3. Statement by the First Minister: The Programme for Government

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:02 pm on 15 June 2021.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 4:02, 15 June 2021

Llywydd, I thank Vikki Howells for those very specific questions. I'm grateful to those local authorities that have come forward offering to assist us with a basic income pilot, offering to do it in their own areas. As the Member knows, we are working on ideas to involve looked-after children, young people leaving the care of public authorities, as the way in which we could mount a basic income pilot here in Wales, and I'm grateful to Rhondda Cynon Taf council and other local authority leaders who have come forward to offer to assist us with it.

I hope Members here will have had a chance to see the Law Commission's report published last week on coal tip safety. It's a sobering document. It touches on many of the things we've talked about this afternoon about the impact of climate change and rainfall in Valleys communities and the fact that standards of construction of coal tips, which were safe enough in their day, may well not be safe enough to go on protecting those communities from the impact of weather events, intensive rainfall and so on. It's a very, very good read, if anybody has a chance to look at it. It does rely on working with the UK Government, and let me say, I'm grateful for the fact that I've been able to co-chair, with the Secretary of State for Wales, the group that we have got together to work on coal tip safety. It was through that group that the possibility of Law Commission work was raised and then funded by my colleague, Lesley Griffiths when she was responsible for that area.

I wish I had as much positive stuff to say on the vacant land tax. The process we have attempted to run is the process set out in the Government of Wales Act 2017, passed by a Conservative Government. It's that Act that lays out how we can draw down the authority to create a vacant land tax here in Wales. We chose a vacant land tax, Dirprwy Lywydd, as you will remember, to test that machinery, with a relatively uncontentious and very specific piece of legislation. Since the election in December 2019, we have faced, I think, a blanket refusal by the UK Government to operate the machinery that they themselves set down. We'd had reasonable co-operation under the Theresa May Government and we were making I thought very good progress in getting an agreement with the Treasury and others on it. It's been a blank wall since December 2019, and that's deeply disappointing and I think it's preventing us from being able to take forward an idea that other parts of the United Kingdom would have been able to learn from, using that living laboratory that devolution provides, in which we can all try different things and then learn from one another.