Questions now from the party leaders. Conservative leader, Andrew R.T. Davies. 

Thank you, Presiding Officer. First Minister, I'm used to my fair share of negative headlines in the Western Mail, but last week the Western Mail carried a headline that said, 'Businesses stabbed in the back by Drakeford'. It went on inside to say that they feel punched in the stomach by the current Welsh Government. Do you think that's a fair reflection of the support that you've given to businesses since the pandemic started?  

Well, the headline was a quotation from press releases put out by his party. [Laughter.] Maybe he ought to read his own press releases before he reads the Western Mail, Llywydd. To put to me a headline in the newspaper inspired by his own party as though this was somehow fair comment, well, really, it's not a good start, is it, to his first question on the floor here. Is it a fair comment? Of course not. 

It's a very fair comment because, actually, that comment came from a business owner in north Wales, First Minister; it wasn't a comment from a Conservative press release—

I've seen the press release. 

—but we have passed comment at the lack of support that you have put on the table for businesses the length and breadth of Wales. Why haven't you put support for start-up grants to make sure that businesses can recapitalise themselves? We know that you've got £140 million still unallocated from the £200 million that you identified during the election campaign. Is it not a fair reflection that businesses need to be recapitalised? And when you have comments like that, that's not politicians' comments—that's business owners themselves commenting that they feel let down by the Welsh Government. So, will you today outline what you will do with the additional £140 million that you have available in the Welsh Government's budget to support businesses here in Wales? 

Well, Llywydd, there's a more sensible question in that contribution, but let me put a few facts on the record first. Here in Wales we have allocated £2.3 billion in coronavirus grants and reliefs to businesses in Wales. What have we received from his Government at Westminster in order to fund that £2.3 billion? We've received £1.9 billion in business consequentials. If it is his serious proposition from his sedentary position that we should have used money given to us for the coronavirus care of patients to put—[Interruption.] Llywydd, I hear the leader of the opposition saying to me that we've had £6 billion from the UK Government, as though all of that were available for businesses. Is it his serious proposition that we should have used the money given to us for test, trace, protect purposes, for vaccination purposes, for catch-up purposes in our schools—that all of that should have been used for business support in Wales? If it is, let him say it. It was a choice he could have offered. I don't suppose, however, he is at all. We have received £1.9 billion in consequentials, and we have provided £2.3 billion—£400 million more—for businesses in Wales than they would have had had they been on the other side of the border. 

Now, his question about how we use the money that is still set aside is an important one, and my colleague Vaughan Gething is, I know, working with his officials to design the best use of that money alongside businesses who have been most affected and particularly those businesses who will most go on being affected by coronavirus restrictions. We have to move on from a period in which almost all businesses needed help to concentrating that help on those for whom conditions mean they cannot resume full operation. That is the conversation we are having. That is how we will recalibrate that funding. I want it to go where it will make the greatest difference.  

I appreciate the First Minister wants to use diversionary tactics time and time again, but it is a fact that the comments I put to you were comments from business owners themselves feeling punched in the stomach or stabbed in the back by the Government of the day, which is your Government, First Minister. It is a fact that you have that money unallocated in the budget, and businesses need that money now. They don't need to wait another month, another six weeks. These are businesses themselves talking that they need the money now, because they need to recapitalise after being the longest part of the United Kingdom shut down, because we shut down before other parts of the United Kingdom did. 

But the other important area of the economy to get comfort from the Welsh Government and understanding about the rules and regulations is the hospitality sector and the events sector, importantly. And I appreciate this is a very fine balancing act, because we know the Indian variant is taking hold in parts of the United Kingdom and, indeed, here in Wales. But what is the First Minister's view on the regulations that the events sectors in particular will have to deal with going forward, when we know other parts of the United Kingdom have a date of 21 June? I appreciate that date might move, First Minister; I appreciate that date might move. But I note today that the Celtic Manor's manager—[Interruption.]—the Celtic Manor's manager is saying that they are unable to attract businesses into Wales because of the current rules that exist. So, are you able to offer us any view of the way the Welsh Government see things panning out in the late summer and early autumn, with the restrictions that the events sector and the hospitality sector have to operate here in Wales?

Llywydd, I'll deal with the very first part of the Member's question first. So, one of the very first decisions I made on resuming this job after the election was to release £66 million from that £200 million to go directly to businesses in Wales. By the end of the second day of that fund being open, nearly 2,000 applications had been received for £10.1 million, and, by today, awards have already been offered to the first of those businesses to apply, and that money will be with them by the start of next week. That money is designed to support those businesses through the month of May and through the month of June as well, at which point we will be able to, through discussions with the sectors, agree how some of the remaining money can then best be deployed. So, I just want to be clear with Members that no business is left unable to claim support. Businesses are already claiming support from the £66 million. Decisions to award funding have already been made, and the money is on its way to them.

It is a very important point that the Member raises about hospitality and the events sector, and I wish I could give them a more definite answer than I'm able to. We've moved to level 2 restrictions. The Cabinet will be considering, this week and next, whether or not it is sufficiently safe in Wales to move to level 1 restrictions, and that would further liberalise the ability of the hospitality and events sectors to get back to business. Of course, that is what we want to happen. We want to be in a sufficiently strong position that those sectors can reopen safely and be able to attract customers back to them. I know, in the next question, Llywydd, we'll be talking about pilot events that we are holding to learn lessons how that can best be done. But the context within which we are making those decisions is a genuinely challenging one. 

