Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:27 pm on 16 October 2018.
That was a very extensive range of issues raised there. I'll do my best to address most of them. In terms of the prosaic issue around updating the regulations and so on, obviously, we'll be looking to make sure that all the regulations that are required to be updated will be updated once the framework is in place, and the consultations are complete. And I'll just take that opportunity to say that we're very anxious that this completely reflects the views of disabled people and their representative organisations. And, as I said in the statement, we've had contact with a lot of individuals as well as representative organisations, and we want to encourage that to happen. We'll be making sure that we do roll it out. If the Member does have anything specific he'd like us to address in terms of roll-out and information, I'm more than happy to discuss that with him. All ideas are welcome, to make sure that it has as wide a dissemination as possible.
In terms of working with the DWP, we've worked very closely with them. My colleague the Minister for Welsh Language and Lifelong Learning, in her employability plan, has been working extremely hard to make sure that, under the title, 'Working Wales', all of the programmes available come together. The idea is to—forgive the analogy, Deputy Presiding Officer—hide the pipework, so that when people present for help, it's not their issue whether they've presented in the right place or on the right stream, but are actually assisted by everyone who's helping under the title, and that includes across UK Government agencies as well, to get them onto the right course, in the right place, at the right time, and that includes having the disability support.
He identified a number of individual issues that I'm more than happy to meet with him to discuss outside. And if there is anything I can do to ensure that meetings take place, I'm happy to do that alongside my colleague the Cabinet Secretary for public services. If we can assist on that specific issue, I'm more than happy to do it.
But I think, really, fundamentally, he's agreeing with me that what we're trying to do here is make sure that each individual disabled human being is regarded as unique and a person in their own right, and has the barriers that prevent them from taking part in society removed and that we don't perceive it as something that they need to do in order to access things. So, I'm very happy to discuss with him the issue that he raised around asking people to buy the right-sized wheelchairs, because that very definitely is not the model that I would like to see being rolled out.
So, when the action plan comes out, the Member will be able to see that we have a large range of issues around that. We'll be incorporating it into our various instructions to local authorities and other public service bodies around the way that they do commissioning and so on, but more importantly we will be looking to them and to ourselves as a Welsh Government—and I'm more than happy to take up the issue with the commissioner as the Member suggests—to be exemplar employers in this regard. I think we should be re-looking at our own targets and being world class in that. At the moment, I'm not happy that our targets are as stretching as they could be and we'll be looking to the public sector in Wales to lead the way to show other employers, in particular in Wales, as the Member is quite right: unless they have really severe life-limiting issues, everyone I meet also wants to work and be as independent as possible. So, we'll be looking to roll that framework out in that regard.