5. Will the Minister make a statement on living-wage accreditations in the education sector in Wales? OAQ54164

Thank you, Mick. I am committed to the public sector in Wales being living-wage employers, including the education sector. I'm delighted that, in addition to local authorities, all FE and higher education institutions in Wales are now living-wage employers and are working towards formal accreditation of that status.

Thank you for that answer, and I'm sure you would welcome the University of South Wales becoming the two-hundredth employer in Wales to implement the living wage. We obviously want to see more institutions having the same level of accreditation, but would you also agree with me that there is still, even with those accreditations, more work to be done to ensure that areas of work and service within those institutions that sometimes may be outsourced or subcontracted also benefit from the same living-wage accreditations?

Well, you're absolutely right, Mick. In order to get an accreditation of the kind that the University of South Wales has recently been awarded, the living wage must be implemented both for directly employed staff and outsourced activity. Without that, accreditation cannot be won. 

Universities Wales members have committed to paying the Living Wage Foundation's living wage to all directly employed staff already, and they've already started the process of implementing the living wage across their outsourced HE activities. As I said, all institutions are currently in the process of being formally accredited for that achievement, and I'm very grateful to have worked in partnership with the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales, Universities Wales and the sector more widely to gain this commitment. The HE sector in Wales will be the first part of the United Kingdom's higher education landscape to achieve this goal. 

Minister, I welcomed your response to Mick Antoniw with regard to local authorities across Wales. Monmouthshire County Council was one of the first local authorities to attain the status of paying the living wage to all of its staff. As you said, councils should be doing this, public bodies should be doing this, and also the education sector as well. So, could you tell us a little bit more about how you're encouraging the education sector in Wales to follow the example set by the majority of local authorities now, and how you're making sure that these living-wage accreditations do happen and do have the weight that we would attribute to them? 

My remit letter of 2019-20 to HEFCW sets out my expectation that I will receive confirmation this year that all Welsh universities will have received formally their accreditation. And I have looked, wherever I can within my department, to make progress in this regard. So, for instance, the staff of the Student Loans Company that operate the student loan system on behalf of Welsh Government out of offices in Llandudno Junction—we've also been able to negotiate with the Student Loans Company an increase to ensure that all staff there are on the real living wage and are on salaries that are more aligned with Welsh Government officials, who actually happen to be working in the same building. Enabling us to do this addresses some of the issues of recruitment and retention of those staff, so that's just another example of what we're trying to do within education to ensure that, if you're part of the national mission, in whichever way you're part of the national mission, you will be rewarded fairly.