3. What specific actions has the Welsh Government taken to lessen the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on women in the workplace? OQ56335

To provide just two specific actions, the Working Wales service has been used by over 6,500 women across Wales during lockdown, and the business start-up grant has attracted 60 per cent of its applications from women. All of this and more is drawn together in today's publication of our economic resilience and construction mission. 

Thank you for the response. We know that women have been, sadly, disproportionately affected by the pandemic, with women making up 80 per cent of childcare, care and leisure services, 75 per cent in administrative and secretarial, and 60 per cent working in sales and customer services—sectors that have been hit hard. We've just talked about childcare, but I think one of the most essential changes that you could make would be that women seeking employment and/or training have access to childcare, as well as those who are in the current scheme, so that they can feel empowered to go out to work again. We are awaiting judgment as to whether the UK Government have acted illegally in reducing the self-employment income support scheme payments for women who have taken maternity leave. I would like to know here today whether the Welsh Government have taken any action to support new mothers in Wales, who will have taken an unfair financial hit by this failure. What risks were flagged in your build back better scheme? We know that school closures have affected women, who are doing a lot of the childcare and the schooling. How will the Welsh Government ensure that Wales will not only build back better, but build back equal? 

Let me begin by agreeing with the sentiments that Bethan Sayed was expressing at the very end of her supplementary question. I've never myself used the mantra 'build back better'; I always say 'build back fairer', because if it isn't fairer, it's not going to be better. She's right to point out the disproportionate impact that the last 12 months has had on women in Wales, as it has on young people, as it has on people from BAME communities. The Welsh Government lobbies the UK Government all the time when it taken actions of which we disapprove and that do not fit with our wish to create a more equal Wales, as the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015 requires us to do. When we publish our spending decisions and the decisions that we have made during lockdown, we accompany them with an equality impact assessment, because we try to see all those decisions through the lens of the equality impact that those decisions have on people. We publish those equality impacts alongside the decisions that we make.

I'm very glad indeed that we have a fertile debate here in Wales all the time about how we can do more and do better to make sure that the decisions that we make during the pandemic, and especially as we come out of it, are focused on those people whose needs are the greatest, where the adverse impact has been the most profound, and where we can use the powers that we have to make a real difference. In that sense, my starting point and the starting point of the Member are the same. We might come to different conclusions about the practical implementation of some of those things, but I don't for a minute dissent from the underlying thrust of what she's said this afternoon. 

I think that's the same for all of us, First Minister. Let's just have a quick look at that disproportionate effect. We've got 72 per cent of working mothers working fewer hours and cutting their earnings due to lack of child care, and during lockdown mothers were doing 35 per cent of uninterrupted work hours that the average father did. I'm sure that those figures from the Chwarae Teg 'State of the Nation' report didn't really surprise you. But what about the fact that women in Wales are twice as likely as men to be key workers, because if you look at those figures together, it's clear that a serious proportion of women key workers stepped back from work because of other COVID-driven demands on them? Regardless of the school hub provision, where attendance was lower than anticipated and I'm sure you'll be asking 'why?' yourself, in due course, it's women who have had to—and I mean 'had to'—put their employers second. As most of those key workers will be public sector workers—obviously, there are private sector workers as well—what levers are at your disposal to ensure that their pay and promotion prospects are not compromised by their COVID-period work record?

I agree that the final point is an important one. I'm afraid I don't think we all do start from the same place. If we did, we wouldn't have a Government that is still not prepared to guarantee that the £20 additional each week for people claiming universal credit is going to be continued beyond the end of March, would we? That's a decision that will fall very disproportionately indeed on women and the work that they do in families. Nor is the furlough scheme based on the sort of principles that the Member has just outlined. Seven in 10 requests for furlough turned down for working mothers—that's what the TUC found in the report that they have recently published. So, I'm afraid it's not as easy as saying, 'We all want to do the right thing', because not everybody seems to me to be in that position. I agree, however, with the final thing that Suzy Davies said, that there will be things that we may be able to do as people return to work, beyond coronavirus and certainly in the public services, that where people have gaps in their employment because they have had to deal with the many different demands that coronavirus has placed on them, they should not be disadvantaged into the long term because of the way in which they have had to make decisions to deal with the many pressures that devolve on them during a crisis.

First Minister, as you've said so often, it is women in the workplace who have been disproportionately at the front end of exposure to the pandemic. They work in retail and care and health and other public-facing roles disproportionately, and in low-paid or casual roles where sometimes the unionised voice for the workforce can be regrettably weaker, yet the pressure can be greater to turn up for work at all costs, including personal health and well-being, and the domestic pressures to put food on the table and pay the bills is also acute.

So, First Minister, as the vaccine roll-out progresses and we can hopefully anticipate more return in the weeks and months ahead to many workplaces, including non-essential retail and personal services and hospitality, where women are over-represented once again in customer-facing roles, then what more can we do than we did last year to ensure that employers put in place every measure possible to protect their staff and customers at work and that the UK Government and Welsh Government have the right measures in place to support those who have to withdraw from the workplace for COVID-related reasons, and not least that the UK Government does not cut that £20 a week from universal credit, because that will hammer women at work and at home too?

Well, Llywydd, I'm sure that Huw Irranca-Davies will recognise the actions that the Welsh Government has already taken to protect workforces where women are disproportionately represented, so our decision early on to make PPE available free in the social care sector was a really important guarantee that those workers knew they would have the protection that that has provided. As you know, it's charged to care homes across our border, where we made the decision from the beginning that the protection of those workers was our top priority and getting them the protection they needed and getting it to them free was an investment by us in the well-being of that workforce, as is the continued scheme that we have to make sure that people are paid sick pay fully in the social care sector, so that they don't feel, as Huw Irranca said, obliged to come back to work when they know that it's not right for them to do so. And in the retail sphere where, again, women are disproportionately part of the workforce, we announced in January that workplaces would have to carry out new risk assessments with higher standards to make sure that workplaces are safe against the new variant of the disease. And we were supported in doing so by employers here in Wales. And those higher standards—making sure that workplaces are properly protected and everything is done to make sure that workers and people who use those settings are kept safe—will continue to be at the forefront of everything that we do as a Government during the rest of this calendar year, when coronavirus is still going to be part of our lives.

And I'll say again, because I so much agree with Huw Irranca-Davies: the thought that up to a third of working families in Wales could find themselves with £1,000 less to meet the needs of their families—people who use that money to do simple things like keep the lights on and keep food on the table—the thought that this Government has kept those families waiting, not knowing what their position would be, it's genuine cruelty. Imagine living in those conditions and knowing that, in just a few weeks' time, you wouldn't have that extra support. I think it's shameful, and I really, really hope that, on 3 March, the Chancellor will finally make good the distress that that has caused to those families.