The next statement is a statement by the Deputy Minister for Social Services on social care fair work and real living wage, and I invite the Deputy Minister to make the statement. Julie Morgan.

Diolch, Llywydd. I'm pleased to be able to outline today our approach to ensuring that the real living wage is the minimum rate paid to care workers in Wales. We've long expressed our support for the Living Wage Foundation's real living wage, and this is something we would like to see implemented across all sectors of the economy. But we recognise that additional action is needed to ensure that it is implemented in social care. That is why it is a key element of our programme for government and a key priority for this Senedd term.

During the pandemic, social care workers began to receive wider recognition for the important role that they have in providing care and support to those that need it most. However, there is no greater recognition than fair reward. We are committed to creating a stronger, better paid workforce in social care. Improving pay for care workers supports our commitment to a fairer Wales, and underpins good-quality social care services that many people rely on.

Last year, we convened the social care fair work forum. The forum is a social partnership group in which our partners have come together to look at how the working conditions of social care workers can be improved in Wales. Social partnership brings together trade unions, employers and Government to identify and implement solutions that bring about better outcomes. It's a well-established way of working in Wales. So, I will be looking to the social care fair work forum to help us take forward the real living wage commitment. This is a long-term commitment, and we must work collectively with it to ensure that it brings about long-term sustainable change.

We intend to embark early in the Senedd term; I will be asking the social care work forum for their advice on how best to take this commitment forward and how we can ensure that, in doing it, we do not destabilise this fragile and complex sector. I also want to work jointly with the forum to understand how we might maximise the impact of this funding.

Fair work is about more than pay. The definition of fair work that we have adopted in Wales covers six characteristics, with equality and inclusion as a common thread throughout all of these. The characteristics include, for example, employee voice and collective representation, security and flexibility, growth and progression, and safe, healthy and inclusive working environments. We need to be confident that public funds will mean workers are better off and the sector stronger, and that public funds will be a catalyst and a lever for employers introducing a wider range of benefits and fair work practices for workers.

Social care workers deserve fair reward, and there is a sense of urgency in ensuring that happens, and I want to see a first group of workers receiving the payment early in this term of Government. 

The Deputy Presiding Officer took the Chair.

However, it is a complex sector, and we know that long-lasting change will need to be approached with a steady hand, and must be based on careful consideration. We will need to take a phased approach to implementing this commitment, which means that not all workers will receive the real living wage at the same time. This is because we recognise that employers and commissioners will need time to adjust to changes. We want to ensure that they are never rolled back.

This is a sector where there are hundreds of employers and tens of thousands of workers. The vast majority—about 85 per cent of services—are in the independent sector. A large number of independent sector providers are running just one or two small homes or services, and they are the employer. This means that pay, terms and conditions are variable across the sector. Rates of pay for care workers differ from service to service and across local authorities. We understand that a small number of employers are already paying the real living wage. Most, however, do not.

Even though we are investing public money, there are challenges in mandating employers to go further than the statutory minimum set by the UK Government. We will need to work through the commissioning arrangements to make this happen. We need to take advantage of the strong working arrangements that we have between providers and commissioners.

This commitment will help support recruitment, but it is important that, in implementing the commitment, we don't create new challenges for providers. That's why engagement with all parts of the sector, through social partnership, is so important. This illustrates the complexity of the issues that we need to work through.

I will be asking to attend a meeting of the forum in July, when I'll be asking the forum members to make recommendations to me about the best approach to ensuring that care workers in Wales enjoy fairer pay by 2024. I will be asking the forum to engage with the sector as it undertakes that work. I recognise that this commitment will have an impact on parts of the sector not directly represented at the forum, and so we will also ensure that engagement on this commitment is wider than forum membership. When I meet the forum in July, I'll be asking them to consider which part of the sector should be our starting point. I'll be asking the forum to report back to us, following which I will make a further statement on our plans for implementing this commitment.

We are committed to making social care a long-term career choice, where workers consider they are properly rewarded and supported. This is vital if we are to strengthen the workforce. Strengthening the workforce will underpin the development of social care services. It will ensure the sector can meet the changing needs of our communities. This is the foundation on which services will be become stronger. This is about delivering a fairer, stronger Wales.

Conservative spokesperson, Gareth Davies.

Thank you very much, Deputy Presiding Officer, and thank you to the Deputy Minister for your statement this afternoon.

