Plenary

The next item this afternoon will be the business statement and announcement, and that statement is to be made by the Trefnydd. Therefore, I call on the Trefnydd to make the business statement. Jane Hutt.

Thank you very much, Llywydd. There are several changes to this week’s business, as set out on the Plenary agenda. Business for the next three weeks is shown on the business statement, which is available to Members electronically.

Trefnydd, I'd like to request a statement from the Welsh Government regarding digital connectivity, particularly in light of the ongoing switch from analogue to digital telephone systems. As you know, large parts of my constituency are rural and coastal, meaning that mobile coverage can often be limited. Indeed, during the storms we experienced last year, there were parts of Pembrokeshire that lost power for several hours, and, in some cases, several days. Many constituents were isolated, which is particularly troubling for vulnerable residents who rely on telephone services to contact people and services.

As the shift to digital services continues, there are understandable concerns from people who live in areas where mobile connectivity and power reliability are uncertain. Trefnydd, reliable connection networks are essential, and people must feel that they aren't at any further risk during an emergency because of the switch to digital telephone services. Therefore, given that the Welsh Government has responsibility for community safety, and some powers in relation to emergency services, I'd be grateful if we could have a statement on how it's ensuring that communities in Wales are reliably connected so that in the event of any emergency, residents are able to contact their loved ones, and, of course, vital emergency services.

Thank you very much, Paul Davies. Thank you for that really important question, and I will seek to respond to it. I won't be able to fully respond to it today, because this covers a range of responsibilities within and outside the Welsh Government as well. But I think your points are very relevant in terms of that switch to digital connectivity and the issues about power reliability and what this means for community safety. Also, part of my responsibility, as you know, is to promote digital inclusion, and this particularly affects older people. In fact, I was meeting with the Older People's Commissioner for Wales yesterday and this is an issue that we discussed. So, I will certainly take this back and seek a way to bring back to the Senedd an update on this situation.

Trefnydd, I’d like to request a statement regarding the 'Period Proud Wales Action Plan' and progress on those actions. I’ve seen an increase in people getting in touch with me requesting period products, finding it much more difficult being able to access them. I know we’ve had numerous debates in the past around the consideration for, potentially, legislation to ensure that this is embedded. I know of the support of the Welsh Government and the investment made, but I just wondered in terms of that ongoing assessment in terms of accessibility, especially given that we see poverty rates continuing to increase, and foodbanks are also reporting to me that increasingly so they’re seeing a demand for period products. So, can we have that update, please, and also, if you have reflected further in terms of the need for legislation?

Thank you very much. Diolch yn fawr, Heledd Fychan. Only just a couple of weeks ago, I attended a period poverty round-table. We have regular meetings that are attended by local authorities; local authorities are key, as you know, to delivering the substantial funding that we allocate to them to provide period products. Schools are crucial in terms of access, but it's not just schools where period products need to be available. The access in not just schools, indeed, in terms of education, further and higher education, but also in health services, in terms of access in leisure centres. So, I will do an update on this, because I think the period dignity initiative, which goes back several years now, has proved to be really important in terms of tackling poverty, but also linking to menstrual well-being, and that's key now in terms of our young people's mental health and well-being. Children need to feel confident in terms of access to period products, but also it's the dignity. And it is also really interesting when you meet—and I am sure you have done—in schools, where indeed school councils and boys, as well as girls, take an interest in what this means. So thank you for raising that, and I will provide an update.

I would like to ask for two statements. Firstly, I am asking for a Government statement on support for live music. The number of live music venues has declined rapidly over the last several years, and it's incredibly important that we keep these live music centres. I am asking for a fan-led review of live and electronic music, and that action is taken to ensure that the industry upholds its commitment to a £1 grass-roots ticket levy on UK stadium and arena shows. Most successful musicians had their apprenticeships in clubs. Ed Sheeran, when he came to Swansea, said, 'This is the second time I have been here. The first time I came to Swansea, I appeared at Sin City', which is a very small venue in the city centre.

I am also asking for a Government statement on progress being made to bring in a community right to buy. A community right to buy for Wales would help protect the things that make our country special, boost community ownership and place power back in the hands of Welsh people by giving local communities the right to first refusal when vital community assets come up for sale. Too often, major community assets, such as chapels, pubs and clubs, are left to deteriorate and are bought by people from other parts of the world.

Diolch yn fawr, Mike Hedges. We've heard before of your great support for live music and recognising what this means in your city, in Swansea, in terms of support for music venues and businesses. This amounts to over £10 million since Creative Wales developed this in 2020, in terms of that support. Creative Wales does work very closely with Music Venues Trust, and we are also moving towards supporting grass-roots music venues. We're aware of the MVT UK-wide survey, and we've discussed with stakeholders and the Creative Wales non-executive board, and those findings echo what we've been hearing across the sector for the past 18 months. We do need consistency of information, so we would very much support this fan-led—and here we have a fan, in this Chamber; I'm sure we have many more—review of live and electronic music, and for that to be undertaken at a UK level in terms of MVT interest in this.

Your point about community assets is really important. You know we established the community asset commission in partnership with Ystadau Cymru, and that followed from the work of the Local Government and Housing Committee as well. So, the commission was reviewing current systems of community asset transfer to encourage innovative thinking to community ownership, and Ystadau Cymru have published a community asset transfer best practice guide. That was back in 2019, and there are some good case studies. But the work of the commission is nearing completion, and there will be a report and recommendations presented to the Cabinet Secretary for Housing and Local Government before the end of this term, and publication planned in the autumn.

I saw some wonderful examples of community asset transfer when I went to Gwynedd earlier this year to see some of the results of that in Cymunedoli Cyf. I think our community facilities grant has also helped where community assets have been transferred. So, I think this is a really pertinent, relevant question. Thank you, Mike Hedges.

Can I request a statement from the Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Secretary for Climate Change and Rural Affairs regarding litter and refuse collection across Wales? It comes after I was contacted by a constituent in Swansea who had raised the condition of his street, where he'd often put his bags out for their regular refuse collection only to find that the nature of the hessian bags that were put out meant that rubbish was strewn all over the street. He told me he'd had to resort to buying bags for himself to collect the rubbish that had blown across the street. I think we need to make sure that the provisions that councils make based on guidance by the Welsh Government ensures that the collection of refuse across Wales is robust enough to ensure that the refuse put out is the refuse that is ultimately collected by waste crews across the country. So, I'd be grateful for a statement to that effect.

Thank you for that question. Of course, we are world leading in terms of our recycling provision, and waste collection is all part of that and part of the way in which we have reached that number too, hopefully to No. 1 in terms of our recycling rates. It's interesting that that was acknowledged today by the Future Generations Commissioner for Wales, Derek Walker, on the tenth anniversary of the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015, and seeing what we're doing in terms of delivering on sustainable development. But waste collection has to be well organised, it has to do the job, and, of course, local authorities learn from each other, with WLGA playing a key role, and the Welsh Government in terms of guidance. So, you've made your point about a particular situation where things have come to your attention, but I think this is something where indeed we are proud of our record in terms of waste collection, as well as recycling.

I'd like a debate, please, to set out how the Welsh Government will mitigate the UK Government's benefits cuts. Westminster's benefit cuts will hit people in Wales hardest. We've had to guess about the extent of the distress that it will cause disabled people and those out of work, because the UK Government refused to conduct an assessment of how their cuts would affect Wales. But Policy in Practice has confirmed this now. Their research warns that these cuts will entrench deprivation in our communities. Caerphilly, Blaenau Gwent and Merthyr are singled out as being amongst the areas that will be most severely affected. In Blaenau Gwent, one in every 10 people will be affected. The rashness of these cuts and the recklessness with which Westminster has introduced them have been appalling. So, can we have a debate to address how Wales and the Government here will respond?

Thank you very much, Delyth Jewell. This is very important. It is important to the Welsh Government, in terms of developing a robust response to the Green Paper, and, indeed, as the First Minister said earlier on, we will be producing that cross-Government response to the Green Paper. It has to reflect the views, not only of people with lived experience—. And on that point, I met with the disability rights taskforce during the recess and heard about their concerns about the welfare reforms in terms of every aspect of those. And I also have made the point, as you know, that the UK Government must come out and consult directly with disabled people in Wales as well.

So, we are seeking that cross-Government response. We will develop that cross-Government response, but also we’re looking to get that data that we need from the Department for Work and Pensions, and we’re working closely with officials to ensure that we can have a further understanding of the impact of the proposed welfare reforms on claimants in Wales.

Good afternoon, Cabinet Secretary. I’d like to request a statement from yourself, please, on the issue of how we protect and look after victims of domestic violence in Powys. Montgomeryshire Family Crisis Centre does an amazing job in terms of protecting our victims and survivors of domestic violence, and yet they’ve sadly had to look at the potential of cutting five jobs. And in a rural area that’s a huge impact. They deal day on day with, mostly, women who’ve come forward who are courageous and brave. And I’d like to take this opportunity to pay tribute to one brave woman who was sadly lost last week, and that’s Virginia Giuffre, who stood up to powerful and rich men in order to make sure that the voices of victims and survivors were heard. And it’s an absolute tragedy that she took her own life after decades of pressure and stress—a woman of sublime courage. And every single woman who comes forward has that courage, and we need to protect and support them. And so I’d like to make sure that services such as the Montgomeryshire Family Crisis Centre are protected in order to continue that service. Diolch yn fawr iawn.

Diolch yn fawr, Jane Dodds, and thank you also for allowing the whole Chamber to hear and recognise the tragedy and the loss of Virginia Giuffre—that absolute tragedy that she took her own life after everything that she had suffered. And, obviously, this is very linked to how do we in Wales, and as a Welsh Government, deliver and respond to violence against women, domestic abuse and sexual violence.

So, thank you for putting that in the context of Powys and the Montgomeryshire Family Crisis Centre, which does provide an indispensable service for families in the area. I was pleased that we’ve been able to recently offer additional revenue—I hope you’re aware of that—to the Montgomeryshire Family Crisis Centre.

This is something where we have put more funding into VAWDASV services this year, and whenever I have the opportunity, we also look regionally and locally to where there is specific need. We’ve supported the crisis centre with capital grants over the past two years, and, of course, this is part of the specialist sector across Wales that we support, in challenging financial times, but ensuring that services are fully supported too in the valuable work that they undertake. And thank you for bringing it to our attention again today—their valuable work in Montgomeryshire.

Trefnydd, in light of the Supreme Court judgement, I’d like to ask for a statement from the Welsh Government reaffirming their commitment to the LGBTQ+ action plan, and, crucially, many of those really important valuable actions in it. Because I know that, like me, you are a supporter of our community, and, as I said earlier, there’s a great deal of distress and uncertainty out there at the moment. So, I think it would really go a long way to have those assurances of the Welsh Government’s commitment to the work that we’ve already set in train here in Wales.

Thank you very much, Hannah Blythyn. The LGBTQ+ action plan for Wales does create the framework for LGBTQ+ policy development across Government, and with our partners. And I thank you for the leading role that you took in terms of bringing this plan forward, and through to launching it. It does set out the concrete steps we will take to strengthen equality for LGBTQ+ people, to challenge discrimination, and to create a society where LGBTQ+ people are safe to live and love authentically, openly and freely as themselves. In particular through this action plan, the Welsh Government commits to defend and promote the rights and dignity of trans and non-binary people, and to make those communities feel welcome and included in Welsh society.

I call for two Welsh Government statements—the first on Welsh Government support for people with multiple sclerosis, a progressive neurological condition. More than 6,000 people in Wales are living with MS, and almost 300 people are diagnosed with MS in Wales every year. This week is MS Awareness Week 2025, from 28 April to 4 May. Next Wednesday I'm sponsoring an MS Society Cymru lunchtime event to celebrate this year's theme of 'MS conversations'—what it's like to live with MS, what services and research are making a difference in Wales today, what else we do need to be doing. People living with MS will be on hand to speak about their experiences living with the condition, and MS Society Cymru will showcase new data and new treatments in the pipeline for both forms of MS.

I also call for a Welsh Government statement on support for the deaf and hard of hearing during next week's UK Deaf Awareness Week 2025, 5 to 11 May. With the theme 'Beyond silence', this is focused on breaking down barriers to full accessibility for individuals with hearing loss, celebrating the diverse ways deaf people communicate and highlighting the richness of deaf culture, and aims to challenge misconceptions about deafness, promoting understanding and building a more inclusive world for all. The week promotes inclusivity by advocating for improved accessibility in workplaces, education and public spaces, and by encouraging understanding of the diverse communication methods used by deaf and hard-of-hearing people. Ahead of Deaf Awareness Week, I met with the Deaf and Sensory Network on Monday, to discuss their work as provider of the adult social care contracts for the deaf community in Wrexham and Flintshire. So, I'd welcome statements—one this week, one next week—on those two items.

Thank you very much, Mark Isherwood, for drawing our attention and the attention of the Senedd to both these important weeks—MS week, and also the week where we'll particularly be able to recognise and acknowledge what we need to do and the needs of deaf people and people with hearing loss. Of course, in terms of both the contributions you've made today, in terms of questions, you do draw attention to the needs of the people affected and, indeed, the services that we provide. I'm sure that Senedd Members will want to attend and engage, and of course the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care will be particularly interested in the MS week, and we will look at any information that we need to share on that. I think it's important that we also recognise that we need to ensure that all deaf people and their carers know where they can access services, care and support in their local community, and provide assurance that they will have rapid access to services and support when they need it.

I'd like to ask for a statement from the Government following the publication of the Royal National Institute for Deaf People report last week, entitled 'Still Ignored: the Fight for Accessible Healthcare'. The report does provide a pretty damning insight, really, into deaf and hard-of-hearing people's experience of accessing healthcare right across Wales. It was drawn to my attention by Cedric Moon, my constituent, who is a great campaigner for people who are deaf or hard of hearing, and he's also written about it in the Western Mail and the South Wales Echo today. The report states that the NHS is systematically discriminating against people who are deaf or having a hearing loss. This is by not meeting their communication needs, by a widespread lack of communication support, such as interpreters, note takers and speech-to-text reporters. This is an experience that I have found to be true in dealing with my constituents.

So, there are a number of recommendations to the Welsh Government, so I'm sure we'd all be very grateful for an update from the Welsh Government about how they will respond to this report and to these recommendations, and also on what further work is being done to better improve the lives of deaf and hard-of-hearing people here in Wales. I certainly support the points made by Mark Isherwood as well.

Thank you very much. Yes, that very much follows on from Mark Isherwood's question. Julie Morgan, your constituent Cedric Moon must be thanked for his continued commitment and diligence in raising these issues with you through his experience and also the fact that he is advocating on behalf of others, on behalf of people who are deaf and hard of hearing.

I think what's important in terms of looking at this from a Welsh Government perspective is that 'A Healthier Wales', our long-term plan for health and social care, and those refreshed actions that came through when it was revised and updated last November, is underpinned by that principle of ensuring that, I quote,

'all citizens can receive timely health and care services equitably, regardless of the language or communication format they need'.

So, that's got to mean something. In collaboration with third sector organisations, we're developing a future approach to audiology in Wales to deliver the best services and support for citizens in Wales and, alongside this and most importantly, reviewing the effectiveness of the all-Wales standards for accessible communication and information for people with sensory loss, exploring the barriers faced by people when accessing healthcare.

And of course we have been working as a Welsh Government with stakeholders to develop renewed standards and robust and clear guidance in relation to commissioning interpretation and translation services for British Sign Language users. We're planning to publish the renewed standards this summer, and they'll now include patients whose main language is not English or Welsh, patients who have language and communication barriers, but also patients who have language and communication needs that may also be for their parents and carers as well. So, the renewed standards will be important, but also we have key recommendations aligning to this in the disabled people's rights plan, which I'll be launching next week for consultation.

Leader of the house, could I ask for two statements, please—one on the job losses at Dow Corning in Barry, obviously an area you're very familiar with, with nearly 300 job losses potentially, subject to consultation? This is sadly another example of high energy costs here in the UK that is putting jeopardy into manufacturing jobs, and I haven't seen a statement come from the Welsh Government, which is surprising given this announcement was made yesterday. I will be pleased, and I'm sure many of the workers in the factory will be very pleased, to understand what action the Welsh Government is undertaking, along with interested parties, in trying to change this decision that Dow have taken to cease silicone production at the facility.

Secondly, could I seek a statement from the Minister for transport in relation to the A48? Just before we broke for the Easter recess, there were the tragic deaths of three individuals in one car accident on the A48. By my reckoning, in the last five years, there have been 10 deaths along the road of the A48 between Culverhouse Cross and Waterton. It needs a full engineering assessment made of that road, because it has been re-engineered many times over the last 30 years. There have been 17 new road traffic lights put in, there have been two new roundabouts installed, many new junctions, and the road, as was originally constructed, is now unrecognisable. With those sorts of tragic fatalities on that piece of road, it is vital that the department undertakes a piece of work that looks into the engineering safety aspects of it, and I would look to a statement from the Welsh Government to come forward to address that very serious issue. Thank you.

Thank you for both those questions that you've raised, Andrew R.T. Davies, both of which actually relate to my constituency, as you acknowledged.

