Carl Sargeant: We are aware Scotland banned these fees some years ago. England will soon be consulting on their proposals. Their experience will help to inform the proposals here in Wales. I don’t have a fixed timeline on this, but I will encourage the Member, again, and, of course, Jenny Rathbone and other Members, if they feel free to submit to the Members’ ballot, it will be supported by the—
Carl Sargeant: [Continues.]—Government, if possible.
Carl Sargeant: Well, that was one of the issues we were concerned about—a transfer of risk to tenants, particularly in fees. We are more content now with the evidence coming from Scotland that that doesn’t appear to be the case. This is a piece of legislation that we’d have to introduce, so that will depend on introduction on the legislative timetable, if and when we’re able to do that.
Carl Sargeant: I’m grateful for the acknowledgement that, if we were to introduce legislation, the Member may even support it as we move through with the passage of that. Look, Members, I hope to be able to announce shortly how the Government propose to respond to this matter. I will bring that to the Chamber accordingly.
Carl Sargeant: I refer the Member to my last response.
Carl Sargeant: The Member regularly meets me to talk about these very issues. I want to make good law in Wales, Llywydd. I will not be rushed into it. However, I will give it careful consideration on the effectiveness, a tailored approach for the needs in Wales, and that the capability to enforce this is in place. But I will bring a statement back to the Chamber.
Carl Sargeant: My team have already started a discussion with the local service delivery boards, which were, effectively, the operations management of Communities First. That is also expanding now to community groups and other interested agencies, and I’m sure my team would be delighted to look at the proposals the Member has raised with me today.
Carl Sargeant: Indeed. I think we shouldn’t close the door on community engagement in any way. We should think about how best effective support for communities can be delivered with communities, not to them.
Carl Sargeant: We are working very closely with the UK Government in terms of the commission around abused children. I understand my team have already started discussions to talk about children who were sent to different countries and what those numbers look like. But there is an operational helpline for people who wish to disclose historic abuse; they are able to talk to people in this country now.
Carl Sargeant: Well, of course, the first port of call, really, is for the disclosure or contact by these young—older people now, but when they were young and sent off to other countries, it must have been very frightening for most of those individuals. We have professionally trained individuals to deal with those contact points, subject to people coming forward.
Carl Sargeant: My team meets with the officials of that independent inquiry on a regular basis, and we supply all information that’s relative to that inquiry. We will help and support them do their job.
Carl Sargeant: All the issues that we’ve introduced, in terms of performance and data measurement, are around the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015, and we’ll be judged in the future on the performance of that. The indicators of that Act are important, to make sure that we are delivering for Wales what we say we’re going to deliver, in turning communities around in a positive way.
Carl Sargeant: Well, I’m not aware of the particular programmes that the Member raises with me today, but if she’d like to give me some more detail, I will give her a fuller response to that comment. The issue around the 2020 deadline is that the European funding is available until 2020, we are aware. And we will continue to draw down that as long as we possibly can.
Carl Sargeant: I recognise the Member’s point. I would say that the access to work is one element of success. The long-term success is about making sure that we can sustain employment. But the experience that people go through on the course itself is a very core skill for those individuals, to grow into the opportunities to get into work in the first place. So, one output of getting a job and sustaining...
Carl Sargeant: I thank the Member for her question. Since publication of the financial inclusion delivery plan in December 2016, we have progressed many of the actions, by working with partner organisations across all sectors. An annual update will be published in December 2017, setting out the progress we’ve made.
Carl Sargeant: Yes, of course. I think consistency is really important. The professionalism of the service is important too. We’ve done a lot of work with credit unions. Credit unions have provided £20.4 million worth of loans to more than 25,000 financially excluded members between April 2014 and September 2016. The latest funding of £422,000 was made available in 2017-18, which will help credit unions...
Carl Sargeant: Suzy Davies, you can take from me my support for your meeting tomorrow with HSBC. Tell them that I hope that they can continue to support your community and many communities across Wales. A bank is a very organised centrepiece of a community, and we should continue, as much as we can, to encourage them to stay in the communities that you represent and I represent.
Carl Sargeant: I thank the Member for Ogmore for his question. We have assessed the impact in Wales of the UK Government’s welfare reforms being introduced between 2015-16 and 2019-20. Welsh households will lose an average of 1.6 per cent of their income. That’s around £460 a year, equivalent to £600 million a year in Wales as a whole.
Carl Sargeant: I thank the Member for his question. I did speak to the Minister of State for Disabled People, and she wrote to me following her announcement stating that this was not a policy change in regard to payments, and it would not result in any personal independent payment claimant receiving a reduction in the amount of PIP previously awarded to them. However, it does appear that the UK Government...
Carl Sargeant: We have undertaken work about the risks to the UK welfare system in Wales. I’m sure that the UK Government would be delighted to transfer the risk to Wales, and they have done in the past around council tax benefits, where we were pushed some money across from the M4, but not enough, and I’m sure they will continue to do that. What we are seeking to do is maximise the support for people...
