Questions now from party leaders. The Plaid Cymru leader, Leanne Wood. 

Diolch, Llywydd. Would the Minister prefer the support of the Scottish Labour Party or the Tories and UKIP in Wales? [Interruption.]

If the leader of Plaid Cymru is referring to the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill, then we would prefer to have done the very best for Wales, which we have done. 

I'm sure the Minister is aware that, yesterday, the Scottish branches of the two parties in her Government joined together to oppose Westminster. Instead, in Wales, Labour and the Liberal Democrats have caved in, given our leverage away and weakened the hand of people here in this country. On 27 November 2017, the First Minister said in this Assembly, and I quote,

'we wouldn't accept a sunset clause. Who is to say that it wouldn't be extended ad infinitum in the future? It's a matter of principle', he concluded. A five-year sunset clause now forms part of the agreement that your Government has signed up to. Can the Minister explain: has the Government lost all of its principles? 

No. I think, again, the hyperbole that's being demonstrated by Plaid Cymru here is really not helpful at all. Just to be absolutely clear, the Welsh Government has secured significant changes to the UK Government's EU withdrawal Bill that protect the devolution settlement, which this party agrees with. Welsh Ministers have come to an agreement with the UK Government that many areas already devolved will remain devolved. The Bill, as originally drafted, would have allowed the UK Government to take control of devolved policy areas, such as farming and fishing, and that is no longer the case. After months of intensive talks, an agreement has been reached meaning that the Welsh Government will be able to recommend that the Assembly gives consent to the Bill on the basis of an inter-governmental agreement and amendments to the Bill that have been published, and which do not say what the leader of Plaid Cymru is currently saying that they say.  

This is not my hyperbole. Those were the words of the First Minister, and this is nothing short of a Labour-Tory stitch-up. You were backed by Brexit believers while losing the support of every branch in your own party, and people in Wales can see that you've sold this country short.

Westminster now have control over at least 24 policy areas and many of those are extremely important to people's lives: control over agriculture, environment, public procurement—all of those issues now sit in Westminster. The only conclusion that we can draw is that you believe that the Tories in Westminster are better placed to act in the Welsh national interest than your own Government. [Interruption.] Well, let me tell you, Minister, my party doesn't trust the Tories, and we don't trust Westminster with our farms, with our environment or our NHS. Perhaps the Minister can enlighten us: when Westminster concludes a dodgy deal with Donald Trump, how does her Government plan to stop them opening up our NHS to private companies now that you've given those powers away? [Interruption.]

I'm afraid the leader of Plaid Cymru has fundamentally misunderstood the powers in the Bill. The UK Government cannot act in place of the Welsh Government, and my colleague the Cabinet Secretary for Finance, when he took us through in great detail the Bill only very recently on the floor of the Senedd, explained the way that the freezing of the powers would work, the way that we have got concessions so that English Ministers cannot act where they would otherwise have been able to act, and, of course, the sunset clause, in its current form, whereas the comments that she talks of are, of course, from the original Bill. So, I would recommend to the leader of Plaid Cymru a very careful reading of the Bill, which she clearly has not undertaken.

Leader of the opposition, Andrew RT Davies.

Thank you, Presiding Officer. Leader of the house, could you give me an assessment of what the life choices are of young people here in Wales?

I think the chances of young people here in Wales are very good indeed, but we could do more and, again, as I emphasise, without the austerity policies of the UK Government, we could do a great deal better.

Well, Leader of the house, when it comes to education, many of the things that can be done to improve life chances for young people are within the gift of the Welsh Government, and, sadly, the achievement has been hindered by some of the policies that have been brought forward by previous Labour Governments. But in the field of dyslexia, there's a real poverty of ambition in trying to improve the life chances of children identified with dyslexia in our schools. The gap with children achieving A or A* to C in selective GCSE grades has widened since 2015. Thirty-three per cent of pupils used to be getting those results at GCSE. Now, 36 per cent of pupils are not hitting that target in English. When it comes to science, which used to be a positive territory for students who were identified with dyslexia, now there's a 10 per cent deficit in children achieving five good grades at GCSE. You don't need money to make that difference, you just need the policies in place to make the improvements. Over the last two to three years, we've seen a massive decrease in the number of children achieving the grades we'd like to see who've been diagnosed with dyslexia. Why isn't the Government doing more in this particular field?

Of course, that was the whole point of the additional learning needs Bill—to give support to those who are most vulnerable in our system. But I do think that it's quite extraordinary to say that it's not money, but it's policy, because, of course, the policies for additional learning needs always involve additional support for the pupil. It's an absolute fact that the more additional learning needs the pupil has, the more support they need and the more money that costs. But, of course, we want to do the very best for all the people in our school system, including the most vulnerable and those with additional needs and that's what the legislation aims to do.

