8. What discussions has the First Minister had with the UK Government regarding halting the cut to universal credit, as requested by leaders of devolved Governments? OQ56987

Llywydd, the UK Government has chosen to ignore all the evidence provided by the Welsh Government on the severe financial hardship caused by cutting that £20 a week payment. It is simply indefensible to take money away from the poorest people in Wales just as they are facing a serious cost-of-living crisis.

I thank the First Minister for that response, and I genuinely am desperately worried for the autumn and the winter for my constituents, some of whom rely on universal credit to top up their wages, some of whom are out of work, but, for all of them, this makes the difference—it's make or break—between going into debt and poverty and possibly homelessness.

I would urge the First Minister to continue his discussions with the UK Government to seek to find additional funding to put in across the UK into these disadvantaged communities and vulnerable families to see them through this autumn and winter and spring, which will be long and hard. But I would also ask the First Minister: what more can we do in Wales, not only in terms of support, which he's mentioned previously, but in terms of supporting advice—debt advice, homelessness advice, crisis advice and support throughout Wales—so that we can at least be there when, inevitably, people are going to face these desperate times across this winter?

Llywydd, I thank Huw Irranca-Davies for that question. He has vividly put the predicament that will face so many families here in Wales. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation recently estimated that fuel prices alone will result in those families—. A family of two children managing on £20,000 a year, fuel prices alone will place a £3 a week extra demand on their budgets. And then when you take into account all the other cost pressures that we know are there in the economy, that will be £8 a week. That's over £700 a year, at a time when they are losing £1,000 from the very modest incomes that they have available to them. Of course we will continue to press the UK Government. The £20 cut in universal credit is the single largest cut in welfare for over 70 years. You have to go back to the 1930s to find a Government that was prepared to load the burden of addressing the financial circumstances of the nation onto the shoulders of those least able to bear it in this way.

Now, as well as the other things we are doing, I fully agree with what Huw Irranca-Davies said, Llywydd, about the need to make sure that as many as people as possible in Wales are getting the help that is already there in the system, and far, far too many families in Wales miss out on the help that is there. We carried out a welfare benefits take-up campaign back in March of this year; it has resulted in hundreds of thousands of pounds in additional benefit being claimed by Welsh families, and we're going to repeat that benefit take-up campaign at the end of this month and through the rest of the winter months. You've then got to make sure, as Huw Irranca-Davies said, that the facilities are there to deal with the extra demand that will be generated, and I'm very pleased to say that the Welsh Government is going to fund 35 full-time equivalent new welfare benefit advisers for advice Cymru so that the person power is there, when the campaign results in more people coming forward, to give them the advice that they will need. All those people will have been recruited by the end of this month, and they will be there to do exactly what Huw Irranca-Davies said, Llywydd: to make sure that we do more to help people to get the help that is still there, even as that really important strand in assistance is being taken away from them.

And finally, question 9—Joel James.