11. Will the Leader of the House make a statement on the action the Welsh Government is taking to tackle slavery in Wales? OAQ51412

Yes. We are determined to do all we can with our partners to tackle slavery in Wales. We continue to raise awareness, provide multi-agency training, support victims, and assist in bringing perpetrators to justice of this heinous crime. 

I thank the leader of the house for that answer. She'll be aware, of course, of some heartbreaking and high-profile cases across the country in recent years, including in the Gwent Police force area. I ask, given the complex nature of modern slavery and the fact that a number of agencies are involved in tackling it and preventing it—some devolved, others non-devolved—what sort of co-ordination role is the Welsh Government able to provide to public bodies in order to ensure that we're all going in the same direction and this heinous crime can be eradicated from our country?

Yes, indeed. The Member's quite right to describe it so. We're the first country in the UK to appoint an anti-slavery co-ordinator. We've established the Wales anti-slavery leadership group, as I was saying earlier in response to questions, to provide strategic leadership and guidance on how to tackle slavery in Wales, and also to provide the best possible support for survivors, which I think is a very important point as well. The leadership group does include a very large number of agencies, many of which are UK Government agencies, but also includes academia, a number of third sector organisations that are active in this area, and so on. The idea is to share the learning from Wales with other partners, including a range of UK Government departments, and we're starting to get some recognition for our work there, but it's a very complex crime to investigate and prosecute.

We need to do a lot more work with partners to develop joint training provision for senior investigating officers and Crown prosecutors, because a large part of this is (a) finding the people who are trapped in these things, and then getting a case together to actually prosecute—and then publicising the prosecution, because we do need to make sure that people who are engaged in this actually know that they will be caught and prosecuted. It's a very large part of that piece of deterrence. 

We've delivered a consistent standard of anti-slavery training—that's actually quite hard to say, anti-slavery training—to 5,500 people across Wales, and there's an estimated 5,000 people benefiting again this year on that. And, of course, we've got the ethical employment in supply chains code of practice, which very much talks about all of our partners in public procurement, making sure that they ensure that their supply chains are free from these crimes. That will go a long way as well to driving some good practice into the supply chains to make sure that people are aware of how many of these things can actually be happening without them really realising. So, it will be very important for us to develop all of that learning in years to come, and I'll certainly be ensuring that we do so.

Cabinet Secretary, amongst the vulnerable people who are entrapped in these despicable practices are often people with learning difficulties. I think it's very important that people that have services like your roof being fixed, your drive being done, your car being washed, keep an eye on those people that do not seem to be flourishing in that practice, seem to be very marginalised, shy and reluctant to engage, because they could well be people trapped in this way. 

Yes, absolutely. David Melding will have heard me talking about some of the work we've been doing as part of the Fair Work Board to look at enforcement procedures that could be brought to Wales and used by local authorities. At the moment, there's a UK enforcement authority, which is in the north of England, that covers the whole of the UK. I'm very keen to ensure that we work with that UK Government department to get a few pilot authorities here in Wales to see what we can do with local enforcement to actually—because I personally believe that there's a lot to be said for having some visible trials and punishments of people who are engaged in that, as a very serious deterrent to those who think that they can get away with it. Also, you heard me talking about the extensive training that we're undergoing. I agree with him that a public awareness campaign of that sort would also be very beneficial.

And finally, question 12, Rhun ap Iorwerth.