Questions now from the party spokespeople. The Conservatives' spokesperson first of all—Gareth Davies.

Diolch yn fawr iawn, Llywydd. Good afternoon, Deputy Minister. Deputy Minister, we have a crisis in social care, don't we, and I think that's a fact—a crisis brought about by a lack of staff. We are simply unable to recruit sufficient numbers of people to work in the care sector, because quite frankly the pay and conditions aren't attractive. Deputy Minister, you know my views on care workers' pay and the fact that we should get on with the pay increase. However, things have changed since the last time we discussed this. The UK Government have introduced the social care fund and last week's budget will mean billions of pounds extra for Wales each year. When will care home workers see a real living wage, Deputy Minister? I know you've mentioned previously that it's £9.50, but the Welsh Conservatives and Plaid Cymru have been calling for a £10 minimum wage for care home workers and social care staff. So, is there any progress in that coming to fruition?

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.

Thank you very much for that answer, Deputy Minister. Any delay in improving the pay and conditions of staff will continue to have an impact on recruitment. This impact is being felt by our NHS and local health boards, which are rightly taking notice and taking action. Some health boards are now looking to directly employ care staff. However, rather than helping to address the problem, the care sector believe this is simply leading to the poaching of staff by the NHS, which offers better pay and conditions. Deputy Minister, we are supposed to be integrating health and care, not setting them up to compete with one another. How will your Government ensure that these pilot schemes by local health boards are not creating shortages in the care sector? Thank you.

This is obviously a danger that can happen. As you know, we've set up the social care fair work forum, which has recently produced their report about how we will deliver the real living wage and that is being considered by officials at the moment. I hope we'll be able to announce something on that soon. So, that is imminent. But of course, it's not just the pay, it's the terms and the conditions and all the other things. As you say, the NHS staff have much improved conditions compared to social care staff. So, I think we have to make every effort to boost the social care profession. At least through all this pandemic, I think people are now aware of what social care is, and I think there is an appreciation of what social care workers do, and we are determined to uphold the standing of the profession. One of the things we have done is registration of the profession; all domiciliary care workers are now registered, which increases the standing of the profession, and we are moving on to residential care workers now, to do the same there. I think that what we've got to do is increase the standing of the profession, show that we value the work of the social care workers. We did make two payments to them during the period of the pandemic, and I know that they were very grateful in terms of the recognition of what they contribute. I think that's what we've got to do.

Thank you again, Deputy Minister, for that answer. Just to change tack slightly, and expand a bit more on the integration of health and social care, of course, the best way to address these issues would be to complete the integration of health and care. The creation of a chief social care officer for Wales was supposed to accelerate the integration efforts, as you mentioned in the health committee recently. Mr Heaney has been in post since before the summer. As we enter the winter months, can you update this Chamber on how the role is assisting efforts to bring social care and our NHS into a single, integrated health and care service? Thank you.

Thank you very much. I think, so far, it's been very successful. Mr Heaney has been doing a listening exercise. He's been around many different aspects of the social care system, he's listened to what people feel about their working conditions, about what they want to do, about integration with health, how the two can work together. And I think, by having him in this position, people do feel that social care is being recognised. We have a chief medical officer, and now we have a chief social care officer. The chief social care officer is working very closely with the chief medical officer, and I think it is a very promising beginning to having a chief social care officer. So, I would say that there's been a lot of progress made since he took up his post.

Plaid Cymru spokesperson, Peredur Owen Griffiths.

Diolch, Llywydd. Gweinidog, unless your head is buried in the sand, you will be aware that COP26 is under way in Glasgow this week. Air pollution is a significant aspect of the climate emergency here in Wales, because it accounts for 1,400 deaths and costs the Welsh NHS £1 billion a year. Within my region, a row of houses has just been demolished as we speak, because they are no longer fit for human habitation, due to air pollution. The First Minister has cited clean air as an area he hoped to work on with other parties, and that this would be a priority for the Government. Despite this, when the Counsel General announced his legislative programme, it was not included. For a Government that lauds its green credentials, in this case, we have a strategic approach but with no urgency. Is the Minister worried, like me, that any further dithering and delay on the clean air Bill will have a detrimental impact on the health and well-being of thousands of people in Wales? In the week of COP26, do you agree with me that it's time for deeds not words, specifically ensuring that there is sufficient investment to help those suffering from the consequences of air pollution?

