Mark Drakeford: More than £1.6 billion Welsh Government investment is helping households with their living costs through programmes that help keep money in people’s pockets, including our council tax reduction scheme, the pupil development grant—access and childcare offer, as well as our cost-of-living payment, our fuel support scheme and our benefits take-up campaigns.
Mark Drakeford: Llywydd, the continued buoyancy of the economy in north-east Wales is the single greatest help to young people entering employment in the Member’s constituency. For those further from the labour market, the young person’s guarantee provides a range of assistance to prepare young people for, and place them in, the world of work.
Mark Drakeford: Well, Llywydd, Welsh Government officials have been engaged recently in a series of meetings with employers in different parts of Wales, including in north Wales. And the story out there, as you know, is no longer a shortage of work, but a shortage of workers. There are 330,000 fewer people in the workforce across the United Kingdom than there were in 2016. And that means that young people in...
Mark Drakeford: Well, Llywydd, I thank Sam Rowlands for that and absolutely agree with the point he's making, and not just higher education, but further education as well, and north Wales is particularly blessed, I think, in the quality of further education that is provided to young people in those regions. We know that the experience of the pandemic means that even young people who have attended higher...
Mark Drakeford: I thank the Member for that question, Llywydd. Following discussions with Welsh Government officials, I can confirm that the council has bid for funding via our resilient roads fund to assist with the replacement of the bridge.
Mark Drakeford: Llywydd, I thank Gareth Davies for those further questions. I agree with him—it's certainly not a matter of political contention that the needs of those local residents need to be attended to. The resilient roads fund, Llywydd, normally only takes applications from pre-existing schemes, but in this case, with the bridge having been destroyed by natural causes, an exception has been made so...
Mark Drakeford: Well, I don't think, myself, Llywydd, that it could have come as a shock to anybody who was reasonably well-informed about the operation of the board. I'm looking now at the letter sent by Janet Finch-Saunders, a member of the leader of the opposition's own group, to the Minister in which she called for the entire removal of the board, including independent members who are found to be unable...
Mark Drakeford: I understand a number of the points that the Member makes, and what I think he needs to do is to allow the story to continue to unfold. What you saw yesterday was the first set of measures that the Minister has taken. There are very real criticisms of executive members and those, too, will need to be attended to. The fact that those actions were not taken yesterday should not be taken as...
Mark Drakeford: Well, Llywydd, the immediate action is to appoint a small number of individuals to discharge the legal functions and to stabilise the organisation. You know that a chair has been appointed and there will be three other members alongside the chair, and their job in the short term is to stabilise the organisation, to concentrate on the appointment of a new chief executive. What I would say to...
Mark Drakeford: Well, Llywydd, the Labour health Minister took responsibility yesterday, and there are 60 minutes for Members to ask questions of the Minister later this afternoon.
Mark Drakeford: Well, given his contribution so far this afternoon, I think the Member will wish to reflect on his use of the word 'glib' in relation to anybody else's contributions. Let me tell him now that that I utterly reject what I regard as a disgraceful charge that the decisions made in November 2020 were motivated by anything other than the advice that the Welsh Government received from the...
Mark Drakeford: Well, Llywydd, the King's Fund report was published in November 2022, not in November 2020, when the decision was made. I advise the Member to read what was said by the British Medical Association on 6 December, when they said that the problem of the Welsh NHS was that 'wolf' had been cried too often, including by them, and I think he's just at it again today. The Welsh NHS, every single day,...
Mark Drakeford: Llywydd, our policy is to reduce, to the lowest possible level, the effect of pesticide on people, wildlife, plants and the wider environment. There has been a steady reduction in agricultural pesticide use in Wales over the devolution period, but there is more that we can and will do in the future.
Mark Drakeford: Well, I thank Mike Hedges for that further question. I think these are really important issues that deserve to be more thoroughly and regularly publicly aired. There's good news, I think, in responding to him: the note that I have tells me that atrazine, hexachlorobenzene and methomyl are already banned for use in the United Kingdom and here in Wales. Rotenone has its use limited now to...
Mark Drakeford: I thank Sam Kurtz for the question.
Mark Drakeford: Llywydd, the National Assembly, as it was then, and the Senedd, has always taken always taken a precautionary approach to the issue of genetic modification of plants; I think we are right to do so. I think if we could be guaranteed that it would be done in the way that Sam Kurtz outlined, that would be a different matter, but we can't be guaranteed, because these are inherently and...
Mark Drakeford: Thank you very much, Llywydd, to Siân Gwenllian for that question. The proposed centre formed part of the bid made by Gwynedd Council to the UK Government's levelling-up fund; the bid was unsuccessful. Welsh Government officials are helping local partners to pursue alternative funding. The Minister for Economy will discuss this during his meeting with the leader of Gwynedd Council on 6 March.
Mark Drakeford: Llywydd, I thank Siân Gwenllian for that supplementary question. I agree, of course, that it was very disappointing that the UK Government wasn't prepared to support the bid that Gwynedd Council had submitted. Llywydd, I had the opportunity back in January to meet with the council leader and others in the centre of Bangor and to hear from the council leader about the projects that are there...
Mark Drakeford: Llywydd, prevention not intervention has to be the aim of good-quality dental care for children. The Designed to Smile scheme is now operating fully again, and nearly 240,000 children have been treated in general dental services since April 2022. Of that number, over 55,000 are new patients.
Mark Drakeford: I thank James Evans for that, Llywydd. Members will know that originally on the order paper today was a statement from the Minister on advances in dental services in Wales, and one of the things that she would have reported to the Senedd was ideas for dealing with dental services in rural areas, and the possibility of mobile dentistry in secondary schools. So, the Member has slightly...
