Questions now from the party leaders. The leader of the opposition, Andrew R.T. Davies.

Thank you, Presiding Officer. Could I just welcome back the Cabinet Secretary for rural affairs, who makes a welcome return to the Chamber? I wish you well, hopefully, in getting over the recent fall that you had, Cabinet Secretary.

First Minister, you said at the end of April that Jeremy Corbyn needed to prove himself if he were to become the Prime Minister at the end of this general election. The relationship between the First Minister of Wales or Scotland or Northern Ireland and the Prime Minister is a very important relationship, and, indeed, inter-governmental relationship as well. Last week, at the campaign launch, you failed to mention his name. Last week, when the manifesto was leaked to the press, you put a press release out to say—[Interruption.] You put a press release out to say it was not your manifesto. Then, within a couple of hours’ time, it was redacted and changed. Do you believe that Jeremy Corbyn will be the Prime Minister on 9 June?

That is what I want to see. I’ve dealt with Theresa May; I see no evidence at all of strong leadership from her. She can’t answer a straight question. Leadership is about doing leaders’ debates. There are several of us who know that in this Chamber. Leadership is about going out and talking to people, rather than going to stage-managed events and stage-managed questions. That’s what true leadership is about, and there are several of us in this Chamber who have had experience of that and know that that is what leadership is about. I want to make sure that we have somebody who is willing to engage with the public, not somebody who shuts herself off from the public.

Giving a straight answer, First Minister, is most probably not your strongest card to stand on, to be fair, as anyone who’s asked you a question in this Chamber could attest to. But, in the manifesto that the Labour Party brought forward today, it talks of abolishing tuition fees, but yet your education Cabinet Secretary said last week that, actually, it’s not tuition fees that are the problem, but it is living costs. She also said, through a press spokesman, that Jeremy Corbyn would not be the Prime Minister. How on earth can you have any joined-up thinking in your Government when you have such a dislocate between the message that’s in the manifesto and the spending commitments that you’re signing up to day in, day out? Isn’t it the case that if people vote for Jeremy Corbyn on 8 June, you will have a coalition of chaos as opposed to the strong and stable leadership of Theresa May?

Well, I wonder if the leader of the Welsh Conservatives believes Theresa May to be a strong leader, given the rumours we’ve heard about his deselection, and that of the rest of his group [Laughter.] When asked on the radio whether she was supportive of him and his position, she said Andrew R.T. Davies is the leader of the Welsh Conservatives. Well, stunningly true as a fact, but hardly a great vote of confidence in him. We are proud of the manifesto that we are standing on. It offers great hope for our people. One thing we do know is that the Diamond review has put students in Wales ahead of those in England, and what we do know, of course, is that if the Tories win the general election, students will be hammered even harder. They will be forced to pay even more. So, one thing we do know is that students will never be in a position where they are better off under the Conservatives.

As per usual, you cut off the quote, and she went on to say what a good job I’m doing [Laughter.] But, if you look at what the offer is on 8 June, it is an offer from the Welsh Conservatives today to abolish Severn bridge tolls and actually deliver a shot in the arm of £100 million to the Welsh economy. A £100 million against the fiscal illiteracy that we see coming out of Labour that I noticed the First Minister has not signed up to or committed to today, yet he sat in the meeting of the national executive last week and put his hand up to spend billions of pounds that this country has not got. It is a fact that if you want to get rid of Severn bridge tolls and put £100 million into the Welsh economy, you need to vote for the Welsh Conservatives, under the strong and stable leadership of Theresa May, unlike the coalition of chaos that Jeremy Corbyn will lead.

I am generous to the leader of the Welsh Conservatives. I want him to stay as their leader—I want him to stay as their leader; Theresa May doesn’t. So I’ll offer him that. He’s right, I want him to stay, but Theresa May doesn’t, and that’s chaos for you. He stands there with the chutzpah—I think the word is—to claim that abolishing the Severn bridge tolls were his idea and his party’s idea. For how many years have we stood in this Chamber demanding the end of the Severn bridge tolls? For years, we were told by his party it was too expensive. We saw estimates of between £20 million and £120 million a year of how much it would cost, and now it’s £7 million. I welcome their conversion—I welcome their conversion—but, at the end of the day, let’s face it, the Conservatives would not have abolished the Severn bridge tolls if it wasn’t for the strong action and strong position taken by this Welsh Government.

