Questions now from the party spokespeople. Plaid Cymru spokesperson, Siân Gwenllian. 

Thank you, Llywydd. Equality means ensuring that people can live their lives to their full potential, and that they can live independently. I'm sure that you would agree with those words. That is why the social model in relation to disability has been a way of empowering the lives of disabled people, and making public services think about disability in a different manner. One of the greatest challenges that faces many disabled people is lack of finance or poverty, and, obviously, poverty can make the quality of life of a disabled person significantly worse. Do you agree that the Welsh Government has a responsibility to give financial support to disabled people and families with disabled children, so that they can overcome some of the barriers that society places upon them?

Yes, indeed. The Member, as always, raises a very important point. It's not actually directly in my portfolio. I have an overarching view of equalities that I work with all of the other Ministers and Cabinet Secretaries on. So, it's actually my colleague the Minister for children who actually deals with most of the funds available, but I have very regular meetings with him about the effect on disabled families and their communities. We work very closely with Disability Wales and a number of other groups in the sector to make sure that we do maximise the funding available. There is a limit to what we can do in terms of the universal credit roll-out, for example, which is causing some concern in the areas where it's been fully rolled out, but we are aware of some of those problems.

Thank you very much. You will be aware that Plaid Cymru has a motion later on this afternoon where we will be discussing child poverty, and that that motion calls for the devolution of the administration of parts of the welfare system. But, of course, there are some benefits that have already been fully devolved, or the administrative responsibility for them already lies in Wales—the Family Fund, the council tax benefit, elements of the social fund and, of course, the independent living fund.

Are you content with the way that your Government has been dealing with the responsibility for these particular funds? I accept that perhaps the other Minister would be able to answer in more detail, but, generally speaking, are you happy with the performance of your Government in dealing with these funds?

I think it's a very complex area, and it's not in my portfolio, so, forgive me, I won't have the level of detail necessary to answer it with perhaps the detail that you'd like. It is actually Huw Irranca-Davies, my colleague, who has control of the actual funds, but I have very regular meetings with, as I said, him and a number of voluntary groups in the sector to see what we can do. I am aware of the long-running and philosophical, almost, debate about whether you can administer a welfare system predicated on a set of values that you don't share, and we certainly do not share the values currently associated with the UK Government's running of that welfare system.

I'm sure it will come out in the debate this afternoon that there are a number of issues around whether you would actually get the money necessary to run it without cutting into other services and so on, but, in principle, of course, we'd like to see the welfare system run in the way it was intended, which is for the benefit of those people who need the helping hand to be able to live their lives to the full. I think we probably share the view that that's not how it's running at the moment.

My colleague the Minister with responsibility for this is conducting a number of reviews of the various funds, and he would be better placed to give you some of the detail of how those reviews are going at the moment.

Thank you very much, and we look forward to having that debate on the devolution of welfare later on this afternoon.

But it is clear that not everyone in your party is content with some aspects, certainly, of these funds—for example, abolishing the independent living fund. I understand that a proposal was passed to restore this fund by the Labour Party conference, which was in favour of adopting the Scottish model. So, could you explain how abolishing this essential support, along with cutting the funding to the Family Fund—? How can doing that be in accordance with my opening words and with the principles of equalities legislation, and your responsibility to remove barriers facing disabled people and children?

This is one of the difficulties of having one of the cross-cutting portfolios. So, I'm not going to give you an answer that's satisfactory, simply because I'm not the Minister with the detail of the fund in question, so it's not for me to answer that. But, in general terms, I've had a number of conversations with the Minister around what we're doing to review the fund, what the overarching aims of it are, what the amount of money contained within it is and what can be best done with that, alongside the various organisations with whom we liaise—the stakeholder groups and so on.

I am aware that there is a range of views on this, but, unfortunately, I'm not the Minister with overall responsibility for that. I do assure you that we have the conversation so that we can maximise the benefit to disabled families. But there's absolutely no doubt at all that we're struggling in an austerity agenda with which we do not agree and where we are really dealing with a rationing system, also with which we do not agree. So, it is a question of trying to find the best path through that and ameliorate, where at all possible, the difficulties that people living with disabilities and living with children with disabilities encounter in their lives.

The Conservative spokesperson, Russell George.

Diolch, Presiding Officer. Leader of the house, 18 months ago, you announced the intention to publish the mobile action plan. Can I ask, since that date, what concrete measures you have implemented to improve mobile coverage in Wales? And when was the last time you directly met with mobile operators?

