7. What consideration does the Cabinet Secretary give to supporting the eradication of homelessness in allocating funding to the local government and public services portfolio? OAQ52726

Dirprwy Lywydd, we will invest an additional £10 million in the current financial year to tackle homelessness. The draft budget for 2019-20 repeats that £10 million and adds a further £10 million specifically to tackle youth homelessness, making a total of £30 million in new investment in this vitally important area.

Thank you for that answer. Cabinet Secretary, I return today to the matter of rough sleeping; it is not going away. Indeed, we heard yesterday that 65 rough sleepers have died in the last year in the UK. I know that Wrexham has previously been reported as having the highest number of rough sleepers in Wales. Last week, my staff attended the launch of a prototype sleep pod in Newport, designed by Amazing Grace Spaces. These are designed in Wales, made in Wales, providing jobs and upskilling in Wales. I've seen the design and heard about how this sort of scheme could work, providing secure and warm beds for the night, but also providing the support services that those sleeping rough may need to get them back on their feet. Cabinet Secretary, funding and vision are needed. Will the Welsh Government provide the former and demonstrate the latter?

I thank the Member for her question, which had a number of very important points in it. First of all, she's absolutely right, I think, to say that rough sleeping is a phenomenon of austerity. It is a desperate—desperate—judgement on the current UK Government that we have seen the rise in the number of people—[Interruption.] Can you imagine a country—

Thank you. Thank you.

—that is the fifth richest country on the face of the globe and has had a Government that has been prepared to tolerate the conditions in which we see more and more people forced to live on our streets? It is an indictment, a visible, everyday indictment of the policies that have been pursued.

Against that background, as Mandy Jones said, the solutions are a mixture of physical infrastructure, the need for more places for people, but, by itself, rough sleeping is not amenable simply to a housing solution, because so many of those people who find themselves in those circumstances have, along the way, accumulated any number of other difficulties in their lives, and they need help to deal with those matters, too.

The Newport example that she cited sounds very interesting. I'm sure that it is known to my colleague the Minister for Housing and Regeneration. She recently, for example, visited Wrexham in north Wales, which Mandy Jones mentioned, in order to see some innovative arrangements that are being put in place there. I've had a recent discussion with the Minister about the plans she has for using the additional money that is now available to her in this very important area, and I don't think I'm letting anything out of the bag in saying that her general approach is to invest more money in those examples that are there already, and we know are succeeding, and then to invest further funds in innovative solutions that we've not been able to attempt so far, and which this additional investment will now unlock.

Thank you very much, Cabinet Secretary.