Part of 3. Topical Questions – in the Senedd at 3:10 pm on 2 February 2022.
Diolch yn fawr, Sioned Williams, and thank you for highlighting the pressures on your constituents, the cost-of-living pressures that are so real and are so vivid and coming through every day in terms of reports from the Resolution Foundation, the Bevan Foundation. Local authorities are playing their role. I think the take-up, given the time we've had—. We've extended the timing for this, extended the deadline, as Mark Isherwood said, to the end of February. Payments will be issued by local authorities. I have to say that I've had some very strong support coming back from constituents with real examples of what this has meant for them. And I'll just quote one from north Wales, who said he would like me to share this with the Senedd:
'Of course, the first £100 alleviated my hard poverty for this month and will also keep me warm for at least a month and a bit. Another £100 will mean I can keep warm in March, April and up to mid May, by which time my heating will be off until at least the start of October, hopefully later.'
He was saying that he has to consume the cheapest, poorest quality food. This £200 is what we are doing as a Welsh Government to try and reach out to our constituents.
Now, as you know, following the debate that you led very recently, we are organising a round-table summit on 17 February, cross-Government, with all our partners, and it will include many of the partners in the cross-party group, in terms of tackling the cost-of-living crisis. But I will say again, not just in terms of the entitlements we've got and our discretionary assistance fund, can I also appeal to people who are off-grid in terms of oil—and I know this affects many Senedd Members here—the discretionary assistance fund is available to help with those costs in terms of access to oil as a key energy source? This is where we have got to address this. But it's not just in terms of support from us, it has to be from the UK Government as well, who are silent on this—silent—when we see these energy price costs rising. But also to say that this is a real opportunity for the UK Government to show that they are actually dealing with the cost-of-living crisis, which is affecting people so adversely and cruelly at this time.