I now call the party spokespeople to ask questions. Conservative spokesperson, Mark Isherwood. 

Diolch, Llywydd. Only yesterday, I received correspondence from a Flintshire constituent who had received a response from Openreach saying that they would not gain access under the first phase of the Superfast Cymru programme. Another one I also received, on behalf of a constituent, from Openreach, only yesterday, said:

'I'm very sorry that residents of Llangollen have not heard any news concerning the proposed fibre roll-out in their area. I have spoken with our local fibre team and sadly the delivery of fibre broadband across the area has now been halted.'

Both of them refer to the Welsh Government's successor programme. Why, therefore, have you not, thus far, provided the statement that you stated on 10 May, in response to my written question, you would be providing within the next month? You said:

'The procurement exercise for the successor project, which is planned to close on the 23rd May, is well underway, with a view to a delivery contract being awarded in late summer of this year. I will make a statement within the next month to update members'—  which should, therefore, presumably have been by 10 June. 

We have, of course, completed the very successful Superfast Cymru roll-out scheme, and as the Member knows, from the amount of correspondence that he and I have had, and a number of other Members in the Chamber have had, we have about 85,000 people who are not included in that, but the scheme has delivered to many more premises than we originally anticipated.

We have announced the successor project. It is currently out to procurement. I was very much hoping to be in a position by today to be able to give more details, Llywydd, of this, but, unfortunately, I'm not in that position. I hope to be in that position extremely soon. 

Thank you. Well, I hope you'll appreciate the frustration for the constituents who received a copy of your reply and have been waiting since 10 June, and have contacted me regularly asking whether we've had the statement yet. 

On a separate matter, in May the Wales Council for Voluntary Action produced a report called 'Empowering Communities'—not directly within your brief, but this bit certainly is in your brief. It said that they've 

'focussed on "place-based" or locality based communities, but different groups of people live within them: different genders, ethnicities, faiths, ages.'

And they said that   

'Recognising the diversity in and across communities—and building on the strengths this brings—should be at the core of community wellbeing policies. Equality is part of community wellbeing.'

In that context, and within your brief, how do you propose to respond to the comments in the valedictory letter from the Auditor General for Wales to Nick Ramsay, as Chair of the Public Accounts Committee, which referred to 

'what has been conspicuously absent so far across the Welsh public service' and the

'real opportunities to reshape services and re-design delivery models in ways which enable genuine transformation and place the citizen at the centre, through working collectively in ways which transcend our inherited organisational structures'?

Well, of course, as part of our community cohesion plan, we do work very closely with our stakeholders and we are consulting on the new national community cohesion plan in the autumn that will, of course, have the intersectionality that Mark Isherwood I know feels very passionately about. We are working very hard to ensure that our forthcoming strategy fits in with the other strategies in that seamless way that the auditor general's been discussing. 

Thanks. Well, I hope you'll in that recognise that some of the people at the top who represent the barriers to sharing power will be made to recognise that this is about turning the power thing upside down and designing the system backwards, with the people as the starting point and not the afterthought. 

My final question relates to play and sport. Sense produced a report a couple of years ago, a play inquiry, which said that early intervention through play is vitally important for children with multiple needs and their families and brings a wide range of developmental and emotional benefits.

Play Wales, quoting a further source, said that 

'Enabling all children to play, and to play together, is about a benefit to the whole community. It is not about overcoming legal hurdles or making expensive provision for a small section of the community. If any child is prevented from playing then it diminishes the play experience of all.' 

How do you, therefore, respond to the evidence that disabled children in Wales are too often being denied proper access to play areas, despite the negative impact on them, where equipment suitable for all children is available but too often isn't made available, and that there needs to be a duty on local authorities to provide equipment in play areas that meet the needs of disabled children and other children? Also, alongside that is the report, last week, from Sport Wales, which found that access to sport by disabled children and adults is perceived to be patchy in many areas across many sports, with accessible changing rooms and direct access to sporting facilities often lacking. 

I know you'll agree with me that disabled children and adults deserve equal access to play and to sport. How on earth are you going to make that happen? 

I completely agree with Mark Isherwood. Obviously, the thing that we'd all like to see is that all play areas everywhere are accessible to all children. We don't want to have children who have to travel longer distances than any other child in order to access equipment that is the only equipment that's accessible to them. So, we are working very hard with Disability Wales, and in our framework for action on independent living, in our guidance to Disability Wales, and in a large number of engagement activities with disability groups to get guidance out as fast as possible about the redesign of any accessible areas, so that we do not have any exclusion of anyone no matter what their characteristics are. So, I completely agree with him that we need to do that. 

