Rebecca Evans: ...and homelessness; funding to pay the real living wage for social care workers from April 2022; a significant investment in our response to the climate and nature emergency; recognising the role of education; and the need to support struggling families. This budget will take Wales forward. I have delivered on my promise to prioritise funding for health, local authorities and social care....
Rebecca Evans: ...the supply chain, so that we do understand those issues that Rhys ab Owen has just described in terms of milk being removed from the country to be processed, only to be returned for the children in schools. That's a really good example of the kind of void that I was talking about earlier, but more so in the area of processing capacity. I know this is an area of particular interest for my...
Rebecca Evans: ...aim, and today I want to set out the first initial steps along that journey. As Members know, council tax plays a significant role in supporting some of our most essential public services, from educating our children to caring for our loved ones to recycling our waste, to give just a few examples. But the system is in need of reform. It is our ambition to ensure the contributions made by...
Rebecca Evans: ..., the First Minister undertook a child poverty review, and that identified areas that clearly work and where we would want to invest further. And I know that you have a significant interest in free school meals, and that's an area where we know that we can make a difference to families. Part of the funding I announced yesterday will be used to support and bolster food banks and community...
Rebecca Evans: ...UK Government doesn't fund it, and Barnett never was intended for this purpose, then that's funding that we'll have to divert away from other things, such as building social housing, investing in schools and hospitals, and in road maintenance and so on. On 27 October, they can address the historical underfunding in rail that we've just discussed in response to Jayne Bryant's question, and...
Rebecca Evans: High-quality, safe and affordable housing is the cornerstone to better health, better educational outcomes and better well-being. We know from housing need estimates that we will need an additional 7,400 homes per year for the next five years, and we are doing everything in our power to deliver the housing Wales needs. But, with new tax powers to incentivise developers to progress stalled...
Rebecca Evans: ...in Westminster to make this right. The Barnett formula was never designed for this; £600 million over 10 to 15 years is a huge amount of funding, and where will it come from? It will come from schools, it will come from hospitals, it will come from road maintenance and it will come from social housing. It doesn't come from thin air. I want to put on record and give a little bit of clarity...
Rebecca Evans: ...young people had an opportunity to enjoy themselves, to meet other people, to get outdoors and do things that they hadn't been able to do for a long time. Alongside that, of course, we have our school holiday enrichment programme, which has been tremendously successful, and some local authorities also undertake different schemes that seek to address holiday hunger and support families to...
Rebecca Evans: ...the NHS and, of course, local government, and working to ensure that those people who've been hardest hit by the pandemic aren't left behind in the recovery. The points made about the role of education and supporting struggling families are well heard there. In terms of health and social care, I've heard that there is a keenness to support the workforce, support for carers and to promote...
Rebecca Evans: ...announcements since we've received our COVID funding earlier on this year which we simply don't know whether or not they're covered by that guarantee. They made large announcements of funding on education for example, and we don't know yet whether that is additional funding, if it's previously announced funding, or funding moved from elsewhere in UK Government's budget. So, this has been...
Rebecca Evans: ...children continue their learning progress following disruption during the pandemic, with a focus on the well-being of children and staff. An allocation of £33 million has been made to further education and local authorities to support learners in colleges and sixth forms to fund additional teaching time, and £6 million has been allocated to support 1,400 trainee teachers currently in...
Rebecca Evans: Welsh Government has provided, over recent years, significant funding for councils for Safe Routes to School, Safe Routes in Communities, and also our active travel funding. At the start of the previous Senedd, we were only investing around £16 million a year in active travel, but, as I said, investment now has increased to around £55 million, showing the constant and increased priority...
Rebecca Evans: ...the implications, how it might work and so forth, to make that decision, so I agreed that there was work that we could be doing jointly to provide information to councillors and to support that education work that the ERS wants to do to ensure that councillors are able to make at least an informed choice about the options available to them.
Rebecca Evans: ...financial support, and that safeguarded 160,000 Welsh jobs. Clearly, we're very mindful of the impact of the continued restrictions on certain sectors of the economy, which is why my colleague the education Minister recently announced an additional £2.5 million being made available to compensate those businesses, such as indoor attractions and wedding venues, who are still affected by the...
Rebecca Evans: Well, in our Welsh Government budget, we set out a wide range of activities that we'll be undertaking in order to tackle and prevent child poverty. You'll have seen our additional funding for free school meals, for example, and Wales was, of course, the first country in the UK to announce that free school meals would be extended right the way through the school holidays, until Easter 2022....
Rebecca Evans: We are working with local authorities as they plan for local elections in May 2022. Education and communications campaigns will encourage citizens to understand the critical role local government plays and why voting matters. We will also work to tackle the barriers which prevent individuals’ active participation in local democracy.
Rebecca Evans: ...touched will have known the kindness and the professionalism with which they've undertaken their roles as well. This afternoon, we do have a statement on mental health and well-being support in educational settings from the Minister for Education, which I think will start to respond to some of the concerns that you've raised this afternoon. And then, tomorrow, the Minister with...
Rebecca Evans: Thank you for raising both of those issues. On the matter of face coverings in schools in Wales, I will ask the Minister for Education to review your comments this afternoon and to write you with the latest position, especially in respect, as you say, of the fact that lateral flow tests are now available. On the matter of resourcing for NRW to undertake its enforcement work, I will ask you to...
Rebecca Evans: ... and to make changes for a fairer, more equal Wales. This includes an increased settlement of £179.4 million for Pembrokeshire County Council and £48.7 million towards a new 11-to-19 secondary school building for Haverfordwest high.
Rebecca Evans: I absolutely couldn't agree more with David Melding on that point, because, of course, when we're investing in our school estate and our college estate, we're investing in the futures of those young people, which is absolutely the priority. But there are so many more benefits that we enjoy as well—for example, the investment that we're making in decarbonisation, in terms of supporting...