Yes, it was a tragic call that I got, and indeed our Cabinet Secretary and her officials, on 24 April from Dow chemical's head of government affairs UK and Ireland to say that they had confirmed their intention to shut down the base silicone manufacturing process plant at their Barry facility, resulting in the loss of up to 290 direct jobs. And, as you know, Dow has been part of the history of generations of people who've worked since the 1950s at Dow. So, this is very, very bad news for the local community, for the workforce, and, of course, it will have a wider impact on contractors working on site. Of the 600 workforce on site, they are being informed that a consultation process will begin with staff.

I've already had one meeting, and I'm having another meeting—I am having a meeting on the site with our MP, Kanishka Narayan, and meeting not only with the management, but also with the trade union, because Unite are also very engaged in the consultation process and have made very strong statements as well. So, we stand ready to support the workforce affected by this decision. But when we say 'the workforce' we are talking about the town, as you know, and so many families affected. I think it is important that they are going to—we understand—continue with an investment in the finishing specialist silicone manufacturing part of the site, that will in the future import base silicone products from other, overseas-based Dow facilities. I am giving more information today because we haven't—. I know that the Cabinet Secretary is responding to this and will want to update Members accordingly.

On your second point, yes, the situation on the A48 and tragic loss over the Easter recess—a death as a result of those road casualties—I raised it myself, and I think this is something where there has to be Welsh Government, local authority and community engagement to look at this. Thank you for raising it today.

Trefnydd, I'd like to ask for a statement from the Cabinet Secretary for economy on the Western Gateway partnership having its funding withdrawn from the UK Government. I, like Peter Fox and many others in my region, am greatly disappointed by this decision. This cross-border initiative was worth £17 billion to the UK economy and offered economic growth for areas such as Newport and Monmouthshire and, indeed, the whole of South Wales East. Let's be clear, this is not about a funding cut. This is a deliberate withdrawal of support from a ambitious economic partnership. Trefnydd, this news serves as a massive loss for the whole of my region and I know that they would appreciate a statement on this. Diolch.

Diolch, Laura Anne Jones. I will refer this to the Cabinet Secretary to ensure that you get an appropriate update.

Can I firstly put on the record, if I may, my sadness at the passing of Mike Peters, the lead singer of The Alarm, who, sadly, passed away today after a three-decade battle with cancer? And my thoughts and prayers go out to his wife Jules, his two children and his wider family at this difficult time.

I'd like to call for a statement from the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care on the steps being taken to improve the quality and regulation of care in residential homes, with a particular focus on dementia awareness, staff training and language proficiency amongst staff and management. Recent evaluations have highlighted areas of concern. Care Inspectorate Wales's national review of care homes for people living with dementia found that, while many staff are warm and respectful, dementia training does not always translate into the best practices in care delivery. Moreover, there is a pressing need for better information about Welsh-speaking staff in care homes and an increase in the number of staff proficient in Welsh, and not only Welsh but staff also must be proficient in English, which isn't always the case. Ensuring that our most vulnerable citizens can receive the high-quality care and can communicate with care workers is paramount. Interim findings from the dementia action plan 2018-22 evaluation indicate that, whilst some progress has been made, challenges remain in the consistent implementation of person-centred care across all regions. So, can the Welsh Government provide a full statement, outlining the measures being implemented to enhance dementia awareness and training amongst care home staff, strategies to ensure all staff are proficient in English and increasing proficiency in Welsh, and plans to monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of these initiatives in improving care quality? Thank you.

Thank you for that question, Gareth Davies. Of course, the Minister for Children and Social Care will have heard that question as well. I think we can be very clear about the standards that we expect in the provision of care in our care homes, which, in terms of inspection and legislation, regulations, are very clear. But it is important that you mention this in the context of dementia awareness and the dementia action plan. So, I think that is the point where we would want to look at the expectations and also the developments and implementation of recommendations from that plan.

I thank the Trefnydd.

The next item will be a statement by the First Minister on the Steel Industry (Special Measures) Bill. I call on the First Minister to make the statement—Eluned Morgan.

The UK Government introduced the Steel Industry (Special Measures) Bill following a recall of Parliament on Saturday 12 April. This was in response to the deepening concerns over the future of British Steel in Scunthorpe. Jingye, the Chinese owners of British Steel, had stopped orders for raw materials to the steelworks, without which the two blast furnaces would have had to be shut down, which would have ended primary steel making at the site. The Bill allows the Secretary of State for Business and Trade to direct the company and keep staff employed. With the passing of the Bill, the UK Government has moved swiftly to secure deliveries of raw materials to keep the blast furnaces running, enabling the steelworks to remain operational. The Bill allows the UK Government the additional time to further consider the options available to secure the future of British Steel. Global events mean that, now more than ever, we must do all we can to protect our steel industry, to guarantee the availability of steel to meet our domestic needs and to continue to provide good-quality jobs for steel communities.

The situation with Tata Steel was very different not only in terms of the global context, but also because of the relationship and intention of Tata Steel. Tata had a plan for transitioning the company to more sustainable steel making while moving to lower carbon steel production, and sought financial support from the UK Government to help enable that transition. Now, the Welsh Government wasn't party to the negotiations between Tata and the previous UK Government, despite our repeated requests to be involved in the discussions. But the deal secured in Wales was a deal not just for the here and now, but also for the future of steel. The current UK Government was able to negotiate a better deal for the Tata Steel plant in Port Talbot than the plan that had been announced in September 2023. And it may not have been the deal that we would have wished for, but, given the parameters and the time pressures to secure the build of the new electric arc furnace, it was an improved deal to keep steel making here in Wales.

Some have argued that the incoming UK Labour Government could have prolonged the operations of the remaining blast furnace by persuading Tata to re-open the deal it had done with the previous Conservative administration, but this was never a credible possibility as Tata had made it clear from the outset that their plan and only their plan was the only viable option. Others have said that in the event of Tata refusing to reopen the deal, then the incoming UK Labour Government should have legislated to take control of the Port Talbot plant, as has been done in Scunthorpe. But that would have been unrealistic and unworkable because of the opposition from Tata. It would have led to prolonged legal conflict with the company, to the possible accelerated shutdown of the remaining blast furnace, and Tata could have withdrawn its contribution of £700 million to the construction of the electric arc furnace.

Throughout this period, the Welsh Government has remained in close contact with unions and will continue to work with them to ensure the best possible solution for workers, for local businesses and for local communities. Management at Tata have assured me that the construction of the electric arc furnace at Port Talbot will start in earnest this summer, and it's good to see that contracts have already been signed with three south Wales companies which will secure 300 skilled jobs to help with the Tata transition. And when that construction work begins, the delivery of green steel making at Port Talbot will start to become a reality, and will be a constructive step towards a sustainable and brighter future for Tata and its downstream sites across Wales.

Steel is the enabler for a much wider transition in Wales. We have a strong holistic vision of the transition of the south Wales region based on new infrastructure and investment. This is a vision that has broad stakeholder support for transformation of the region. However, we need to work collaboratively, with the support of the UK Government, and we hope to see that work progressing through continued work on the UK industrial strategy.

We recognise that this transition and transformation is having a significant impact, that the steelworkers and their families have been through a very difficult time, and that the impact on contractors has also been profound. We also understand that there are some who feel that Port Talbot should have been subject to the same measures as have been implemented in relation to Scunthorpe, but, for the reasons already outlined in my statement, the two situations are not comparable.

Now, through the continued work of all the partners on the Tata transition board, we're providing advice and support to those affected, and we will continue to do so. The board has brought all our collective support mechanisms together, including those provided by local community groups, to provide a holistic approach to helping those workers, their families and the wider communities impacted by Tata's transition. A webpage is available on the Neath Port Talbot council website, providing access to the support available, and the community hub located in Aberafan shopping centre provides support and a guidance drop-in centre for the community.

My colleague the Cabinet Secretary for economy has a seat on the UK Steel Council, which is overseeing work to develop the steel strategy, and we expect to see that published in the coming months. The UK Government's steel strategy is an important piece of work, investigating the policy issues our domestic steel sector continues to face as well as researching the best opportunities for capital investment.

The national wealth fund provides £2.5 billion of capital investment for the steel sector. The parliamentary debate on the Bill confirmed this is an addition to the £500 million going to Port Talbot, and will offer further opportunities for investment and innovation in the industry in Wales. It is absolutely critical that Welsh-based steel companies benefit from this fund through capital investments and through policy developments that can further secure the future of the industry and create meaningful jobs.

The Cabinet Secretary for economy has written to Jonathan Reynolds, the Secretary of State for Business and Trade, asking him to confirm a shared position and commitment to the whole of the steel sector in the UK and specifically to sites in Wales. But many of the critical issues facing the sector are not solely about capital investment. Crucially, the sector wants to see a truly competitive electricity pricing structure, greater leverage for using UK steel through public procurement, and robust trade remedies. We are going to work closely with all our partners to push for this support through the steel strategy.

We will continue to work closely with the UK Government to ensure that Wales gets its full share of investment and policy support so that the Welsh steel industry can thrive for the long term and our communities can recover and face a more certain and successful future.

Thank you, First Minister, for your statement. Obviously, I requested a recall of the Senedd so that we could have the opportunity to discuss this issue much sooner than today, but here we are, two weeks and a half later, and we're finally getting the statement through.

And I think the first thing that many people are very upset about is, obviously, the very different approach that's being taken to protecting the steel industry in Wales versus the steel industry in England by the Labour Government. Can I ask you, First Minister, were you consulted as a Welsh Government on the UK Government's approach to the steel industry being different in England versus the approach that has been taken here in Wales, and when you actually became aware of the different approach that was going to be taken in respect of Scunthorpe? I think those are important questions that people want to know the answers to. Do you support the UK Government's approach that it's taking in Scunthorpe and, if so, why do you support the approach being different there to the approach that's been taken in respect of Tata? Because people are upset, understandably, and furious about the fact that it seems to be a completely different attitude towards Welsh steel when compared to the steel industry in England.

Many Labour Ministers have obviously begun to notice that the steel industry, in order to produce virgin steel, needs a lot of coal. [Interruption.] Wales is blessed—[Interruption.] Wales is blessed still to have quite a lot of coal in reserves, so can you tell us whether, given that we're reliant on coal still at the moment to produce virgin steel in the United Kingdom, the Welsh Government will take a different approach to the coal industry here in Wales and change your policy, which currently prevents coal from being taken out of the ground here in Wales for use in the steel industry, and instead supports coal being extracted in dirty mines with appalling environmental conditions elsewhere around the world and shipped into the United Kingdom in order to support virgin steel production? Because let me be clear: you cannot cheer for steel and sneer at coal in the same breath. It is impossible to do that, because coal is needed in terms of being able to produce the virgin steel that we need. So, will you review your planning policies to make sure that we can take the opportunity to revive our coal industry here in Wales in order to make sure that there is a clean and environmentally sound policy, going forward, on coal?

In terms of the situation at Port Talbot, I know you keep—[Interruption.] I know you keep turning your nose up at the deal that was arranged by the previous UK Conservative Government, exactly the same deal that had been implemented by the new UK Government—£500 million available to invest in order to turn that Tata Steel facility into one which produces environmentally sound steel from recycled steel products through the electric arc processes. The same number of jobs are being protected as was the case under the previous Conservative Government, and the same number of jobs, unfortunately, are being lost. Why is it that you continue to sneer at that previous deal from the UK Conservative Government when, actually, it's the same one that's been implemented by your current UK Labour Government? And let's not forget it's very different to the approach that was promised in advance of the last general election where, frankly, Labour MPs were promising the earth to people who were working at Tata, telling them that there would be billions of pounds more invested in their plant in order to save their jobs, complete works of fiction, which, of course—. A massive u-turn as soon as the Government was elected.

Now, you've rightly made reference to the national wealth fund that we have and the £2.5 billion that has been set aside for steel across the United Kingdom. You've said that you want to see some of that spent here in Wales. There was talk, of course—there was a pledge, in fact, given by Jo Stevens, saying—that there would be a direct reduced iron plant at Port Talbot in advance of the last general election. We're yet to see any developments on that front. Is that a project that you want to see this £2.5 billion invested in? Is that what you are proposing as a Government? I can't see any strategy other than warm words in terms of trying to make sure that we're taking advantage of the resources that are available, because I fear that what will happen, because we have a weak policy on steel here in Wales under your leadership in the Welsh Government, is that that £2.5 billion will go elsewhere and we won't see a penny more than the £500 million that was arranged by the previous UK Conservative Government, because of the weak strategy, the lack of policies, the lack of attention that you've given to this particular issue.

I can't believe I'm getting lectures from the Tories, who had all the opportunities to step in, to do something constructive—

They did.

—and didn't. They didn't. They wouldn't even pick up the phone to the First Minister when he asked for a call. They wouldn't even pick up the phone. I think it's really important to note that.

We, on the other hand, as a Welsh Government, our powers in this area—. These are big decisions; we do have to work with the UK Government to do that. But I certainly flew out to Mumbai to speak to the people in Tata, to see what might be possible. The timing was not great. That is the truth of it: the timing was not great. One blast furnace was shut on the day of the elections. The coke ovens had also closed down. The geography of the site means that it's very difficult to keep a blast furnace open at the same time as developing an electric arc furnace.

And you talk about the need to address the issue around coal. Listen, I am concerned not just about steel, but I'm also concerned about the climate emergency that is upon us. And the point with an electric arc furnace is that we're going to see a 90 per cent reduction in carbon dioxide emissions. That is not an insignificant amount. And 75 per cent of the raw materials needed for the EAF will come from UK sources. So, that is something that I think is positive.

I am very keen to see a significant ring fence for Wales from that £2.5 billion steel fund, and I have pressed again today the Secretary of State to give us the assurance on that, as has the economic Secretary.

Now, ingrained in the heartlands of heavy industry in Wales are the stories of workers forgotten by Westminster. We became accustomed and programmed to expect it from Conservative Governments whose ambivalence towards Wales and their neglect of its workers contributed to the very existence of the institution that we stand in today. But what has become of a Labour Party unwilling to stand up for workers, or, to be precise, what's become of a Labour Party whose instincts to respond depend on the postcodes? Now, without hesitation, I say that the UK Labour Government did absolutely the right thing to step in to save those jobs at Scunthorpe, to protect a strategic interest and the livelihoods of 2,700 workers, remarkably similar to the total job losses at Port Talbot. But, Llywydd, the First Minister mocked Plaid Cymru for suggesting and pushing for everything to be on the table, including nationalisation, in order to protect blast furnace virgin steelmaking at Port Talbot. 'A pipe dream' she called it, patronisingly, which has become something of a trademark for this First Minister. But, of course, when the proposal is made in another Parliament for another steelworks in another nation, then she is more than happy to applaud that. It is blatant double standards at Wales's expense.

Once again, double standards and the lack of action of the Labour Party have meant that Wales is losing out, and the facts prove that. Like the responses to freedom of information requests from Plaid Cymru demonstrate, there is no information about how many former Port Talbot workers are reskilling; no data on access to support; no record of where the funding is going. It's no surprise, therefore, that the voices of the local people that I've spoken to on the streets of Port Talbot and the surrounding area in the past few weeks are full of anger and intense disappointment in the Labour Governments both here and in Westminster. It's no surprise that they are now asking: what is the purpose of Labour now? Why is the value of a worker in Port Talbot considered to be less than the value of a worker in Scunthorpe? As Liz Saville-Roberts, the Plaid Cymru leader in Westminster, said:

'If this government can't explain how it's helping Port Talbot's laid-off workers to build a future through reskilling, why shouldn't those workers then come to the logical conclusion that Labour has abandoned them?'

Llywydd, it will take a long time to restore any respect Labour had amongst the communities. There are things we need in terms of action from UK Government. There has to be, on energy, a move to make sure that we are able to be in line with our European competitors. On the dumping of cheap steel from other countries, accelerating the removal of trade barriers with Europe makes economic common sense in the face of the US's protectionist policies. But we need to see a testing of the so-called partnership in power, don't we? Welsh Government has to be relentless now in pushing UK Government to ring-fence a significant amount of the £2.5 billion steel fund, specifically for future investment in Wales's steel industry.

Does the First Minister agree with me that, after this betrayal, we need cast-iron assurances that the UK Government's investment in Scunthorpe in no way compromises the promises made to Port Talbot? In fact, the least the UK Government should do now is begin to repair the damage by announcing a new and enhanced package of support in recognition of its two-tier approach to preserving virgin steel capacity.

Well, thanks. I think there is a future for steel in Port Talbot and in Wales. The electric arc furnace provides that. We've had assurances, contracts have been signed. The situation was different in terms of the situation with Tata and in Scunthorpe. As I said, I think it was unrealistic to expect to step in at that point, because Tata would have taken on a legal case, and you take on a company like Tata—it is possible to do it, but people will not invest in your country after that. Just be absolutely clear about the implications of what that would look like. They would also have withdrawn the £700 million that they put on the table. I also think it's probably worth stating that the story in Scunthorpe is not over; we don't know what the end of this story will be. But what I can tell you is that we, as a Government, have been absolutely relentless in terms of our focus on this issue. Forty-two million pounds has already been spent with the transition board. You want some figures. There's been start-up support for 178 people; 65 people have registered interest with the resilience and growth fund; there have been over 1,500 people who have attended the centre at the Aberafan shopping centre, and, of those, 980 were individuals who were employed in Tata Steel. We've also as a Government set out the funding that we have through ReAct and Communities for Work, and we have £24 million for that pot of funding, and obviously some of that will be available to people in those areas.

