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

Thank you, Presiding Officer. First Minister, two weeks ago in response to my colleague Janet Finch-Saunders, you said:

'the reason why low area statuses have moved up is because of the importation of TB by farmers buying infected cattle and bringing them into the area.' 

That caused a huge amount of distress and hurt in the agricultural industry. Do you accept that's a misleading statement, First Minister?

Llywydd, I repeat for the record that assessment of disease report forms show that eight in 10 confirmed breakdowns in low TB areas—and it was a low TB area that I was being asked about—are primarily attributable to cattle movements. So, it's important to get that on the record as well.

I'm grateful to the Member for his question, though, because it allows me to say that, of course, farmers in Wales work very hard indeed through the biosecurity regimes that they put in place to try and protect their herds against TB. And they need to go on doing that, and they need to go on doing that alongside the Welsh Government and everything we've put in place in order to go on bearing down on the scourge of TB in cattle, the harm it does to animals themselves, but also the very real impact that contracting TB in a cattle herd has on those who've worked so hard very often to build up those herds, and to look after them. None of that can take away from the known facts that in low-incidence areas, it is cattle movement rather than, as I was being asked by Janet Finch-Saunders, badger-driven spread of the disease that lies behind additional outbreaks. 

First Minister, the distress of that statement is that you identified farmers as being part of the problem. You know and I know that the regulations that are in place from the Welsh Government require that all cattle, prior to movement, have to undergo a TB test, and that test is valid for 60 days. So, the farmers themselves are doing all they can, along with the Welsh Government, in fairness, with the regulations that they've put in place. We will disagree about the overall campaign that the Government are undertaking here in Wales, but that I hope you will recognise that was a deeply distressing statement to make by yourself as First Minister, given that there is pre-movement testing of all bovine animals in Wales and animals that come into Wales from England. So, will you apologise today for that distress that you have caused by that statement to the farming community, accepting that we do have policy differences about how TB should be tackled? 

Llywydd, let me put it like this. It was never my intention to cause distress to anybody in the statement that I made. What I was pointing to was that the question I was asked sought to place the blame for rises in TB in north Wales in low-incidence areas and say that they would best be dealt with by badger culling. I make no apologies for repeating the fact that that is not the policy of the Government, nor would it be the right response.

Farmers themselves do have responsibilities. They have responsibilities for cattle movement, and they have responsibilities for discharging the testing regime, and I'm happy to repeat again that I know the enormous efforts that farmers make to keep their herds safe and to comply with those regimes. Where things break down, and we have undoubtedly seen rises in TB incidence in the Conwy valley, in Denbighshire and in the Pennal area, then it is right that the causes of that should be investigated and investigated with an open mind. That involves all the players who have a part to play in keeping those herds safe and reducing TB in those areas.

Well, I regret the fact that you are unable to put an apology on the record, First Minister, but I'm grateful for your more detailed explanation around the sentiments of your comments some two weeks ago. 

If I could address, in my third question to you, the change of policy within 72 hours around the Llandeilo bypass, which I appreciate was a policy agreed with Plaid Cymru in a budget deal in 2017. I happen to believe that there does need to be a bypass for Llandeilo, and I also believe there are other towns that require bypasses as well, such as Dinas Powys in my own electoral region, which has been campaigning for some 50 years. But what I have struggled to find out—. But where I have struggled to find consistency is in the remarks of the Minister on his feet here in the Chamber, who said,

'I think it would look very odd if we'd left Llandeilo out of the whole-Wales review and I would have certainly raised some questions.'

So, why, in 72 hours, did the policy position change or is this just pork-barrel politics?

Well, Llywydd, the Minister set out, subsequent to his statement on the floor of the Senedd, the position of the Welsh Government. Let me be clear: when this Government strikes an agreement with another party, it is our intention to honour that agreement. We had an agreement with Plaid Cymru in a previous budget round. That involved a bypass at Llandeilo, and the roads review, which is a very important policy and will be carried out in accordance with the transport hierarchy that we set out at the end of the last Senedd term, will honour the agreement that we made.

Interim leader of Plaid Cymru, Rhun ap Iorwerth.

Thank you very much, Llywydd. The latest report of the Bevan Foundation, published today, is sobering for anyone. I hope it will awaken this Government to see the impact of poverty on our communities—issues that have come to the fore during the pandemic. It shows clearly the very deep inequality in our society: one in every 10 homes without certainty regarding the future of the roof above their heads; 80,000 having heard during the pandemic that they have to find new homes. And from tomorrow, the 'no evictions' policy will come to an end. Considering the findings of this report, will you reconsider that?

Well, Llywydd, of course I agree with what the Member has said about the way in which the pandemic has exaggerated the inequalities that were already far too evident in our society, and this Government continues to do everything we can to press against the rising tide of inequality here in Wales. But it is a tide that is rising because of the actions that are taken elsewhere.

When I met the Chancellor of the Exchequer some weeks ago, I took the opportunity to press on him the need not to row back on the £20 a week that families in receipt of universal credit have in Wales, as a response to the pandemic. The Chancellor extended that in his March budget to the end of September, but those weeks are ticking away, and once again those families face the none-too-distant prospect of losing £1,000 in a year—£1,000 that really makes an enormous difference every single week to the children who live in those families. I pressed that point as powerfully as I could with the Chancellor.

