I'd like to thank the Minister for sharing a copy of the housing support grant practice guidance ahead of her statement today. Now, of course, good intentions from the Government would mean little unless those responsible for delivering crucial services that help to tackle homelessness on the ground are on board, so I do welcome the emphasis placed on securing all around buy-in for the cause of tackling homelessness.

The Minister may want to reflect on how the Government can drive this message home, when we have, for example, Newport council, which is under Labour control, evicting homeless people from a car park where they'd been staying and confiscating their meagre possessions. Now, I'm certain that she would oppose such measures, so I'd urge her to consider what action can be taken in order to ensure that this culture change is reflected across all levels of local authorities.

We know that homelessness is growing on a yearly basis. Welsh Government snapshot statistics show that increase in people sleeping on the streets. The snapshot shows—and again, I'm sure that she's very familiar with the figures—240 people sleeping rough over a two-week period in 2015, and that's increased to 313 in 2016, 345 in 2017, 347 in 2018, and 405 in 2019. I do think it's important to put those statistics on the record, because there is a clear pattern of an increase there. And we know that the real scale of the problem is likely to be much larger, because homelessness is notoriously difficult to measure. But the fact that Cardiff Council had 4,000 requests for help with homelessness in 2018—these figures just start to hint at the scale of the problem.

So, there's nothing in the Minister's statement today that I disagree with. The guidance and regulations seem to be striking the right note, but I do think it would be remiss not to discuss one of the main drivers behind the consistent growth in homelessness, which is of course funding cuts. While the cuts to welfare since 2010 are outside the Welsh Government's control, the £37 million cut to the homelessness support grant since 2012 is within the Government's control, and this year's budget once again delivers a real-terms cut to the budget because of the effects of inflation on the static budget.

Now, the preventative course set by the Welsh Government is the correct one—I agree with it—but it cannot be delivered unless it's supported by an adequate level of funding. If the Welsh Government really is serious about making tackling homelessness a priority, and I believe that the Minister is serious about this, it has to be reflected in budgetary decisions.

So, Plaid Cymru wholeheartedly supports the Housing Matters campaign that's advocated by Cymorth, by Community Housing Cymru and by Welsh Women's Aid, which is in favour of increasing funding to the housing support grant, and their call is supported by the evidence collected by the Equality, Local Government and Communities Committee. Their inquiry found that the current budget—again, I'm sure that you're aware of this, Minister—for the grant does not meet the Welsh Government's apparent prioritisation of homelessness, and recommends an increase in funding in order to meet the ambition of homelessness being 'rare, brief and unrepeated'. They found it's nigh on impossible to achieve this aim in the face of previous cuts to the budget, and in the face of increasing demand on services and complexity.

In terms of the kinds of real-life effects we're talking about here, I'm sure the Minister has looked at some of the case studies on the Housing Matters campaign website. Just for the record, I'd like to read one of them out to the Chamber. This is a direct quotation:

'Through the Housing Support Grant, we have recently helped a young homeless person who is wheelchair-bound move into temporary accommodation, supporting him in applying for benefits, emergency funding, white goods, and pre-tenancy support in preparation to move into permanent housing.'

Again, looking at the holistic way of helping a person in this very vulnerable situation. I know the Minister is of course aware of the impact of the grant for which she's responsible. I would urge her, please, to press the importance of increasing this budget on her Cabinet colleagues, so that it's reflected in the final budget allocation, so that other people like this individual who I mentioned can be supported.