us during the case studies, and for their honest views on the problems being faced.

In total the Committee made 21 recommendations, covering a wide range of issues. In the time available today, I can't cover all our recommendations. I will, however, outline some of the main concerns raised. We are pleased that the Minister for Education has accepted all of the recommendations in our report and the broad welcome she has given to the committee’s work in this key area. It is concerning, though, that the Minister’s response lacks clear detail on how a number of the recommendations will be taken forward. And I hope that the Minister will be able to expand on her response during the debate today on a number of those key recommendations.

In outlining the findings of the inquiry, I’d like to start with the most worrying conclusion we reached as a committee, and where the evidence received was overwhelming. Put quite simply, there is not enough money going into the education system in Wales and not enough finding its way to schools. We saw this first-hand during our school visits. As we've outlined in the report, this is a simple conclusion that, unfortunately, does not have a simple solution. The system for funding schools is hugely complex, multilayered and dependent on many factors, not least of course the amount of money available to the Welsh Government from Westminster. It must also be recognised that responsibility for providing adequate funding for our schools cuts across ministerial portfolios. Given the complexity of the funding formulas, Ministers across Welsh Government must work together to ensure that schools receive the funding they need.

Additional funding for education is essential—and I’ll return to this point shortly—but while it would have been easy to simply recommend additional funding, we believe that increasing the level of funding alone is not the solution. The funding must also be used effectively and in the right places. To fully understand the problems being faced by our schools, it is crucial that we first know the extent of the funding gap facing the education system in Wales, particularly at this time of substantial reform. We need to understand how much it costs to run a school and to educate a child, as a basic minimum, before all necessary factors such as deprivation and sparsity are taken into account, as well as the huge reform agenda.

Recommendation 1 in our report is therefore clear in its call for the Welsh Government to undertake an urgent review to establish this. The response from the Minister has been very positive, confirming that work has already started between Welsh Government and local government to consider the scope of the review. I look forward to receiving an update on action in due course from the Minister. Can I say, though, that whatever the outcome of that inquiry, it cannot be put in the ‘too difficult’ box, as has happened with previous reviews on school funding, such as the Bramley review in 2007 and the years that followed?

Returning to the issue of additional funding, I’m sure that Members are aware that recent funding announcements for education in England have led to a consequential of nearly £200 million for Wales. In view of the fact that the Welsh Government has accepted all the recommendations of the committee’s report, I would hope that most, if not all of this, will be earmarked for education in Wales.

As our report sets out, the problems being faced are not just about the level of funding for schools but also about the way it makes its way to the school front line and how it is used. This clearly depends on a number of factors, including budget prioritisation at a Welsh Government level, how resources for local government are shared out between authorities, whether local authorities prioritise schools within their own budget-setting process, the extent to which they delegate funding to schools themselves, and how they distribute that funding between schools.

Given the complexity of the system, we were concerned to learn that the Welsh Government does not monitor the level of priority that local authorities give to schools within their distribution of funding. Welsh Government has been very clear throughout the inquiry that local authorities are responsible for allocating resources to education, and are democratically accountable for this. While we accept this position, we believe that given Welsh Government's overall responsibility for education, they must be able to satisfy themselves that local authorities are sufficiently prioritising education.

Recommendation 5 of the report, therefore, calls on the Welsh Government monitor this spend more closely, to assure itself that sufficient funding is being provided to enable schools to effectively deliver what is required of them: high-quality education, and also to improve and deliver on the reform agenda. While the Minister has accepted this recommendation, the detail in her response does not provide any indication of how the Welsh Government will undertake the greater monitoring role we called for. We will therefore be seeking further clarification from the Minister on this issue.

In the evidence we received, there was confusion about the purpose of indictor-based assessments within the local government settlement. The clear position of the Welsh Local Government Association and the Association of Directors of Education in Wales was that IBAs have limited influence on how much is spent on education. However, the headteachers' unions argued that there's little point establishing IBAs if local authorities do not take account of them. While we accept that funding for local government is unhypothecated, we believe the Welsh Government must provide greater clarity on the purpose of IBAs. While they are not a prescription of how much a local authority must spend, are they not at least the Welsh Government’s estimate of how much a local authority should need to spend in order to maintain a standard level of service? That is not entirely clear from the Welsh Government’s response to recommendation 6.

