Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Finance and Local Government – in the Senedd at 1:53 pm on 15 September 2021.
Huw Irranca-Davies, obviously, is right that we are many steps ahead of the UK Government in terms of the thinking that we’ve done on this issue and, of course, Huw was the original chair of that inter-ministerial group which pulled together interests from across Government to ensure that we were considering this in a very holistic way, not just, as I said previously, looking at how we raise and distribute the finance.
And again he’s right that we have taken steps which put people in Wales, actually, at an advantage as compared to people in England, because here we have the weekly maximum on the amount that a person can be charged for all of the care and support that they are assessed as requiring at home and in the community. The money that people can keep before paying for care is also much higher here than it is in England.
So, we’re many steps ahead already, but the challenge ahead, I think, as I know Huw Irranca-Davies appreciates, is huge in terms of our ageing population and so on. So, we’ll bring that group together very quickly. We did meet just before the end of the Senedd term, so this isn’t a piece of work which has been on the shelf for a while. Actually, we kept it going right to the end of the Senedd, so it’s just a case of reconvening and picking up where we left off.