The India variant of coronavirus is already in Wales, as the leader of the opposition acknowledged. Across our border, it is now in community spread. It is doubling every five to seven days in those communities. We know it is more transmissible. We know that the vaccine is less effective in dealing with it. The Royal Bolton Hospital yesterday issued an appeal from its chief executive for patients not to attend there, because of the pressure that hospital is under because of the coronavirus outbreak in that city: eight people in critical care in that one hospital in England—more than twice the number of people in critical care in the whole of Wales. We've just got to go on very carefully, looking at that context, seeing any impact that there may be in Wales, and then make decisions that are as helpful to the sector as we can be without doing what the sector itself has asked us all along: not to find ourselves in a position where, having opened up the sector, we're in a position of having to close it down again. It is, as the leader of the opposition said, a very finely balanced set of judgments, and we'll continue to make those judgments over the next week as further data comes in from what is happening across our border and the numbers we now see here in Wales.

Plaid Cymru leader, Adam Price.

Diolch, Llywydd. The people of Wales voted this month by a margin of more than 2:1 for parties that stood on a platform of greater powers for the Senedd. Westminster's reaction to this mandate so far has been not just to ignore it but to seek to reverse it. They have a plan for Wales; it just doesn't involve us. The Senedd bypassed on the replacement to European Union funds; Transport for Wales rebranded as 'Great British Railways'; Wales to get a freeport, whether we like it or not, and maybe even a tunnel in the Celtic sea, floated without consultation and built, presumably, like the M4 relief road, without our consent. If you add to this list the internal market Bill, the Australia trade deal, and a UK Government hub seemingly conceived as some imperial outpost, doesn't Westminster's strategy increasingly look like abolition by stealth?

Well, Llywydd, I have to agree with the leader of Plaid Cymru that the charge sheet against the present UK Government is a long and serious one. The so-called plan for Wales—a plan made for Wales without Wales: not a single conversation with the Government of Wales in its production; not so much as an invitation to a single conversation with the Secretary of State before it was published, or even an invitation to its launch. I must say, it was deliberate, it was provocative and it was intended to be so. Now, I say to Members on the Conservative benches here that, if we are serious about the future of the United Kingdom—and I'm certainly serious about that topic—we cannot fashion a future for it if the UK Government thinks that the way that that future will be fashioned is to try to roll back the settlements that have been agreed in two referendums here in Wales. And yet, every day—every day—that is what they do. And while they do it, then people who believe in the separation of Wales from the United Kingdom will find the arguments that the leader of Plaid Cymru has made already this afternoon.

[Inaudible.]—another example. Westminster's latest assault on Welsh democracy involves the £500 bonus for health and care staff in Wales. Not content with taxing it, Westminster now appears to be using it as an excuse to cut people's benefits. So, instead of receiving a thank-you bonus, many workers will be punished with a deduction of up to 63 per cent in their universal credit. If we controlled our own welfare and tax policy here, none of this would happen of course. Now, you recently reiterated, First Minister, your personal opposition to the devolution of tax and benefits in a wholesale way, as, for you, they are part of the glue that holds the United Kingdom together. Perhaps, though, even you might now concede that that glue is coming decidedly unstuck. What is the collective view of the new Welsh Government on the devolution of welfare?

Well, Llywydd, I'm going to have to gently suggest to the leader of Plaid Cymru that the election is over, and the idea of independence was very thoroughly tested in this election and people in Wales made their decision on that issue.

So, the policy of my party on the benefits system is that we should seriously explore, as John Griffiths, leading the local government committee in the last Senedd, did on our behalf, the devolution of the administration of parts of the benefits system. But the benefits system itself should be an engine of redistribution right across the United Kingdom. The fact that it is temporarily under the control of a party that doesn't regard it in that way is not a criticism of the potential that that system has always had to move money from those who have more than they need to those who need more of it to sustain an ordinary lifestyle. I think that is still one of the things that has the potential to hold the United Kingdom together.

I very much regret that we have failed to persuade the UK Government not to tax the lump sum we've been able to provide to social care workers. And the fact that it is being used as evidence of income for the benefits system is an even bigger blow to those people who work every day in that sector to earn a living and now find the money that was provided to them from the Welsh Government being taken away from them by the UK Government through universal credit.

The election may be over, First Minister, but the bitter legacy of deep poverty and inequality in our communities, which is bequeathed to us by this deeply unequal United Kingdom, that persists. The 31 per cent of our children in Wales who are living in poverty: how can you argue that the union has been a force for untrammelled good for them? Contrast that with New Zealand: this last week, a radical well-being budget was passed by the Government there that will drive down child poverty this year to half the level in Wales. That's a Labour Government, but of an independent country that has the power to choose its own future.

Now, you as a Government have pledged to lead a new national civic conversation on the constitutional future of Wales. Will it be a genuinely open conversation—open to the possibilities of independence and, yes, the challenges too? Open to it at least as a plan B, if Wales says 'yes' to radical federalism, but Westminster continues to say 'no' to Wales. Now, that would be a conversation that I and my party would be happy to join.

Well, Llywydd, I am looking forward very much to being able to develop plans for that civic conversation. I want to do it with parties right across the Chamber who have a serious interest in the future of the United Kingdom and Wales's place within it. I don't define any ideas out of that conversation because, if it's a civic conversation, citizens will have the ability to make that contribution. All those possibilities will be able to be rehearsed within it.

I would just say again, Llywydd, that we had an election in which the choice could not have been clearer. There were parties who stood who believed that this whole institution should be abolished, and that the governance of Wales should be handed back to Westminster. They didn't succeed in gaining support to be represented here. There was a party that believed that Wales should be taken out of the United Kingdom. If any party stands on that proposition and wins an election, then it has a mandate to take that forward. But, until it wins an election, it cannot expect that the centre of gravity of the discussion about our future will be dragged to a proposition that failed to command the support of enough people in Wales to give it a majority here on the floor of the Senedd.