Part of 2. Questions to the Minister for Health and Social Services – in the Senedd at 2:32 pm on 3 November 2021.
Thank you very much for the question. We accept that there are real problems in social care and it is very difficult to recruit at the moment. The reason it is so difficult to recruit is because, for some care workers, there are more attractive jobs in the retail sector or in the hospitality sector, which have recently opened up. It is very difficult to attract people into the social care field at the moment. But we are committed to delivering the real living wage. The updated real living wage will be announced on 15 November, although I think we need to wait to see exactly how much it will be. We want this to be introduced as soon as it possibly can in this term. We are looking towards the Welsh Government budget, which will be in December, when we will be able to make some more announcements about how we're going to move forward, in particular following the announcement of the plans for social care in England.