Bethan Sayed: ...you will have seen that Neath Port Talbot council is currently consulting on its budget, but what interests me most there is that they are potentially going to slash £50,000 from their special educational needs budget, affecting two specialist education facilities and up to 11 school-based units in the county borough. This has, sadly, obviously provoked anger amongst parents, some of whom...
Mark Drakeford: ...to make a statement today on the proposals for the reform of local government. Local government plays a vital part in the lives of every citizen in Wales. Councils provide the services that educate our children, look after our elderly, dispose of our waste, and light our streets. They go on doing so, moreover, during a period that the Institute for Fiscal Studies has called an...
Vaughan Gething: ...delivery group has had a focus on prevention and support, with an emphasis on co-production with the third sector in particular. The diabetes implementation group has developed patient resources to educate and support people living with diabetes, covering subjects such as the importance of retinal screening, foot care and hypoglycaemia. The stroke implementation group is piloting an...
Carwyn Jones: ...additional learning needs. This means supporting our youngsters to start their journey early with our innovative Flying Start programme. It also means investing an extra £100 million to drive up school standards for all. It means extending the pupil deprivation grant to provide targeted additional support for schools, and our additional learning needs and education tribunal Bill will...
Ken Skates: ...one glaring, obvious error in it is that he’s not been able to identify where, within the Government’s revenue budget, £700 million will be able to be found. Where will that come from? Health? Education? That’s one glaringly obvious mistake. You say, ‘Be ambitious’—there’s a difference between being realistic and delusional. Being able to just magic out of the air £700...
Ken Skates: ...is an expectation from the Welsh Government that the contractor will not use steel dumped from overseas markets on any project. Grant funding and investment in projects such as twenty-first century schools, as I outlined at last week’s all-party group meeting, are all now used as levers to require recipients of Welsh Government funding to evidence just how supply chain contracts are...
Mark Isherwood: Thank you. Referring to the Welsh economy, academics at Cardiff Business School reported two weeks ago that Welsh output or gross value added is most sensitive to changes in higher rate tax, any cut in which will always raise tax receipts and any rise will always, quote, ‘reduce tax revenue’. Given that Wales has had the lowest prosperity levels per head amongst the 12 UK nations and...
Rebecca Evans: ...forward, we’ll be re-introducing the public health Bill, as it was at Stage 3, with the e-cigarette sections removed from it. That public health Bill does contain provisions to cover smoking in school grounds, hospital grounds and public playgrounds. It also provides that Welsh Ministers will be able to add additional spaces, using regulations, and that such regulations would be subject...
Rhun ap Iorwerth: ...NHS. I would want to distance myself from virtually everything that Jeremy Hunt has said. But, coming to my question, he has announced this week that he wants to see more training places in medical schools in England. Is that something that the Cabinet Secretary wants to see happening in Wales?
Vaughan Gething: ...still be reliant on international recruitment as well as doing more of what we could and should do to make sure that people within Wales and the UK have a real career and a real stake in medical education, training, living and working as doctors in our country.
Rebecca Evans: ...Welsh Government drive forward not only our active travel Act, but also our active travel plan, which is cross cutting, right across Government. For example, there are actions within that for the education Minister and actions for planning and so on, as well. So, I’ll be writing shortly to my colleagues, highlighting what’s within the plan that sits under each of those departments,...
Lee Waters: ...is that this rests on a false premise—there is no such thing as free car parking. The money has to come from somewhere, and it currently comes from other services—from social services and from education. The cost of providing a so-called free car parking space, according to the Department for Transport, is between £300 and £500 a year for one space. It’s not free; it’s paid for....
Bethan Sayed: ...about whether they own that house or not. I think, in general terms, that this Chamber is in danger of becoming stuck in a time warp. Two weeks ago, we heard calls for bringing back grammar schools and now we have a defence of the right to buy. What next—bring back Bananarama? We should be looking to the future instead. [Laughter.] Well, some of you might like Bananarama; perhaps it was...
David Lloyd: ...and be far more innovative in our thinking in terms of how we deal with the need to improve our infrastructure. In drawing my comments to a close, we’ve had a debate tabled by UKIP on grammar schools, which exist in England and not in Wales, and we are today discussing HS2, which is an England-only infrastructure project, not a Welsh project. What next? What will be the next topic chosen...
Schools Funding Levels in South Wales West
John Griffiths: What level of priority will be given to education in deciding Welsh Government policies?
Leanne Wood: ...should be able to live and work where they choose, but we should also be able to incentivise some of them to come back so that we can see a return on our public investment, if you like, in their education. We are the only party to have proposed a mechanism, through higher education, to incentivise students to return to work, and you’ll be aware that we put forward those proposals ahead...
Dawn Bowden: ...for his answer on that. I just wanted to widen this slightly to road safety issues that certainly have been raised with me, and I’m sure many other Members, particularly relating to safety around schools. It’s often the case that, even with the provision of zebra and pelican crossings, the safety of children travelling to and from schools is a concern. Ideally, the council would employ...
Carl Sargeant: ...and responsive public services. That is why we are committed to strengthening community provision of health and social care, where possible, moving these away from hospitals into communities. Schools and colleges also play a vital role, so we will pilot a new model of community learning centres, extending community access to services, including childcare, parenting support and family...
Vaughan Gething: ...to coincide with World Mental Health Day. The 2016-19 delivery plan sets out 10 priority areas for service improvement, including examples of cross–working with areas such as housing and education, which demonstrates how we should be joined up in our delivery. It also demonstrates how we will continue to drive the implementation of the strategy. It sets out clear actions and performance...
