Questions now from the party leaders. The leader of the Welsh Conservatives, Andrew R.T. Davies. 

Thank you, Presiding Officer. First Minister, what is your view of the situation involving Liberty Steel and its associated companies, and its likely impact on jobs here in Wales?

I'm not going to speculate on the future of Liberty Steel—a very important company here in Wales, and one that the Welsh Government has supported in the past. I have a letter in front of me from Mr Gupta, the executive chair of GFG Alliance, which is the parent company of Liberty Steel, written to my colleague Ken Skates on 4 March, so at the end of last week, in which Mr Gupta sets out the trading position of Liberty Steel and reinforces the commitment that GFG has to Wales. We as a Government will continue to work with the company and with the steel sector more generally to secure the future that we are confident, in the right conditions and in the right way, the steel industry has here in Wales.

I agree with you, First Minister; Liberty Steel is an important player here in Wales, and that's the reason for the question. It's important to understand what financial support has been made available to Liberty Steel in the past and whether any additional support, given that you've alluded to a letter being delivered from the company to the economy Minister, has been requested by the company to secure its operations in Wales. Can you inform us whether there's an offer on the table at the moment from the Welsh Government to support Liberty Steel's operations or associated companies here in Wales?

The letter from Liberty Steel did not request additional funding from the Welsh Government; that wasn't the purpose of the correspondence. The purpose of the correspondence was to set out the difficulties that Greensill, the financial provider to GFG Alliance, has experienced, but to put on the table as well the strong current trading position of Liberty Steel Group. Steel prices in Europe are currently trading at a 13-year high and the aluminium market is more buoyant than it has been for some time past. In his letter, Mr Gupta makes it plain that factories that the alliance owns in these fields are operating at full capacity to meet high demand and generating positive cash flows. What the letter demonstrates, I think, is the close relationship that has existed between the company and the Welsh Government, and the confidence that the company wishes to continue to create in its future. We will work alongside the company in order to secure the jobs that it provides here in Wales and in order to secure the future of the sector more generally. 

Talking of support, First Minister, Friday is a notable day, with the latest review of lockdown restrictions here in Wales. Your Minister for mental health and well-being has said that, with lockdown and people in Wales, if you give an inch, they'll take a mile. Can I first check whether this is your assessment? Do you agree with her? Or do you take my assessment that it's the hard work of the people of Wales over this lockdown period that will allow you, now, to lift some of these restrictions? Can you confirm what type of announcements we might be looking at on Friday, in particular around non-essential retail? Will you be opening up gyms like the Minister for well-being has previously suggested? And will you, as you alluded to in the press over the last few days, be lifting the stay-at-home rule and introducing a five-mile rule, like we saw last summer?

I'm afraid the leader of the opposition will have to wait until Friday. That is when the three-week cycle ends. The Cabinet will continue to discuss the package of measures that we will be able to propose then during the remainder of this week. But he's right to say that at the end of the last three-week review, I said that I hoped that this will be the last three weeks in which we have to ask people in Wales to stay at home and that we would be able to move beyond that. I said then as well that we would continue to make the return to education as quickly and as safely as possible for our children our top priority, and that, alongside that, we would look to find ways of allowing people to do more in their personal lives and to begin the reopening of new aspects of the Welsh economy. That continues to be the list of issues that we discuss as a Cabinet and I'm looking forward to being able to make announcements on that on Friday.

The fact that numbers in Wales of people suffering from coronavirus continue to go down, the fact that the stress and strain on our health service is reducing in the way that it is—that is undoubtedly the achievement that belongs to people here in Wales, for everything that they have done to abide by the difficult ask that we have made of them during recent weeks, in order to bring this latest wave of the pandemic under control. As we lift restrictions, I will once again be appealing to people in Wales not to approach this by asking themselves, 'How far can the rules be stretched, what is the most that I can get away with as restrictions are lifted?' We continue to face a public health emergency. Nobody knows how the Kent variant will react as we begin to restore aspects of our daily lives. I will be appealing once again to people in Wales to ask themselves the question not, 'What can I do?' but, 'What should I do in order to go on making my contribution to keeping myself, others and the whole of Wales safe?'

Plaid Cymru leader, Adam Price.

First Minister, upon winning your party's leadership election in December 2018, you said that, in a fractured world, Members of the Senedd should strive for 'a kinder sort of politics'. Last week, your Labour colleague and leader of Neath Port Talbot council, Rob Jones, was forced to step aside after a recording emerged of him making despicable comments about our fellow Senedd Member Bethan Sayed. Yesterday marked International Women's Day, with this year's theme, 'choose to challenge', encouraging people to challenge stereotypes and bias wherever they arise in order to effect change. With that in mind, will you place on record your condemnation of Councillor Jones's remarks, and choose to challenge his appalling misogyny? And, should his temporary resignation, in your view, be permanent?

