Mike Hedges: ...you can claim, what you're entitled to if you work from home, clothes for work count as expenses, how donating to charity can be good for your tax bill, pensions' relief. And finally there is the elephant in the room—non-domiciled status, used by the wealthy to avoid paying any income tax in Britain whatsoever. UK residents who have their permanent home outside the UK may not have to pay...
Joel James: ...huge sums of money to reduce carbon in industry, encouraging people to change behaviour, as well as changing the ways we heat our home and travel around, we are not actually addressing the elephant in the room—namely, we are adopting practices and embracing technological advances in our lives that are resulting in even more carbon dioxide being produced. For instance, nearly every mobile...
Jenny Rathbone: This could be a really important tool for ensuring that all women know about it. The elephant in the room, in my view, is endometriosis, and I appreciate that we're doing lots of work to improve the understanding of both GPs and gynaecologists on this issue. But, it really is a serious issue, and very difficult to disentangle from gynaecological cancer, because if you've got such problems—
Rhun ap Iorwerth: ...and they relate to the need to strengthen the social care system, to attract and support staff. It’s a sector that has been ignored for far, far too long. But may I suggest that there is another elephant in the room when it comes to ensuring that patients can be released in a timely manner from our acute hospitals? There are some 10,500 hospital beds in Wales; 30 years ago, there were...
Caroline Jones: .... And I also welcome their commitment to a review of the income threshold for receiving free school meals. We must not allow a single child in Wales to go hungry. However, we must also address the elephant in the room: the rise of childhood obesity and the lack of nutrition. According to the Food Foundation, a staggering 94 per cent of children consume less than three to five portions of...
Jenny Rathbone: So far, everybody's talked quite a lot about COVID and what it's told us, but nobody's mentioned the elephant in the room, which is the end of the European Union transition period, happening in less than a month. In that small amount of time, we potentially face the most momentous upheaval in our food supply chains, which will make queues at supermarkets in March look like a tea party by...
Suzy Davies: ...appreciate, Minister, that you said you're planning to move on—not rest on your laurels, I think you said—despite COVID, and I don't think we can just leave it as 'despite COVID'. It is the big elephant in the room in the delivery of this curriculum. As the head of Pencoed secondary school in my own region said when notice of this statement was being made, 'It's completely lost in the...
Delyth Jewell: ...liked to have seen it included in the statement, namely the shortage of social and affordable housing. Yes, the core numbers are increasing, but they are falling far short of what is required. The elephant in the room, if I can say that, is that we have a planning system that has profit assurance built into it, namely developers can use the Planning Inspectorate to prevent local...
Rhun ap Iorwerth: ...is strengthened in order to ensure that this does happen? If I could move on to my next question, whatever age group you're talking about and whatever generation you're talking about, there is an elephant in the room here too in terms of there being one major problem, and that is the major cuts in local government funding over the past decade. We have seen cuts to day centres, we have seen...
Angela Burns: ...boards, where they have had to cancel operations so that they can accelerate a catch-up programme so that our waiting times have an opportunity to improve rather than lengthen? Finally, I think the elephant in the room is that social services need to be on call seven days a week all year around, like our health services. On call in terms of being able to do delayed transfers of care,...
Janet Finch-Saunders: ..., the Welsh Local Government Association have captured the situation beautifully—'It's a bit like trying to run a marathon with a lead weight tied around your neck. The funding is always the elephant in the room'. Their words, not mine. There are options you can consider, such as the reform to school funding. According to the Department for Education, the new arrangements will provide up...
Mark Isherwood: ...if you'd comment on, therefore, the need to focus on that constitutional issue in perpetuity, rather than our views of current or future Government policies or parties in Government. Perhaps the elephant in the room, again, for me is the cross-border nature of crime and justice in Wales. It's always been thus. It's nothing new—it's no threat to nationhood, good or bad, it's a reality...
Lynne Neagle: ...like to be able to welcome today's debate from the Welsh Conservatives because I do think that local government is facing its toughest period since devolution in 1999, but it would be to ignore the elephant in the room to thank the Tories for the opportunity to talk about this because it is their austerity agenda, that political choice to starve services of funding, that has led to the...
Siân Gwenllian: ...in their day-to-day activities. The profession is under huge pressure at the moment, and we need to thank them for continuing to try and inspire our children and young people in the classroom, which is, after all, their main task, but the context is a challenging one. The serious funding crisis facing schools across Wales is having a detrimental impact on the education of our young people,...
Russell George: ...growth deal, I am concerned that the draft budget has a real-terms cut of 1.6 per cent for funding for city and growth deals. And I hope the Cabinet Secretary will be able to comment on that. The elephant in the room in regards to the transport budget is, of course, the M4 relief road. That decision will have profound implications for future budgets across a range of portfolios, and this...
Mr Neil Hamilton: ...of course, very welcome—although, as he rightly said, what's given on one hand is partly taken away on the other and about half the budget is already earmarked by the UK Government. But the real elephant in the room here is not so much the funding available, but the continuing inability of many health boards to be able to manage their own budgets properly, and we've seen, this year, that...
Mr Neil Hamilton: ...a vital need until we have got the building blocks in place for what is going to replace them. So, this, I think, has been handled in a most insensitive way. And then, of course, we come to the elephant in the room in the form of the health Secretary, because ultimately, Hywel Dda is now under his supervision, just as Betsi Cadwaladr is in north Wales, and the Welsh Government can't...
Gareth Bennett: ...in its own workforce. That lack of investment in its own staff is a key reason why productivity today is worse in the UK than in, for example, Germany. Of course, from our viewpoint in UKIP, the elephant in the room is immigration. If you have a system that allows for hundreds of thousands of immigrants to enter your country every year, then you are allowing employers the opportunity to...
David Lloyd: ...personal care, should also be registered. And, obviously, those processes are part of an obvious requirement in improving the outcomes in social care that we all want to see. But obviously the elephant in the room here is that you can't achieve all this whilst care support workers are low paid, still subject to casualisation, occasional zero-hours contracts, and that they don't have...
Mick Antoniw: ...know needs to happen, and that is that there has to be a consideration of the whole of the UK constitution, a UK constitutional convention of some format. And also to look at and deal with the 'elephant in the room', as it was described by John Morris so many years ago, and that is the English question as a fundamental part of resolving the relationships on a permanent and...