It's deeply disappointing that fair pay for social care workers is such a long way off. I'd have thought, Deputy Minister, with my party pledging to pay staff in social care at least £10 per hour, and Plaid Cymru pledging to increase the pay in real terms, that introducing the real living wage would have been the bare minimum you would have done. Instead, Welsh Government have kicked it into the long grass and asked a committee to come up with recommendations—not that we should be surprised, given how the Welsh Government have treated the social care workforce during the past 15 months. Social care staff are some of the lowest paid workers, but they were expected to go above and beyond during the pandemic. We all remember only too well the £500 promised to care staff last year, which was dogged by dither and delay because the Welsh Government failed to discuss the matter with the Treasury before winging out their press release. Deputy Minister, we are grateful that you remedied this with an additional payment, but now will you apologise publicly to all those who missed out on the initial payment, and will you task the social care fair work forum with looking beyond the real living wage? Will you be asking them to look at the issue of sick pay, which was highlighted over the course of this pandemic?

A House of Lords inquiry found that care homes that relied upon those who funded their own care were able to pay staff almost double that of those homes funded by local authorities. Do you agree, Deputy Minister, that to properly fund social care staff we have to ensure that local authorities are properly funded? Will you reassure this Chamber that future local government settlements will allow our councils to pay social care staff a fair wage?

Of course, how we value our staff is not just in the amount we pay them; how we treat them and how we train them is almost as important as paying a fair wage. Unfortunately, Wales has a social care workforce that has been demotivated and demoralised for far too long. As a result, we have seen record staff turnover rates and sky-high job vacancies.

Deputy Minister, the previous Welsh Government set a target of employing 20,000 more social care staff by the end of this decade. Is it still your intention to do so and, if so, will you outline the steps you'll be taking to achieve this target? According to the latest available figures, we have 9 per cent of posts in adult social care unfilled and a staff turnover rate of 13 per cent. In domiciliary care, the turnover rate is an astronomical 30 per cent a year. Deputy Minister, do you agree that unless we tackle the demoralisation of staff, the issue of pay becomes secondary? Aside from the issue of a fair wage, how will the Welsh Government make the profession more attractive to both existing staff and those thinking of pursuing a caring profession?

I look forward to working with you, Deputy Minister, to improve the pay and conditions of staff working in social care, to ensuring care work becomes a more desirable profession, and a fair reflection of the value we place upon the amazing staff working in care. Diolch yn fawr iawn. 

I thank the Member very much for those remarks, and I'd like to reiterate our total commitment to the social care workforce. The pay issue has certainly not been kicked into the long grass. As I said in my statement, we need to do this carefully and cautiously because it is a very complex—. The care sector is very complex, and we need to do it in partnership, working with trade unions, working with employers and working with other interested parties. I think it is essential that we move forward in that sort of way, and it would be very foolish to try to rush and do that. 

Nevertheless, we do want to move as quickly as we can because we recognise that social care staff have been paid a very lowly wage for a very long time. So, we do intend to implement some parts of the sector as soon as we can. I hope by April next year that we will be able to start paying some parts of the sector, but we are depending on the social care fair work forum to work with us, in the joint way that I've described, to decide who should be the first social care workers to receive the uplift. And, of course, to work with the local authorities, whom he mentioned, to make sure that we are all working together to reach a common goal, because I think what the pandemic has done is make everybody realise that we do want to ensure that social care workers do get a better deal, and they certainly don't have that now.

We are paying the real living wage and that is a priority in our programme for government and, of course, it's a rate of pay that is independently calculated every year to meet the real cost of living. And it is reviewed—the Living Wage Foundation accredits organisations that pay the living wage—and so this is really, I think, the most appropriate way to move forward. But we do know that more will be needed to be done, but I think the delivery of the real living wage will make a real difference to care workers' lives. But we do accept that it is one step forward. 

I think he referred to the demoralisation of the care staff. Certainly, they've been through a huge upheaval and faced tremendous difficulties that we could never have imagined that they would have done. But I do think that the payment of the two lots of special bonuses was a great uplift to them, because many of them spoke to me and said how this did make them feel that they were being acknowledged, and that their work was being acknowledged. So, I think that was very important. We have worked very hard on trying to increase the professionalisation of the social care staff by registration. That's something that we were doing before the pandemic hit us, and I think it is something that will ensure that the social care staff have pride in their profession. So, I thank him for his remarks, but I think we are going on the right way.

Plaid Cymru spokesperson, Rhun ap Iorwerth. 

Thank you very much, Deputy Presiding Officer, and thank you, Deputy Minister, for your statement, and this is something I welcome as a step in the right direction. There's a sentence in the statement that causes me some concern. You said that during the pandemic care workers had started to receive the broader recognition they deserve for the important role that they play in providing care and support for those who need it most. That's true, of course, for the public in general, that there is now an enhanced understanding of the importance of the sector, but there's never any excuse for a Government only now to be waking up, during a pandemic, to the value of this sector, and that's why I'm so frustrated that it's taken a pandemic for us to get to this point where there is proper recognition starting to be shown in terms of their wage level.