I was concerned to read accounts of what Councillor Jones had said, and I'm sure that he has done the right thing in stepping aside from the leadership of Neath Port Talbot council while those remarks are properly investigated by the monitoring officer and by the ombudsman here in Wales. That's why he has been suspended from his membership of the Labour Party while those inquiries can be completed. I think that it would be sensible for anyone to await the outcome of those inquiries before drawing conclusions about what should happen next. But I'm sure that Councillor Jones was right to step down from the leadership of the council and to refer himself to the monitoring officer and to the public services ombudsman. We will now await the outcome of those inquiries.

But surely, First Minister, even now you can issue an outright condemnation of his remarks. The recording also reveals a sinister way of going about politics, doesn't it? He, astonishingly, alludes to favouring projects supported by Labour councillors for public funding. Citing the example of Alltygrug cemetery in Ystalyfera, he talks about telling officers to go and search down behind the back of the sofa to pay for a project that, he boasts, resulted in people turning to the Labour Party. I have written to the auditor general, First Minister, requesting that he not only investigates the remarks made by Councillor Jones in the recording, but also ensures that robust checks and balances are in place to safeguard against the potential misuse of public funds for party political purposes in Welsh public authorities. Would you support such an investigation?  

It is important that investigations are carried out, and it's important that those investigations are allowed to come to their own conclusions, rather than politicians on the floor of the Senedd anticipating those conclusions and asking others to agree with the conclusions at which they have apparently already arrived. There's no place for misogyny in any part of Welsh life or in any political party. I remember that Mr Price himself launched an inquiry into misogyny in Plaid Cymru in June or July of 2019. I have looked to see if I can find the result of that inquiry, but I have not been able to locate it myself, and that may simply be because I've not looked in the right place. But just as he was right, I'm sure, to have that inquiry carried out in his party, so it is right that the allegations that have been made against Councillor Jones should be investigated, and certainly the results of those inquiries will be made public.

I just ask him finally: could you admit that the words used by Councillor Jones to describe Bethan Sayed are absolutely appalling? You have all the information, surely, that anyone needs to make that statement now.

In last week's budget, the UK Government faced fierce criticism for the way in which its so-called levelling-up fund favoured Conservative constituencies. In the first tranche of funding, 39 of the 45 areas due to receive support are represented by Conservative Members of Parliament. As my colleague Liz Saville Roberts put it,

'our public money is being snatched for the budget of Tory bungs.'

The revelations that have come to light as part of the Neath Port Talbot saga have worrying echoes of this, First Minister. Are you confident that the case of Neath Port Talbot is not just the tip of the iceberg, and that Wales doesn't have its own problem of cash for colleagues on Labour's watch?

I condemn misogyny wherever it is to be found. I think it is right that there should be inquiries into those matters, and I think that it is right that those inquiries should then be made public. That will happen in the case of Councillor Jones, and I think that that applies as much to his party as it does to mine.

Trying to deduce a generalised smear from one incident to what happens right across Wales does not seem to me to be a sensible or proportionate way of responding to that. I took the precaution, thinking that this might be raised this afternoon, to look at the record of the Welsh Government in the way that we use funds right across Wales. Let me just give him a few results of that. In fact, I'll focus for a time just on one, the twenty-first century schools programme—a major Government programme, providing schools and colleges fit for the twenty-first century. There are 25 schools in Plaid Cymru-controlled Carmarthenshire, 11 schools in independent-controlled Pembrokeshire, nine schools in Plaid Cymru-controlled Ceredigion, 18 in Plaid Cymru-controlled Gwynedd, 14 in Plaid Cymru-controlled Ynys Môn and 14 in Conservative-controlled Conwy. The record of the Welsh Government stands up to examination in every scheme that we have, and there is no possible implication that could be drawn, for the way in which funds are used by this Welsh Government, on party political lines. We do so always on open, transparent and needs-based criteria. That is the right and proper way.

The levelling-up fund, to which Adam Price referred, is the opposite of that. That will now be in the hands of the Secretary of State in the communities, local government and housing department of the UK Government, a department that knows very little of Wales, and there's no-one here to assist them to find out more. I remember what the Public Accounts Committee of the House of Commons said about out the Secretary of State when he awarded towns fund funding to 60 out of 61 constituencies in England that were either Conservative marginals or on the list of seats that the Conservative party hoped to win at an election. That is a very worrying precedent, and one very different to the way in which this Welsh Labour Government goes about using public funds in Wales.