Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:31 pm on 25 June 2019.
Llywydd, I want to thank John Griffiths for that and to agree with him entirely at the shocking nature of the impacts that austerity now has in our communities. I reread at the weekend, Llywydd, the reports that John Griffiths's committee have produced in relation to homelessness, and they provide a telling level of detail about the impact that cuts to benefits and cuts to services are having in the lives of people across Wales. As a Government, we will take the advice of the action group that has been established, chaired by the chief executive officer of Crisis, to make sure that we have everything we can in place as we go into the second half of this year. We will continue to invest the additional £20 million that we have found within our ever-shrinking budgets to do more in the field of homelessness. We will promote Housing First as a model, which brings together the two aspects that John Griffiths highlighted in his supplementary question—the need for more accommodation, but, at the same time, for the support services that respond to the complex needs that many people who find themselves sleeping rough on our streets have accumulated during that incredibly difficult journey. All of those things will be done by this Welsh Government here in Wales in order to mitigate the impact of rough-sleeping across our nation.