Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:16 pm on 22 January 2019.
Dirprwy Lywydd, I think this Government has a creditable record of working with Members in other parties where there are proposals that we are able to support. Indeed, I was responsible for responding to the safe nurse staffing Bill in the last Assembly, a backbench Bill with widespread support across the Assembly, where a great deal of work went on between the Government and Members in different parties here to get that piece of legislation safely onto the statute book. The position last week was different. The Government's position was clear. There are a series of actions that we are taking that we believe will have a far more significant impact on improving services for people with autism and their families than would have been secured had that Bill moved forward. The Minister outlined those carefully during that debate—the fact that we are to have a statutory code of practice, that the integrated autism service will be available in all parts of Wales, that we have to allow the Additional Learning Needs and Education Tribunal (Wales) Act 2018 passed by this Assembly to have its impact. The Minister made a series of undertakings to continue to report to committee and on the floor of the Assembly in the progress of that legislation, and he said—I heard him say on this floor during that debate—that, when those aspects have had a chance to be bedded in, to mature, if at the end of that there are things that can be done through legislation, our minds are not closed to that. If we do that in the way that the Member first mentioned in his initial question, I think there is a better chance that families across Wales will get the sort of service they want, and we will be better off if we continue to try to work on that shared agenda, rather than using this forum as a way simply to try to allocate blame.