I welcome your statement today, Minister, and the publication of the housing support grant guidance for local authorities. As you know, the equality committee that I chair has been doing a lot of work on rough sleeping, and in particular, in our recent work, we've dealt with co-occurring disorders and issues around commissioning. Indeed, we'll be debating that report here in the Chamber tomorrow.

But I very much welcome that the guidance makes clear that commissioning drives procurement, because that's been a theme throughout the committee's work on this subject, and we do believe that effective commissioning should lead to effective services that meet the needs of the people accessing them. I also welcome that the guidance emphasises the importance of involving and engaging people who use the funded services in all aspects—the planning, the procurement, the monitoring and the evaluation. That's clearly very important. I'm particularly pleased that the guidance highlights the importance of considering the length of contracts within the context of establishing a stable environment that enables recruitment and retention of staff, and stability, of course, for people using the services. We found that the current levels of instability within the sector have been repeatedly highlighted as a barrier to establishing effective relationships with the people accessing those vital services.

While I welcome much of the guidance, I continue to have concerns about the level of funding in the system. As you know, our committee called for an increase in the housing support grant as part of our budget scrutiny, and along with colleagues from across the Chamber, these calls were repeated last week during the debate on the draft budget. Our recommendation was based both on our budget scrutiny and on our ongoing work. We’ve received correspondence from Cymorth Cymru, Community Housing Cymru and Welsh Women’s Aid saying that the cash-flat settlement in the budget is simply not enough, with services reaching a tipping point.

So, while getting the commissioning of services right is obviously essential, it’s also vital that there are sufficient funds to enable the right services to be delivered in the right place and, of course, in a timely fashion. I heard what you said earlier, Minister, and I note that the Minister for finance, in responding to questions last week, suggested that, were additional funding to be allocated to Welsh Government, then that could provide extra funding for the housing support grant. So, I very much welcome what you said earlier about those discussions, and we look forward to hearing the outcome.

But it would also useful if you could clarify what consideration has been given to reallocating funds to provide the necessary increase to the housing support grant, because, of course, we don't know that additional funds will be forthcoming from the UK Government. Diolch yn fawr.