There is something that you can do. Yes, it does have to be done cautiously. I would like to see the process happening far more quickly than I have seen outlined by the Deputy Minister today, but, yes, there are steps that need to be taken. One thing that the Government could do would be that when changes are introduced in the appropriate manner, that it would be backdated to include elements of the pandemic when care workers have gone way beyond what anyone could have expected of them in caring for the most vulnerable people.

Why propose the real living wage rather than the £10? It's not just us and the Conservative Party; Unison have recommended that £10 should be the figure. Is there a reason? Because you're getting close to it—£9.50, I think, is the figure now. Why pitch this at that lower level when there has been a lot of work done on this, including by the relevant trade unions, to decide what the level should be? Let's be honest; £10 an hour isn't close to being enough either.

It's not just salary levels that are important. Far too large a percentage of the workforce are on zero-hours contracts. We in Plaid Cymru have brought forward motions time and time again, asking you, 'Please, tackle this issue and prevent the use of these zero-hours contracts within this sector.' But the Government has chosen to reject those proposals. Is it your intention now, along with this proposal of a salary increase, to pursue that issue too?

And on the the bonus, finally, I agree with the Conservative spokesperson that the Welsh Government dealt with the issue of the bonus in a shambolic manner, if truth be told, and that the ducks should have been in a row before announcements were made, and we know how much delay there was because of that. But it was the Conservative Treasury, ultimately, that failed to deal with the issue in the serious manner it deserved and to find a solution so that those problems could be resolved. And one problem that is raised time and time again by me and others on these benches is the people who have missed out on universal credit as they've been offered that bonus. Is that something that you are still trying to tackle, including the possibility of increasing the bonus for those who have lost out on benefits as a result?

I thank Rhun ap Iorwerth for all those points. In terms of why the real living wage rather than the £10 that he mentioned, I think I did respond to that, to the Conservative spokesperson. The real living wage provides certainty to workers that their rates of pay will be independently and fairly reviewed each year. Rather than a one-off figure, such as £10, workers can be assured it will be updated every year. The Living Wage Foundation is a very respected organisation that makes a calculation and they have come up with the £9.50, and I think it will be a great step forward when we do implement the £9.50 for all social care workers. I do acknowledge that it is a step in the right direction, but as I said, we are relying then very much on the social care fair work forum to work on all these issues with us.

And all the other points that he mentioned about the bonus, you know, I think, obviously, the fact that the UK Government continued to tax the bonus and also allowed it to affect the benefits is something that they did have the power to do, and the fact that they didn't do it does show their lack of sympathy with social care workers.

The other points he makes about the zero-hours contracts and the different recognition of social care workers, those are all things that the social care fair work forum will be considering. But I just really feel that this is a step forward and we will deliver the real living wage to all social care workers by 2024, but we will start delivering it by April next year and I think that that is a reasonable time frame.

Finally, Vikki Howells.

Diolch, Dirprwy Lywydd. Thank you, Minister, for your statement. I wonder if you're able to say a little more about the definition of social care workers. It's an issue that I've had raised with me and that I have, in turn, written to you about—that some types of workers aren't included in the social care recognition scheme, for example, advocates and business support staff.

Secondly, I welcome your comments around making social care a long-term career choice. Are you able to say anything further around Welsh Government work in terms of social care and the skills agenda? We should all recognise social care as a skilled job, of course, but how can we make sure that it is actually regarded as such?

I thank Vikki Howells for those questions. The issue about who has had the recognition payment has obviously caused some issues, particularly with the people she has mentioned—advocates and business support. But the purpose of giving the bonus to social care workers was to give it to those who actually do deliver the service. And we really wish we could deliver it much wider, but of course, there is a financial limit to what we are actually able to do. So, one of the first tasks that we'll be asking of the social care fair work forum is to work with us in defining who will be the social care workers who will receive the real living wage, and that will not be easy to do. That's why I've said, really, that this is a complex process and why we don't want to rush into doing it. It's obvious that some workers are social care workers, for example, people working in residential care homes or people delivering domiciliary care, but there's a whole host of other people who have to be considered. So, that will be one of the first tasks of the social care fair work forum, and I'm really glad that we'll be doing that jointly with the unions and with employers and other organisations.

Now, in trying to encourage people to choose social care as a career choice, Social Care Wales has been very successful in terms of its registration of domiciliary workers and now it's moving on to the registration of residential care workers. The registration process does highlight the skills that so many people have, and what could be more important than caring for an elderly, vulnerable person or a vulnerable child? It is one of the most important jobs that could be done, and by their advertising—they've got an advertising process that is very well respected and has, in fact, been copied by other countries in the UK, by Scotland in particular—they have managed to attract people to apply for social care worker posts. But I absolutely agree with her that we have to put in all that we possibly can to ensure that these jobs remain successful jobs for people where they feel that they have got a career in front of them. And I think making sure that there is improvement in their pay is one of the first steps towards that.

I thank the Deputy Minister.