I clearly identified how the gap is widening and that clearly is unacceptable, especially over the last two to three years, where, in English and science in particular, there's been a real deterioration. Over the border in England, they've introduced phonics as a policy area to improve the ability for children to improve their reading. Since 2011, 147,000 more six-year-olds are benefiting from this policy area in England. From 2011 to 2016 that number is—147,000 children. Will the Welsh Government be developing more strategies to assist children identified with dyslexia and make sure that these numbers, which I've quoted you today, are arrested and actually put into decline so that children identified with dyslexia have a better life chance here in Wales?

We do teach phonics in Welsh schools. I've personally visited schools and watched their phonics tuition, so I'm absolutely well aware that we teach phonics already. I'm sure that more could be done to teach more children phonics. But I do think the statistics that you're quoting are a little misleading because most dyslexic children have additional time and take different exams. So, I'm afraid I don't have the detail of that at my fingertips, but perhaps if the leader of the opposition would like to let us see these statistics he's quoting, we'll be able to respond to them fully.

Leader of the UKIP group, Neil Hamilton.

Diolch, Llywydd. It's always a pleasure to see the leader of the house at the lectern. I hope it doesn't mean that the First Minister has sadly become a bit demob-happy.

I wonder whether the leader of the house is aware that minimum pricing for alcohol is being introduced into Scotland today and that that has resulted in a bottle of Sainsbury's Basics London Gin being increased from £10.50 to £13.13, a bottle of Asda Rich & Ripe Red Wine from £3.19 up to £4.88, and 18 cans of Tennent's Lager, which cost £12 at Asda will be increased to £15.85. These are significant increases by percentage and does she not agree with me that this is going to impact disproportionately upon people with low incomes? I know she's concerned about the impact of austerity upon people, so is this the right time to be adding extra burdens on them when one of the ways in which they try to alleviate austerity is to have a moderate drink? It's not going to affect the people who've got serious alcohol problems very much, but it is going to affect the overwhelming majority of people who drink responsibly. 

First of all, on his remarks about the First Minister, which I think were particularly ill-judged, the First Minister is, of course, on an extremely important mission to Doha, coming in on the first Qatar Airways flight to Cardiff Airport, something which we're all immensely proud of. And, Llywydd, I feel obliged to say at this point that when I returned to Wales as part of my professional career in 1993, the first sad task I was given was to work on the compelled privatisation of Cardiff airport from the public sector, because it was making such an enormous amount of money it was an embarrassment to the then Government. I'm delighted to say that this Labour Government has been able to put it back into the public sector where, of course, it's gone from the very poor performance it had in the private sector to a sterling performance in the public sector. So, I'm grateful to the leader of UKIP for giving me that opportunity to say that.   

In terms of minimum pricing for alcohol, I know that he doesn't agree with the policy, but large numbers of people die as a result of alcoholic poisoning, and that's something that this party takes very seriously indeed. 

I think what the leader of the house is admitting is that it's a sledgehammer to miss a nut, because the vast majority of people are going to be affected in their pockets but it's not going to make any difference to their health. At the moment, up to 76 per cent of the price of a bottle of whisky is taken in excise duties and value added tax. Of course, this is not a tax that is proposed to the minimum pricing of alcohol, so the extra profit, if any, that is made will go into the pockets of the supermarkets. So, there won't be a fund from which public health benefits could be spread by Government policy. Surely, a much better way of tackling this problem is to target the problem drinkers themselves, rather than to impose burdens upon people who don't have a problem. 

Of course, the minimum alcohol pricing policy isn't the only policy that we have in place to assist people who suffer from alcohol abuse and substance misuse problems. The leader of UKIP is quite right to say that it can be an issue with austerity that people attempt self-medication and so on, but we're very wedded to making sure that those people have the correct support that they need to be able to stop the abuse that they suffer. And we know from the research that minimum alcohol pricing is one of the pieces of armoury in that kit. 

But, of course, alcoholism or alcohol dependency isn't the only public health problem that exists in Wales. There's a significant problem with obesity, there's a significant problem with cardiovascular disease, and the Public Health Wales Observatory has recently published figures that show that the risk factors for heart disease are: physical activity, 71 per cent; unhealthy eating, 67 per cent; alcohol, perhaps surprisingly, only 43 per cent; and being a current smoker, even more surprising, only 23 per cent. So, where is this policy of minimum pricing of alcohol going? If the state has allocated to itself the power to try to alter people's behaviour in their private lives by using the tax system or a variant upon it, why shouldn't we introduce a tax on food, a tax on salt, or any other of the known factors that might be a cause of deterioration in individuals' health?    

Well, of course, this party has a very different idea of the state's role in people's lives than UKIP does. I'm not entirely certain that it's consistent in UKIP. But, of course, we have a number of things at our disposal that the Government does indeed do. We have done a very large number of things in public health. So, for example, adult smoking prevalence rates fell to 19 per cent ahead of our 20 per cent target in 2016. Smoking amongst young people is at its lowest level, with 7 per cent of boys and 9 per cent of girls aged 15 to 16 smoking regularly, compared to 9 and 14 per cent in 2009-10. And 425,000 men and women are routinely screened in Wales for breast, cervical and bowel cancer. These are state interventions in people's lives, but they're very welcome, and they contribute hugely to public health agendas here in Wales, of which we're very proud.