I meet with mobile operators on a rolling programme of meeting the various different operators. I haven't had a group meeting with them for quite some time, since we launched the action plan, but I have a sort of series of meetings with them, if you like. We're also in regular correspondence with Ofcom. We've had many more discussions with Ofcom very recently around—it feels slightly like groundhog day here, Llywydd, because we had the debate yesterday—issues such as sharing infrastructure, planning your infrastructure more efficiently, what planning requirements are actually necessary, what the real need for a reduction in non-domestic rate charges are, and why they're so extremely opposed to roaming in areas where they've all agreed that only one operator is likely to give 98 per cent geographical coverage. I think I did rehearse some of that with you yesterday as well.

You did, and I did ask in my question what concrete measures you have implemented to improve mobile coverage in Wales. I didn't hear anything to tell me what actual measures you've undertaken. I would suggest that perhaps you do meet with the operators together, because they would be able to tell you what their barriers are. They tell me what the barriers are, and I think they need to explain some of these barriers to you. You said yesterday that you disagreed entirely with my analysis of the situation with mobile, but what I think is more important to the people of Wales is that the mobile industry seems to agree with my analysis.

Now, you did also say yesterday that the geographical problems in Wales are unlike anywhere else in the United Kingdom. Well, I entirely agree with you on that, but that is precisely why you need to foster the right conditions for the industry to roll out its infrastructure here in Wales, and the operators are saying that continued delays in the reform to the existing planning laws are delaying and adding additional costs for them. I think this is the issue, particularly in rural Wales, which is causing us issues. Now, with changes to the planning rules already in place in England and in Scotland, we're now playing catch-up in Wales. You talk about needing more evidence from the industry, but I would ask you what evidence you need on top of what they've already provided you. That's my specific question. 

Last year, the economy committee undertook an inquiry on this and we made some recommendations on mobile and you accepted them all, I'm pleased to say. One of those recommendations was that you should explore the feasibility of using the planning regime to encourage operators to share infrastructure. You agreed with that, so I'd like an update on that. You also accepted recommendation 9, which said that Welsh Government should consider offering non-domestic rate relief for new masts. Well, you accepted that, I'm pleased to say, as well. And you did say in your response at the time—nine months ago—that you were examining the scope for changes at that time and that research would be completed in November 2017. So, can you please also update us on progress in this area?

Yes. A large part of that is actually in the portfolio of my colleague, the Cabinet Secretary, who is also here to hear what you've got to say, but I think I did go through a lot of it yesterday. Just to be clear, one of the big problems we have in terms of giving you concrete things that I've done, is that it's not actually devolved. We have a fundamental disagreement with a Government of your colour in the UK about whether this is infrastructure or not. The mobile phone operators, I'm very well aware, will tell you that all they need is to be able to build bigger masts and everything will be fine. But I don't want to see, and nor do most of the people of Wales, a forest of masts right through the national park, because they can't be brought to share those masts and infrastructure, or indeed use the Home Office masts instead. So, there is a real balance here between the number of masts necessary in order to ensure there's competition in something that ought to be an infrastructure and ensuring the coverage for Wales, and actually people behaving sensibly in sensible areas.

As I said, this is a commercial imperative by them, so what they're basically saying to me is they want me to get my Cabinet colleague to allow them to build any size mast they like, anywhere they like, and take all of the tariffs away that they have to pay to go there, and then they'll build a whole network right across Wales. Well, I'm sorry, that doesn't stack up in business terms. We've asked them for the evidence to show why the current charging regime makes such a difference to their commercial case, and why they can't share, and why they won't allow roaming, and I'm afraid the evidence we've had back has not been good. So, we've gone out again to do that. At the same time, we're out to consultation on 'Planning Policy Wales'—that's about to come in—and we're about to consult on changes to the permitted development regime. But it will not be a free-for-all, because that's not what the people of Wales have indicated to us, in any consultation, they actually want.

Well, you keep saying that these issues aren't devolved. The two specific issues that I asked you about are absolutely devolved. I asked you about offering non-domestic rate relief for new masts, which you didn't address. I also asked you about changes to the planning regime. You talk about how this isn't in your portfolio, but you should be answering—you've already discussed this with the Cabinet Secretary—and giving us an update in that regard. So, I think it is frustrating that so little progress has been made. 

New research from O2 reveals that the UK could benefit from £6 billion of productivity savings to essential services from 5G. Can I ask you how you're going to work with the industry to ensure that Wales is at the forefront of this next generation of mobile technology and does not lose investment to other parts of the UK?

Right, well, I'll reiterate it, because I thought I had answered it very clearly. I have not seen any concrete evidence of why the business case is that they can't share masts, that they need to build their own separate infrastructure, and that that infrastructure is not viable without non-domestic rate relief. So, I have not yet seen that evidence, although we've asked for it many times. We are out to consultation. We've had the research; we are out to consultation on the back of that research. That consultation finishes in June, and we're about to start the permitted development rights. So, I think that is the answer that you've asked for. It might not be the one you like, but that is the answer.