Llywydd, there are many more important issues raised during the inquiry that I would like to discuss but cannot cover today. I would like to conclude by saying that I truly believe the lack of adequate funding for our schools is one of the biggest problems facing our public services. To reiterate, I very much welcome the Minister’s agreement to commission a review to identify how much money the schools system in Wales needs and look forward to further information on that.

Investment in education is the most important preventative investment that any Government can make. The time has now come for us all to work together, across parties, across both Welsh Government and local government, to ensure that our schools have the funding they need to provide the high-quality education that all our children and young people deserve. Diolch yn fawr.

Suzy Davies (Conservative, South Wales West)

Can I thank you, Lynne? I don't think Welsh Government should have been particularly surprised at the content of this report. Per-pupil funding for schools has been historically poor compared to the rest of the UK, and the chickens have finally come home to roost. Teachers, school leaders, unions like the NAHT and council leaders have been genuinely fearful about the vulnerability of schools to crumbling finances, and I thank them all for coming before the committee to give us their evidence. And as well as their worries about the overall amount available to schools, teachers and school leaders have been extremely alert to that visible disparity between councils and the invisibility of why those disparities are there.

Despite the long-standing pupil funding gap, Welsh Conservatives signed up to this report because we thought there was an issue regarding UK Government funding. Even though we could have pushed the obvious point of the Welsh Government choosing how it prioritises its spending, and the extra money per head provided by the funding floor, some of these concerns are UK-wide, so fixing the problem had to lie partly with London. But London has responded. As a result of the shrinking national deficit, the UK Government has committed £7.1 billion to schools over the next three years. The Institute for Fiscal Studies says that this will restore the value of the pot of money for schools to where it was before the effects of the financial crash bit. This means about £355 million extra coming to Wales from the UK schools budget—and that is the schools budget, not the education budget—over the next three years. The Minister now has the clarity to allow for multi-year commitment, as she asked for in accepting recommendation 15.

The £195 million for Wales coming from the UK schools budget for 2020-1 as a result of this year's spending review—we heard from the Trefnydd a couple of weeks ago that the decision has not been made on how that money is going to be spent. I hope we find out that that's allocated soon, because in the last three years the pupil funding gap between Wales and England has noticeably narrowed—the NASUWT says it's £645; Welsh Government says not. But narrowed it has, because the number of pupils in England has grown considerably over the last few years and funding there has not caught up. In Wales we've had only 29 extra pupils in that 10 years, but the long-standing funding gap—and let's remember it's been as much as £800—is still there, despite the funding floor.

The gap has been the result of long-term budget decisions made by Welsh Government, not the UK Government. It predates and arises from different reasons from those affecting schools in England, and unlike Welsh Government, the UK Government has acted relatively swiftly, reversing the real-term cuts that have affected the value of that school funding pie. So, the question now is, now that this extra money is coming on-stream, whether we see the per-pupil funding gap open up again. Because if it does, it will be completely clear that this is a choice made in Cardiff Bay, not one in London.

Hefin David (Labour, Caerphilly)

Would you take an intervention?

Suzy Davies (Conservative, South Wales West)

Very quickly. I might move on to answer your question, actually.

Hefin David (Labour, Caerphilly)

I have to say, it really isn't like you, Suzy Davies, to take this kind of central office-brief approach. You were part of the committee, and it's a constructive report. It isn't intended to be in the way you are presenting it, as dividing between UK and Cardiff Bay. Please can you be more constructive and reflect the views of the committee?

Suzy Davies (Conservative, South Wales West)

Let me carry on, because, of course, as Lynne Neagle mentioned in her opening remarks, Westminster was mentioned in this, and I think it is worth us noting that Westminster has now responded to concerns that have only been made apparent to them in the last four or five years. Welsh Government has not responded to the per-pupil funding gap that's been presented to them since I've been here and before. So, what I want to say is that, even if Welsh Government commits the entire £355 million to schools—not education, schools—then we hit, as the committee report says, the local government funding fog, and this is what I want to concentrate on now. Because, in some ways, I really wish that the local government Minister was here responding to this debate, because I think it's at local government level that the urgent action is necessary.