Leader of the UKIP group, Neil Hamilton.

Diolch yn fawr, Llywydd. Sir Keir Starmer, the shadow Brexit Secretary, was in Wales a few days ago and I see from a Welsh Labour press release that he said that Conservative Brexit negotiations pose a danger to the hugely successful campaign to recruit more doctors in Wales. Can the First Secretary tell us how many extra doctors from the EU this campaign has managed to recruit?

We do know that 5.8 per cent of our medical staff are from the EU. We know that there is interest from the UK and abroad. The reality is that every single health system anywhere in the world competes in a world market. It is folly to think that, somehow, the UK can train and recruit all its own doctors within the UK. And so nobody said to me on the doorstep, nor to him, ‘What we need, you see, are fewer doctors and nurses from abroad.’ Nobody said that. So, it’s vitally important that we’re still seen as a welcoming place to get the best and the brightest to work in our health service.

I agree with that. The actual figure is seven extra doctors have been recruited this year, compared with the same figure last year—not all of whom, or indeed perhaps none of whom, will have come from the EU. Therefore, this seems to be rather irrelevant to the whole question of the Brexit negotiations. But what Sir Keir Starmer seemed to be trying to do was to instil some sort of fear in the minds of those who might be susceptible to his words, that after Brexit we are going to turn away potential doctors and nurses from the United Kingdom. I’m sure the First Minister knows, in his heart of hearts, that this is a preposterous idea and that Australia, for example, has a very strict immigration system based upon points, which are awarded in order to fill various skills gaps in their economy, and the United Kingdom will be just the same. So, why doesn’t the First Minister get on board with the Brexit negotiations and try and make a success, instead of trying to be an obstacle to progress all the time?

Can he not see that, handled badly, doctors and nurses will get the impression that the UK does not want them? It’s already there. It’s already there because the issue of mutual recognition of residency rights has not yet been dealt with. Nobody—nobody—wants to see people not be able to stay in the UK, or UK citizens unable to stay in the rest of the EU. Nobody wants that, but there is no agreement on it yet, and it’s hugely important that that is done as quickly as possible, to my mind, in advance of the substantive negotiations over Brexit. But it is hugely important that we’re able to recruit from abroad. My great fear is that we end up with a cap on immigration every year, that there is a cap in each sector, that the city gets the lion’s share in order to protect banking and finance, and we end up, because of that cap, unable to recruit doctors and nurses into Wales. That, I think, would be a foolish way of dealing with the issue.

It is inconceivable that any cap that is introduced is going to work in such a way as to prevent the NHS filling skills gaps, particularly of professional people. But—[Interruption.] But the First Minister will also know that, two years ago, the Bank of England did an in-depth study of the impact of migration upon wage levels at the lower end of the income scale—people like cleaners and care workers and waiting staff in the health service—and it concluded that unlimited immigration from the EU and other parts of the world of unskilled and semi-skilled workers reduces wages by a factor of 2 per cent in relation to a 10 per cent rise in the proportion of immigrants in those sectors. So, what’s happening here is actually that wage levels are being compressed for the people who can least afford it, whilst there is actually no danger, as a result of the Brexit negotiations, to the numbers of doctors and nurses being recruited from outside the UK.

Well, no—if there is to be a cap, a cap is a cap. You can’t say, ‘Well, the cap doesn’t exist for certain professions.’ And that is something that we need, to my mind, to avoid. We have 80,000 EU citizens in Wales, out of 3 million people, so it’s a tiny proportion of the population. I take his point that there were many who felt that wages have been depressed as a result. Part of that lies in the fact there’s been a complete failure to prosecute for minimum wage legislation—no prosecutions at all, as far as I’m aware. I have to remind him that, in his former party, they were against the minimum wage, and, as a result of that, that would have driven wages down even further than now. There is exploitation. I’ve heard stories of exploitation of EU citizens who come to Wales. That needs to be cracked down on and it needs to be prosecuted, in the same way that those who try to employ people below the minimum wage, those people who try to get around employment legislation, should be prosecuted according to the law, and the law should be strengthened to ensure that nobody is exploited in the future. That’s exactly what a Labour Government would do in Westminster.

