5. Will the First Minister set out the Welsh Government’s policy on the administrative devolution of welfare? OAQ53335

I thank the Member for that. We will explore the case for devolving administration of aspects of the benefit system to Wales. In doing so, we will take into account the work of Assembly committees on this matter and experience elsewhere. Any transfer of functions would have to be accompanied by the necessary funding.

The question of whether the administrative devolution of aspects of welfare can bring benefits by better aligning welfare with Welsh Government policies to tackle poverty and to deal with providing opportunity for all is one that's been around for a while. But there was a frisson of excitement last week, I have to say, at the welcome response of the First Minister to the question of my colleague John Griffiths on 15 January that the case has been made to explore the devolution of the administrative aspects of welfare. It's something I believed we should be open to consider when I was a Minister and I still believe it now. So, whilst recognising there are dangers, flagged indeed by the devolution of council tax benefit, where the UK Government short-changed us badly—that is a lesson learnt—I would urge him to explore this seriously, but with due diligence, with patience, neither to succumb to the over-enthusiasm of those who would ignore any dangers and seek this devolution at any cost to our Welsh exchequer base and our Welsh citizens, nor to succumb to the over-cautious who would say this is too perilous even to consider. Could the First Minister now indicate for us how he might take this work forward, and perhaps to what broad timescale, and whether he'll draw on the report of the Bevan Foundation in doing so?

Can I thank Huw Irranca-Davies for the supplementary question, because the spirit in which he suggests we should go about this is exactly the way that I want us to do it? I want us to do it seriously, I want us to do it positively, but I want us to do it in a way that recognises that there will be difficulties in the path as well as advantages to be gained. The Member is right to point to the fact that administering parts of the benefit system is not a wholly new idea as far as Wales is concerned. The fact that we have preserved a council tax benefit scheme here in Wales, the fact that we have a discretionary assistance fund, the fact that we are taking action to abolish imprisonment as a consequence of not paying council tax and to absolve care leavers under the age of 25 from paying the council tax—those are all examples of how, when we have the ability to do it, we are using the powers we already have in the benefit administration field. The report that our colleague John Griffiths's committee produced pointed to some of the impacts on people in Wales, for example, of the benefit sanctioning regimen. And we know the punitive way in which that has been administered in Wales and in other parts of the United Kingdom and that's why I am committed to exploring whether there are further ways in which we could do things differently and better here in Wales. I hope to explore with the Wales Centre for Public Policy whether they may be the best way in which we can take these first steps forward, looking further at the evidence the committees have considered, looking at the experience of Scotland to date, and then providing an evidence base for us of the sort that Huw Irranca-Davies has pointed to, one where we have courage to look at things that may be new to us but are sufficiently alert to the dangers that might still be there. 

I think, frankly, First Minister, that administrative devolution in this area would be a very meagre thing. Now, since 1945, the social contract that's been the bedrock of the welfare state is that a citizen has a direct relationship with the state for a level of economic security and, no matter where he or she lives in the United Kingdom, they have the same basic economic rights to benefits. If we mess about with this principle, we could end up breaking that consensus we currently enjoy and that sustains a welfare state. We need to be very, very careful about this sort of fragmentation.  

Well, Llywydd, this is not a principle that appealed to the Member's own Government when they forced administration of council tax onto us here in Wales, when they devolved the social fund to us against our wishes, when they insisted that we took responsibility for the disability living allowance without having asked us at all for it first. But, actually—. See, I happen to agree with what the Member says, but I make a different distinction to him. I don't want to see the break-up of the tax benefit system; I think it is part of the glue that holds the United Kingdom together. I am not talking about devolution of policy responsibility for these matters; I am talking about administrative devolution—the ability not for us to have a different system in Wales, but for the way in which that system is delivered on the ground to be in Welsh hands—and I think that's a different matter to the danger that the Member points to, and a danger that, actually, I happen to share. 

I welcome the recent shift from the Labour Government when it comes to the devolution of the administration of welfare benefits. There's no doubt in my mind, nor in the minds of many people who work for homeless support agencies, that austerity is linked to the shocking rise in visible rough-sleeping on our streets, and it's no wonder that this has been described as reaching crisis point by Shelter Cymru. Scotland already has extensive powers over welfare, thanks to the proactive Government from the Scottish Nationalist Party in power there, and they are doing much better on the homelessness front. So, will you commission a study to look at how they mitigated welfare cuts from Westminster so that, if we are able to have those powers in Wales, there is a plan of action ready and waiting? And will you also agree to review what the Government can do in the meantime, using your existing powers, to provide some relief to the growing homelessness crisis we have here in this country? 

I absolutely agree with Leanne Wood that the rise in rough-sleeping is the most visible outcrop of the age of austerity, and it is a profound change in the way that we see that crisis in people's lives in front of us every day, compared to a decade ago. I do want to learn from the experience of devolution of welfare in Scotland. It's a process she will know that isn't due to be completed until 2021, so it is at the very early stages of it, but, nonetheless, in the sort of study that I referred to in my answer to Huw Irranca-Davies, I think capturing the experience of Scotland is important for us. Here in Wales, as far as rough-sleeping is concerned, we are putting more money into homelessness services next year as well as this year, and there are a whole range of initiatives that the Minister then responsible for it, Rebecca Evans, announced before Christmas. We've seen some figures published very recently that have some very small first signs that those initiatives are beginning to make a difference, and I want us to go on doing more to address those very, very disturbing signs that we see around us of people who are forced to live their lives in circumstances none of us would be prepared to see as acceptable.