I very much welcome the statement by the First Minister. I speak as a former employee of the British Steel Corporation, as it then was. I agree with the First Minister that global events mean now, more than ever, we must do all we can to protect our steel industry, to guarantee the availability of steel to meet our domestic needs and to continue to provide good-quality jobs for steel communities.

This is not a battle between Port Talbot and Scunthorpe, even if some people are trying to make it such, but the opportunity to save the UK steel industry. An electric arc furnace can be turned on and off to meet demand, to deal with electricity costs or the shortage of raw materials. I would like to see us learning from European countries, such as Sweden, and also from Australia, on working to replace coke by hydrogen to produce iron in a blast furnace—rather than creating carbon dioxide, creating water vapour.

The cost of modernising iron and steel making needs Government control and financial support. It is too much for individual companies. Does the First Minister agree with me that the future of steel in Wales is via using hydrogen to produce iron by a publicly owned steel industry?

Thanks very much. Look, I think there are opportunities that we need to explore, because there are real issues about how you switch on an electric arc furnace with the costs of energy as they are today, which is why one of the things that I've been pressing the UK Government on is to see whether anything can be done to reduce the costs of energy going to companies that are producing steel. There may be opportunities if we develop the offshore wind opportunities, which is why I spent part of the Easter break actually trying to lobby people to come and invest in our country to make sure that we have significant amounts of energy that can then, potentially, be turned into hydrogen. There are lots of opportunities here and, for me, the important thing is that we keep the focus on places like Port Talbot. There are big opportunities, there are lots of skills there, and there are lots of companies that have an interest in developing in those communities because of the significant skill sets that exist there.

Can I just say, of all those contributions on this particular item, I have to congratulate Darren Millar for his common-sense approach? At the end of the day, the Welsh Labour Government and Plaid Cymru have dithered, and we now know the difficulties facing Tata Steel.

The UK Government reported that more than 55,000 tonnes of coking coke has arrived in the UK this weekend to go to Scunthorpe steel plant. Coking coke has also been transported from Australia, with 66,000 tonnes of iron ore pellets and 27,000 tonnes of iron ore due to arrive from Sweden. This is hardly you as a Welsh Government showing true commitment to reducing our own carbon footprint when we're prepared to import this when we're sitting on loads and loads of coal. Now, even in the remediation of the disused tips, there will be found, in this remediation—. There will be found usable coal present. Does the First Minister agree with me that it is simply nonsensical for coal extracted here in Wales, or found even as part of any remediation scheme going forward, that we shouldn't be just leaving it there? It could be sold and it could have helped in keeping Tata Steel going. Diolch.

God, you couldn't make it up, could you? We've got a Tory asking us to reopen coal mines in Wales after what they did in the 1980s. It's quite, quite remarkable. You couldn't make it up.

It is important, I think, for us to recognise that there are potential—. We have to look at what the future looks like. We have responsibilities in relation to climate change, but we also have responsibilities to those people who work in the steel sector and, if we can, we need to balance those. The electric arc furnace gives us the opportunity to do precisely that.

I have to say, it's a complete and utter bleak image the First Minister has just painted of the future of Welsh industry, that we're at the whims and mercy of multinational corporations, because if we challenge them, well they might challenge us back, and we can't have that, we can't do that, we can't stop them. That is managerialism at its worst, I have to say.

I do not want to dwell on the past, but I do take issue with the First Minister saying that Tata wouldn't have reopened the deal. You yourself, along with your Labour colleagues, with much fanfare, talked about the enhanced deal that the Labour Government were able to deliver once they got into power. Now, 'enhanced' suggests to me that you had to go back and talk to Tata, so they were open to renegotiating a deal, surely. Or have I got that wrong and, actually, it's what we suspected from the start, that that enhanced deal was actually just spin, and it is exactly the same, as Darren Millar said, as the Conservative Government's deal that was on the table?

Now, I will say that the First Minister is right, that the issues within the steel industry go beyond simple capital investment, and it's right that any steel strategy looks at electric prices, trade and procurement. I'd also add ownership on to that list. On procurement, in 2016, the Welsh Government produced the 'Public Procurement of Steel' report that identified potential projects that could be completed using Welsh steel. That then led to the Welsh Government signing up to the steel charter in 2019. So, looking ahead towards the Welsh Government's new steel strategy, can we expect a similar report to be produced by the Welsh Government, outlining where Welsh steel can be used within Wales, and then a commitment that actually it will do it?

Thanks very much. Listen, it always fascinates me that nationalists want to nationalise, but they want England to pay. That is a very difficult situation. So, this week you want to nationalise steel. Last week, you wanted to nationalise Holyhead port. And you won't even support us in a £1.6 billion increase in funding for our public services.

Look, when it comes to public procurement, you're quite right, it is important that we work with the UK Government to see where the opportunities are for steel in the future, and that's why having our Cabinet Secretary responsible for the economy on that board will help to shape what the UK steel plan looks like, and hopefully those will be in them.

But I think one of the other things that's probably worth noting is that I've written to the Secretary of State, and one of the things I've asked him to do is to reduce the safeguard quotas because the situation at the moment, in particular with the tariffs that have been imposed by the Trump administration, means that there is dumping going on, and we do need to make sure that the quotas are adjusted, so that we can protect our industry at this very difficult time.

First Minister, Gordon Brown and colleagues produced a very important report for an incoming UK Labour Government, now of course elected, around dealing with the regional economic inequalities in the UK, and part of that was about green steel making. So, now that we have this UK Government £2.5 billion fund in place and a steel strategy to go forward, I'm sure you will join me in making the case for Wales to get a fair share of that funding for that green steel making, partly to address the regional economic inequalities in the UK, but also recognising the strengths that we have here in Wales in terms of existing experience and industrial strength. Part of that, of course, has to be skills around green steel making, and for me in Newport it's very much about the Llanwern site, as you would know, First Minister, and there was a commitment from Tata in terms of the UK Government funding available on green steel making, to make sure that the downstream operations from Port Talbot are very much part of that ongoing investment and that ongoing picture. So, I am sure you would recognise that in terms of Llanwern and want to make sure that everything that Llanwern has to offer for the green steel making future in Wales and the UK is realised.

Thanks very much, John, and thanks for your efforts on behalf of your constituents. I know that many of them are concerned about the situation in Llanwern and it was good to meet some of them on Friday as well, who made it clear that there are still real concerns in relation to what is going on. I think it is important that we address regional economic inequalities, which is why we do need to land investment. That is where the growth is likely to come from. We need to get our own companies growing. We need to improve productivity. We need to get quality jobs in. But you are quite right when it comes to the £2.5 billion clean steel fund. I have made it clear in the letter I have sent to the Secretary of State that we understood that the fund was intended to be for capital funding for transformation and not for revenue support. So, we will make sure that it is very clear that we do not want to see this funding going on supporting the revenue support of the Scunthorpe plant at the expense of the situation in Welsh steel.

First Minister, throughout the statement and in answering questions, you have referenced a letter that you've sent to the Secretary of State for Wales. In my FMQ supplementary question to you earlier, I asked you to publish it, but you forgot to answer that question, so if you could answer that by publishing that letter, I would be very grateful.

But what concerns me is the contradiction in language I hear around the sadness of the blast furnaces in Port Talbot closing from this Labour Government, but then the optimism of the carbon dioxide that is being saved because of its closure. You can't have it both ways here. That's the reality of this. That is what happens when jobs are offshored. Tata are opening blast furnaces over in India because that is cheaper for them to do. That carbon dioxide is still going to be released, yet we are the ones losing jobs in this country. Is that an economic strategy that you sign up to?

Look, just to be clear that I’m happy to release a copy of the letter that I’ve sent, but let me also be clear in relation to the electric arc furnace: I think this does provide a future, a sustainable future for steel in Wales. It is really difficult; there is a glut of steel in the world. These are massive global economic factors that are determining the situation in this country, and of course, we need to recognise this as a strategic industry, and we need to do what we can to make sure that as a Government we provide a home market for steel, so that they know that there will be somewhere for that to go, because there is so much steel in the world at the moment. China’s producing a hell of a lot of it, and I think we’ve got to just be aware, with our eyes wide open, that there’s a carbon adjustment situation that’s going to come in in the EU, and that will affect us as well, so there are a lot of moving parts here and none of it is straightforward. As far as I’m concerned, the key thing for us is to provide something that’s sustainable for the future of those communities. They’ve had a tough time, but they know that there is now some hope at the end of the line because of the electric arc furnace, and the jobs that potentially could be built around that provision.

What has happened at Port Talbot, though, has had effects across our communities. The workers at Port Talbot deserved better. Their jobs were just as important as those in Scunthorpe, but Labour in Westminster, they did choose not to fight for them as determinedly. Why didn’t Parliament sit on a Saturday to stop the last blast furnace shutting down in Port Talbot? Why were we in Plaid mocked for calling for the steelworks here to be nationalised? That has not been addressed. And First Minister, do you understand the anger that’s felt by Welsh workers now? Because it is a story we’ve seen unfold before, of our jobs being thrown on the scrapheap by an uncaring and aloof Westminster. Don’t you wish that your Labour colleagues there had fought harder for Welsh workers too?

Look: Jingye, owners of British Steel, they’d stopped their orders for raw materials for the steelworks and without those, the two blast furnaces would have had to be shut down, so there was an immediate issue there, which wasn’t the case with Tata; Tata were still discussing, they were still being constructive, they were still being active with the situation in Port Talbot. It is a different situation. Yes, I understand why people are frustrated. I understand that people want to see a future. As I say, I don’t think we’ve seen the end of the story in Scunthorpe yet, because some of these global pressures will come down to bear on us, which is why what we need to see is some clarity when it comes to what the future of steel looks like, and because we have the economy Secretary sitting on that board, we hopefully will be able to help shape it.

On 12 April, the UK’s emergency action confirmed what many of us here in Wales had already feared, that our workers are second-class citizens. When 2,800 jobs were on the line in Port Talbot, there was absolutely no recall of Parliament, no rapid intervention at all. Yet, for Scunthorpe’s 2,700, the Government moved heaven and earth in order to make sure that there was a plan in place. The truth is stark: they could have done the same for us, but they chose not to. Port Talbot was let down, not by circumstance but by political choices.

Labour came into power in July; the plant shut in September. There was enough time there to ensure that Parliament was recalled. There was a genuine need and a genuine desire to demonstrate the importance of Welsh jobs and Welsh communities to the Labour Government. And the Conservatives did absolutely nothing at all either. You didn’t recall Parliament in order to make sure that Port Talbot was protected, so please, do not stand there and say that you could have done better.

We have a crisis here, and the people of Port Talbot deserve better. You can understand—and you’ve mentioned this—that they don’t see why Scunthorpe was treated differently. So, what actions are you taking to make sure that the people of Port Talbot and the local community are clear that the Welsh Government is backing them and making sure that the jobs are there going forward? Diolch yn fawr iawn.

Thanks very much. I’ve explained why the situation was different. The timing was not great, and that was partly because we had to pick up the pieces of the difficult situation that was left to us by the Tory Government. But I understand why people are frustrated. I want to give you reassurance that, as the Welsh Government, we are spending a huge amount of time supporting the communities that have been affected by the job cuts. We are in constant touch with the company, the organisations that are impacted. We will move heaven and earth to make sure that there is a future for steel in Wales, and to make sure that we take advantage of the fact that there is a steel-making facility through building other initiatives around it.

The First Minister has said that she understands why people perceive, particularly in Port Talbot, that one community, one nation, has been treated differently to another. It’s blindingly obvious, I think, to most people that that is what has happened. Like all of us, I’m glad that the steel jobs of Scunthorpe have been saved and that that community has been helped, but in terms of the situation in Port Talbot, there was an integrated steelworks. If you’re talking about creating a strategic asset, then that’s where you should have invested.

You’ve said it yourself, First Minister—this is probably not the end of the story with Scunthorpe. So, if you’re just looking at it strategically and objectively, then the UK Government should have made the economic investment on the economic case in Port Talbot. The reality is they didn’t make the decision on the basis of the economics; they made the decision based on the politics, on the political expediency, because they know, 'Loyal Labour votes in Wales, we can take them for granted like we’ve always done, but, actually, the core of our political heartlands we’ve got to look after’. And that’s the real tragedy here. People feel that they’ve been lied to, and it’s no wonder that trust is falling in politics.

What do we do now, First Minister? I would appeal to you—Wales has political capital in the bank here, because we have been let down big time. Use that political capital, because this will not be the last time that we are facing an economic crisis in Wales. Enough is enough. Use that political capital. Use your voice. Stand up for Wales, and say that the people of Wales are owed big time, and we are fed up of being let down, time and time again, by successive Westminster Governments that have taken us for granted.

Thanks. I understand the frustration. I think the timing was difficult. I think Jingye and Tata were different organisations. I want to give you an assurance that we in Welsh Labour never take the public for granted. You’re quite right, I will be using the opportunity to use that political capital. I’ll be making a speech next week where I’ll be setting out our position in relation to how we work with the UK Government in future.

It’s strange, the last time I spoke in this Chamber, it was actually when we were recalled to stop the closure of steel making in Port Talbot, nine years ago. The first time I’m back here, what are we talking about—steel making in Port Talbot once again. Thank you, first of all, First Minister, for actually coming to Port Talbot on Friday to meet with the unions and to listen yourself, first-hand, to what was being said, and to hear the anger, disillusionment and frustration that took place because of the decisions.

Everyone has said that they were all supportive of the decision to keep Scunthorpe, and they didn’t want to see Scunthorpe communities and workers and families go through the same challenges they faced, and are facing now. But what was clear was, as has been said, why didn’t it happen before? I’ve stood in this Chamber to call for a fair and just transition. Whilst I recognise what you said about the structure and layout of the site, we still could have seen blast furnace No. 4 keep going for a little bit longer, to allow that just transition to happen. But we are where we are, unfortunately, and we must now look to the future. It's important that we now make sure the future is safe and secure for steel making in Port Talbot.

To that end, you've already mentioned this letter you've sent, but I think we need to have confirmation from yourself that you're going to stand up for a fair and substantial share of that £2.5 billion and that it's not eaten away by Scunthorpe, that we do see that money coming in, that you stand up, ask and fight for a reduction in energy costs, because with an electric arc furnace and the way energy prices are at the moment, that's going to be hugely burdensome upon steel making. We need to have a fair transition so that they can compete competitively, because the tariffs coming in mean we're going to have more global inputs from steel from across the world.

Also, you've talked about the quotas. I understand at the moment that quotas actually are bigger than what we produce in the UK. So, they're actually putting all the quotas in to match our steel making. We need to see those quotas reduced, to make our steel competitive within the UK, let alone anywhere else.

Can you also ensure that Port Talbot gets its fair share of investment beyond steel? You talked about the wind, and that's important, but we want to make sure the FLOWMIS money comes so we can see the Celtic free port develop, so we can see other developments—maybe a plate mill in Port Talbot, to develop the steel making for offshore wind. We need those investments, we need to have commitments from the UK Government that that will happen. As Adam Price said, we've got it in the bank now, let's use it, let's make sure we're standing up for the people of Port Talbot, the workers in Port Talbot, and the communities that have so far struggled as a consequence of decisions to date.

Thanks very much, Dai. Thanks for the way you've spoken up for your community, and thanks for organising the meeting on Friday. It was a tough meeting, it was difficult to hear the frustration amongst many of the workers there. Since that meeting, I've responded through chasing up with that letter to the Secretary of State. You're quite right: this has got to be about a fair and just transition. We've seen enough unfair, unjust transitions in Wales over the years.

I have been clear that we want to see a substantial share of that clean steel fund coming to Wales, and also made it clear that we would like to see a reduction in the costs of energy for companies like Tata, because we simply won't be able to compete. That's the reality. The price of energy on the continent is significantly lower, which is why we have to do all of these other things by producing our homegrown energy as well. We have to see a reduction in quotas, and we need to see that happening soon, because in July, it will roll over and we’ll be locked into a situation for a long period of time.

It's not just about steel in Port Talbot. I think it's quite right that there are massive opportunities around the port there. There are people with a real interest in developing it, but we need the support from the UK Government to develop that through the release of the FLOWMIS funding that should be there to help us develop the proposition once we know what's happening in relation to the Celtic sea.

I thank the First Minister.

The next item will be the statement by the Counsel General and Minister for Delivery on the legislative programme. I call on the Counsel General to make that statement—Julie James.

Diolch, Llywydd. As Counsel General and Minister for Delivery, it is a great pleasure today to deliver the Government’s annual legislative statement and set out the final year of our legislative programme. I’d like to begin by reflecting on some of the significant reforms that we have taken forward through our legislative agenda over the last 12 months. I'm very proud that we continue to make laws here that will deliver positive and progressive change for the people of Wales.

