Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:58 pm on 8 June 2021.
Well, Llywydd, I thank Rhun ap Iorwerth for drawing attention to Carers Week, which is a very important week here in Wales. We have a higher proportion of our population that provide informal care than any other part of the United Kingdom, and I was very pleased on Monday that my colleague Julie Morgan was able to make specific announcements, using money that we have set aside. It was in my own party's manifesto to make sure that respite care for carers can be improved here in Wales.
In the social partnership arrangements that we have agreed during the last 12 months, we have established a new social care forum. It's part of the social partnership forum, and it brings together the employers, the local authorities and the trade unions. They are giving us advice on how we can make sure that the money that we will invest as a Government, to make sure that people in the sector are paid the real living wage, reaches those workers rather than ending up in the profit margins of private companies. That is the only delay that there will be in the system.
It is just making sure that, with over 1,000 different employers in the sector—. It's not the same as in the health service. When I was the health Minister, we were able to agree the real living wage for health service employers, and it's very simple. There are a small number of employers, a national system, the money goes in at one end and you know where it’s going at the other. It genuinely is not like that in the social care sector, given the number of employers there are, the different scale and the different way that they operate. The social care forum is going to help us make sure that we have the mechanism in place so that the money that the Welsh Government will invest for the purposes that we share with the Member and share with Plaid Cymru, both of us in our manifestos having made this a priority—we just need to make sure, in a practical way, that that money ends up where we want it to end up. As soon we’re confident that the mechanism is there, we’ll be able to get on with that job.