Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 2:30 pm on 29 January 2019.
Trefnydd, I'd like to request two statements today. Firstly, I'd like to thank the Minister for health for his written statement updating AMs on maternity services in Cwm Taf. I'm also grateful to the Minister for meeting with me and other AMs to discuss this, and I've also had frank and useful conversations with the chair of the health board. However, could we have an oral statement in Government time so that AMs can really scrutinise what is, after all, such an important issue for my constituents, who should be able to expect safe, good-quality maternity services?
Secondly, at lunchtime today, I attended the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers campaign event for better pay, and I was horrified to find out there that people on universal credit could lose out on a week's rent during 2019-20. This is due to the way that the Department for Work and Pensions and social landlords calculate in different ways the number of weeks in that year, due to the financial year having 53 Mondays. Now, the net effect could be that, if you are on UC, you could lose a week's rent, and this could have serious repercussions, for example, for tenants of Trivallis, a social landlord in my constituency, who pay their rent weekly. Could we have a statement from Welsh Government on its response to this and how it's working with social landlords to make sure that people on universal credit don't lose out?