In March 2025, the Health and Social Care (Wales) Act 2025 received Royal Assent. This is a landmark piece of legislation that will eliminate private profit from the care of looked-after children as part of our programme to transform children’s services. We are committed to ensuring effective, high-quality and sustainable health and social care to deliver better outcomes.

The Elections and Elected Bodies (Wales) Act 2024, which will remove barriers to democratic engagement and create a system of electoral administration fit for the twenty-first century, received Royal Assent in September 2024. In the same month, as part of our work to reform non-domestic rates and council tax, Royal Assent was given to the Local Government Finance (Wales) Act 2024. The Senedd is also considering several hugely important Bills that have been introduced since the last legislative statement.

The First Minister has been clear that connecting communities and delivering a better bus network is a top priority for this Government, and to that end the bus Bill was introduced before the Easter recess. This will create a new system to reverse the deregulation of the sector that has existed since the 1980s, and enable public bodies to work together to plan and deliver the local bus network people need in Wales.

The Senedd will consider the general principles of the Disused Mine and Quarry Tips (Wales) Bill later today and I commend this important piece of legislation to Members. The Bill will give greater security to people living in the shadow of disused tips and protect critical infrastructure.

The Visitor Accommodation (Register and Levy) Etc. (Wales) Bill, which will give local authorities powers to introduce a visitor levy, is currently at Stage 2. The levy will enable local authorities to raise revenue, encouraging a sustainable tourism approach, helping local areas to thrive and visitors to enjoy high-quality amenities. Through making a small contribution, visitors can support the destinations they enjoy.

We are also legislating to preserve and strengthen the language of our nation, through our Welsh language and education Bill, which the Senedd will consider at Stage 3 next week. This reflects our ambition that by 2025 every pupil in Wales will become a confident Welsh speaker by the time they leave school and places a responsibility on the entire education system to work towards that goal.

The Legislation (Procedure, Publication and Repeals) (Wales) Bill is the second Bill in our programme to improve the accessibility of Welsh law. These statute law repeal Bills have typically been a periodic feature in UK Parliament legislation and are a real sign of our maturing legislature.

Often, it is our primary legislative programme that captures the headlines, but this is underpinned by a significant programme of subordinate legislation. This includes legislation to ensure that our Acts, including the Health Service Procurement (Wales) Act 2024 and the Elections and Elected Bodies (Wales) Act 2024, have the intended effect, as well as legislation like the Food (Promotion and Presentation) (Wales) Regulations 2025, which will have a significant impact on the health of our nation for years to come.

Llywydd, we are a Government focused on delivery, and we will maintain the pace at which we introduce legislation as we bring forward the final Bills in our year 4 programme before summer recess.

We will introduce a Bill to transform our homelessness system, so it is accessible and person centred, enabling those who are homeless to obtain long-term housing quickly, increase their own self-sufficiency, and stay housed.

After taking office in August last year, the First Minister stated that she would be a leader focused on delivery and on ambition for our nation and not some distant figure in Cardiff Bay, and that the people's priorities were, indeed, her priorities and that she wanted to lead a Government that listened and delivered. But let's face it, this Government is delivering everything but the people of Wales's priorities. So, let's take a look at this Welsh Labour Government's record.

In Wales, we have the highest NHS waiting lists in the whole of the United Kingdom, with over one in four of the Welsh population on a waiting list, and a staggering 15,500 people waiting two years or more, compared to virtually zero over the border in England. People's lives are literally on the line as a result of this Welsh Labour Government's record. In Wales, we also have the highest unemployment rate in the whole of the United Kingdom and the lowest take-home pay packets in Great Britain. Welsh Labour's policies are directly leading to the people of Wales taking home less money than our friends and our family over the border in England. And Counsel General, what has been the Welsh Government's response to this? Introducing 20mph speed limits up and down Wales, continuing to slow our country down, and creating 36 new and costly Senedd politicians, which the people of Wales do not want. Out of touch. Do you really think that you've been a Government that delivers? And looking at your Welsh Labour Government's legislative programme, it seems that you're not really doing very much at all.

Since 2021, Counsel General, the Scottish Government has delivered 58 Bills; the UK Government's legislative programme in Westminster delivered 178 Bills; but, since 2021 in Wales, you've delivered just 17. In comparison, in 2024 alone, the Scottish Government delivered 15. What on earth has this Welsh Government been doing, Counsel General? And delivery Minister, what exactly have you been delivering? Scotland has 129 MSPs, and they're producing about 0.45 Acts per politician, whilst in Wales it's just 0.28 Acts per politician. Moreover, Scotland has 2.15 times the number of politicians, yet it has produced 3.41 the number of Acts in the same time frame. So, Counsel General, when you inevitably say that we need more politicians to be more productive, we can make the case that our politicians are, per head, less productive than their counterparts elsewhere in the UK. So, more politicians won't solve that problem.

Now, of course, you do still have some legislation going through the Senedd—a whopping five Bills, actually—and one of the most widely discussed ones, of course, is the one that you call the visitor accommodation Bill, but known to everyone else as the toxic tourism tax. Your own regulatory impact assessment of the tourism tax Bill has found that this toxic tax will hit the Welsh economy by up to £576 million over the next decade. Counsel General, Wales's tourism sector contributes to over 150,000 jobs in Wales and is worth over £2 billion of Wales's gross domestic product. This crucially important sector needs our support, and the Welsh Conservatives will do all we can to support tourism in Wales. So, do you agree with me and the Welsh Conservatives when we say it's time to axe the tax?

Well, that was really amusing. Thank you very much, it's always nice to be cheered up on a Tuesday. Just remind me how many MPs and councils you control while you get this enormously uncontroversial thing—[Interruption.]—through. Yes, I am absolutely being patronising. I'm responding to the patronising speech I just heard. It was entirely patronising.

Let me just outline for you, very simply, as you clearly didn't listen and came with a prepared speech, what I actually said we were doing. We are about to introduce the homelessness and social housing allocation (Wales) Bill. This is the most radical change to homelessness provision anywhere in western Europe. You've only got to ask any of the housing charities who have worked alongside us on that Bill, or any of the people with lived experience, what their view of that is. So, the very idea that that's not innovative, new and progressive is for the birds.

The environmental principles, governance and biodiversity targets (Wales) Bill will leapfrog the other nations of the UK and put us in pole position to protect both our climate and our nature, our very critical nature, alongside our cultural assets, actually. It will put in place a governance body with real teeth and real power, and I commend that to the Senedd, as I'd already said.

We will bring forward a building safety (Wales) Bill, as I've already said, which will put us into prime position across western Europe for safety in our high-rise buildings. We will consolidate our planning laws to make them accessible to Welsh people and make sure that they know what they're doing.

On the visitor accommodation regulation (Wales) Bill, I had the privilege over the Easter recess of speaking on behalf of the Government at the Commonwealth Law Conference, which was held in Malta, a place where I very happily paid treble about what we're currently proposing as a visitor levy to help that island really allow its tourism industry to thrive. I had meetings with the Minister for justice there, who told me how much that levy has done for Malta in terms of what they've been able to put forward in amenities and how much their tourism has grown as a result. So, it's always important to actually look at the evidence instead of the knee-jerk reactions that you have. There is evidence from across the cultural world that visitor levies enhance the experience for tourists for a very small price in order to give them the amenities that actually draw them there in the first place. So, you really are not at all in touch with the actual evidence here.

In terms of the NHS, of course, we've just had the biggest fall in waiting lists we've ever had, so I really suggest you update your statistics.

Thank you to the Counsel General for this afternoon's statement. I appreciate the constructive way in which you've been discussing these issues with us as business managers too, in order to ensure that the legislation can progress, and also the fact that this statement has been brought forward earlier than usual because committees can play their part, too. Clearly, there's an important role for this Chamber, but also for scrutiny committees, and the ability to prepare, along with stakeholders too to know, because there's a great deal of work facing us over this final year—.

Clearly, it's very unfortunate that we have had a period of instability in Government, which does mean that many of the things that should have happened have had to be squeezed into this final year, and we have to recognise that and the pressure that that will now put on so many of our committees. But also, there are things to be welcomed here, of course. The legacy of the co-operation agreement is clear from what you've announced today, and, clearly, we will be very pleased to help steer and shape these Bills as they go through their final stages.

There are some things that do sadden us on the Plaid Cymru benches, certainly the postponement in terms of the crucial changes to the council tax system, which is an unfair and disproportionate system, and it is a great shame that we haven't been able to proceed with changes there. Also, of course, creating a more gender equal Senedd has been dropped entirely, and that is something that deeply saddens us and we are very concerned as to the implications of that in terms of the seventh Senedd. So, there are some things that could be there.

But I was pleased to hear in your statement today that you will be ensuring that the legislative gaps that exist in terms of environmental governance, which have left us as the only nation in the UK without such arrangements in place since Brexit, is progressing. Also, you mentioned reform to the tribunal system in Wales, and that there will be work done there. I assume that we are not going to see that legislation, and I would appreciate confirmation of that. Clearly, Adam Price was very clear last month on the need for us to modernise and to bring that system together. Do you believe that that will be possible or is that something that you anticipate will not be possible because of time constraints?

There are things, of course, that we will be discussing today in terms of the coal tip safety Bill. This is something that many of our communities have been desperate to see for many years. But as many stakeholders have said, the scope of the Bill appears more narrow than was suggested originally in the White Paper. So, the scrutiny process will be extremely important.

Diolch, Heledd. I agree with that. I will try and clarify a few of the things you said, but I broadly very much agree with where you're coming from. Certainly in terms of the co-operation agreement, we've done really good work, and I've got a long list here of the things that were passed legislatively because of it. I think a few of them are worth picking out, actually. The Tertiary Education and Research (Wales) Act 2022, for example, is really groundbreaking and it happened because of the co-operation agreement. There's the Agriculture (Wales) Act 2023, of course, and there is the Senedd reform itself. We have got the Local Government Finance (Wales) Act 2024—one very undersung but actually a very good Act to have got through—and the social care one. We've currently got the Welsh Language and Education (Wales) Bill and the Visitor Accommodation (Register and Levy) Etc. (Wales) Bill in. And, of course, we worked together during the co-operation agreement time period—in fact, Siân and I worked very specifically on some of the homelessness things and the environmental governance and biodiversity things. The building safety one—I remember several sessions on that during the co-operation agreement, which were really good. Of course, that has meant that we have been able to bring really radical, groundbreaking legislation forward, and I am really glad that that has been able to happen.

In terms of the tribunals Bill, we think we will be able to get a fully complete draft Bill in both languages, but we won't have time to get it through the Senedd. It is not part of my statement today, but I would very much hope that it is not controversial at all; it's about getting it absolutely right and then whoever the Government is after the next election will have an uncontroversial Bill to cut their teeth on, ready to go. I have already spoken to Sir Gary Hickinbottom, the President of the Welsh Tribunals, and after this statement today, I will write out to all the stakeholders and tell them that plan. I know that they will want all of the major parties across the piece to put that into their manifestos. I don't think it is at all controversial and we will have done all of the work necessary to introduce it. We just couldn't do it in the last year; there just wasn't the time. And that is actually the same for the taxi Bill as well, so we will get the draft Bill ready, but we just ran out of time in terms of getting it through the scrutiny processes and stuff. I don't think it's a bad thing to have some things on the stocks for the seventh Senedd that are not controversial, ready to go. The new Government will have something to cut its teeth on and we can—you know, we'll start in good stead. So, it's not where I would have liked to have been, but it's not the worst possible scenario.

There is a lot to welcome here—people's priorities, as well as our priorities. The environment and biodiversity Bill—. I heard on the radio this morning the future generations commissioner saying we need to do more regarding biodiversity, and we've got this legislation coming through, really welcome, but also the bus Bill, the public services bus Bill—that's people's priority—and ending greyhound racing. We heard the public and you've put that in place now to happen before the end of the year. It's really welcome.

We also debated adopting the Pet Abduction Act 2024, which has been introduced in England—a lot of public support there, and the Senedd all supported it. I know that the Government had to abstain, because you've got a big logjam there of legislation to get through. Rhys ab Owen suggested changing the Theft Act 1968, or putting a line in, to recognise pet theft as more than just taking an object, you know. It's really emotional for people. So, is this something—you talked earlier about going forward to the next Senedd term—that we could put forward ready? We've debated it; we know people want it. Can we get it on so that it's an Act that can be taken through really quickly and easily in the next Senedd term? Thank you.

So, I think that one of the things that we'd be very keen to do as we go towards the election—and this, obviously, affects all of the parties here today—is to talk across party about a series of things that the Government can begin the preparation for in order to have them ready to go that are not controversial and would be likely to be included in all of the manifestos of the main parties. We'll be continuing that conversation. That, obviously, can go on the list of that, and then, obviously, it would be a matter for whoever the incoming Government is to pick that up. But we will be talking to all the major parties present in the Senedd about what that list might look like and to make sure that we're geared up for it.

We're going to a four-year Senedd term, so we can't really afford to not have legislation going through straight away, and so making sure that we have some consensual legislation ready to go—. And we're very happy to commit Government drafting time to some of that, to make sure that happens. So, I will be having those conversations across the piece, and, as the election approaches, obviously, everybody gets access to the civil servants to talk through what they need to do. And if we can find those consensual pieces across the Chamber—I think the tribunals Act is a very good example of them, but there are others—then we can obviously bring those forward—. Well, we can get them as ready as we can in order to make sure they happen.

Can I also thank you for the way that you've engaged with myself, just as Heledd did with Plaid Cymru? We really do welcome that approach. I've got to start with the ban on greyhound racing, on behalf of Arthur, who is no longer with us, and Wanda who is, and also I'd like to pay tribute to all those amazing animal charities who've worked so hard to get this in place. I look forward to the implementation group being in place very soon in order to take it forward.

I'm pleased at the legislation to eliminate profit, and the bus Bill as well, with the £1 bus fare for 21 and unders that we had in the deal. I am saddened that the gender quota Bill didn't go through. Many of us spent a lot of time on a committee hearing evidence from a lot of people and making recommendations, and that was a real sad day when we heard that it wasn't going to go through. But I just wanted to spend one minute—less than one minute; 10 seconds—talking about the Member accountability Bill and the deception part of that. My questions to you really are that, in order to restore public trust, we need some real principles in there, so I hope I'll be able to meet with you to talk a little bit more about it, but the issues really are about independence, about a judicial process, and about a process that is fair and accountable. Thank you—diolch.

Thank you, Jane. I share the frustration on the gender quota Bill. We just weren’t able to do it in a way that meant that we were sure we could get it through. We had to sever it, as you remember, from the reform Bill itself because we were afraid that it would take the whole thing down, and then we haven’t been able to work out a way to do it. That does not mean it can’t be done in the future, but it was very challenging to do. I share your sadness at that. I am sure that will be a piece of work that comes forward again.

In terms of the Member accountability Bill, yes, I absolutely intend to speak to yourself and to Adam and to Lee, who were the three people who pushed it forward in the first place. But I also intend to engage properly with all of the parties in the Senedd about what we expect that Bill to look like and what’s possible. I have also had a conversation with the Chair of the standards committee about what they expect and what is achievable. But I'm absolutely committed to taking something through that we can get through this Senedd term. Whether we will be able to get all of the implementing regulations through is something we will need to discuss. We will have to have discussions with the Business Committee about an expedited timetable for that Bill, because there's no way we can get it ready before the half-term in the autumn term, and so we just will not be able to have a 12-week Stage 1 scrutiny period or it will time out. So, we will have to do a lot of work across the Senedd to make sure that that happens, but that does not mean we can’t do that, and I'm very much looking forward to it. There is a placeholder in the programme to make sure that it can stay there, so I'm very committed to that. It has the two bits in it. It has the recall provisions, as well as the Member accountability provisions, so we will need to make sure that we work very hard to put those in place.

The Deputy First Minister, I know, has been working hard on the implementation group for the greyhound ban, and I hope we’ll announce that very shortly. I'm sure I've seen a draft. So, yes, that should be any minute now, I think. That should be coming out. Then, as you know, we have the placeholder Bill in place for the backstop for that as well. So, we'll be convening some groups to make sure that we have the gist of that. I will be doing that alongside the drafters, so I will make sure that the legislative counsel who actually draft the Bill are part of that group as well, so that we kind of circumvent some of the iterative processes so that we can do it as fast as possible.

Diolch. I thank the Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice and the Counsel General, yourself, for inviting me to a series of constructive meetings regarding my British Sign Language (Wales) Bill over the last few months. As you know, the Bill as now drafted will place a statutory duty on Welsh Ministers to promote, support and report on the use of BSL throughout Wales. The Act outlines a comprehensive framework, including the preparation of a BSL strategy, guidance for public bodies and the creation of BSL plans for key public institutions. It also requires the appointment of a statutory BSL adviser who will advise Welsh Ministers. Will the Counsel General confirm her agreement with the Cabinet Secretary for Social Justice and I that this adviser would be a BSL user themselves and they would have the power to appoint a BSL advisory panel, which would mean that this legislation would go further than any other BSL legislation in the UK?