Now, I accept that there are wider pressures on the revenue support grant, but what this report has exposed is what looks like the arbitrariness of how schools are funded. The huge disparity in reserves and deficits between schools is evidence of something going badly wrong. There is no consistency between local authorities on how they prioritise core spending on schools and no line of accountability to Welsh Government connecting its decisions on how much schools need, its consequent contribution to the RSG, and how much councils actually spend on schools.

I find myself asking whether local authorities should be entirely free to use money found by Government to address a particular, identified problem on something else altogether. Spending, as Lynne Neagle said, on good school experience is the epitome of preventative spend and, therefore, sufficient school funding should axiomatically be a priority for every single council. But, as Government admits, it will not influence the prioritisation, despite accepting recommendation 2.

Both Ministers, in evidence to us, reached for the importance of professional trust between Government and councils for their decisions. But what about the professional trust between school staff and councils, and schools and Government? Even in accepting all our recommendations, the Minister has avoided answering some of those questions actually captured in recommendations. There is an uncomfortable question about who she trusts most to deliver her aspirations for school age, because it seems to me that she is happy to trust school leaders with the huge responsibility of designing a new curriculum, but, when it comes to financing the school in which to deliver it, that's for someone else and it’s not clear to me who, yet it will be school leaders who'll carry the can if the curriculum fails due to lack of money for schools.

Your legacy, Minister, will depend on you solving the school funding problem set out so starkly in our report. I really hope this report helps you, and the local government Minister, get the money that you need for schools. Thank you.

Siân Gwenllian (Plaid Cymru, Arfon)

I was very pleased to be part of this important inquiry, and there are important recommendations that are being presented in this report. It should be an exciting period for education in our schools in Wales. The introduction of a new curriculum that respects the skills of our teachers is a concept that Plaid Cymru has supported across the years.

But, unfortunately, if this huge change is not supported by funding and sufficient resources, there’s a genuine risk that we will lose this golden opportunity, and the introduction of the new curriculum will be inconsistent at best around Wales and, at worst, will be a complete disaster. Amid this, our children and young people will suffer.

The paper that was published this week, called ‘Fit for the Future Education in Wales’, draws attention to this exact problem, noting the concern about the level of resources available to teachers to develop and to provide the new curriculum, and that there are few signs that a significant injection of funding is going to happen at a school level and across the system before the launch in 2022.

The NAHT quotes figures from schools this year, compared with the previous year, in order to outline the problem as it exists at present. I do think it’s important for us to outline the crisis that needs to be sorted.

So, starting this year, there were 1,286 more pupils, but 278 fewer teachers and 533 fewer support staff. So, from those figures, it is obvious that the budget cuts that are described in detail in the report mean that there are no teachers appointed to many of the vacant posts and that cuts mean that fewer teachers work full time and more are working part time, and that the support staff are the first to be hit by losing their jobs, working fewer hours or by schools failing to renew their specific contracts.

One primary head told us, ‘We’re on our knees’. This is a genuine concern, and steps have been taken by the Welsh Government to reduce the burden on teachers, but a lack of funding in schools is adding to the workload and, of course, this is having a detrimental impact on the education of our children and young people.

So, I welcome recommendation 2 by the committee more than the others—the others are important, but recommendation 2, in my opinion, is the one that’s going to bring the greatest change that is needed. The implementation of recommendation 2 would mean that there would be reasonable class sizes to ensure that teachers could give adequate attention to every child. It would mean sufficient numbers of support staff and enough capacity in the additional learning needs staffing to identify problems as early as possible, and would give greater support to mental health problems across the education system.

Even though I do welcome recommendation 1 on the review, I do think it’s important that we shouldn’t wait for that, as that would decelerate the process and the funding needs to flow into our schools now. It’s important for the review to be clear about the initial assumptions and to ensure that there is a range of models in terms of schools and costs taken into consideration. For example, there are differences between the cost models for big schools and small schools, and rural and urban schools, and so on and so forth.

