4. How is the Welsh Government responding to rising living costs in Wales? OQ57437

I thank Joyce Watson for that, Llywydd. The Tory cost of living crisis is already a reality for thousands of Welsh families. As I said earlier, Llywydd, the UK Conservative Government has chosen to take £20 each week away from the poorest families in the land and to break its election promises to pensioners, just as fuel prices and inflation rocket.

It is indeed a scary time for lots of people living in Wales. We see inflation out of control, and we see fuel price rises immediately on the way. Of course, in Wales, the Labour Government has the Warm Homes programme, steadily retrofitting fuel-inefficient housing stock. We put a £100 cash payment to low-income families—your Government has—at the same time, and in contrast with the Tories, as you just said, taking £20 a week out of their pockets. And that of course is a cruel decision, it's unnecessary, and it is a politically driven decision. They also are refusing to adopt Labour's proposed VAT cut on home energy bills and a windfall tax on North sea oil and gas profits. That, of course, is economic mismanagement. So, further to all the things that you've already mentioned in the ways that your Government is offering help, can I ask, in conversations you of course will have had with the Treasury, if they're not already aware, if they are absent without leave, have you asked them to face up to their responsibility to the people in Wales and to ensure that they offer all the help that they can at this critical time in people's lives? 

Llywydd, I can absolutely assure Joyce Watson that time after time after time, Welsh Ministers, together with their counterparts in Scotland and Northern Ireland, lobbied UK Ministers against their plans to take that £20 every week away from poorest families. There's a quadrilateral meeting of finance Ministers later this week. Rebecca Evans will once again be making these points to UK Government Ministers. A windfall tax—. As these prices rocket, so the profits made by companies rocket alongside them, and given that it is the public that is paying that money in, I think the public have a right to expect that a Government acting on their behalf would take some of that money back to invest in mitigating the impact on those who need that help the most. These are not difficult decisions for any Government to make, unless, as Joyce Watson said, there is a different political agenda that a Government is pursuing. There are actions that the UK Government can and actions that they should take. Welsh Ministers will be there this week again pressing that case on them. 

I do recognise that there are a number of things as a result of the pandemic that are putting pressure on people's incomes, and that is something that all Governments need to work together to tackle. First Minister, I do want to ask about what more the Welsh Government can do to help people in financial hardship. The Welsh Government, in fairness, does provide a number of support schemes to complement those offered by the UK Government. However, despite this valued support, the Bevan Foundation have recently stated that the current disjointed nature of these schemes means that it's difficult for people to access all the support they are entitled to. First Minister, what consideration has the Welsh Government given to establishing a single point of access for benefits and support schemes administered in Wales, as well as exploring the possibility of automatically passporting universal credit claimants onto that system? Diolch. 

I thank Peter Fox for that. I think the single advice fund does, in many ways, address some of the issues that Peter Fox has raised, because it is a single service and people get the advice they need across a whole range of different issues, whether it's fuel poverty or problems with paying council tax, and so on. So, I think that was a conscious effort to streamline the advice services that we have here in Wales, and make them as easy as possible for people to use them.

Peter Fox makes an important point about passporting. One of the problems of universal credit is that it has broken the automatic passport that was there before for people claiming housing benefit then being able to claim council tax benefit. It's not easy for the Welsh Government to repair that broken link ourselves. But I can say to the Member that discussions have been had with the UK Government as to how we can more automatically make the help that's available through the council tax benefit scheme available to people who are newly qualifying for housing benefit and who, at the moment, have to make a separate claim in a way that they didn't previously in order to get help from the council tax benefit scheme.

So, the system is notoriously complex and the more you try to fine-tune it to be able to help people with different parts of their lives, the more complexity tends to get built into the system. But here in Wales, we are at least in a position where we have a national council tax benefit scheme, a national scheme for the discretionary assistance fund, a national scheme that will allow up to 350,000 households in Wales to benefit from a winter fuel payment, and a Government that is committed, on that national basis, to introducing the real living wage wherever we can. It's all part of an effort to try and make sure that we protect people in Wales, especially those with the least, against the cost of living crisis that is coming their way.

Jane Dodds.

Thank you, Llywydd, and a happy new year to you, First Minister. 

Seven out of the 20 areas across the United Kingdom hardest hit by rising fuel prices are in Wales, so I just want to follow on from the point from my colleague Joyce Watson. Prices are set to rise by an average of £598 a year, with some seeing bill increases as high as £750. Four of those seven areas are in the region that both Joyce and I represent, namely Ceredigion, Powys, Pembrokeshire and Carmarthenshire.

This is a dire situation for families and households who are already struggling to keep their heads above water. If, as predicted, the price cap increases, we could see the overall number of households in fuel poverty in Wales increase by 50 per cent or more. Between the price cap increasing and the Conservatives hiking national insurance contributions, and their freeze to the personal tax allowance, families could be facing an extra £1,200 in bills in the next year. Prif Weinidog, would you agree with me that in order to save families from what is becoming a cost of living catastrophe, as you have said, the United Kingdom Government should be instituting a Robin Hood tax on oil and gas superprofits to support families with soaring heating bills? Diolch. 

I thank Jane Dodds for the question and for her good wishes. 

I thank her for drawing attention to the Robin Hood tax—the Tobin tax, as it was sometimes called—to which I have always, myself, been attracted; a very small tax on a very large number of transactions, which would result in a very significant additional inflow of funds into the UK Treasury, which could be used in exactly the circumstances that the Member outlined.

She's right to say that we focused on the fuel price rises. They are not just the cap. The cap was raised by £139 only last October. It could be raised by £500 in April. It's not only that and the £100 that every family will have to pay to deal with the market failure that the Conservative Government presided over, but if you were on a fixed-price tariff with one of those firms that has collapsed, you won't be on a fixed-price tariff with the company that's taken you on. You will now be exposed to the rise in the cap as well. That's why Jane Dodds is right to point to the fact that £500 is by no means the maximum that many families in Wales will be exposed to.

And, it's not just the national insurance hike. Again, as Jane Dodds says, it is the effect of freezing income tax thresholds for the next four years, which will drag more and more families into the tax net at the very bottom end of the spectrum and draw people up the hierarchy of tax rates as they find that their income rises but the tax threshold stays the same. These are tax rises by stealth and they will hit families here in Wales. So, imaginative ideas such as the Robin Hood tax and such as the windfall tax, which Joyce Watson mentioned, these are choices available to the UK Government and they should exercise them.