Suzy Davies: Thank you for that brief answer. The Help Point in Swansea has been a positive addition to Swansea's night-time economy. It's a project, actually, supported by South Wales Police, and by Swansea council and St John Cymru as well, and their work has helped retain the city's purple flag status. But there are still a number of challenges as violent crime, as recorded, has gone up on Wind Street,...
Suzy Davies: Diolch yn fawr, Dirprwy Lywydd, and I move the motion. Members, I suppose the easiest way to start this is to just say that it's Carers Week, and let's have a debate about carers. This awareness raising is very valuable, and it's useful to have a point, I think, at which to mark our appreciation. But I suspect that what most of the 370,000 unpaid carers would like us to do is show that...
Suzy Davies: Silence is never golden, as other Government colleagues have found out this week. It gives rise to suspicion, and I suspect that failure to guide councils to consistency on what constitutes assessment and what constitutes meeting needs has meant confusion about what those statutory requirements actually mean. How can you be sure that councils are acting lawfully if carers don't know the legal...
Suzy Davies: Thank you. I completely recognise what you're saying. Young carers and young adult carers will find themselves in this position. And my question for the Minister is: why on earth are they in that position? Maybe there's a way around it that way.
Suzy Davies: Will you take an intervention on that, if you've got time? Thank you. The carers champions that you're talking about within schools—do you foresee that part of their role will be to ensure that they actually get the formal assessment by local authorities or whoever the work is outsourced to and that those carers' needs are then met? And then do you also, as a backbencher of the governing...
Suzy Davies: Very quickly, thank you for that information. Of course, what we didn't get from that report was a clear understanding of what 'assessment' meant, so I was encouraged to hear your following remarks.
Suzy Davies: In your interim annual report on grants management 2016-17, it states that the Permanent Secretary was to chair the improving efficiency board with the aim 'to reduce bureaucracy by identifying administrative work which is of low value, or which could be undertaken less frequently or in a different way or not at all.' The work started in May last year and was to complete in 2018 by being...
Suzy Davies: I wonder whether I could ask for one or possibly two statements as this covers two portfolio areas, please. I hope you'll join me in congratulating Glasgow, which has just become the first city in the UK to make emergency life-saving skills compulsory on the secondary school curriculum there, something their director of public health has been applauded for leading the way on there. As it's...
Suzy Davies: Talking of Swansea, you may recall a few years ago that the council failed to apply for a second tranche of Government funding for discretionary housing payments, and that was not long after they'd had to return almost £1 million to Government as they could not find a way of using it to reduce poverty. This is a council which has a history of spending money on things that perhaps we...
Suzy Davies: Thank you for the statement, Simon. Part of me thinks that I wish this had been a debate because it would have given me the opportunity as the relevant Commissioner standing here today to pick up some of the points that Mike Hedges and, in fact, Nick Ramsay have made, but the question I wanted to ask you relates actually to what you were saying at the end there, Simon. The situation is going...
Suzy Davies: In evidence—I think it was to the health committee—the Welsh Local Government Association and the Association of Directors of Social Services Cymru said that 'Key determinants of health are largely outside the control of health services and so the quality of, and spending on, social care has one of the strongest impacts on the demand for health care.' That might be stating the obvious,...
Suzy Davies: Will the Cabinet Secretary make a statement on capital investment in South Wales West?
Suzy Davies: It was my understanding that Ministers made it clear that the door was still open on tidal energy and future discussions on that. But let's talk about something that we can do something about more quickly, and that is rapid and fast electrical vehicle charging points. The same report mentioned that Wales is behind the rest of the UK in the number of charging points available, and suggested as...
Suzy Davies: Oh—whether you've had any conversations with Ford about electric car production in South Wales West.
Suzy Davies: Diolch, Dirprwy Lywydd. Thank you for your statement. I think it might have been just been a little bit more balanced if you had mentioned the £1.3 billion innovation fund that was mentioned by the UK Government. There are other ways of dealing with some of the challenges that you raised here without being quite so gloomy about it. What I wanted to ask you specifically was: this is...
Suzy Davies: First Minister, this puts you in a bit of a quandary, I think, because of course we heard offers put forward for a new Swansea bay lagoon over the weekend, and while there are obviously questions about that and why they didn't put this offer forward sooner and whether the figures stack up, you did offer £200 million to support a Swansea bay lagoon on figures that actually proved unworkable...
Suzy Davies: Diolch, Dirprwy Lywydd. Perhaps I can just start by saying, of course, that autism itself is not a learning disability. I think that's perhaps something we should make plain in the Chamber. Autism Spectrum Connection Cymru's one-stop shop that we've been speaking about, as far as I understand, is being forced to close because it's lost its funding. I'd be grateful if you could have a look at...
Suzy Davies: I just wanted to make a contribution based on some of the evidence that was presented to the External Affairs and Additional Legislation Committee, of which I'm a member—and some of that evidence as recently as yesterday—and to ask Welsh Government how it views this alongside the Wales Centre for Public Policy report. Can I begin by saying, though, that I think this must be one of the...
Suzy Davies: Cabinet Secretary, you'll remember our exchanges in this Chamber over the concerns of the 1,000 or so jobs that could be lost if new opportunities aren't found for the Ford factory in Bridgend, in my region. And in our cross-party meeting with the Ford staff, at that time, Brexit wasn't their main concern, although I suspect it may be more of a concern now; it was, rather, their relationship...
Suzy Davies: Diolch, Llywydd. Weinidog, thank you for visiting Neath abbey and the ironworks very recently with Jeremy Miles and me. I have to say the friends were delighted that you took the trouble to come and see them, so that they could show you the hard work that they've been doing, promoting and looking after that site, even though they don't own it. Obviously, it's owned by the local authority....
