5. Statement by the Minister for Housing and Local Government: Coronavirus (COVID-19)

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 5:37 pm on 17 March 2020.

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Photo of Julie James Julie James Labour 5:37, 17 March 2020

Thank you for that series of important questions. Just on the by-elections, we've already contacted local authorities with impending by-elections to say that the emergency Bill will contain provisions to postpone them, and that authorities should do the right thing and postpone them in advance. So, the one in Swansea, I believe the electoral registration officer has already written out to say that they're suspending all work on the elections.

It's slightly more complicated for elections that were being held in the immediate future. So, I believe there's one on Thursday scheduled in Cardiff, so we are in conversation with Cardiff council about what the best thing to do there is, and, obviously, the Bill won't be in force by then, but, nevertheless, we're asking people to do the right thing in terms of the by-elections. That's pretty straightforward.

The whole issue around free school meals and the issue around what else children receive in schools apart from education is a really difficult issue, and one of the reasons we're urging schools to stay open, at least until the Easter holidays. What we need is the month's plan, so, two weeks of the remaining school term and two weeks of the Easter holidays, to get the plans in place to ensure that children who receive free school meals can still receive them in whatever arrangements we can put in place. We will be working closely with local authorities and, obviously, education colleagues to put those provisions in place, and that's a very large number of pupils. Some schools in my constituency have a very high number of free school meal pupils who, obviously, would be very disadvantaged.

But there are other groups of children. There are groups of children who are placed with their parents, but only because they have supervision in school. So, we will have to make sure that there are safeguarding arrangements put in place for such children. There are a number of others. There is a long, long list of things that we need to do that schools normally do that we will need to put in place. Although I accept everything that Members have said across the Chamber, Deputy Presiding Officer, about the difficulties with schools and so on—the education Minister has been having meeting after meeting with various people about it, and I know will be answering questions and meeting the committee tomorrow—clearly, there are a number of things that we need to rapidly put into place to make sure that we can cover off as many of those things as possible and that each local authority area has a number of centres that can step into that. So, we've a lot of work to do to get to there. We're still in the phase of trying to buy some time, if you like, to get those arrangements in place in a coherent and controlled fashion, with the right information out to people, rather than it being very ad hoc, which is otherwise the danger.

For domestic abuse victims, absolutely, we've already been considering actually not only for existing domestic abuse victims, and I don't mean this in any trite way, but being confined to close quarters with your nearest and dearest can be very stressful, even for people who are in perfectly reasonable relationships. So we will need to put helplines in place, talking therapy lines in place, and that kind of thing, and also the Live Fear Free helpline—that's very hard to say—will be still available, and we'll make sure it's available all the way through that. But, yes, we will have to put a number of arrangements in place.

In terms of housing and homelessness, as I said briefly in my statement, we're already looking at arrangements to ensure that people are right at the sharp end of homelessness and get the help and support that they need. I understand that the English Minister has announced an initial £3.2 million earlier today for her help for homelessness. I don't yet know whether there's anything in that for Wales, but clearly we're already looking at measures to pick that up.

There are other issues around housing. We have been urging residential landlords who have buy-to-let mortgages, where their lender is being encouraged to give them a mortgage holiday, to pass that on to their renters, clearly. So we're urging Rent Smart Wales to be doing that, and to be fair, the Residential Landlords Association have been asking their landlords to ensure that they do that. We will be writing out to social landlords about what should happen about rent in social housing—registered social landlords and councils in the next day or so—and I will be doing another update for Assembly Members, Deputy Presiding Officer, probably by written statement later this week, about some of the provisions that we're looking at there. That includes victims of the recent floods, many of whom are in temporary accommodation, and what we will be looking to do to ensure that we get those into more suitable accommodation. Obviously, if that's their own home, then that's much more ideal, but for some of them that's not going to be possible in the short term. So, we're looking at that as well.

I don't know what the NHS blank cheque means. We hope that it means that there will be enough money coming to us, and obviously we fund health and social care jointly. Obviously, we will need to include social care in that. That's just axiomatic. There are a whole series of things that the First Minister mentioned when answering questions on health and social services and in First Minister's questions just now that will be looked at over the next weeks and months, including getting people who are fit for discharge from hospital but who haven't been able to be discharged more rapidly discharged. Very hard decisions are going to have to be made about the level of choice that people have, and so on, in order to cope with the crisis, but we will be looking at all of those.

Today, Andrew Morgan and I put out an appeal during the press conference for anyone with social care experience, or anyone who feels that they could help, to come forward to their local authority to see whether they can be of assistance in the coming days and months. I repeat that appeal now: people should contact their local authority and explain that they would like to be considered. As part of the emergency legislation we are looking at provisions that affect people who've got a pension. So, at the moment, there are claw-back provisions for people who work more than certain hours and so on, so we're looking to relax those as part of the emergency legislation that's coming through to meet this crisis.

There are a whole series of other things around assisting various third sector organisations with all kinds of things—equipment and so on—but actually, just with staffing resources and stuff, which will be considered at tomorrow's meeting. I'm sure we'll be updating Assembly Members accordingly.