Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Finance and Trefnydd – in the Senedd at 2:15 pm on 8 January 2020.
Jack Sargeant recognises the importance of the housing support grant, as do I, in terms of it being one of the levers that we have in terms of preventing homelessness here in Wales. He's right that, despite being able to maintain budgets at existing levels, we unfortunately haven't been able to provide real-terms increases to every item in the budget. Pressures continue, of course, going into next year.
I think that our record in Wales does compare favourably with that across the border, where Supporting People was dehypothecated, leading to significant cuts in the funding, according to the National Audit Office. But, of course, when the budget is announced on 11 March, we will see then to what extent there is additional funding that does come forward to Wales, and, obviously, any changes will be made then in an early supplementary budget, should those changes be significant.