Questions Without Notice from the Party Leaders

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:55 pm on 11 January 2022.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 1:55, 11 January 2022

Llywydd, I agree with the point that Adam Price started with. The Resolution Foundation, in a very detailed analysis published only a few days ago, said that April will mark a cost-of-living catastrophe for many, many families across the United Kingdom, with bills of over £1,000 coming their way just from the fuel price rises and the changes to national insurance contributions, and that doesn't take account of all the other pressures that we know are already there in family budgets, with real wages stagnant or reducing. And in that sense I think that Adam Price is quite right—the cost-of-living crisis is going to dominate the lives of many, many families across Wales. And for many families it has begun already, Llywydd, with those thousands of families faced with a cut of £20 a week in the reduction in universal credit—a genuinely cruel decision made by a Government that knew what the impact of that decision would be in the lives of the poorest families.

Now, across the Welsh Government, we are already taking action, whether that is the £51 million household support fund, which will offer help with fuel bills to families in Wales this winter; with our commitment to the council tax reduction scheme, 60 per cent of households in Wales get help through the council tax reduction scheme; through the millions of pounds in addition that we have put into the discretionary assistance fund; and through the actions that we are taking through our single advice fund to make sure that people in Wales have the help they need when they claim the things to which they are entitled—£17.5 million in additional benefits secured in the first six months of this financial year through the single advice fund and 35 new benefit advisers recruited to help us with the campaign we are running to make sure that people in Wales get the help that is there.

Now, I'll think about the point the Member has made, of course, about whether bringing people around the table in advance of April to see what more could be done would help us with the actions the Welsh Government can take, but that is not because there is not already a very comprehensive set of actions that the Welsh Government has already put in hand.