1. Will the First Minister outline the Welsh Government's plans to reduce the number of people smoking in Wales? OAQ55018

I thank Angela Burns for that question, Llywydd.

We remain committed to reducing the percentage of the Welsh population who smoke to 16 per cent by the end of this calendar year. A post-2020 tobacco control plan is in preparation, deploying all evidence-based techniques to help achieve a tobacco-free Wales.

Thank you for that answer, First Minister. And, undoubtedly, Wales has led the UK in banning smoking in public places, which is very welcome. However, 13 years on, latest figures still show that we're failing to address smoking in young people and expectant mothers. Across Wales, 9 per cent of 15 to 16-year-olds smoke, and 30 per cent of teenage mums smoke. Thirty per cent of mums aged between 16 and 19 are smokers at their baby's birth. Now, this obviously has a long-term impact on them, and, of course, their child. And one of the things I've discovered is that not all maternity services have dedicated stop smoking services. Those that do have them have shown a very high success rate. And we have to recognise that teenage mums in particular are very vulnerable to pressures such as body image, they want a tiny baby, there are a lack of role models, and, of course, the demographics sometimes fight against them. And we also know that if children see people smoking around them, they're much more likely to take up smoking.

So, I wondered if you could just outline for me what the Welsh Government could do to ensure that the best practice that does exist where there's a midwife-led stop smoking cessation service in a midwifery unit is spread across Wales, and we can have more midwives that can lead this kind of practice in order to try to cut down on the rates of teenage smoking.

Llywydd, I thank Angela Burns for those supplementary questions. She is right that there is a continuing challenge to reduce the proportion of young women who become pregnant and who carry on smoking. The figures have to be treated with just a small degree of caution, because the percentage is a factor of the fact that the number of teenage pregnancies has fallen so rapidly during the devolution era. So, in the year 2000, there were 495 young women under the age of 16 who became pregnant in Wales, and in 2017, the last year for which we have figures, it was down to 144. And that's a dramatic decline. And amongst the 144, there is a concentration of young people who have particular difficulties and challenges, then, in persuading people to give up smoking.

But the range of services that are there in the NHS are designed to try and make sure that there isn't just one approach. In-hospital services work very well for some young people, but other young people definitely, we know, prefer to use pharmacy-based services, partly because it can be more anonymous; you'd rather go where you weren't so visible to other people. Specially trained midwives have a very important part to play in working with young people in particular, and then working directly with young people is important as well. So, in Pembrokeshire, in the Member's own area, Hywel Dda is doing a particular piece of work with young people who are smokers, trying to learn from them about the things that they would find most effective as forms of intervention to enable them to give up smoking, and that work is going on alongside primary care clusters and specialist midwives.

Thankfully, we've made progress in reducing the numbers smoking in Wales, First Minister, but it still takes a terrible toll on health in Wales, and particularly regarding people living in poverty. I do believe it's important that we make it more and more socially unacceptable to smoke in Wales, and the ban on smoking in enclosed public places has been a big part of that. A recent Action on Smoking and Health survey showed 59 per cent of respondents in favour of a ban on smoking in city and town centres. Is that something Welsh Government would consider in terms of making further progress?

I thank John Griffiths for that, and I completely agree with him—it was a point made by Angela Burns as well—that social acceptability of smoking leads to young people, in particular, becoming smokers. We have seen a huge cultural shift in the last 20 or 30 years in social acceptability. My colleague Vaughan Gething will bring forward regulations this year to enforce a statutory ban on smoking in hospital grounds, school playgrounds, play areas outside schools, and in unenclosed premises in childcare facilities. And then we will move on to the next phase of our determination to make smoking something that we bear down on, that we reduce, and that we prevent young people from thinking that it's a normal way of growing up. And unenclosed premises, in town and city centres, is one of the things that we will definitely be moving to act on next.