In my overall plan for equalities, which is the four-year review that will be coming in front of this Chamber, Llywydd, in December, I hope to be able to cover off our future plans for the sort of inclusion that Mark Isherwood has just talked about. 

UKIP spokesperson, David Rowlands.  

Diolch, Llywydd. Leader of the house, as a former magistrate, I have seen first-hand the sometimes horrific consequences of domestic abuse. Could the leader of the house please outline the latest interventions being instigated by the Welsh Government to combat these crimes? 

Yes. We're just in the process of rolling out the implementation of our groundbreaking Act. We're actually, as we speak, in the position of rolling out the regional frameworks. We've been working very hard indeed with a large number of stakeholders across Wales, including, I think crucially, survivors of domestic abuse, to ensure that we get the guidelines and pathways properly put in place so that no matter where you disclose—no matter where the disclosure takes place—you are guided to the correct pathway that has the right outcome for you as a survivor, or as a potential survivor at that point, so that we can help people to get their lives back on track as fast as possible.

The Deputy Presiding Officer (Ann Jones) took the Chair.

I thank you for that answer, leader of the house. It has been stated by Welsh Women's Aid that victims of domestic abuse cannot leave the abusive environment because they cannot afford to do so. With the latest figures showing cases of domestic abuse in Wales rising by 23 per cent, can the leader of the house give us an indication as to the support available to victims who are caught in such a situation?

Yes. We fund a variety of programmes right across Wales, but we are currently, as I said, working with a number of stakeholders to ensure that those pathways exist everywhere in Wales. I think, Llywydd, it is not the case that we have a completely ideal framework right across Wales, but, as part of our regional strategy and as part of our roll-out, and as a result of advice from our national advisers, we are hoping to put that plan into action, and we are on target in terms of the Act for enacting the national framework plans, and that will inform our spending subsequently.

I would just say, though, that we ought to be glad that the numbers are rising, because what we hope that that means, although we haven't empirical evidence of this, is that, of course, people are more prepared to come forward. What we don't want is to have it as a hidden crime where people don't come forward. So, we welcome the rise in numbers, as that indicates a rise in the number of reported incidents.

Again, I thank the Cabinet Secretary for that, and I do acknowledge the many interventions now taking place with regard to domestic abuse. But I'm sure you'll agree with me that refuges are a key element in getting victims out of abusive situations. What will the Welsh Government do to ensure that refuges in Wales are kept open? And if funding is channelled through local authorities in future, what measures are in place to mitigate top-slicing funds to facilitate administration costs?

Absolutely, exactly as I said, there is now an onus on local authorities to produce regional plans, and the regional plan is a needs assessment, and so they must then respond to the needs assessment, which is the needs assessment of their area, and the funding follows. So, it's not just that we give them the money and then we ask them to just sort it out as they see fit; they've got to produce the regional plan, which tells us what the need in the area is and then we look to see that the funding is indeed spent in that way. As part of the new supergrant, which is what David Rowlands is referring to, there is a voluminous, I think it's fair to say, set of guidance that goes with that about what we expect local authorities to do.

The Plaid Cymru spokesperson, Siân Gwenllian.

Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. I want to talk about some of the conclusions of the ‘Rapid Review of Gender Equality 2018: Phase One’, which was recently published. The report draws attention to many areas where the Welsh Government needs to drive improvement and show leadership. One specific action that the report recommends is to tackle the low number of people who take advantage of shared parental leave within Welsh Government. The report specifically recommends the introduction of shared parental leave at the enhanced maternity rate to fathers who take a period of absence. Will you do this?

Yes, I'm very much hoping that we can implement that recommendation in the report. I'll just, Deputy Presiding Officer, set out where we are. We've published phase 1 of the report as it is. We have yet to respond formally to it. We are looking now to see what we can take forward rapidly over the summer, or, in other words—I don't know what cliche I can use: low-hanging fruit, if you like—something that is pretty obvious that we can get on with, and then we'll have a medium and longer term plan for some of the, as Siân Gwenllian rightly said, more challenging aspects of the report.