And the next answer on 5G—and I've said this many times in this Chamber—is that if we have the same situation as we have with 4G, where we have, effectively, landbanking, where you have one operator that owns 4G for Wales and if it doesn't think it's commercially viable, it simply doesn't roll it out, it is not acceptable. So, if they buy it and they haven't used it within a certain amount of time, we've asked the UK Government many times to put an axe on that to say, 'If you haven't used it in this specific area by then, give it back and let the public sector do it as a market intervention'. Now, that will reduce the amount of money that the spectrum is sold for, and that is a big issue because we don't think it should be used as a cash cow, and I'm afraid that's not what the UK Government thinks. So, we're having a big argument with them about that, which is a fundamental issue, because this is not a luxury product; it is an infrastructure. As long as we have that argument, we've got a real problem.

The UKIP spokesperson, David Rowlands.

Diolch, Llywydd, and I promise you, leader of the house, I will not mention digital infrastructure at all. In October 2017, Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary produced a report entitled 'Stolen freedom: the policing response to modern slavery and human trafficking'. In that report, it says that today and every day, thousands of men, women and children are being degraded and dehumanised. Whilst this is a UK-wide report, can the leader of the house give us an update on efforts in Wales to combat modern slavery?

Yes, indeed. We have the first anti-slavery co-ordinator in Wales, and he's been working very hard on a system, alongside all of our partners, to make sure that we have the multi-agency hubs working together to ensure that, when people do come forward, we're able to swiftly process them, take them to places of safety, and get the prosecutions in place as swiftly as possible. There have not been many so far, but we're very confident that more are coming. There are three problems, however, the first of which is the issue around the hostile—now called 'compliance'—environment. We do not want people who come forward and who have been the victims of modern slavery to find themselves without any status and, in the worst of cases, faced with deportation. We particularly don't want women who are trafficked to be in that position, often fleeing domestic violence as well. So, we have had liaison with the Home Office to discuss unintended consequences of the several regimes coming together, which we fear are stopping people coming forward because they fear that they'll be put into a worse position. But we have been very much praised in Wales for our anti-slavery co-ordinator and his efforts to bring the services together, and we're very pleased with that.

Well, I thank the leader of the house for those comments, and I fully endorse exactly what she has just said about those complexities, and that anybody who comes forward should have the necessary help and should not be punished for the situation they're in. But the Independent Anti-Slavery Commissioner, Kevin Hyland, highlighted that those in modern slavery are hidden in plain sight, housed in squalid conditions and working in high-risk industries, including building sites, car washes and nail salons. Given that all of these industries are prevalent in Wales, is it not incumbent on the Welsh Government to ensure that Wales will not tolerate the abuses that come with these practices?

Yes, indeed, and we make very sure—. We've been running a number of publicity campaigns—the 'Don't be a bystander' one, which was launched last week, for example—highlighting to people what they should look for, both in domestic and sexual violence cases, but also in slavery cases, and putting studies out across network television and so on, so that if people recognise themselves, they can come forward and they can understand where to get that help. A large part of this is actually people not understanding that that's what happening to them because they don't understand the system into which they've been trafficked or moved. My colleague Joyce Watson has done an enormous amount of work in getting this sort of publicity out as well.

You're absolutely right that we have to make sure that people are aware of their circumstances and know what to do in order to come forward, and can escape, if you like, from those circumstances, with some degree of safety in order for that to happen. For that to happen, we have to make sure that all of the citizens of Wales are aware and actually recognise it when they see it, so that they can come forward and report. I would say at this point, Llywydd, that we always encourage anyone who has any suspicions of that sort to contact their local police immediately.

Well, again, I thank the leader of the house for her answer, and I fully endorse the fact that Joyce Watson has done a great deal of work with regard to this, and I acknowledge that, of course.

But there have been numerous observations on the inadequacy of the agencies concerned in obtaining convictions of those engaged in the various aspects of exploitation, particularly with regard to immigrant workers, and can I make it known here that we really do have to have a definition of what slavery is? It's all right to say that people should come forward if they recognise it and they see it, but unless we have a true description of what slavery is, then that's not going to happen. So, could the Minister update us on the number of convictions, not referrals—convictions—there have been in Wales involving slavery or quasi-slavery?

Yes, I don't have the statistics to hand, so I'll write to you with the specific statistics. But there aren't enough of them, and that's why we've continued to develop the multi-agency service hubs, in order to bring together the data necessary to make the prosecutions much more likely to happen. There are a large number of reasons for why the prosecutions haven't happened, largely to do with the reliability and availability of data for evidence. This is about getting the agencies together so that we have the data necessary and we don't expose people to further threats and difficulties in coming forward. We're very hopeful that the number of prosecutions will accelerate as we go forward, now that we've got the multi-agency hubs being rolled out right across Wales. But I will write to the Member with the specifics, which I don't have in my brief at the moment.