The need for this legislation was once again highlighted by the reports last week of the deaf man living near Mold who died from cancer and whose daughter stated that his care was impacted by a severe lack of sign language provision. This language legislation will help make Wales a more inclusive place for BSL users, enabling them to participate in public life and access essential services. Finally, therefore, will the Counsel General also confirm that legislative time will be made available in the remainder of this Senedd term to allow my Bill to progress through the legislative stages? Does she agree that we must get this legislation right, with lived experience at the heart of the Bill, for the BSL and wider deaf community?

Thank you very much, Mark. I'm absolutely delighted to be able to confirm ‘yes’ to all of your questions. It isn't, obviously, in my statement today, because it's not a Government Bill—it's your Bill—but the Government will absolutely work with you to make sure that it goes through. We are in absolute agreement on it, and we will make sure that the legislative time is made available. We will help you speak with the Business Committee to make sure that the scrutiny arrangements are in place and we've got a placeholder for it in the programme, although it remains your Bill and not mine, so that's why it's not on my list. But we've been delighted to work with you; the Minister for social justice and myself have been delighted to be part of that, and I'm very grateful to you for having brought it forward.

Finally, Mick Antoniw.

Counsel General, firstly, thank you for the statement. I was disappointed in the opposition's contribution to your statement. Normally, with oppositions, they set out some of the legislation they would have liked to have seen, and I don't think there was a single piece of legislation that was mentioned. It's no wonder they lost all the Members of Parliament in the last general election. Can I say also that what is clearly happening is that we are creating a growing body of Welsh law and legislation, and obviously issues around the devolution of justice, which we all want to see, will, hopefully, make progress.

Can I just say a couple of pieces of legislation that are really important? The consolidation planning Bill—I'm glad to see that is progressing. It may actually, although consolidation, be one of the most significant and important pieces of legislation that we've passed in terms of the economic benefits that there will be. On the tribunals Bill, I very much welcome the fact that the Government will be working, the legislative programme will be working, through to the very last minutes that are feasible within it, which is quite unique, and obviously reflects the fact that we'll need to do that time after time in the new Senedd, because, with a four-year programme, there is no time, there is no availability of time, to waste or to defer—so, to maximise legislation, and particularly shorter and focused pieces of legislation as well, and I very much welcome what was said in respect of the sign language Bill.

On tribunals, obviously a very, very important piece of legislation, but again it makes perfect sense to have legislation that is continuing from one Senedd to another on important matters of policy and operation of this Senedd, particularly within the justice sector.

Can I just add one further point, then? There are certain bits of legislation that clearly need reviewing. You referred earlier to the Agriculture (Wales) Act, and I know that, for example, Unite the Union, the agricultural workers section, are keen for there to be reviews of part of that. Do you have any plans in respect of the review of legislation and updating in terms of what we've learned as legislation progresses year after year? Thank you.

Thank you very much, Mick. So, I absolutely agree with your points there. As you know, as a Parliament, we haven't got a wash-up process, as they do in the UK Parliament, and it is one of the things that I think we should consider as a Senedd going forward, because there will be Bills that are consensual in that way that could fall into a wash-up process, and, if there was such a process, we might have got the tribunals Bill through. So, it's something we should really consider for future Senedd programmes.

I've also been discussing with the Business Committee—and, indeed, as a member of the Future Senedd Committee—some of the other things that we can do that would allow consensual, procedural-type legislation to go through. One of the things we intend to do, as I've said a number of times in this place to Members, is we intend to do an omnibus correction, repeal and tidying up, if you like, Bill. We would expect to see at least one of those per Senedd term, and I would very much like to see one every other year, actually, in which we improve the accessibility of the law by tidying up the various pieces. And there's a piece of work going on with all of the legislative counsels of the four nations around what is the primacy of the law. So, this is very technical. Apologies to everyone who isn't really into this, but at the moment in the UK—and I'm telling you something you already know, Mick, I know—it's the paper law that's the law, and the digital version is not the definitive law. In virtually every other jurisdiction in the world, it's the other way around. And you wouldn't, if it was the other way around, be able to give the King's Printer for Wales the ability to correct the digital record. So, for example, the example we give all the time is that, in much UK legislation, powers are given to the Secretary of State. It's not obvious which Secretary of State; you have to do a little bit of rummaging around to find out. But, because of the growth in Welsh law, 'the Secretary of State' can mean the Welsh Ministers; it can mean the Secretary of State in regard to England and the Welsh Ministers in regard to Wales. But, even more extraordinarily, that Act might be disapplied in England and it might only mean the Welsh Ministers. Good luck with figuring that out, if you're appearing in a court.

So, if we went to the digital law being the primary law, then the King's Printer could actually correct that, and they could do that as an administrative thing, whereas, at the moment, we would have to take amending legislation through, which is a huge palaver to do something pretty straightforward. So, I agree with you, I think there are a number of things that the maturing Senedd will be able to do that will improve the accessibility of law, and one of those is absolutely legislation that goes across Senedd terms or falls into a wash-up.

I thank the Counsel General.

Item 5 today is a statement by the Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Secretary for Climate Change and Rural Affairs on the community food strategy. I call on the Cabinet Secretary, Huw Irranca-Davies.

Thank you, Dirprwy Lywydd. Food lies at the heart of all our lives. What we eat impacts not only our physical and mental health, but also our environment, our culture, and the strength of our communities.

This is why the community food strategy is a key commitment in our programme for government. It is not a top-down directive; it is a strategy built from the ground up, shaped by and for communities across Wales. We’ve listened to and drawn on the experience of grass-roots initiatives already working to strengthen food resilience, to promote healthier diets, and to build more sustainable local food systems. Through consultations, workshops and collaborative partnerships, we’ve ensured that the strategy reflects what our communities need and value. And my sincere thanks go to all those who've contributed.

As we all know, Wales is part of a global food system. Supermarkets offer convenience and affordability, but the reliance on global supply chains also comes at a cost: environmental impact and, indeed, impacts on people’s health and diet. The levels of fat, sugar and salt in ultra-processed foods are linked to a number of health concerns. These long-term impacts on people and communities’ well-being are why we’ve grounded this strategy in the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015, and it complements the 'Cymru Can' strategy. This strategy complements the recommendations made by the Future Generations Commissioner for Wales in relation to food only earlier today. The community food strategy also integrates with the ‘Healthy Weight: Healthy Wales’ plan and the 2024 child poverty strategy, both of which promote community-led solutions and long-term well-being.

A stronger local food system depends on stronger links between supply and demand. Through this strategy, we are backing Welsh growers, farmers and food businesses with the investment in capacity, skills and infrastructure, and the access to procurement opportunities. We’re supporting public bodies to embed food into their well-being plans and to work closely with local food partnerships. In practice, this will help to increase the amount of locally produced food available through our public services, through initiatives such as Welsh Veg in Schools and the Rhondda Cynon Taf food partnership.

Food policy touches nearly every Government department, and last year, I published 'Food Matters: Wales' to demonstrate our joined-up strategic thinking in policy making. The cross-Government food policy forum continues to support this joined-up approach, making sure that we are making the most of every opportunity. To drive delivery and demonstrate our strategic leadership, I am very pleased to establish a new ministerial advisory group of key stakeholders and delivery partners. This group will help us stay focused, collaborative, and accountable against the objectives of the community food strategy.

We are committed to joined-up strategic thinking and leadership across all levels of government. Public bodies are increasingly embracing sustainable food procurement. Local authorities are exploring new uses for public assets—like land—to support food initiatives. Our target is bold: to increase public sector spend on Welsh food and suppliers by at least 50 per cent by 2030, increasing the market opportunities for those who grow and produce our food here in Wales. We’re supporting this shift with initiatives, including Buying Food Fit for the Future and Welsh Food on the Public Plate.

Since 2022, we have expanded local food partnerships from nine to 22 local authorities, now reaching every local authority across Wales. These crucial partnerships enable local food organisations to co-ordinate their actions, helping to maximise the positive impacts on food poverty, public health, green growth, and on education.

Universal primary free school meals are central to our whole-school approach, offering healthy food whilst also teaching children about their food and sustainability. And in 2024 alone, our Food and Fun programme reached 205 schools and supported over 13,000 children every day. Providing school-going children with nutritious and sustainably sourced food will help strengthen food resilience in our communities.

Food insecurity is a pressure on households right across the country. It undermines health and it contributes to obesity, disease, and indeed to malnutrition. The impact of food insecurity and food poverty are real, and they are lasting. That's why, since 2019, we've invested over £26 million to support those most in need, including through local authorities, Trussell Trust foodbanks, and FareShare Cymru. Initiatives such as Food Power, Healthy Start, Big Bocs Bwyd and the PIPYN pilot in Merthyr Tydfil are supporting people to make those healthier choices and improving food literacy. In February, I was delighted to visit Fareshare Cymru to see their work, and how they have made 15 million meals available since 2015. I'd like to take this opportunity to thank the staff and the volunteers at all such organisations for their continued support of these initiatives. The local food partnership funding will support making healthy, locally sourced food more accessible to more people across Wales.

As well as helping more people to buy and eat local food, we also need to support more people to grow that food. Small-scale horticulture brings big benefits: fewer food miles, healthier soil, more biodiversity, and support for rural jobs. So, we're providing grants, training and support networks to grow this sector, and I look forward to seeing it go from strength to strength.

Through Welsh Government support, social farms and gardens deliver the Community Land Advisory Service and are helping to tailor guidance for smaller horticultural enterprises to enable them to grow and become more established. We're also updating 'Planning Policy Wales' to enable community growing and horticulture. At the same time, we're addressing infrastructure gaps in local processing and packaging—essential steps to scale up regional food supply.

Community-supported agriculture brings producers and consumers together to share the rewards and the risks of sustainable farming. These models deliver lower emissions, better biodiversity, and stronger local ties, but they do face barriers like access to land and financial viability. So, to create cohesive food communities, we will support more CSA start-ups—community-supported agriculture start-ups—and we'll seek to make more land available to help them thrive.

This community food strategy is not just a Government initiative; this is a shared vision, developed by Welsh communities, for Welsh communities. Together, we can build a healthier, fairer, and more resilient approach to our food system and market structures, and one that helps us build that sustainable future.

Now, I know that community food resilience is a matter of personal interest to a number of Members across this Siambr, and I want to thank those of you who have shown an active interest in this topic for many years. As such, I encourage you to support the community food strategy and the benefits our collective actions will bring to people and communities across Wales. Thank you, Dirprwy Lywydd.

I suppose I'd better declare an interest because we do touch on farming within the strategy. Can I thank you, Cabinet Secretary, for not only your statement today and the community food strategy, but also for the conversation we had yesterday to give me an insight into your thinking? I welcome the community food strategy. I have some anxieties, as you know. It's been a long time coming—it's been over four years—but that doesn't matter if it arrives at the right outcomes. I'm hoping that some of the work that I've done myself has helped influence its direction in some ways. It feels similar in certain areas.

I welcome the six objectives—they are very important—and I welcome the cross-Government approach. It's going to be fundamental that this is embraced by every directorate that really can impact on the future of food, and not only the food, but the well-being of the people who will eat that food.

The dedicated ministerial advisory group is also going to be very important. I feel that it's going to be offering some sort of challenge, possibly even scrutiny, but I am concerned it's perhaps going to be a little lightweight in that scrutiny function and that challenge function, but I hope I can be proved wrong. I fear it may not have enough teeth to drive the change and to maintain the pressure on the importance of rolling out these objectives.

So, whilst welcoming the strategy, I'm left with concerns though over how, on the ground, the strategy will actually drive the scale of the change we need. What is clearly missing from the strategy is a reference to expected outcomes. There is no reference to deliverable targets for the six objectives, and they're going to be fundamental if we want to drive the change, so that we can measure how we are doing on this journey of our food strategy and driving our food security.

I still believe, though, as I did when I brought my food Bill forward, that these aspirations need to somehow be anchored in legislation, which can then span administrations, so that these things continue, because it's very good to bring these things forward, but unless they're embedded in the culture of the country, things will get lost or we will deviate from where we want to go. So, whilst there are objectives here that are welcome, I fear they won't enable the scale of change we need or give the confidence, perhaps, to allow that real commercial change for the farming industry.

We talk about some really great schemes that are happening and encouraging partnerships to do a lot more and celebrate what they’re already doing, but what I'm concerned about is the scale of what we need to secure food security and to drive more local food into our schools, our hospitals and our prisons. We need to be able to commercially scale this above and beyond what is happening in partnership arrangements within local communities. I think that's going to be really important.

Peter, first of all, can I just give my wholesome thanks to you for the challenge that you've provided to Government over the last few years in terms of driving forward this food agenda? And you're right in saying this doesn't sit in isolation; it sits alongside 'Food Matters: Wales', which brings together that strategic thinking across Government, of last year. But this very much focuses on the local supply chains, the community food initiatives, the procurement aspect of more food made in Wales on the plates in Wales as well, as well as those resilience pieces.

But you raised a number of good questions, and some of them do come back to this question of the monitoring, evaluation and assessment, and I think the ministerial advisory group will have a key role to play within this. I know that within the original Bill there was an idea we discussed yesterday around a commission, but we don't want to set up, let's say, another great beast of a commission when actually we know that when we've devised really good ministerial advisory groups here within the Senedd and we've put the right people on it, which would be the people who've brought forward this strategy and contributed to it, and it's well chaired, and you put Ministers in front of it—not just me, but other Ministers—from education, from health, and so on, then they will need to listen to the experiences of those on there, and they can provide ideas and so on.

It's worth me just flagging up some of the things that that group will be doing. We want that group to give us that push on joined-up strategic thinking and leadership, to drive forward local food system co-ordination and action, to strengthen food resilience in our communities, to create those cohesive food communities and to enable stronger diverse local supply chains and promote and enable community growing and horticulture. I think they will bring forward the challenge and the ideas to say to Ministers, 'Get on with this one, this is easy to do—these ones will take a bit more work.' But that's what we've seen in the best of these groups. So, rather than a large commission, I think this will monitor the delivery of the strategy, and also have a role in saying what are the key outcomes that we want to see as well, and that could be in things such as increased procurement. It could be an increased number of community growing initiatives, how they feed into procurement.

You are right in saying that we need this to be driven with data, and one of the advantages of a ministerial advisory group is that we can provide some of the substance through that through the work of our officials with some of the data and the evidence. But if we look at the procurement piece, for example, Caerphilly council—one good example here—used the guidance that we've now put forward, the revised guidance, to award their south Wales food frameworks last year. It resulted in a 70:30—this is very technical—quality-price split, a new Welsh lot, many more local options, and a Welsh wholesaler, Castell Howell, winning 100 out of 150 lots. And interestingly, Castell Howell are doing incredible work alongside Harlech on actually developing that local procurement, including small individual local suppliers, where they help them get into that procurement to land on Caerphilly council's tables. So, we can do a lot with that.

I'd like to start by welcoming the fact that this strategy has been published. Of course, it emerged from the co-operation agreement that we had with the Government. Whilst we do welcome it, I'm sure that the Deputy First Minister himself would admit that it's taken perhaps longer than he would have liked for us to reach this particular point.

I'm sure you will agree that it's taken longer than maybe we would have wished to get to this point, but hopefully now we have a joined-up coherent strategy that ultimately, I hope, brings together the many threads of food policy here in Wales. And this, of course, needs to be more than a list of aspirations. It needs to be rooted in the reality of climate impacts, of food insecurity, and an unequal food system, which is what we have at the minute. And as you've alluded to in your statement, the response needs to be local, needs to be community led, bottom up and built, of course, for resilience.

Food security in Wales, of course, isn't just a question of supply. It's a question of justice, sustainability and, indeed, sovereignty as well. The Welsh food and drink sector contributes billions to our economy, but we also know that it is subject to a great deal of vulnerability when supply chains falter. Climate change, as we know, has already begun to reshape our food landscape. We've seen one of the wettest 18-month periods on record, of late, and extreme weather, of course, has impacts on yield, it affects animal health and, of course, we see then, as a consequence, worsened food price inflation as well, all piling pressure onto families, very often, who are already struggling. So, the question really we need to ask is—and I'll be fair here, we only had a copy a few hours ago—whether the community food strategy actually goes far enough to build the resilient localised food system that we want to see that can withstand the climate shocks and the other disruptions that we know are happening, and indeed, others that are coming.

Just turning specifically to the ministerial advisory group that you touched on earlier, I don't know if you could share a bit more detail about not the membership in terms of persons, but in terms of the kinds of bodies and sectors that you'd like to see represented on that. Clearly, I'd imagine primary producers, processors maybe, supply chains, voluntary or community groups as well; just give us a flavour of what that might look like. And particularly how communities will shape the work that stems from maybe some of the suggestions and challenge that comes from the ministerial advisory group.

