I thank Mike Hedges for that supplementary question. He is absolutely right to point to the success of the decision made here in the National Assembly to have a national scheme. When the social fund was abandoned by the UK Government, here in Wales we decided that we would have a fund that would be run on a Wales-wide basis with no local lottery in it. In England, we know that many local authorities took the money that they were given when the social fund was broken up and provide no service for poor people with it at all.

Here, we have helped 280,000 applications to the fund since its inception. The budget has increased year on year in this Assembly term. It was £7 million in the first year of this Assembly term; it's £11.2 million in this year. It went up £2 million in this financial year; it will go up by another £1 million in the next financial year. The number of applications has gone up remarkably quickly in an age of austerity: 65,000 applications in the first year of this Assembly term; 160,000 in this financial year, to the end of December; so it's going to be more than 100,000 additional applicants to the fund.

And not only have we sustained it, Llywydd, by more money to keep the fund available to people, but we've extended its scope as well. We've made sure that it can respond to the needs of refugees and asylum seekers here in Wales. We've made sure it's available to people who are discharged from prison with absolutely no possessions at all. I wish there wasn't a need for a discretionary assistance fund. I wish that the social security system provided people with enough to be able to meet their needs without this final safety net of the welfare state. But while it is needed, here in Wales we go on investing in it and making sure that those whose needs are the very toughest in our society have somewhere in Wales that they can go.