Thank you. I welcome the opportunity to bring forward these amending regulations today. The Council Tax Reduction Schemes (Prescribed Requirements and Default Scheme) (Wales) (Amendment) Regulations 2021 amend the 2013 council tax reduction scheme regulations. The scheme provides direct help to households across Wales by reducing their council tax bills. The UK Government abolished council tax benefit on 31 March 2013 and passed responsibility for developing new arrangements to the Welsh Government. The UK Government's decision was accompanied by a 10 per cent cut to the funding for the scheme.

The Welsh Government responded by meeting the funding gap to maintain entitlements to support in 2013, and we have continued to maintain entitlements each year since. The scheme currently supports around 280,000 of the poorest households in Wales. As the pandemic continues to place increased pressures and hardships on the people of Wales, it is even more important that we ensure that the systems that are in place to support them are as fair as they can be and are kept up to date.

Amending legislation is needed each year to ensure that the figures used to calculate each household's entitlement to a reduction are increased to take account of rises in the cost of living. The 2021 regulations make these uprating adjustments and maintain existing entitlements to support. The financial figures for 2021-22 relating to working-age people, disabled people and carers are increased in line with the consumer price index—0.5 per cent. Figures relating to pensioner households continue to be increased in line with the UK Government's standard minimum guarantee and mirror the uprating of housing benefit.

I've also taken the opportunity to include minor technical changes and to make additional amendments to reflect other changes to related benefits. For example, I'm amending the regulations to ensure that people in receipt of Windrush compensation payments will have those payments disregarded so that they do not alter a person's entitlement to support through the council tax reduction scheme.

These regulations maintain entitlements to reductions in council tax bills for households in Wales. As a result of this scheme, the most hard-pressed households receiving council tax reduction scheme will continue to pay no council tax in 2021-22. I ask the Members to approve these regulations today.