I'd also ask whether you've had an opportunity to review with the Wales-specific recommendations in Professor Tim Lang's report for the National Preparedness Commission, because that offers a practical framework for action, especially at a community level. For example, he raises concerns about over-reliance on emergency food provision, foodbanks, community cafes, and other social sticking plasters, if you like. Foodbank operators themselves are telling us clearly that ultimately they want to be phased out, but maybe the infrastructure behind them could be reimagined as co-operatives or social enterprises. I'm wondering what your vision for transforming this infrastructure maybe into something lasting and empowering might be. The report I referenced recommends as well a national audit of community food assets; that includes land, skills, equipment et cetera, and I'm just wondering if that's something that you might be willing to consider in terms of mapping out what we have so that we can maybe from there unlock the potential of community food infrastructure.

Llyr, diolch yn fawr iawn. Thank you as well for reminding us that this flows from a great deal of work across the Chamber, including the co-operation agreement as well. I would have liked to have brought this forward earlier, but it's important that we get it right. Our commitment was that we bring it forward during this Senedd term. It's here now, and we can get the infrastructure up and running behind this strategy, get the membership of the ministerial advisory group up and running as well, which you touched on.

And you're right: the membership of that will reflect the people who've helped contribute to what the strategy looks like, so it will be all of those from the primary producers through the supply chain, but also the community growers, those people who are involved in the thinking behind a more local, community-based food approach in Wales that gives us that resilience as well as gets more Welsh food on Welsh plates and so on. So, the membership will very much look like that.

But we don't want a cast of thousands; what we want is the key people on there that can give us the real insight to what it feels like on the ground, from small-scale horticultural growing and where we get on that, through to people like the major distributors, who will all have a part to play. The great thing about this is the strategy has been brought forward by them and with them, informed by them. I think the work going forward, delivering on this, and the outcomes, need to be driven by them as well, to identify the barriers as well as the ways forward to ramp up what we want to do.

This is quite a sea change in the approach, I've got to say as well, and it does recognise, as you were saying, the nature and climate emergencies and the more that we can do in terms of local and community-based food solutions. It is not uncommon on the continent and it is starting to happen within Wales, but it's actually moving it at pace now in that direction. Everybody has a part to play within that, including some of the bigger players within the supply chain like the distributors, who are really engaged in this, right down to grass-roots organisations, community growers that we will see as well, and others.

This has incorporated some of the thinking as well—although not all of it, because there's more to do on that—of Professor Tim Lang's work. Of course, he identifies the issue of food shocks to the system and the vulnerabilities with that. But I have to say that developing local food networks is a real assist against those shocks when you depend on a global food economy. We can't walk away from the fact that we have an international dependence with some of our food imports and exports, but, actually, the more that we can grow and put that resilience into local networks, it's good for the planet, good for climate, it's good to avoid having the food shocks when that system is threatened or jolted. But, certainly, we'd be keen to work with Professor Tim Lang and others as we take forward not only this work but also the wider work we have across Government in food as well.

Thank you very much for your remarks, particularly acknowledging the levels of salt, sugar and fat in ultra-processed food, which I'm afraid is the biggest driver of early death in Wales now. I know smoking is supposed to be the biggest cause of early death, but I think UPF is definitely overtaking it, because with six in 10 households never cooking from scratch, they are basically eating ultra-processed food. Once you start doing it, the outcomes for individuals' health is really devastating.

There's nothing to disagree with in your lovely little plan and all the people you've engaged with. It's all great, but there's a huge amount more to do, particularly as relying on global just-in-time food supplies is a fool's errand with the huge disruption to international trade that we're seeing since the election of Donald Trump. We absolutely have to become more self-sufficient and ensure that we do have the food security that, at the moment, we lack. We absolutely need to back Welsh farmers and growers and get Welsh veg in schools, but it’s in its infancy. I heard today that there are still only seven local authorities engaging with Food Sense Wales, with another five being added in the very near future. But what are the other 10 doing? They have local food partnerships; why are they not aspiring to ensure that local food is available in all our schools? At the moment, the demand hugely outstrips supply, but we absolutely have a lot of work to do on it. Things like I know that Monmouthshire insists on Red Tractor chicken; most local education authorities are using chicken reared in Thailand, and that’s absolutely not sustainable in terms of carbon emissions—

Jenny, you need to conclude now.

So, No. 1, do you support the right to grow? In a place like an urban constituency like mine, we need to be using every single patch of land that’s not being used for something else. And what discussions have you had with Government about massively increasing cookery classes, not just in schools, family learning, but also in the wider community, so that people can understand how to look after themselves better so that they feel better?

Jenny, thank you very much, and also for your championing of these issues as well. You are right in highlighting that ultra-processed foods—. The link is drawn daily, now, between that and increased mortality and increased poor health amongst—. And it is a social justice issue, very much, as well. I mentioned in my opening remarks that it’s not only issues of obesity and diabetes as a result of poor diet, but it’s also malnutrition as well, which is quite remarkable. This is a real twenty-first century phenomenon. So, the more that we can do right across the piste in that area, the better. And we note that, for example, the work that’s going on at the moment with the review of healthy eating in schools is going to be important, and this needs to feed into this: how can we get locally, freshly sourced food into schools? But there's also the education piece as well. So, it’s not only—. And this was one of the big takeaways that I’ve come across before, but also from my recent visit in February to FareShare Cymru—the work that they’re doing now, not purely in diverting what would be waste food, but actually diverting that into people’s menus, but then working with people to actually educate parents and children in cookery and in how to use some of these ingredients as well. So, we need to do all of that; we need to do it in schools but outside of schools as well, right across the piste.

The veg in schools, you rightly said, is a very laudable initiative, but we need to go further, so I’m keen that, as part of this community food strategy, we identify how we can roll out that good practice, that model, to other local authorities in other parts of Wales, because we can undoubtedly do it. And in so doing, we need to do the supply side as well, and we need to really work on what we have learnt from the existing veg in schools projects, so that we can make it easy for all to do it.

And you’re right, in fact, Monmouthshire schools, which you referred to as well there, are featured within the strategy as exemplars in certain work. How do we take what’s really good and make it common practice right across all areas of Wales? Because that will undoubtedly benefit health, diet, resilience, good lifestyles, connectivity with local food culture and also, I think, issues of affordability as well.

You asked me specifically on the right to grow. I'm interested in the concept of the right to grow. I think we need to analyse the impacts of that and the implications of that. But in response to Llyr earlier, I mentioned that we have many pockets of land in urban and rural environments that are not biodiversity rich, but are often scraps of land, often pieces of former wasteland. Now, I'm a great subscriber to the idea that you need unfinished edges on communities with a bit of wasteland around to play and enjoy in. But also, they could be used for the production of food, with local communities using them. And we've seen some good initiatives on that. So, I'm interested in the concept. I think we need to understand the full implications of it. And that could well be something, actually, that we take forward as part of this, with the work of the ministerial advisory group as well, because I'm sure there are some people on that group who would want to advocate for it. But thank you, again, for your support and championing of this.

Thank you for this statement. One thing that struck me that wasn't in the statement was mention made of game. I am aware that you might be considering that in a different way, but game meat is produced on quite a wide scale here in Wales. It's healthy meat, it's full of protein, there's almost no fat on it and it's abundant here in Wales. It's meat that could contribute to the diet of children in our schools and in the public sector, in hospitals and so on. So, what consideration have you given to game meat, meat such as pheasant, or rabbit even, which is abundant here, and how could that contribute to your plan?

So, I deliberately haven't gone into the full menu options and menu choices within this. The focus has been very much on actually driving up locally sourced produce, and sustainably locally sourced produce as well. It is interesting that when you look at some of the species now that are under management not just within Wales, but in places like the New Forest and so on—deer and so on—they are increasingly being promoted as a very environmentally—. What's the right way of putting this? It's a good sustainable way of actually accessing affordable meat and protein, particularly within a managed regime. We deliberately don't in here enter into a thing of whether game is part of that and so on, but I think you'll understand that what we do focus on is on locally sourced, good produce, nutritious produce, and that also benefits local economies as well. That's the other thing.

And finally, Carolyn Thomas.

I really welcome this strategy. It's really important, I think, for people to reconnect with food, where it's come from, especially young people, to get them to eat healthily. It doesn't just benefit people's health, but, as you said earlier, nature and biodiversity as well. How will Welsh farmers benefit from this as well? Do you think that it might help encourage them to diversify, going forward, rather than just have monocrops?

Also, regarding planning as well, there aren't many areas in north Wales where you can grow vegetables, except in certain areas of Sealand, for example, and we've got a big solar farm proposed for there. So, could we feed this into that, as well, as part of the food strategy—that it needs to be weighed up as part of planning decisions? Thank you.

Thank you very much. Look, I think there are great opportunities here for farmers and primary food producers in Wales, because the more that we can work right across the supply chain, not only into the public procurement space, which is increasingly happening in Wales, but also onto the supermarket shelves—. That has to be a benefit. So, part of this, beyond the technicalities of it, is actually a drive towards developing a culture that is based on locally sourced food, the pride in that locally sourced food. Now, that surely will have tangible benefits, then, economic benefits, for farmers.

And on your point on the land availability, yes, we're not creating more land, unlike the Dutch, who do have remarkable propensity to do this, and on that basis, we need to be very selective in where we grow produce and where we do other uses. And sometimes, they can be combined as well, but you are certainly right that where we've got good productive land that can grow crops, then we need to be making use of that land. I've missed one of your points; I'm sure you had three points. But if I have missed it, I will come back to it, Carolyn. But thank you, again, for your support and championing of this.

I thank the Deputy First Minister.

Item 6 is a statement by the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care on the report of the ministerial advisory group on NHS Wales performance and productivity. I call on the Cabinet Secretary, Jeremy Miles.

Thank you, Dirprwy Lywydd. Last October, I appointed an external ministerial advisory group to provide an independent review of performance and productivity in the NHS in Wales. I appointed members with national and international expertise in their respective fields, and I asked them to provide me with assurance about the effectiveness of current arrangements and advice about how these could be strengthened. The group was chaired by former NHS England chief operating officer Sir David Sloman, and I asked the group to focus on planned care, diagnostics, cancer performance and urgent and emergency care.

I would like thank all the members for their hard work and diligence in undertaking this rapid but detailed piece of work. I have today published the group's report and 29 recommendations, together with the Welsh Government's response. Earlier this morning I met NHS leaders and members of the ministerial advisory group to discuss the report and the recommendations. This was the second time that we have come together this month. At the start of April I met NHS chairs, chief executives and their senior teams to set out my priorities for the coming 12 months, including ambitious plans to continue to reduce the waiting list, eliminate two-year waiting times for planned treatment and restore a maximum eight-week wait for tests by March 2026.

Over the coming weeks I will be making further statements about the systemic changes we now need to see in the NHS this year, and how we will speed up delivery in some of our key priority areas. The recommendations from the ministerial advisory group will make an important contribution to how we will achieve this. Dirprwy Lywydd, the report's message is clear. When we look at planned care, at diagnostics, cancer and urgent and emergency care, we have a significant challenge in terms of performance and productivity. Despite the fact that we invest around half of the Welsh budget in health and social care, and that the NHS employs more people today than at any time in its history, the service is not performing at the levels, nor with the levels of productivity, that we would all want it to, and that the public needs and expects it to.

But the group's report and conclusions are optimistic, not least that it sets Wales the ambition of becoming a world leader in healthcare. Time and again it outlines the strength of our NHS staff, of the commitment and skill of clinical and managerial professionals, of good strategy and often of good practice. It's clear that, in a country of our size, with a comparatively small number of health bodies and a Government able to work closely with the NHS, we have an advantage that we can and we must make work better. If we are able to draw on the best of what we do in Wales and the best of what has worked elsewhere, we can improve performance and productivity to deliver better outcomes.

Dirprwy Lywydd, there are five major themes running through this report and its recommendations. In the time I have this afternoon I want to briefly touch on each. I will expand further on our plans in the weeks ahead.

The group makes a number of specific recommendations about out-patients and waiting list management. These will be essential to our plans for the year ahead as we continue to cut long waiting times and build on the improved planned care performance that we have seen over the last three months.

Secondly, it tells us to focus less on plans and strategies and more on delivering our existing commitments better. There are a series of recommendations about how we can use funding to unlock and drive performance. Members will recall that I provided an extra £50 million to health boards in November to fund their plans to reduce the longest waiting times. I have been clear with NHS leaders that, where those plans are not delivered in full, the funding will be returned to the Government to be used elsewhere in the NHS. However, I have also agreed to look at how we can use funding to incentivise and reward organisations to improve delivery and productivity. This is an area I am keen to develop further.

Llywydd, the ministerial advisory group has presented us with a challenging but constructive report, which lays out specific, concrete proposals for improving performance and productivity. It's also given us a practical set of recommendations and a pathway towards reaching the ambition of becoming one of the best-performing and most productive healthcare systems in the world. It is a bold ambition and one I expect that we must embrace and work towards together.

I'd like to thank the Cabinet Secretary for his statement today, and I think the Cabinet Secretary has to be honest with the people of Wales. This isn't anything new or nothing that we haven't been told before. What this is is a last-minute scramble. After 26 years of Labour running the NHS here in Wales, with just 12 months until an election, the Cabinet Secretary arrives here today with sweeping promises of urgency and ambition. But what this really reflects is a Government that's finally realised and woken up too late that actual delivery on the ground matters.

I know we've had this statement today but I did read the speech you gave to the NHS Confederation, and I know you had this report before then, so I'm going to focus a bit on that speech as well, because I think it does tie in together. I just want to say first I'd like to thank the chair and all the members of that group for pulling this together. So, this isn't anything new—this is something we've all heard before—but what the ministerial advisory group does lay bare is what patients, professionals and opposition Members here have been saying for years. Performance is down, productivity is poor and patients are suffering as a result, and the report does make clear the operational performance of the core NHS services is in need of urgent attention and turnaround.

And after 26 years of you in charge, now what you're trying to tell us is you want to create the best-performing and most productive healthcare system in the world, and I share that ambition. I think, for half of the Welsh Government budget spent on health, it is right that we have the best healthcare system in the world and not be propping up the bottom of all the league tables here in the United Kingdom. So, I'd actually like to ask you, Cabinet Secretary: what fundamental changes are you going to make to make us the best-performing healthcare system in the world, because people have waited far too long for this change? I think it's about time we actually had some concrete answers of how you're going to do that.

You spoke today about digital transformation; in that speech you gave to the NHS Confederation, you did admit that our digital journey has been marked by underdelivery and I agree with you, and many of us have been saying this for years. We've had Digital Healthcare Wales, and I must ask you, Cabinet Secretary: what have they been doing? Because our digital infrastructure here in Wales has fallen behind. Basic—basic—integration between health boards still doesn't exist. They still don't share information between each other and now, only years later, when we seem to have two Labour Governments at either end of the M4, you want the NHS Wales app to integrate with the NHS England app, which, to me, makes common sense. It's something that should have happened years ago—it just doesn't seem to have been driven forward. But another part we see in digital infrastructure is primary care, and certain elements of primary care and allied health professionals are still having to send letters and faxes up into district general hospitals, because they don't have access into their systems.

Well, I slightly regret the churlish tone that the Member has brought to the piece of work that we're debating and discussing in the Chamber today. I wasn't sure whether he was attaching weight to it or not. But I'll do my best to try and unpack that from the questions that he put to me.

He asked me what the specific steps are that we are planning to take, and I'm grateful to him for having taken the trouble of reading the speech that I gave on 7 April, which set out, as he will recall, a number of very specific steps that we're planning to take, which I think answer his question precisely. And this morning, we published not only the recommendations from the report, but I was keen that we take the decision to publish our response at the same time, so that it is clear precisely what steps the Welsh Government plans to take against each of those 29 recommendations. And that enabled the discussion this morning, both with the ministerial advisory group and with NHS leaders, so that those actions could be tested. Not all of them are actions that are in the hands of the Welsh Government, as he will appreciate, and I know he will appreciate that, given the last points that he made in his questions in relation to the balance of responsibility in the NHS.

So, between the statement that I made on 7 April and the statement that I published this morning, he will find a full description of the range of steps that we are planning to take. I'm grateful to the ministerial advisory group also for giving us a steer on the timescales within which they recommend that the various steps are taken. So, he will also see in the document this morning that reflection of the three-month time frame, the six-month time frame and so on, which will give, I hope, him and others a sense of the pace that we plan to bring in relation to the recommendations specifically.

He is right to say—and I've acknowledged that in both the speeches I have made in the last few weeks—that the state of development of digital infrastructure in the NHS is not where it needs to be. That is obviously problematic from the point of view of improving performance. We need to make sure that there is a clear digital underpinning to service improvement so that it can continue to be able to take advantage of the most recent developments in terms of digital applications, technology, the growing use of artificial intelligence and so on. He will have seen that over recent weeks I have taken the decision to escalate Digital Health and Care Wales in recognition of the fact that they have a particular need for more support to be able to develop a stronger capacity for planning and for managing large-scale digital projects. But one of the tasks we have set this year in the remit letter, which he will, I think, have seen, is the outline planning of the integrated patient record, and I'm very optimistic that we will have, over the course of the next few weeks, some, I think, exciting announcements to be able to make in the digital space.

Thank you to the advisory group for this report, which makes for useful reading. Unfortunately, we haven't had enough time to process this very thorough report in full as of yet, and, in order to have a more meaningful discussion, it might have been better to give more time between the publication of the report and having a statement on its content. But I welcome the fact that the Cabinet Secretary has commissioned this piece of work, which demonstrates a willingness to hold a critical assessment of the health service in order to take the necessary steps to make improvements.