As far as evictions are concerned, let me just explain to the Chamber—and this will be set out in greater detail by my colleague Julie James—that the regulations that have suspended evictions are coronavirus regulations. They have to be justified in law on the grounds of the pandemic, and as other parts of our society see greater normality restored, then greater normality has to be restored in other parts of Welsh life. Had we not done so, I think there is no doubt at all that the Welsh Government would have been challenged in the courts by landlords who have a legitimate interest in defending their own interests in the bargain between a landlord and a tenant.

Now, we have done an enormous amount during the pandemic to strengthen the support that is available to tenants: extending notice periods, providing additional discretionary housing payments, funding the private rented sector debt helpline and the citizens advice bureaux, as well as the very significant millions and millions of pounds that we have spent through local authorities to go on dealing with problems of homelessness and stabilising people's housing situation. As the time comes when those regulations have to be lifted, the Minister will set out further assistance that we will provide to tenants in that position in order to minimise the risks that people run of becoming homeless and having to be rehoused in other ways by statutory authorities.

First Minister, one word struck me there: 'normal', 'normality'—something we all are looking forward to, in many ways, in the context of this pandemic. But poverty has become far too normal; child poverty has become far too normal, from way before the days of the pandemic. The Children's Commissioner for Wales yesterday said that children's poverty is the biggest challenge facing your Government. It was true before this pandemic. As we've argued for many months, the children's commissioner is arguing that free school meals should now be extended. You could speed up your review of that, you could just do what we've been calling for and extend free school meals to children in every family in receipt of universal credit. Given the sobering message in that Bevan Foundation report today, why don't you just do that?

Well, Llywydd, if only it were just that simple that the Welsh Government could conjure out of the air the many, many millions of pounds that would be required to bring about such a policy, with all the other opportunities to do important things in the life of children in Wales and other Welsh citizens that would have to be forgone by doing so. I'm afraid being in Government is a matter of choices, not of magic solutions where you simply say, 'Why not find £100 million to do something?' as though that had no cost to anything else that the Welsh Government could do. Nor is it possible, in the way that the Member suggested, to accelerate the collection of data that we need to carry out the review. The pupil-level annual school census data will become available and it will become available in the normal way. The Welsh Government doesn't have an ability simply to issue an instruction that would magic that data out of thin air either.

In the meantime, Llywydd, it's important to put some facts on the record as well. In the month prior to the pandemic, so when things were—to use the Member's word—normal, prior to the global pandemic, 66,000 children in Wales were in receipt of free school meals. Last month, the figure was 105,000, so that's nearly 40,000 extra children in receipt of free school meals in Wales in just over a year. Of course this Government wants to increase the number of children in Wales who are able to take up that offer, but we will have to do it in a way that is informed by the latest data and that is negotiated through the budget round, in which there will be many, many very important needs that his party and other Members of this Senedd will advocate for, and that, in the end, we will have to weigh up against one another and do the best that we can from the inevitably limited resources that will be available to us. 

That was a very long list of excuses as to why the Government hasn't taken the action, in over 20 years, that could at least show us that Wales is serious about tackling child poverty. But, from child poverty to the housing injustice that I was talking about, from economic injustice to lower wages in Wales—universal credit, then, has been a disaster to families in Wales. Devolution can and should be a line of defence between Westminster and Wales, if used to its maximum potential. But, given the catalogue of economic and social injustices that I have just mentioned—there are many more—as a result of Wales being tied to Westminster, compounded, yes, by the inaction of successive Labour Governments, can you honestly stand by your comments back in April that the benefits system is part of the glue that holds the United Kingdom together? And, in reality, can you genuinely say that there is no alternative to the continued entrenching of poverty that we are seeing for Wales as part of the UK?  

Well, Llywydd, of course there are alternatives to the policies that entrench poverty, and my party has consistently advocated for those policies. Devolution is the line of defence against the worst impacts of those policies. Our policies are supplementing the social wage of families here in Wales—all the things that we collectively provide, which otherwise people would have to find from their own pockets. Free prescriptions is just a single example of that.

We've forgotten what it's like in Wales to have to weigh up which of three prescriptions you can afford to pay for because you cannot afford to pay for them all, because families in Wales no longer face that dilemma. Families in Wales are up to £2,000 every year better off because of that string of decisions that successive Governments have made here in Wales that leaves money in people's pockets.

That's a real defence. That's a real defence that, every single day, families in Wales feel, because they have money to do things that, in other circumstances—were it not for the actions that the Senedd has taken, that money would not be there for them to make those decisions. So, I don't think that it helps anybody to act as though devolution had been no help to anybody, because it has been an enormous help, year in and year out, to families in every part of Wales.

Llywydd, I do believe that, properly run, the benefits system should be part of what binds the United Kingdom together. The fact that pensions are paid in Wales in the way that they are does not depend for a moment on Wales alone. It depends upon that far bigger pool of risks that are placed into that pool, and then rewards shared out between us. That's just one example of the way in which a UK-wide benefits system continues to be to the advantage of Welsh people.

It could be far more to our advantage, of course, if there was a Government with a genuine commitment to redistribution, to using the engine of redistribution that the social security system should be. But, the fact that a temporary occupation of Government by a single party doesn't deliver that should not be mistaken for the potential that that system has to deliver those benefits for Welsh people.