5. What steps is the Welsh Government taking to support residents and landlords in buildings with potential fire safety defects in light of recent statements by the UK Government? OQ57606

It is for developers who constructed buildings with fire safety defects to pay for their remediation. In September we launched the first phase of the Welsh building safety fund. This will provide grant-funded surveys for buildings where fire safety issues are known or suspected in order to identify necessary remedial actions.

Diolch. At the end of January I hosted a public meeting here on the steps of the Senedd to listen to those affected and caught up in what is a tragedy and a scandal. I spoke to a pensioner, Eileen, who pays £511 a month in service charges alone. Her income—her monthly pension—is just £800 a month. Another attendee was sent a bill of thousands of pounds and given just 25 days to pay. Others are facing bills of £50,000 over the coming years. We all know that this scandal will devastate the lives of countless people, not to mention the terrible emotional toll that this causing. I think it is important that the voices of those people are heard. The Welsh Government should be stepping in to help those leaseholders right now. There's remedial action that needs to be taken to make those buildings safe and to make sure that their emotional health is protected. So, I would ask you, First Minister, to reconsider your position and to make available funds for that remedial action in those properties. Thank you. Diolch yn fawr iawn.

I'm not quite sure I follow the very final point the Member made, because the Welsh Government does intend to provide funding of that sort, but to do it in a way that does not create the moral hazard in which the public purse pays for the problems that developers themselves have created and lets those developers off the hook. I think exactly that point was made by the Secretary of State in England, Michael Gove, when he said that he expected the industry to provide the £4 billion that will be necessary to put right the wrongs that the industry itself has created. If the public purse simply steps in and picks up all those bills, what possible incentive will there be for the next developer to make sure that their buildings do not suffer from the same defects?

I congratulate the Member on the meeting that she held. I saw some accounts of it, and those are powerful testimonies that she's relayed from the people she met that day. It's because of that, Llywydd, that on 14 December the Minister responsible, Julie James, made an oral statement on the floor of the Senedd, where she committed the Welsh Government to a new leasehold support scheme to help that small number of leaseholders who find themselves in the very significant financial hardship that Jane Dodds has pointed to this afternoon. The Minister will make a further statement before the Easter recess that will provide further details of how that leasehold support scheme will operate—the costs it will cover, the way in which people will be able to access that help—so that the worst casualties of this scandal will receive the help that we can provide without allowing the developers themselves off the hook. They are responsible for these defects, they must put them right.