There's no hiding from the fact that the report does paint a concerning picture, but let's not pretend that the report says anything new. Patients are experiencing these weaknesses on a daily basis, and a recent survey of the Nuffield Trust and the King's Fund showed that almost three quarters of the public in Wales were dissatisfied with the state of the NHS.

So, it's vitally important that this report represents a watershed moment for the Government and that we see tangible efforts to implement lessons learnt. Here are some suggestions of what the Government could do to show it's serious about acting on this report.

As I've mentioned many times before, the NHS is nothing without its staff, but they are being let down by a lack of strategic leadership when it comes to issues of recruitment and retention. That's why we need a comprehensive NHS workforce plan, outlining practical steps to ensure that the workforce has the resilience and the resources to meet demand. This should be accompanied by an audit of health data sources in Wales, whose shortcomings are consistently cited by various stakeholders as a persistent barrier to more effective workforce planning.

We also need to see reforms to the governance architecture of the NHS, which is currently ill suited to fostering and embedding performance improvements on a pan-Wales basis. Now, in this respect, this report makes for very familiar reading, because last November Plaid Cymru published our plan that set out many of these recommendations: addressing a systematic lack of co-operation between health boards; clarifying and standardising performance metrics; simplifying targets with the aim of making them more aligned with resources; empowering the patient voice; and enhancing the transparency of accountability mechanisms. Yet, back then, the Cabinet Secretary claimed that the Government was already doing what we were recommending. Now we know that clearly wasn't the case, and six months have been wasted by this Government dragging its feet, when the problems and the potential solutions were being presented to them—solutions that were drawn together from clinicians and health managers. So, can the Cabinet Secretary explain why the Government failed to act on our report when it had the chance, and whether he now regrets the time that was lost in getting on with the job of initiating the urgent course correction that the NHS desperately needs?

We need to see a purposeful shift towards a more preventative model of healthcare resourcing, and away from the firefighting tendencies that we've seen. This includes advancing long-overdue reforms to social care, the impetus for which has been distinctly lacking over recent years, based on the feedback we've heard from the sector. So, will this Government take the bold action required, and establish a national care service without delay, so that people get the care they need, and we start to treat the sector with the respect it deserves?

Finally, I'm concerned at the proposal to ring-fence NHS funding for what is called 'the independent sector'. Whilst this shouldn't be surprising, coming from a chair so involved in the private sector, it is surprising to see the Government boast that it's already doing this. Can the Cabinet Secretary tell us where he will draw the line on this privatisation of our health service that is happening under this Labour Government?

Well, I'm grateful to the Member for welcoming the work of the group, and for recognising it as a significant piece of work, which I'm sure will have been well received by those who've worked so hard to provide their insight to us in relation to these reforms. He's right to say there are some hard-hitting messages in the report, but I myself think it's also an optimistic report, because it also outlines the assets that we have, both in terms of staffing, strategy, good practice, within the NHS in Wales, and I at least celebrate that, and we ask all parts of the NHS in Wales to learn from each other, so that each can support the other in improving across the system. And I hope the Member would agree with that approach.

He makes an important point about the workforce plan. He will know from our previous exchanges that I also believe that we need to have a workforce plan that takes a strategic view across Wales, and I think he may also know that's already under way.

In relation to governance architecture, I myself do not believe that the main challenge that the NHS faces is one of structure. I note, I think I read in the context of his party conference, his thinking about dividing secondary and primary care, for example, or collapsing health boards together. My own view is that neither of those are the main challenge that we face in Wales, and the risk that we run with significant structural change is that we lose focus on what is the principal challenge, which is improving the performance, in the interests of people in Wales, of their health service. That's why I think the plan, which is set out both in my speech earlier this month and in the report today, is the right approach, and there are new things that are being proposed in both of those interventions that I think, together, represent the way forward.

I note and commend the Member for his ongoing advocacy of the Plaid Cymru plan, as he calls it. The reason I remember it so vividly was that it almost said exactly what I had said two or three weeks before that, so I was grateful to him then for the support that his plan showed for my plan, and I reiterate that support today. He made me a very specific challenge about what we've done in the meantime in relation to that. He will know that I published planning guidance at the end of last year, which set out very specifically a smaller number of priorities, a clearer accountability framework, and a set of expectations for the sector, which was one of the key asks that I set out in my plan, and which his plan also called for, and there are a number of other steps that we've taken in the meantime.

He made an important point about a national care service. During our time in the co-operation agreement, we were able to make good progress in relation to that. He will know that there is a plan that spans the best part of a decade, which we were working together on, I think, proactively, pragmatically and in agreement, and that work continues beyond the life of the co-operation agreement as well. I think he is right to say that bringing stability and long-term resilience to the social care service in Wales is critical for social care, but it is also critical in the way that he was absolutely right to say, for the resilience of the health service as well.

I welcome that waiting lists are now going down for the third month on the run. I also welcome the building of a new orthopaedic hub in north Wales, in Llandudno, and hopefully we can have investment in the Royal Alexandra as well in north Wales.

I have been having lots of conversations with people on their doorsteps during recess, including with NHS employees. What has been raised with me is that systems and processes need to be back in place, especially post COVID, and strengthened with training and consistency. A paramedic said to me that GPs are too often referring people to A&E when they need to just have antibiotics or maybe even a blood test. This happened to two 80-year-olds on Saturday—in England, this happened, though—where they spent 12 hours on a Saturday night in A&E, from 10 o'clock at night until 10 o'clock in the morning, just to be told that everything was fine.

So, I just wanted to know, really, how employees can feed into this, because they're the ones who've got this lived experience. I really think it does make a difference. I have given some feedback to Betsi as well, which they seem to be taking on board and talking to that person, but I just think it's really important. Thank you.

Thank you, Carolyn Thomas, for those questions. In terms of the role of GPs in managing waiting lists, I think that is absolutely essential. One of the things that I hope we'll be able to do more of over the next year is, where we're providing additional funding to the system, that that isn't solely focused on the secondary care part of the system, that it's also supporting primary care practitioners to manage the waiting lists as well, and to ensure that there isn't more referral than there needs to be in the interests of the patient.

So, the work that we are doing to support health boards to manage waiting lists better can only prevail in the long term if we're also making sure that demand is managed in the interests of patients, and actually providing that holistic view, I think, is really important. So, I hope she will welcome those steps when we are able to set those out in the coming weeks.

I think she is absolutely right to say, and I was talking to colleagues in the NHS this morning, that thousands of people come to work every day in the NHS and they work hard and they're motivated by the care of the patients that they're responsible for. And what I want to see is an NHS where, as she said, the systems and processes support that effort, support that commitment, so that it can be as impactful as it can possibly be. And that's what this is all about at the end of the day. We are looking at introducing NHS skills academies over the course of the next year, which will help with some clinical skills, but also waiting list management skills to provide that sort of rounded support, which I agree with her is important.

She mentioned staffing, and she mentioned staffing in Betsi Cadwaladr. I’m conscious that the surveys that Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board have been seeing recently have shown greater levels of staffing satisfaction, which I think is a very positive sign, notwithstanding the challenges that they face. And I think that she is absolutely right: in my experience, and I am sure that of all of us, you speak to somebody who works on the front line in the NHS and they will tell you quite quickly five or 10 things they think could benefit the system very quickly. I would commend to her the piece of work that Llais and the Bevan Commission are running at the moment, which is about how we can identify some processes, practices that may be obstacles to that improved performance. So, if she has constituents or colleagues that she knows might have suggestions to make, I think that that would be a useful way for that to be fed through.

The first thing I want to put on the record is a huge thanks for the work and dedication of all the NHS staff, at all levels, who deliver care to us day in, day out. One area that the public have focused on is the waiting times, and most of that focus is on the orthopaedic waiting times. But it’s also clear that, month on month, those waiting times are reducing, and at a faster rate than any other time before. It’s true also to say that there has been significant improvement made in the out-patients' appointments, and again that was due to staff working at weekends. It was to do with the £50 million investment that had been made to deliver that.

And in south Ceredigion, with same-day urgent care services, you had the 50-day challenge. It went down extremely well. It ended on 31 March, and it’s now being reviewed. I know it was also valued by those people who used it, because I have had lots of e-mails pertaining to that. So, it would be interesting to those people, and to me, to know how quickly that review will be worked through—I think it’s the health board who are doing it—and if it is the case, like people are saying to me, that it’s of huge value to them, that we would look to reinstate it. Thank you.

Thank you to Joyce Watson for those remarks and questions, and we will all want to associate ourselves with the points that she made at the beginning about the incredible effort that NHS staff at all levels, in all roles, provide day in, day out. That's why making sure that the system overall is performing at its best is so important, so that all of that effort and commitment can have the biggest impact possible, which is what we all wish to see. I, as she does, welcome the reductions in waiting times over the last three months. We very much hope and expect that that will continue. That's certainly the task that I've been set and which I have set with the NHS as well. But she is right to say that we are seeing evidence of those waits coming down. She will know that, in May, we'll be able to publish the figures for March. The task that we had been set was to reduce those two-year waits down to around 8,000 patients. So, we will hopefully have some good news to be able to share in a few weeks' time.

I think she is right to point to the additional investment, which we were able to make at the end of last year. That has enabled us to provide just that little bit of extra flexibility, so that those new ways of working that we know are more effective at seeing more patients quickly can be embedded. What I would also say is that that has been accompanied by a very significant system-wide focus on a weekly basis on meeting those targets, with a very, very rigorous level of reporting and challenge that has gone with it. And I think that that has established a good way of working, whilst what we are trying to do is to get the system back into balance. We wouldn't want to run things in that way when one is back in balance, but I think, for the time being, that is the right way of doing it.

She makes an important point, finally, about the 50-day challenge. That is being reviewed by each region, but we are currently working at a national level about understanding what the most impactful interventions have been, so that we can make sure that they continue. There was funding provided last year, she will know, for some of those interventions. Some of them actually aren't about funding; they're about different ways of more collaborative working, and I think those are now embedding in the system. We've seen reductions month on month in the numbers of patients ready to go home but delayed, and what we all want to see is that progress continuing as well.

I thank the Cabinet Secretary.

The statement under item 7 has been postponed until 3 June.

Item 8 is next, the motion to vary the order of consideration of Stage 3 amendments to the Welsh Language and Education (Wales) Bill. The Cabinet Secretary to move.

Thank you, Llywydd. As Members will be aware, it is usual to dispose of amendments to Bills in the order in which the Schedules and sections that they refer to arise in that Bill. During Stage 2 proceedings for this Bill, the Children, Young People, and Education Committee made a decision to vary the order of consideration. This approach worked well in terms of groups and the discussion of amendments. This order proposed by this motion follows the approach taken at Stage 2. I urge Members to support the motion.

I have no speakers, therefore I take it that the Cabinet Secretary does not wish to reply to himself. So, the proposal is to agree the motion. Does any Member object? No. The motion under item 8 is therefore agreed.

Items 9 and 10 are next. In accordance with Standing Order 12.24, unless a Member objects, the two motions under items 9 and 10 will be grouped for debate, but with separate votes. There are no objections.

This is the motion on the general principles of the Disused Mine and Quarry Tips (Wales) Bill. The Cabinet Secretary for Climate Change and Rural Affairs to move this motion. Huw Irranca-Davies.

Move formally.

Are you sure only formally, or do you want to speak to the debate and to the two items? You can try and get away without saying a thing, but I'm sure people will want you to speak.

Llywydd, it's my pleasure to open the debate on the general principles of the Disused Mine and Quarry Tips (Wales) Bill, and to present the motion on the financial resolution. I would like to thank the Chairs and members of the Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee, the Finance Committee, and the Legislation, Justice and Constitution Committee for their detailed reports on the Bill. I would also like to thank everyone else for their help in developing this Bill and for the useful ideas that they provided as the committees carried out their scrutiny. I would request their expertise once again as we draw up subordinate legislation and guidance and as we prepare for implementation. I welcome the recommendation of the climate change committee that the Senedd should support the general principles of the Bill.

As Cabinet Secretary, Llywydd, it's a privilege and an honour to lead on this historic piece of legislation, which is world-leading in its approach and its focus on human welfare. This Bill fulfils a commitment in our programme for government to introduce legislation to deal with the legacy of centuries of mining and to ensure coal tip safety during this Senedd term.

I have considered very carefully the recommendations from the Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee, the Finance Committee and the Legislation, Justice and Constitution Committee. I have set out my responses to the recommendations in correspondence, which they have already received. Therefore, all three committees are aware of my position.

The Bill establishes a new public authority, the disused tips authority for Wales, which will be responsible for implementing the new regime established by the Bill. Fundamental to the Bill is the protection of human welfare, seeking to ensure that disused tips do not threaten human welfare by reason of their instability. This will be achieved by introducing a consistent and robust system of assessment, registration, management and monitoring of disused tips in Wales.

The Bill will bring about significant improvements to the current regime under the Mines And Quarries (Tips) Act 1969, in particular establishing a lower threshold for intervention and providing the authority with appropriate powers of entry to any land where necessary for the exercise of certain functions. It also places on a firm legislative footing the key elements of the new management regime, such as a register of categorised disused tips, which is the foundation upon which the rest of the provisions in the Bill are built.

The coal tip safety grant scheme will continue, and, in this Senedd term, we have made available £102 million to local authorities, Natural Resources Wales and the Mining Remediation Authority for the current programme of monitoring, maintenance and repair. This is inclusive of the £25 million that the Welsh Government was successful in securing in 2025-26 for disused coal tips from the UK Government in the most recent autumn budget. The Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Welsh Language, who's here in the Chamber with us today, recently requested confirmation of disused coal tips funding from the UK Government for the financial years 2026-27 and 2027-28, ahead of the second phase of the spending review, to enable officials to operate a multi-year grant scheme, which would allow applicants to undertake larger scale capital works programmes.

During the scrutiny of the Bill, I listened carefully and noted the discussions and the subsequent recommendations regarding key matters in the Bill, such as management plans, guidance and consultation, monitoring, categorisation and assessments. I want to strike the right balance between what is on the face of the Bill and the detail that should be included in guidance, and this will ensure the effective delivery of the new regime. Therefore, taking on board the committee's views, and the preference to have certain key areas set out on the face of the Bill, I have instructed my officials to draft several amendments to the Bill.

My officials have commenced work on an amendment that places a duty on the authority to prepare and maintain management plans for category 1 and 2 disused tips, and a power to prepare and maintain management plans for category 3 and 4 tips. In addition, the minimum content of management plans will be prescribed on the face of the Bill, including information relating to emergency planning. This addresses the recommendations of both the Climate Change, Environment and Infrastructure Committee and the Legislation, Justice and Constitution Committee in relation to management plans, and it does strengthen the Bill in relation to emergency planning.

I'm keen to address the concerns of the Climate Change, Environment and Infrastructure Committee and the Legislation, Justice and Constitution Committee regarding guidance, and so I intend to bring forward an amendment that will place a duty on Welsh Ministers to issue guidance to the authority in respect of the authority's exercise of its functions in certain key areas, including management plans, monitoring and assessments. There will be a corresponding duty on the authority to have regard to the guidance, and a duty on the Welsh Ministers to consult on this guidance. In the development of guidance, we will continue to engage with experts and relevant stakeholders, ensuring that those with the relevant expertise and experience will be involved in its preparation.

Is it okay for me to sit down?

It's fine for you to do so, yes, and I will call you back to reply to the debate.

The Chair of the Climate Change, Environment and Infrastructure Committee now, Llyr Gruffydd.

Thank you very much, Llywydd. Before turning to the committee's report, I would like to begin by thanking all of those who gave evidence to inform our consideration of the Bill. I would also like, in particular, to thank the Deputy First Minister for his willingness to remain open-minded during the Stage 1 scrutiny process. As we've heard, I think his positive response to our report is very much a testament to that, and I'll highlight several examples of this in my contribution.

The coal tip landslide in Tylorstown in 2020, and the more recent landslide in Cwmtillery, serve as a stark reminder of the risks posed by Wales's mining heritage, and the urgent need to better protect communities from them.

The Law Commission’s review of the current law governing the safety of coal tips sets out a compelling case—a very compelling case—for change, and the findings of the review were cited by contributors in providing support for the Bill. They told us that the current law, which dates back to the 1960s, as we heard from the Deputy First Minister at the beginning, is outdated and is insufficient for managing the risks posed by disused tips, particularly, of course, given the increasing impact of climate change.

As already outlined by the Deputy First Minister, the Bill provides for the establishment of a new, dedicated authority to assess, register, monitor and oversee disused tips. Importantly, of course, the authority will be able to intervene at a much earlier stage than is currently the case to address tip instability, and there is no doubt in the committee's mind that this new regime will be a marked improvement on the existing one. Given this, therefore, and the imperative to ensure the safety of communities living in the shadow of disused tips, the committee recommends that the Senedd agrees the general principles of the Bill.

