Part of 4. Topical Questions – in the Senedd at 3:31 pm on 22 September 2021.
Thank you, Mike. I agree with your assessment of prepayment meters. Part of the conversation with Ofgem—I had an already scheduled meeting with them in the diary, and I've had an additional meeting as well—part of the scheduled meeting with Ofgem is to discuss with them the plight of people on prepayment meters and what we can do to make sure that they register as people without a service, and how we can get them on to a better kind of a tariff. That's an ongoing issue.
In terms of the steel industry, and other industries affected around Wales, that's part of the ongoing conversation with Ofgem. A number of Ministers, not just myself, are now engaged in discussions across various sectors to find out quite what the impact is. The gas price has gone up by five times as much, as Delyth said, in her introductory remarks, so that's five times higher bills in the short term. We will be working right across the public sector to understand the impact of this and the rise in national insurance and a number of other things that will impact our ability to deliver public services.
We've also made the point forcibly to the UK Government, via my colleague Rebecca Evans, that these things need to be taken account of in the comprehensive spending review, and then, the allocation to Wales, because these are clearly issues that are not going away. I personally made the point to the Secretary of State in the meeting on Monday night that, in looking for the market to realign itself, as he put it, that doesn't just mean more expensive carbon dioxide. That means more expensive everything, including public services, and that the Government needs to take account of it in relying on the market, quite extraordinarily in my view, to sort out these kinds of sustainability issues.