Diolch yn fawr, Peredur. I can assure you that sometimes in recent weeks I've been dying to bury my head in the sand, but that is not the case. In terms of air pollution, certainly, we are very aware—and you'd have heard me responding in the debate yesterday on climate change—of how air pollution is something that we see as being linked to climate change. Therefore, it is important that we address that issue. We have to understand that climate change is not just something, in relation to the NHS, where we have to change the way we build our hospitals and renew our hospitals, make sure they're insulated, put in new LED light bulbs, and all of those other things that we are intending to do. Also, we have to recognise that there is a consequence, a health consequence, to climate change, and you rightly point to air pollution being one of those. I can assure you that, when it comes to a clean air Bill, this is something that the Welsh Government is taking very seriously. We're in the process currently of determining which Bills go as priorities, and I'm sure there will be an announcement on that in the very near future. 

Thank you for that answer. 

On the subject of COP26, I noted your tweet about the Prime Minister sitting next to Sir David Attenborough without a face mask and seemingly asleep. The words you used to describe Johnson in your tweet were, and I quote, 'a national disgrace'. I have no argument with that, but what I do have a problem with is your Government's faith in Westminster delivering a non-partisan, all-encompassing, UK-wide COVID inquiry, when the man responsible for it is, in your words, 'a national disgrace'. Or does your trust in the Tory Government in Westminster only extend when it's convenient?

Thanks very much. You'll be aware that the context of that photo was that it was Boris Johnson sitting alongside our national treasure, David Attenborough, who was alert, awake and paying attention, unlike our Prime Minister, who was asleep. I think it is important, of course, for us to understand that there are times when we need to work very, very closely with the UK Government, and, actually, climate change is a good example where we do need to understand we're all interlinked, not just with the United Kingdom but with the rest of the planet. Certainly, when it comes to COVID, we need to understand that we can't draw a line around Wales and think that it's all about how we managed to contain the virus or not within our boundary within Wales. We know, for example, that the delta variant was brought in from India. Even if we wanted to shut the borders with India, we wouldn't have been able to do that, and that is the dominant variant in Wales. So, to think that we could have our own independent inquiry—it would be extremely difficult for us not to look at those kinds of issues and understand the interconnectedness, which is why the First Minister has made it absolutely clear that his preferred option is to have a UK inquiry with a very clear mandate within that for Wales. I've heard him bring that request up with the Prime Minister personally on more than one occasion, and it is really important that the Prime Minister now, Boris Johnson, follows through and undertakes to honour the kind of commitments that the First Minister was asking him to undertake in relation to that inquiry. 

Diolch. I recently met with Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice Cymru, and I met with them again today; they're in the Senedd today, and they have many, many unanswered questions. They have little faith that a UK-wide inquiry will provide all the answers they crave in order to give them closure after the death of a close relative. One of the major questions they have is around hospital-onset COVID-19 deaths. One campaigner told me that her father died from COVID after being sent home from hospital following treatment for a gallbladder infection. During his hospital stay, he was exposed to 13 patients, three on his bay, and 14 staff on his ward. Yet he was sent home without retesting and the family was not advised of his exposure and potential risk of COVID-19. Do you not think that there are lessons to be learnt from a full public inquiry into the Welsh approach to tackling coronavirus, and do you not think it's important that we learn lessons from this? Shouldn't you be agreeing with what Vaughan Gething said a few minutes ago—that it's time to do your job and stand up for Wales?

Well, frankly, I'm not sure if I could work harder in my job than I am at the moment, but I can tell you that we know we have got lessons to learn in relation to COVID and the way that the pandemic has wreaked havoc on our communities. Of course we've got lessons to learn, because this is a novel virus; nobody knew about it. We're still learning about it. There's a new sub-variant of delta, the AY4.2. We're still learning. It's still changing. Of course, we've got things to learn. We will learn those lessons, and we are learning those lessons. After every COVID death in hospital there is an assessment to see what we could have learnt from that. But we're not waiting for the inquiry for that to happen; there are inquiries constantly going on so that we're learning as we go along. And I think we have got to be, of course, sensitive to the fact that there are literally thousands of people now mourning in Wales loved ones who've contracted the virus, and it's particularly sad if they've contracted the virus in hospital.

I've been listening to lots of podcasts over the half-term period, international podcasts that talked about the possibility of ring-fencing vulnerable people, and particularly in care homes, for example, and what these podcasts were saying is that, actually, nobody managed to do that. You couldn't close off vulnerable people, because they are part of a society, and people work in hospitals, there are comings and goings, and it's very, very difficult to isolate people from people who work in hospitals who need to go home at night to their loved ones as well. So, of course it's difficult, and of course we've also got to be sensitive to the fact that there are people who want to go and visit loved ones in hospital. Getting that balance right is really, really difficult, and of course there will be lessons to be learnt, and we are learning those lessons, but we've probably still got more lessons to learn as we go on, because this pandemic is not over.

Question 3, Mabon ap Gwynfor.