That said—and I did have to say that, didn't I—there are certain provisions that we believe could be improved upon, and there are certain things missing, in the committee's view. Of our 30 recommendations, over half are for amendments aimed at ensuring that the new regime is clear, robust, effective and instils public confidence. The Deputy First Minister has so far indicated he is willing to accept at least eight of our recommendations for amendments, and we very much welcome that, and I hope that it will remain possible for us to convince him about the other amendments as the Bill makes its way through the remaining stages of the scrutiny process.

A recurring theme in our report is the lack of detail in the Bill in terms of key components of the new regime. We’ve heard from the Deputy First Minister that this detail will be set out in future guidance, but this approach is unsatisfactory, in our view, for several reasons. Firstly, it means that the Welsh Government’s policy intentions are not clear. Although draft summary guidance was shared with the committee, and we were grateful for that, in practical terms, of course, that was too late for us to seek stakeholders’ views on the guidance, and also, of course, too late for us to consider the guidance as fully as we would have wished. Secondly, the new regime will not be put in place until 1 April 2027, which is almost two years away. So, it will be a matter for the next Welsh Government to determine some of the policy details here. Finally, and crucially, leaving the policy detail to guidance means that significant changes could be made by a future Government without proper Senedd scrutiny. Of course, guidance does have a role to play in ensuring that the effective implementation of the Bill takes place, but it should not be used to fill in important policy details that we would expect ordinarily to be set out in legislation, in order to, of course, provide proper democratic oversight.

I call on the Chair of the Legislation, Justice and Constitution Committee, Mike Hedges.

Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. The Legislation, Justice and Constitution Committee was supportive of the general principles of the Disused Mine and Quarry Tips (Wales) Bill. The committee’s report drew three conclusions and made 22 recommendations. Our main concern with the Bill, as expressed in conclusions 2 and 3, is that the Welsh Government is relying too heavily on the use of guidance to deliver the Bill’s objectives. We therefore concluded that there was an inappropriate balance between provisions that will be on the face of the Bill or left to regulations versus what is to be left to guidance. We therefore welcome the positive response to our report from the Cabinet Secretary, as evidenced by his accepting, in full or in part, 14 of our 22 recommendations. They include acceptance of eight recommendations that proposed changes to the Bill to address our concerns.

In response to recommendations 5 and 6 about section 10, which relates to tip monitoring, the Cabinet Secretary indicated that he will be tabling amendments to place the minimum frequency of inspections on the face of the Bill for category 1 and 2 tips, as he indicated earlier today. In addition, a duty will be placed on the Welsh Ministers to consult on and issue guidance to the authority on its monitoring functions under that section. We believe that this will not only strengthen the Bill, but also provide clarity and greater certainty for stakeholders.

Another important issue for us concerns the absence in the Bill of a requirement to produce management plans and to rely on guidance provided by Welsh Ministers for their delivery instead. We are pleased, therefore, that the Cabinet Secretary has listened to our concerns and has accepted recommendations 18 and 19 in full, and recommendation 20 in part.

We believe that including a duty on the face of the Bill for the new authority to produce management plans for categories 1 and 2 tips, with a discretion to prepare plans for those disused tips in categories 3 or 4, will strengthen the Bill and again provide clarity and certainty for stakeholders. In tabling appropriate amendments, we also acknowledge and welcome the Cabinet Secretary’s intention to go further than recommendation 19 by describing on the face of the Bill the minimum content that is to be set out in a management plan.

We also note the Cabinet Secretary’s intention that this will include information that the authority considers may be relevant in an emergency involving a disused tip. This addresses recommendation 8 of our report. We agree with the Cabinet Secretary’s view that this will not only strengthen the Bill but will mean that provisions dealing with emergency preparedness are easily identifiable.

We also welcome the acceptance of recommendation 13 that the Bill should be amended to place a duty on Welsh Ministers to produce guidance following consultation.

And I call on the Chair of the Finance Committee, Peredur Owen Griffiths.

Thank you, Dirprwy Lywydd. I welcome the opportunity to participate in today’s debate. In our report, we came to one conclusion and made nine recommendations. I'm pleased that the Deputy First Minister has accepted all of our recommendations, with one accepted in principle. We welcome and support the Bill’s overall purpose and are broadly content with the financial implications of the Bill. However, we have raised specific issues with the aim of improving the financial information published alongside the Bill.

We have a general concern that the evidence used to inform parts of the Bill aren't included within the RIA. This includes data informing the costs of the Bill and benefits arising from the Bill, and the cost savings of the Bill. Whilst we accept in principle the Deputy First Minister's assurances that these are evidence based, we are disappointed that this information was not shared with us either through the RIA or during the scrutiny of the Bill. As a result, it is difficult for the committee to assess if these costs are robust. We have recommended that the information is shared with us ahead of the Stage 1 debate, and to update the RIA after Stage 2 proceedings. I am glad that the Deputy First Minister has responded positively to these requests ahead of today's debate.

Although we heard assurances from the Deputy First Minister that there are sufficient funds to undertake all the work required to make land that contains a disused tip safe, we are concerned that these funds might be allocated on a first come, first served basis. We ask the Deputy First Minister to confirm that the funds will be allocated to those areas of greatest risk and based on need, and we are grateful to him for stating in his response that applications made for higher rated tips are prioritised over those for lower rated tips, if the proposed works are feasible and deliverable.

Turning now to another issue, as mentioned earlier in the debate, the Bill creates a new body, the disused tips authority, and we would welcome clarification on a number of issues. In particular, we requested further information regarding the funding for bodies who would be losing some of their responsibilities as they are transferred to the authority. From the evidence we considered, it wasn't clear if these bodies would be losing a proportion of their funding to reflect the change in responsibilities, and we are grateful to the Deputy First Minister for confirming these funding arrangements in response to our recommendation.

We are also concerned regarding the impact the new authority would have on the workforce of the Welsh Local Government Association, should staff choose to seek employment at the new authority. We therefore welcome assurances from the Deputy First Minister that the Welsh Government has undertaken a capability assessment with the WLGA to assist work in this area. We also have concerns regarding the contingency estimated for non-staff costs associated with the new body. Whilst the Deputy First Minister explained contingencies are based on experience of establishing other bodies, once again we found the evidence supporting this was missing from the RIA. Although the Deputy First Minister has accepted this recommendation in principle, it is disappointing that further changes won’t be made to the RIA, as this would be beneficial in terms of transparency.

Dirprwy Lywydd, our final recommendation relates to the post-implementation review, which is a common theme for our committee. I would like to reiterate the importance of such reviews to ensure that the objectives of the legislation are being delivered in line with expectations, and that value for money is being achieved.

We therefore welcome the inclusion of the post-implementation review in the Bill and the Welsh Government’s commitment to assess the overall cost of the Bill during the review period, in particular with regard to non-coal tips, where further information is needed to provide full-cost estimates. We welcome the fact the Deputy First Minister has committed to doing this and look forward to seeing the outcome of the review once the Bill has been implemented. Thank you.

First off, I'd like to thank the Cabinet Secretary for bringing this forward. This Bill does provide a genuine opportunity for this, the Parliament of Wales, to develop the most robust legislation possible to ensure tip and mine safety. And, where possible, our group look forward—and me in particular—to working with Members across this Siambr on this legislation. I will be upfront, though, and state right at the beginning that whilst I agree with the vast majority of what is already in the Bill, major changes are needed, and I know that we have that scope, as the Bill progresses, in terms of us tabling amendments. It is fair to say, from all the committee Chairs that have spoken, that whilst you've been very generous in accepting some of the amendments, there's quite a number, if you times it by the numbers of committees, of amendments that you haven't actually in principle accepted. We don't believe the Bill goes far enough, but we will, the Conservative group, be supporting the fundamental principles of this Bill, and we will be looking to bring forward amendments that I hope—and it's not always been the case—will be looked upon in the spirit that they are put forward, and not the fact that they are being put forward by the official opposition.

For instance, the Bill does not consider all environmental factors, if any, during the assessment and categorising process. The new regime provided for in the Bill focuses on disused tip instability, which, obviously, a major risk it could be, but there are also other risks that this Bill could and should be covering. There are other risk factors such as pollution, combustion and flooding, and they will not be taken into account as part of the assessment and categorisation process when they are independent of instability. Now, the Law Commission itself highlighted that this is a deviation from its own recommendation. The British Geological Survey said

'explicit consideration is given to risks of environmental contamination (of soil, surface water and groundwater bodies) from disused tips in the event of collapse or changes to drainage conditions, including for "stable" tips.'

The Bill also focuses on direct human effect, but what about also—and we acknowledge that—threats to our habitats, our biodiversity, our landscapes and our watercourses? The UK Environmental Law Association asserted to our Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee that, importantly, threats to habitats, biodiversity, landscapes, watercourses et cetera, while exhibiting indirect effects on individuals and communities, may not be caught by the definition of threat to human welfare. For this reason, the extent and scope of the threats arising from the disused tips should be wider and should go beyond direct human threats. The National Sheep Association highlighted that the Bill should consider the risk posed to animal health, and this Welsh Parliament has declared not only a climate crisis, but a nature crisis. The Bill does not contain any detail to address the aftermath of tip failure. UKELA said it was surprising that the Bill does not cover actions to address the aftermath of a tip failure. Therefore, we should be looking at introducing a chapter specifically on what the legal requirements are when dealing with the aftermath of such a catastrophe.

You need to conclude now, please, Janet.

Okay. Finally, and most importantly, the legislation simply does not go far enough to ensure that the voice of local communities are championed and that locals are kept informed. So, I'll be looking to work with you to create a section based on the duties of the authority and the Welsh Government to the communities local to tips.

Dirprwy Lywydd, there are going to be many, many presentations made here now on this, going forward, and I can assure you that the Welsh Conservatives are committed to the fundamental principles, but we want to make sure that this Bill does exactly what the people of Wales need. Thank you.

This Bill represents an important step forward, and I'd like to thank the Deputy First Minister and the civil servants who've worked on the Bill. I'd like to welcome, in particular, the changes set out this afternoon by the Deputy First Minister. I think that we, as a committee, would welcome the fact that he has listened to us in that regard.

The need for action on coal tips goes back decades, to a time before the Senedd even existed. The coal tips are the legacy of an industry that shaped and scarred our communities. What happened to us in our past should compel us to ensure that every coal tip in Wales is made safe and no community has to live with that fear again. I look forward to scrutinising this Bill in greater depth in committee. There are some issues that I would raise now. Many people, I'm sure, will ask why they will have to wait until 2027 for the authority to be fully operational. I welcome some of the changes that have been outlined this afternoon, which I hope, in terms of interim measures, will be making people safe, and also, crucially, making them feel safe in the interim, and that's something I know that we will be coming back to at further stages.

I do welcome the clear focus in the Bill on human welfare as the paramount consideration, though I am concerned that environmental welfare has been left out. Many of these tips are located in ecologically sensitive areas. Biodiversity loss is a fundamental consequence to our health, of course, and to our environment, and to our long-term resilience, so I will be asking the Government to reconsider this gap.

Now, of course, legislation alone is not enough to make our communities safe. Adequate and long-term funding is absolutely essential. It's clear that a significant amount of funding will be needed, perhaps £600 million. Much of that must come from Westminster. I would ask, and I will continue to ask, what steps the Welsh Government is taking to secure that necessary funding from them. A lot of the pledges laid out in the White Paper originally, like risk assessments, monitoring responsibilities and management plans—it’s been outlined already—have been delegated to guidance rather than, even, to secondary legislation. Now, with the changes that have been set out notwithstanding, which I do welcome on this, that lack of statutory pressure could leave communities still feeling exposed. So, I would still ask the Government to reconsider and to strengthen further those elements of the Bill so that there is greater reassurance given to the public.

Now, finally, I am deeply concerned that the Bill could stimulate private interests in remediating coal tips as a guise for new coal extraction. Now, I agree with organisations like Coal Action Network that existing legislation is not robust enough to prevent this from happening. So, this Bill must be amended to prevent it. The Deputy First Minister has said that he can’t envisage a scenario in which the extraction and burning of coal will arise as the result of the Bill. I’m afraid I don’t share that feeling and that reassurance. I am fearful that this Bill could encourage just this scenario, perhaps by landowners who have concerns about ongoing maintenance costs. We need to see the Bill amended so that there is a guarantee that any coal extracted during remediation work cannot be sold where there is any possibility of that coal being combusted, because that would contribute to the very climate change that the Bill acknowledges would increasingly threaten the stability risk of coal tips.

I call on the Cabinet Secretary to reply to the debate.

Thank you very much, Dirprwy Lywydd, and thank you very much to Members too.

Now, let me just make sense of some of my notes here in responding to a lot of contributions, and a lot of detailed contributions as well. Llyr, can I just begin with your contribution? You rightly reminded us about the need to look back to the events of Tylorstown, but also more recent events as well, such as Cwmtillery and elsewhere. That is why we are bringing this legislation forward, within all the technicalities and the engagement that we are having. And my intention, as I’ve shown today, in reflecting on the committee’s report, is to engage very collaboratively to improve this Bill. We can’t forget, in amongst all of that, that what we’re trying to do here is deal with instability of tips and the welfare of those communities that live with this industrial legacy. And I think it is worth reminding us all that that is what it’s about—this legislation will take this forward significantly from the previous legislation that’s on the book that does not deal with this legacy in this way.

You referred there, Llyr, to the fact that this is quite a sea change in the way we will deal with this, because this is to do with assessment, early intervention, monitoring, evaluation—a proactive approach, but also based on collaboration with landowners, and with authorities, to make sure that we’re ahead of the game here; we’re not waiting for events to happen, we are ahead of the game. And that is quite a sea change in itself.

And if I could turn to the matter that you raised on environmental law you touched on, now the proposal to actually carve out, somehow, environmental law is an interesting one. There have been calls to take some sweeping powers to switch off, in effect, environmental and planning laws where the authority—the new authority—considers that emergency works are required. Just to make it clear, as in my response to the committee, this would set quite a challenging precedent and real practical difficulties, given the wide range of the legislative framework in those areas. No detail has been given as to which laws should be switched off, the circumstances in which they would be turned off or for how long they would remain switched off, only that Welsh Ministers should be given a wide-ranging power of direction. It raises a number of issues. Switching off planning and environmental law in the way suggested is, as far as we're aware, unprecedented. It would be constitutionally significant, because it's not only areas of devolved law but areas of reserved competence as well. And, in addition, in practical terms, we'd need to do a considerable amount of work to fully understand the implications of giving the authority or Ministers the ability to switch off legislation in this way. In the remaining Bill timetable that we have, we have a year ahead of us. To work up, to fully develop, a policy to switch off environmental and planning legislation and to understand the wider impact, for example the impact on the wider planning system and local decision making, is quite a task. However, we are preparing amendments to ensure that emergency planning is a mandatory element of management plans, and the expectation is that those plans will include how to identify and mitigate potential environmental and planning issues, and for public authorities to agree on an approach in the event of an emergency. And in collaboration with statutory partners, including NRW, the WLGA and the Mining Remediation Authority, work is well under way on developing a protocol and working arrangements to assist the authority to work together and to expedite any consenting. So, there is a different way through this, and it's actually a way, by the way, that is well known, because it's the approach that's taken in terms of reservoirs. And it works. And it doesn't require carving out or derogation from planning or environmental powers.

If I could, Mike, also thank you as well. There were many points. I can't refer to all of them, but thank you, and others who have spoken, for the welcome of the thrust of this and the approach we've taken, the constructive approach, to the recommendations of your committee, not least the balance between what's on the face of the Bill and what can come through in guidance. And it is a judgment on this, but we do want to give the authority as well the flexibility to respond in the right way through guidance rather than bolt them into something on the face of the Bill. But we're bringing forward amendments, as we've said, in those areas.

I appreciate that, but, according to my time, you're way over.

Okay. Just very, very briefly, our policy states:

'Coal is a non-renewable energy source.'

I say, to all members of the climate change committee:

'All proposals for the extraction of coal, including any secondary coal products produced during mining operations, which are destined for energy markets, must clearly demonstrate why they are needed in the context of climate change emission reduction targets.'

You can't be clearer than that. You may disagree with it, Janet, but I cannot be clearer. This Government cannot be clearer.

Now I realise I haven't now responded to all of my colleagues, Dirprwy Lywydd. Delyth, why 2027 for the authority? Because this is, based on previous experience, how long it takes to set up a new authority, with things like IT systems, procurement, recruitment, development of guidance and so on. That is a reasonable timescale.

Multi-annual funding—I mentioned that my Cabinet Secretary colleague for finance and the Welsh language has already engaged with the UK Government and has made clear our request for the additional funding that would allow multi-annual funding of larger scale projects going forward as well. And on coal extraction, I've just answered it in terms of our coal policy.

But to all the points that I haven't responded to, can I just thank colleagues for their support for this in terms of this debate on the principle of it? I'm looking forward to engaging with all Members as this goes forward. Diolch yn fawr iawn, Dirprwy Lywydd; thank you for your patience.

The proposal is to agree the motion under item 9. Does any Member object? No. The motion is therefore agreed in accordance with Standing Order 12.36.

The next proposal is to agree the motion under item 10. Does any Member object? No. That motion is also agreed in accordance with Standing Order 12.36.

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