Diolch, Llywydd. I'd like to thank Plaid Cymru for bringing this important debate today. It's absolutely topical currently and a really important debate as we take action as a Government to tackle the cost-of-living crisis, which is so seriously adversely affecting the people we all represent and serve in Wales, which has come over so strongly in the debate.

We are, as a Government, drawing together our plans and using our powers to tackle the cost-of-living crisis, as called for in this debate, but I do want to endorse the points that have been made by Members today that the powers and fiscal resources needed to help people with the spiralling costs of energy bills and increasing living costs do lie, mainly, with the UK Government. So, this debate does provide us with the opportunity to unite today to back the representations that we are making as Welsh Government Ministers to the UK Government, because of those powers and fiscal levers they have, but also as well the taking forward of our plans and priorities that have been called for today in this motion and by Members.

As has been highlighted, the Minister for finance met with the Chief Secretary to the Treasury last week, with colleagues from Scotland and Northern Ireland, to call for urgent action to lessen the burden on hard-pressed households as a result of the cost-of-living crisis. Julie James, Minister for Climate Change, and I have written to the UK Government to express our deep concern about the increase in domestic energy prices, pressing the case for urgent action to safeguard vulnerable households. You will have seen the letter that we wrote.

I also wrote this week to the Secretary of State at the Department for Work and Pensions, calling on the UK Government to uprate welfare benefit payments this April, in line with the consumer price index increase, because the Institute for Fiscal Studies, you will have seen, reported last week that they expect this to reach 6 per cent. With that uprating, this would save our lowest income households from facing a £290 real-term, year-on-year fall in benefit income, helping just to marginally ease the cost-of-living crisis that they're facing.

When the UK Government took the shameful decision to end the £20 uplift in October last year of universal credit, despite warnings of the impact it would have in plunging more households into poverty, we urged and continue to urge the UK Government to reverse its decision. It resulted in the biggest overnight cut to social security payment rates since the modern welfare state began. And the fact is, the UK Government's autumn spending review doesn't meet the scale of the challenge we're facing to tackle this cost-of-living crisis—this perfect storm, as has been said—and invest in our public services, businesses, communities and families in Wales.

But where Westminster has failed to support families, the Welsh Government has stepped in to back our communities through this challenging period, and to move forward, with our powers and policies, and with the contributions that have been made this afternoon, and working very much on a cross-Government basis to take this forward. We have introduced emergency measures—they've been acknowledged today—to offset the impact of the £20 universal credit uplift: our £51 million household support fund; £2 million allocated for homelessness prevention; and the £38 million winter fuel support fund, providing that one-off £100 cash payment to help eligible households with their fuel bills. Again, yesterday, the First Minister announced that up to 100,000 applications for that are already in place. There's £1.1 million for tackling food poverty, including £0.5 million to support foodbanks, meeting increased demand, and £657,000 to help establish a further 25 Big Bocs Bwyd projects in schools in the Valleys taskforce area.