There are a number of sensible recommendations in the report about the different aspects of this, and I do think that recommendation 15 is one to draw attention to and is a high priority, namely the creation of three-year funding settlements. Now, I know that there are difficulties in terms of depending on Westminster timetables, but I do think we need to find a way of doing this. There is another group of recommendations involving the middle tier, and I’m looking forward to seeing the work of Professor Dylan Jones. And there is a problem here. There is a lack of trust between schools and the regional consortia, and a strong feeling that there are great sums being spent on that level, or that tier.

What is important, I think, is recognising what’s in recommendation 2. If we do that, then the discussion could move forward. And I do believe that we need to turn, as the committee Chair said. We need a mature discussion across the Chamber, across the ministerial responsibilities, to think differently about the Welsh budget and to think about the Welsh budget in a preventative way.

Dawn Bowden (Labour, Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney)

Can I start by thanking those who participated in the inquiry, and thank the Welsh Government for its very positive response to the committee's recommendations? Inevitably, I think we will probably all be covering a number of the same areas, so please bear with me. But, for me, this inquiry clearly showed that the issue of school funding is not as straightforward as some would like to suggest. So, even if we start from the premise that we all accept that schools need more money, and we all do, there's certainly no straightforward answer to the question of how much do schools actually need, how much should that be. As the Minister said in her response, this is hugely complex and multi-layered, and is dependent on many factors.

I think therefore that recommendation 1, which Siân has just referred to, of the report is very much framed to provide the evidence to help us answer that question and to provide a firmer basis for the discussion about school education and its funding in Wales. It's what we did around the NHS funding through the Nuffield report, and I think a similar study for education can only be helpful.

During the inquiry, I felt there was considerable misunderstanding about education and schools, actually, the school system in Wales, or at least I felt that there were people that were using the system to present layers of mystery based on complexity. That included arguments over gross expenditure, per pupil expenditure, the purpose of indicator-based assessments. And some of those debates are very technical, and we heard conflicting arguments as to the importance of the data that was represented. So, I do welcome the agreement of Welsh Government to try to provide a clearer understanding and a greater consistency in the statistical gathering and reporting.

Now, as we all know, there are at least four levels of financial decisions in the system. We start with the UK funding to Wales. I do have to support my colleague Hefin David here in challenging what Suzy Davies said, because this is set against a backdrop of a decade of Tory austerity. So, for every Welsh Conservative voice in this debate asking for more money for schools, reflect on the manifestos that you stood on—

Darren Millar (Conservative, Clwyd West)

Will you take an intervention?

Dawn Bowden (Labour, Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney)

—and the spending cuts that you have imposed on Wales. I'll take your intervention.

Darren Millar (Conservative, Clwyd West)

I'm very grateful for you taking the intervention. The reality is that there is a combination of factors that deal with school funding, not only the cash that is coming from Westminster, which you've already heard is going up by hundreds of millions of pounds from next year, but also it's affected by the way that you carve up that cash here as a Welsh Government, and the way that you distribute that cash across Wales. Now, the reality is that, in my own constituency in north Wales, both of those local authorities have been hit by a huge squeeze on their finance as a result of increases in council funding coming to places in south Wales, such as Cardiff, Newport, Swansea, Rhondda Cynon Taf, Merthyr Tydfil and others, while at the same time cuts are being imposed in Conwy, Denbighshire, Flintshire, Gwynedd and Anglesey. Why is that the case? Unacceptable.

Julie James (Labour, Swansea West)

That is not true.

Darren Millar (Conservative, Clwyd West)

Absolutely true.

Dawn Bowden (Labour, Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney)

Well, I assume Llywydd will give me some extra time now in my contribution because I'm sick to death of standing in this Chamber week after week hearing the Tories call for more spending on all our public services when you have presided over 10 years of austerity. We will take no lessons from the Conservatives on spending.