Leader of Plaid Cymru, Leanne Wood.

Diolch, Llywydd. Last week, the successful Time to Change campaign launched a pilot scheme in nine schools to tackle mental health discrimination and stigma. If this scheme is successful, we should see more young people coming forward to seek help for problems that they might have. So, can you tell us what additional funds you’ve made available for school counsellors and for training for teachers to deal with this extra demand?

Well, every school, of course, has a school counsellor, and she will know we’ve ring-fenced funding for health and put, I think, £8.6 million a year extra into child and adolescent mental health services. And we’ve seen a massive reduction in the waiting times with regard to having an appointment within 28 days.

We’ve not seen a massive reduction in waiting times, First Minister. You can fairly say that waiting times are no worse than they were before, but you can’t say that they are improved. It’s not clear at all what those improved outcomes are from this extra spending, but what we do know is that the number of children requiring counselling is going up, and that’s a good thing, because, hopefully, that means that problems can be prevented before they become severe and require specialist help. However, we know that many schools don’t have enough counsellors or teachers with training to help those pupils who may need it. Also, we’ve seen a reduction in local authority youth workers—a staggering 40 per cent in that workforce as a decrease. This is clearly going to have an impact on whether the children experiencing the low-level mental health problems are going to be able to get the support that they need, particularly as your Government has raised the threshold for accessing specialist CAMHS. I spoke recently to someone who works with care leavers, who told me that they’re only able to refer young people who are at risk of suicide. They have no capacity in the system to work on mental health prevention. Is that situation acceptable to you, First Minister? When is there going to be an early intervention service, that’s so badly needed?

Well, as I said to her before, there is a counsellor in each secondary school in Wales. Health boards have committed to meet the 28-day target by the end of March. They’ve made great strides to reduce the numbers waiting over the last 12 to 18 months. One example: in Betsi Cadwaladr, we’ve seen the percentage of CAMHS referrals seen within 28 days go from 21 per cent in April last year to 84.5 per cent in February this year. That’s an enormous improvement in the time required to get a first appointment. So, the money that we’ve put in—the extra money we’ve put in—to CAMHS, together with the counselling that’s available in schools, is bearing fruit.

You’re giving the wrong impression, First Minister, because it’s true to say that the waiting lists are no worse than before, and, overall, you cannot say—. You cannot claim, overall, throughout Wales, that they are better. Now, children and young people with mental health difficulties go an average of 10 years—10 years—before they receive specialist help. These are the people who are likely to be the most ill, and also who cost our services the most money. It didn’t have to happen this way, that we have the kind of teenage mental health early intervention scheme—that we don’t have—that we badly need. We know, don’t we, that self-harm is the second biggest killer of teenage girls globally. Are we going to have to wait for 16-year-olds to have the vote before the mental health of our children and young people gets the proper priority that it deserves?

Well, some of us do have children, and I have a 16-year-old daughter, so I know the pressures that exist on young people, particularly through social media. That’s something that didn’t exist when I was 16, and so any bullying stayed at the school gates and didn’t tend to move beyond that. I know some of the things that are said online, and I know that, when youngsters are at their most vulnerable in terms of their confidence, they can be very deeply affected by that. But she gives the—. She didn’t listen to the figures that I gave to her. I talked about Betsi and I said, ‘Look, the percentage of CAMHS—

I’m talking about the nation.

Well, she can shout as much as she wants. She’s had three questions already, right. Again, Betsi is an example of what’s happened around Wales. In Betsi, the level of CAMHS referrals seen within 28 days has gone from 21 per cent to 84.5 per cent in February. She can’t deny that, or she’s saying that the figures are wrong. They needed to improve. We knew more money had to be put in, because of the demands on the service. That’s exactly what we did, and we are delivering for our young people.