2. What considerations has the Minister given to ensuring that the forthcoming Welsh Government budget does not reduce services to over-60s in Wales? OAQ54305

We continually assess the impact of a range of factors on Welsh Government spending plans, including the latest demographic projections. I'll be meeting with the older persons' commissioner on 9 October, as part of my engagement with stakeholders ahead of the forthcoming budget.

May I thank the Minister for her answer? And it's very important that you do meet with the older persons' commissioner to discuss these needs. We've seen the UK Government cuts to pensioners; they've attacked, for example, the Women Against State Pension Inequality, ensuring that they have harder considerations for their state pension. We've seen how they've taken away tv licenses, or overseen the taking away of tv licences for some people. It's important that this group of people have always been supported by the Welsh Government. They've always been able to benefit from the over-60s' travel concessions on buses. They've also been able to benefit from free swimming for over-60s. I've obviously had a lot of correspondence from constituents following recent announcements by the Welsh Government, particularly the letter from the Deputy Minister last week, which highlighted the changes to the free swimming concessions. These people see this as a benefit for their health, for their well-being, to remove loneliness and isolation, to actually be a very important part of civil society. Will the Welsh Government ensure that these communities are not going to be forgotten about in the Welsh budget, and will be supported to continue these activities?

I can certainly give you that reassurance. Social care is one area that is particularly important to older people, and that is one of our top cross-Government priority areas. As part of my considerations for the budget, I undertook a series of visits over the summer, and a couple of them will be of particular interest. The first one was an integrated care fund project in Cardiff, which is there to support older people, and then, a second visit was to the Maes Arthur housing development in Aberystwyth, and that's a social housing development that is helping older people to downsize to properties that they find more manageable and then also freeing up properties with larger numbers of bedrooms for families to be able to take as well. So, those are a couple of the visits that I took that have a specific relevance to older people. 

In terms of the free swimming initiative, of course, there's a question to the Deputy Minister later on this afternoon in terms of being able to explore that further, but it is important to recognise that there will still be a free swimming offer for both young people and the over-60s, delivered by local authorities, based on local authorities' understanding of their communities, with a focus on providing opportunities for young people especially in disadvantaged communities. But over-60s will also remain a target audience, and it's important that local authorities find the best way in order to engage with that target audience to understand how free swimming can best meet those needs.

And on the issue of the free bus pass, I know that there's been an opportunity for you to discuss your concerns there with the Minister for Economy and Transport, and I'm sure those discussions will be ongoing, because, of course, that's part of a piece of legislation that will be subject to the full scrutiny process within the Assembly.  

Local authorities, of course, across Wales provide services that are greatly valued and, indeed, much needed by our older people. However, despite having the highest percentage of over-65s in north Wales, Conwy County Borough Council has historically been hit by your poor settlements. The local authority is now facing a budget shortfall of £12.5 million for the next financial year. It would take a 23.1 per cent council tax increase to cover the service pressures, meaning that, yet again, there would be even more penny pinching from our pensioners. This has to stop, and the buck falls fairly and squarely with your Welsh Government. You have the money provided by the UK Government. One pound twenty—£1.20—for every pound spent in England is spent here in Wales. The thing is, will you now commit to using some of this extra £600 million from the Chancellor to stop the strategy of continual slicing of local government settlements, and no more so than for our local authorities in north Wales? 

Well, the nerve is quite incredible. The fact that Welsh Government has had budget cuts for a decade—. People have been living with austerity for a decade, and the buck stops firmly in the UK Government's responsibilities there, I have to say. But, that said, I think it's important to recognise as well that Welsh Government has been quite clear in our early discussions about the budget that health will continue to be a top priority, but we are really, really keen to ensure that we can offer the best possible settlement to local authorities. 

As far as the local authorities funding formula is concerned, that's decided in partnership with local authorities, and the Minister for Housing and Local Government and I have been very clear that we are open to ideas of other ways to deal with the formula, but the local authorities themselves haven't pressed us for changes to that formula. 

A big concern for many people in the Rhondda right now, and something that could reduce access to services, is the question of bus pass renewal. The current bus pass will no longer be valid after December, so people are naturally keen to quickly get sorted what is, for many, a lifeline to the world outside their front door. Unfortunately, from day one there have been major problems. For some reason, the applications were only made available online, and we're talking about pensioners. Some pensioners are, of course, not online and will not have friends or family to help, and the suggestion from Transport for Wales that a carer could help is laughable, because we all know that carers are not given enough time to do their job as things stand.

After a week, it was announced that paper applications were going to be accepted. Whether this is anything to do with the Transport for Wales bus pass renewal website crashing and being offline since last week is anybody's guess. Why weren't these bus passes automatically renewed? No-one has got younger since they first applied, have they? Minister, will this Government take responsibility for this botched exercise and, if necessary, put more resources into this so that no-one who is eligible for a bus pass misses out as a result of someone else's incompetence?

Well, I'll repeat what I said yesterday, and I think Leanne Wood was in the Chamber when I said it yesterday, and that's the fact that the existing concessionary travel cards will continue to remain valid until 31 December. So, the key message is that there's no rush to apply for your new bus pass; we have until the end of the year. And the reason why we have new bus passes is because the current chips will no longer work in the system after 31 December, but the new ones will be formatted so that they can work in an integrated transport setting, and we talk all the time about the importance of integrated travel. It is true, of course, that there was a great deal of traffic on the website in the early days and that did lead to the website crashing, which is obviously unfortunate, but work has been undertaken now to improve the experience and the capacity of that website. And discussions are being held to see how older people can be supported to apply for their bus pass if they don't have somebody to support them with that. I'm sure that the Minister for Economy and Transport will be able to provide further updates in due course.

Minister, as a result of cuts to local government budgets over the years, the over-60s have been hit disproportionately. We have seen the closure of day centres and libraries, which have increased loneliness and isolation in this age group. Minister, how will your Government ensure that your future budget decisions do not contribute to increasing loneliness and isolation?

Welsh Government has been clear that tackling loneliness and isolation is a priority for us. There was a great piece of work that was done by the committee that looked at that, and it is informing Welsh Government as to how we might go about tackling loneliness and isolation in future. 

Through local authorities, Welsh Government funding is going towards community co-ordinators or local brokers—they're given different names in different parts of Wales. They're doing absolutely incredible work in terms of linking up older people who are experiencing loneliness and isolation with the kind of services and the breadth of social opportunities that are in communities. And that is something I'm really keen to continue supporting because I've seen for myself the incredible work that they do.