Secondly, Welsh Government budget decisions, which I'm now going to come on to, including the allocation to local authorities and the funding directed to delivering national education priorities. Thirdly, local authorities' decision in their local priorities, which includes education school spending and the local schools funding formula, and, of course, finally, priorities set by local school leadership themselves for the individual needs within the schools.

So, as we know, the way our education system works in Wales is through national policy and some national grants like the pupil deprivation grant—which, again, Suzy was talking about earlier on, a policy that helps to overcome disadvantage—the regional consortia, which help to challenge and raise standards, and also shared services, which help to make it more cost-effective for local authorities and schools, and the local authority priorities, which include the funding formula for school funding. And this is all very nicely captured, actually, in the diagram that was on page 22 of the report, and I commend it to you as part of the understanding of this inquiry. It neatly shows us how money flows around the system. But those facts lead me to my next point, which is that the funding allocated by Welsh Government and local authorities needs to support the whole of that education schools system, and, in times of financial restraints, the reality is that, in order to increase funding in any particular part of the system, then decisions are required on who gets more, and, therefore, who gets less, and that's a key challenge for the whole system to respond to the needs in our communities.

So, it is right that recommendation 2 of the report stresses the need for preventative spending and the link with recommendation 4 about the importance of a needs-based approach to the allocation of funding. For me, that includes a high priority on the need to focus on tackling the impact of poverty on the prospects and the achievements of our children. But I also want to echo what Lynne Neagle said at the outset of this debate about the scale of the education agenda that we're currently pursuing in Wales, and I think it's worth reminding us that we're talking about the new curriculum, we're talking about the transition through to the ALN, we're talking about encouraging a whole-school approach to mental health, along with the support and development of teaching staff. So, education and school funding, within a framework of preventative spending, is a major funding issue for Welsh Government in the decade ahead, and, as a result, I hope that we are seeing some turn around after years of Tory cuts—we'll wait and see if the money comes our way—so that we can start to improve the funding situation for local authorities and for schools, and that the Welsh Government and local authorities are able to deliver an improved understanding on the funding needs of our schools, but we must also recognise that, even if councils get more money, how much of that money reaches schools does still depend on the priority of each school—sorry, each local authority.

Finally, Llywydd, we should also remember that the results achieved in our schools are not solely linked to the amount of money that they receive. There's a lot of evidence to show that, even in schools spending the highest sums of money, the attainment levels are often lower than in some schools spending far less, and I'm not sure we've got to the bottom of why that is.

And, while I agree with recommendation 21, which reminds us that the Welsh Government need to ensure the money is finding its way to the front line for the purposes intended, the debate about school funding should not distract us from the discussions around raising performance, in which school funding is only one factor.

David Rowlands (UKIP, South Wales East)

Can I thank the committee for this report and can I say that we will be supporting the motion? Funding our schools, as with our NHS, has always been a controversial issue, but, as with the NHS, we cannot fail to ensure that our education system receives adequate funding. Whatever financial pressures our local authorities are under, school budgets are not the place to make cuts. Only by funding our schools at a level that ensures our children get the best possible education and, thus, the best start in life, can we ensure not only their futures but the future prosperity of the country as a whole. Education is the bedrock not only of our economy but also the social fabric of our society.

Minister, the world is changing. It is no longer good enough for us to keep up; we need to be ahead of the game, and that, in a modern industrial economy, means the highest quality education system possible. The changes that artificial intelligence will bring as well as many other advances in science and communication systems will put more and more pressure on all those engaged in the education sector. We cannot let them down with inadequate funding.

In a technological world, our education system is open to extreme pressures, and this means that the teaching profession will need to be continually training to meet those pressures. So, the question is how do we meet the challenges ahead and provide the funding levels that should make our children the best educated in the UK, if not the world.

We know the problems we face and we have to accept that resources are finite. Perhaps, then, we have to look to some radical solutions. In this, I mean it is time money allocated in the Welsh Government's education grants goes directly to schools rather than to local authorities who top-slice the money to fund local education departments. It is the schools and the teaching—[Interruption.] Yes, of course.

Mike Hedges (Labour, Swansea East)

You do realise the major expenditure by local education authorities centrally is on pre-school transport?