I'm due to have a series of meetings with the Permanent Secretary—and I'm not in any way shirking this, I would just like to hasten to say, but obviously the terms and conditions of the civil service are a matter for the Permanent Secretary and not for Ministers—but I'm due to have a series of meetings with the Permanent Secretary around a range of items in the report, which are to do with civil service terms and conditions and so on, with a view to seeing what we can do. I'm delighted to say that, alongside the Assembly Commission, the Welsh Government has now signed up to the Chwarae Teg fair-play employer benchmarking, so, that should drive some of that forward as well.

Thank you very much, and we look forward to seeing that being implemented. Now, the report draws attention to many areas where the Government has not achieved what was intended, and the report does warn that equality is often seen as a tick-box exercise that doesn't influence policy. There is one part that is particularly critical in the report, where it talks about how,

'the current budget process and structure continues to act as a barrier to effective cross-government working on all issues, including gender equality. The budget process is not aligned to the policy-making process and budgets focus on financial pressures rather than impact.'

I will repeat that:

'The budget process is not aligned to the policy-making process'.

To me, that is a damning criticism of the way that the Welsh Government sets is budgets, and the way that it has been operating for many years. But, more importantly, what are you going to do to ensure that this changes, and changes immediately?

Actually, as it happens, the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and I, just shortly before this session, attended the budget advisory group for equality, where we consult with them during the budget process. We had a spirited discussion there of the new integrated equality assessments and what we can do, as a group of people, to ensure that they are rolled out in a helpful way and not as a tick-box exercise. I have a helpful graph, Deputy Presiding Officer, that I can share with Assembly Members, about how we expect that process to work and what improvements it should bring. As part of that, we then discuss—because, as I said, we haven't responded formally to the report. When we do respond—. We discussed helpfully in that group what the group might do in order to move some of the issues forward when we do the formal response. So, it was a very helpful preliminary conversation, and, in the autumn, I'll be in a better position to be able to respond very positively to some of those.

The report also talks about the lack of ability within your Government to turn intentions into outcomes. It goes on to say that:

'Actions and objectives within equality plans, well-being plans and national policy more widely are felt by many of those we spoke to, to lack ambition and, based on an analysis of current Welsh Government policies, there is an increasing tendency to make broad, aspirational statements with limited actions, timescales and success measures to outline how these aspirations will be realised.'

I have to say that the statement, in relation to wanting to create a feminist Wales, does ring a bell there, doesn't it—that is, that they are 'broad, aspirational statements', but where are the actions emanating from that?

In terms of the best performing nations in relation to gender equality, all of them publish data and evidence regularly and accessibly, mapping out gender equality. Without actions or indicators that will promote gender equality in policies in Wales, it will be impossible for us to trace or to see the progress that takes place effectively, and it will restrict scrutiny.

Do you acknowledge that these are themes that we see time and again from your Government? We will, later on, be looking at the report of the low-pay inquiry that the committee undertook, and we also recently discussed, in terms of mental health and other subjects—this lack of data and lack of targets. So, can you show the way to the rest of the Government, by adopting quantitative targets and meaningful indicators in order to measure progress towards gender equality in Wales?

Yes, I think there's much that I can agree with there in what Siân Gwenllian is saying. I don't agree that it's an issue across the board, but there are data issues in Wales. We struggle to uplift some of the national surveys in a realistic way, and although it's not quite on the topic that we're currently discussing, I hope it will be illustrative. For example, we haven't taken part in the race disparity audit that the UK Government did, even with the Welsh uplift, because the numbers that we would have got from that would have been too low to have been of any statistical significance. So, we're actively looking at the moment at what we can do in Wales to do something that is statistically significant, and very much in terms of our response to this early phase of the gender review, and then I hope in the action plan going forward, once we've got the second-stage process, will be how we get baseline data, what data's currently available, what resource we need to uplift that, because we will have to do that, because the UK data tends not to have enough of a sample in Wales to be significant, and then what we can do to create those targets, because I quite agree with her that, unless we have those targets in place, we won't have any idea whether our policy is or isn't effective.

Also, on the point of leadership, though, it's easy to be cynical, but if you don't state that you want Wales to be a feminist place, and if you're afraid to do that because of the cynicism, then I personally think you'd never get there. So, whilst I acknowledge the cynicism, I also acknowledge the vision, and I want to work very hard indeed to make sure that we do have an active action plan that is implementable and meaningful over, as I said, the short, medium and longer term to embed those processes.