Mike Hedges: Can I thank the Minister for that response? I think we have seen some progress—albeit slowly—across a large number of areas like MPs, AMs, and even councillors. Something that concerns me is that we've had seven police and crime commissioners, not one has been a woman, not one has been from an ethnic minority, and it's very much the situation that people are looking at it and seeing that...
Mike Hedges: 3. Will the Deputy Minister make a statement on increasing diversity in elected office? OAQ54253
Mike Hedges: Capital maintenance.
Mike Hedges: We currently have a situation where Jeremy Corbyn has more in common in terms of policy with the immediate post-war Governments of Churchill, Eden and Macmillan than either Boris Johnson or Jeremy Hunt as the Westminster Conservatives are changing into the British version of the Republican Party. Regarding this first supplementary budget on housing, I welcome that an extra £50 million has...
Mike Hedges: I'm going to break the long run now. I'm going to be voting for the budget. This supplementary budget is set against continuing austerity and Brexit uncertainty. We know we should be receiving at least £800 million more a year than we are currently receiving, which is, coincidentally, approximately the size of this supplementary budget. But to the Conservatives at Westminster, austerity is...
Mike Hedges: Can I welcome the Minister's statement? We have many people who are homeless and living on the street. Minister, we saw several of them after leaving St Mary’s Church in December after attending a concert for the homeless charity Crisis. However, we have far, far more people who are sofa surfing, living in overcrowded accommodation, and others living in homes that are cold and damp, being...
Mike Hedges: I very much welcome the Minister's statement. There has been a long-running campaign, but I have fully supported it over several years to ban the use of wild animals in circuses. A ban already exists in Scotland. In 2006, which is a long time ago now, in a public consultation across the UK, 94.5 per cent of people responding thought banning the use of wild animals in circuses would be the...
Mike Hedges: Diolch. Swansea: 50 years a city. This morning, I was in Tabernacle Chapel in Morriston celebrating, in the presence of the Prince of Wales, the fiftieth anniversary of Swansea being made a city. Fifty years to today, and two days after his investiture, the Prince of Wales, on his tour of Wales, he visited Swansea. On the steps of the Guildhall he announced that Swansea was going to be...
Mike Hedges: Firstly, I want to say 'thank you' to Dawn Bowden for giving me a minute of her time. It's strange, really, because David Melding, Dawn and I quite often speak on housing and often our speeches are interchangeable. After sustenance, housing is the next human need. I want to highlight inadequate housing. The 1950s and 1960s saw large-scale slum clearance and large-scale council house building...
Mike Hedges: Well, as somebody who's had at least half a dozen a day, including one from Germany, it is a matter of concern. Really, it is, in many ways, beyond the Commission's capacity to stop it. What the Commission can do and I understand what other organisations do, they have an automated message that comes on saying, 'If you think you're contacting HMRC, you're not, this number has been spoofed and...
Mike Hedges: On a personal level, I'm trying to increase the number of Welsh-speaking teachers by one. Whilst we will not know the number of Welsh speakers in 2050 because there'll be no means to find that out, we'll know the number after the 2021, 2031, 2041 and 2051 censuses. How many Welsh speakers do you expect in the 2021 census? One thing I do know is we're not going to go from 600,000 to 1 million...
Mike Hedges: Invest-to-save has been successful over a period of time, but it mainly involves safe investments, certain, or almost certain, of producing savings. Alongside it, a more ambitious programme of innovate-to-save has been introduced—something I asked for over several years. Will the Minister provide an update on the effectiveness of the innovate-to-save scheme, and on whether any projects have...
Mike Hedges: Can I very much welcome the statement? I'm very pleased that we are again discussing what I consider to be the major issue facing us in Wales. We can either decarbonise or look for a new world to inhabit, because, if we don't, this world will not be able to sustain human life. We are facing a serious climate change emergency, and we've got to address it. I have three questions, and the first...
Mike Hedges: Can I ask the Trefnydd firstly for a Government statement regarding Virgin Media, which is due to close in Swansea on 30 June? I'd like a statement from the Government including the number of people who worked there who have now found alternative employment, the number who are still being assisted by the Welsh Government, and what future use of the site is being considered. I would then like...
Mike Hedges: Will the First Minister make a statement on developing the economy of Swansea?
Mike Hedges: Both zero hours and short weekly or daily guaranteed hours mean that there is no certainty of income on a weekly or monthly basis. This leads to severe financial problems when few or no hours are worked in any weeks. And the one thing is: never be ill, because when you're ill you go back to either your minimum one hour or zero hours, and the food bank is the only hope of food. Using staff...
Mike Hedges: Thank you, Presiding Officer. I've given a minute to Dawn Bowden in this debate. This is about in-work poverty. The state of the Welsh economy, poverty and low pay are all interrelated. A successful Welsh economy should drive up wages and reduce poverty. Too many of the people living in Wales are employed on 'flexible'—which I call 'exploitative'—contracts, with no guarantee of weekly...
Mike Hedges: I very much welcome this petition and the opportunity to speak on it. When historians look back on the National Assembly for Wales, they'll be astonished at how much time has been spent on how we trade with other countries and how little time we have given to the threat to our world and all species, including ourselves. It's beyond serious argument now that we're seeing climate change, and...
Mike Hedges: We have too many poor-quality houses in Wales, many with very poor energy efficiency, meaning those who are poorest end up either cold or paying more for heating their homes than you and I do. What is the Welsh Government doing to improve energy efficiency, especially in the private rented sector and the very low-cost part of the private rented sector?
Mike Hedges: I think that it's very important to get to net zero, but I think that we need to be more ambitious than that—I think actually start taking more carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere than we are putting in. So, net zero is a good way, but we need to go past that, and we can go past that by planting more trees and more plants. Through photosynthesis, they turn carbon dioxide into oxygen—it...
