Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:43 pm on 17 November 2020.
Diolch, Llywydd. First Minister, from the start of this week, people on low incomes in Wales will be able to claim £500 if they have to stay off work and self-isolate due to COVID-19. I'm pleased to see that those payments will now be backdated to 23 October. However, it remains the case that local authorities in Scotland and in England have been delivering the grants for some weeks and backdating them to 28 September. Now, the Minister for Health and Social Services has made it clear that Wales's payments have been delayed because the Welsh Government has had a
'practical challenge in getting all of our systems in place to make this work'.
Can you tell us what those practical challenges are? And can you also tell us why the Welsh Government isn't backdating the payments to September, like in other parts of the UK, as surely this means that people on low incomes in Wales will be financially disadvantaged compared to people in England and in Scotland?