Bethan Sayed: I just wanted to come in briefly, to try and analyse some of what’s been said today. You will know that, as Chair of the culture committee, I’ve have had quite a lot of communication from people. You raised a question over the content of some of those letters. I would like to say that, perhaps, they are written as they are because they have, in my view, some level of confusion as to your...
Bethan Sayed: I think the statement today from the Cabinet Secretary is a positive one and as I’ll say tomorrow during the Conservative debate, Plaid Cymru is supportive of the work that the Welsh Government is doing with veterans, provided that they are properly measured and the outcomes are transparent for us all to see. But there is a growing problem around Remembrance Day, and my questions today are...
Bethan Sayed: Thank you very much. Of course, I’m pleased to be part of this debate today, and, of course, I could not disagree with the fact that we need to treat families and veterans with respect. Really, I would expect anybody who lives in a civilised society—although perhaps there are some people in America who don’t agree they live in a civilised society after last night—to treat people with...
Bethan Sayed: First Minister, I think it would be funny if it wasn’t so serious that UKIP is rushing to welcome the President-elect to Wales without actually discussing the fact that this candidate, President to be, has been espousing misogyny, sexism and homophobia to the rest of the world, and we should be very, very concerned about this. I wonder, in the whole debate around Brexit, the United States...
Bethan Sayed: Thanks. My first question is to concentrate on Rent Smart Wales and the ongoing publicity now that the registration is coming to an end. We’ve seen that there’s been a final burst of publicity, which might cause problems with the administration processes in handling a high volume of applications, including those who opt to do the training online. Will there be enforcement action against...
Bethan Sayed: Thank you for that. A recent court case about the legislation found that there are only nine enforcement officers employed by Rent Smart Wales. Will you commit to urgently publishing details of how you will be implementing the new legislation, and would you agree with me that there should be extra resources given to Rent Smart to enforce the law, ensuring it focuses on rogue landlords?
Bethan Sayed: Thank you, and I’ll obviously want to track progress on that particular issue. My third and final question is: obviously, you will know I met your officials last week with regard to financial inclusion. The Money Advice Service report out this week shows that two thirds of 16 to 17-year-olds cannot read a payslip, while a third have never put money into an actual bank account. Now, this...
Bethan Sayed: Oh, sorry, I can’t stop laughing.
Bethan Sayed: 6. Will the Minister provide an update on the Communities for Work programme? OAQ(5)0068(CC)
Bethan Sayed: Thank you for the answer. You came to the equalities committee, where I asked you some questions on this, and I would just like to have more information on the programme’s budget, how many staff it specifically employs through the budget from your department and how many people it has helped since its birth. Because, on the website, it says that a lot of this money comes from European...
Bethan Sayed: Will the Minister make a statement on staffing levels at Tata's Port Talbot site? EAQ(5)0075(EI)
Bethan Sayed: Thank you for that detail. I’m raising this now because worried steelworkers have come to me very recently to say the company, as you have said, are in the process of employing staff at Port Talbot—although they quoted to me 200 to 250. So, it would be good if we could have a breakdown on that. You know that they obviously declared the cuts of 750 workers earlier this year. Staff want to...
Bethan Sayed: First Minister, there seems to have been some confusion at the time—when we debated this previously, in the previous Assembly—over whether you had the powers, or not. And I understand that you were able to give backbench Labour Assembly Members advice to suggest that it wasn’t, in fact, legal for you to do so, something that wasn’t shared with the rest of us as part of that particular...
Bethan Sayed: Cabinet Secretary, I was last week refused permission as an Assembly Member to hold a public meeting in the new Ysgol Bae Baglan in Port Talbot by the headteacher at the last moment, trying to discuss local parking issues and access to community facilities at the school. The reason given was that it was a political meeting, but it was not a political meeting because we had representatives...
Bethan Sayed: Will the Minister make a statement on discussions he has had with Trinity Mirror about their proposal to close the Cardiff based printing press, cutting 33 jobs at the site? EAQ(5)0085(EI)
Bethan Sayed: Thank you. You’ll appreciate that, as Chair of the Culture, Welsh Language and Communications Committee, I have an interest in this particular area, given that we will be carrying out more work as a committee over the next five years into looking at the landscape of the media in Wales and the retention and development of journalists, and the work that surrounds journalists here in Wales. We...
Bethan Sayed: Thank you, Cabinet Secretary. I’m particularly concerned about the pension scheme, as has been mentioned previously in this debate. Tata bought Corus, as you will know, for more than it was worth and just before a recession, and it should have done the due diligence and known the liabilities, although those of us who have been involved in other pension issues such as the Visteon pensioner...
Bethan Sayed: I’ll follow your call to arms, Janet—your passion shines through. I think we should be having this debate in relation to how we want our debates to be perceived by the public, and how the public can actually engage with the debates that we have in the Assembly. I say this because I sometimes think that we can come up with quite high-end ideas, but when we talk to people on the street,...
Bethan Sayed: Yes, exactly, and I think all they’ve wanted to do is to try and tell the council, ‘Look, these are our problems. This is what we’re trying to overcome. We want people to spend their money here in the town centre but currently they’re not.’ We have to get around that and I think sometimes that the intransigence of local authority officials is actually stifling development in their...
Bethan Sayed: No-one would doubt the fact that the Welsh housing quality standard is ambitious, and I would be supportive of that. But, as Assembly Members, we continue to receive a number of complaints about social housing services, for example that work isn’t done in a timely manner, that there’s a poor response from some of the housing services in the context of the fact that it’s the winter...