David Rowlands (UKIP, South Wales East)

They can, of course, be done by the authority directly itself, if that is the case at this moment in time.

It is the schools and the teaching professionals who run them who know best where to spend the funds available. They are in the best place to decide priorities. Let's put our trust in these professionals.

I was told by a headmaster some years ago about the inflated costs he faced when having repairs done to his school—£500 to repair two holes the size of dinner plates in his schoolyard, which he could have had done professionally for £100. And £1,100 to replace a sliding window, which a father of a pupil, a professional carpenter, said he could have replaced at £90. Just two instances where the school budget is being wasted. These are moneys that should be going to educate pupils. If we have to accept that funds are finite, we should not be wasting those funds that are available.

Janet Finch-Saunders (Conservative, Aberconwy)

I would like to thank Lynne Neagle AM for her leadership as our chairman of the CYPE committee, the preparation of this report and also for introducing it here today. She has hit the nail on the head: there is simply not enough money going into the Welsh education system, and certainly not enough finding its way into our schools.

Now, of course, since the publication of this report—[Interruption.] I haven't even started. Sorry, I can't.

Since the publication of this report and, thankfully, our Prime Minister, the Rt Hon Boris Johnson MP, has announced that the Welsh Government will receive £1.24 billion extra spending directly for schools. This money will provide an opportunity for the education Minister to take decisive action to close, if not crush, this £645 per-pupil funding gap between England and Wales. Earlier this year, the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers' representative told us that it was the worst year for Welsh school budgets since 1995, and, sadly, things are only set to get worse because the Minister herself, actually, is in denial about this.

The WLGA have projected that the school budget gap will rise further to £319 million in 2022-23, and the cuts this is causing are crippling. For example, the number of teachers has fallen by 1,500 between 2010 and 2018, despite there only being 29 fewer pupils. There needs to be sufficient funding of schools, so I am pleased that recommendation 1 has been accepted. I will be following the urgent review with much interest because I believe that we need to know, however, the timings on this and by when we can hope to have a base figure for running a school and educating a child here in Wales.

Now, the report also gets to grips with monitoring the level of priority that local authorities give to schools within its distribution of funding and puts us on track to have a better understanding and tackling the known inconsistency with setting school budgets by 22 authorities. For example, the inequitable situation is exemplified when considering that the amount spent by authorities on schools can range from £5,107 to £6,456 per pupil. So, we are in a peculiar position where 501 schools held reserves above the statutory thresholds whilst 225 were in deficit as of March 2018. Shockingly, 70 per cent of Welsh secondary schools are currently in deficit. This is a priority problem.

I wonder, therefore, why the response to the recommendation about deficits does not explain how you are working with local authorities to explore effective management. I welcome your continued commitment to challenge regional consortia about money reaching the front line. The National Education Union have told us that they have had problems with the consortia since they were first established. The evidence we have received shows a lack of understanding of the roles of local government and regional consortia. I cannot criticise the confusion as even you are still working on providing clarity. And, Minister, I do recall during my scrutiny of you during one of your ministerial presentations to us at committee, you said, 'Janet, even I cannot follow the money from the Government to the schools', so there is a concern that if you can't follow it, how are our headteachers and, indeed, our parents able to follow it?

There is no bigger area calling out for clarity than spend on school improvement. In 2018-19, despite spending £11 million on purchasing school improvement services from consortia, local authorities also spent £10.9 million on school improvements. So, I strongly support the calls for an urgent comparison of both those spends. There is no room for duplication of work and financial frivolousness. The funding in the system must be made to work as effectively as possible as the school situation currently is unsustainable. For example, a headteacher in north Wales contacted me only yesterday to explain that teachers are leaving the profession and are not being replaced, teachers are reducing their hours due to budget pressures, and support staff are being hit by redundancies and reduced hours. So, I will be voting for the best interest of young people and our hardworking teachers, and I therefore support all the recommendations.

However, I do believe that you, Minister, can go further through addressing the queries I have raised to help provide a boost to schools from here, the Welsh Labour Government, as our Prime Minister has done from the UK Government.