Questions now from party leaders. Leader of the Welsh Conservatives, Andrew R.T. Davies.

Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. First Minister, may I send my best wishes to you? It's good to see you looking well and I hope that you come out of confinement as quickly as possible. It's good to see you on the screen today looking so well.

First Minister, inward investment is going to be critical to building a strong and resilient economy post COVID. What has the Welsh Government got in terms of plans to attract a greater share of inward investment into the United Kingdom? 

Can I thank Andrew R.T. Davies for what he said in his opening remarks? I too am looking forward very much to being released from confinement and back in the Chamber again.

I agree with him that inward investment does have an important part to play in the future of the Welsh economy, alongside—not instead of, but alongside—the investment we need to make in those successful companies that are already indigenous here in Wales to help them to grow, to help them to remain rooted here in Welsh communities. We take a whole range of actions to encourage inward investment. Our international relations offices in different parts of Europe and beyond all have, as their primary purpose, the identification of inward investment opportunities, and also export opportunities for Welsh businesses looking to create new markets elsewhere in the world. I myself have a series of opportunities in the coming weeks to meet with ambassadors from different parts of the world. We always focus on the inward investment that we have here in Wales from those other parts of the world, to make sure that, where opportunities exist to add to that, we as a Welsh Government are active in our promotion of those opportunities and in helping companies that wish to come to Wales to put together the packages that they need to make sure that they can successfully make that transition, and, thinking of the questions we've just had, to make sure that there is a supply of people with the skills necessary to take up those opportunities.

It's interesting you say that, First Minister, about putting the packages together, because in 2020, Britishvolt said that they wanted to set up a battery cell gigafactory in St Athan in the Vale of Glamorgan, creating 3,000 jobs and 4,000 associated jobs—7,000 jobs in total, the second largest industrial investment project in the United Kingdom. That's worth repeating: the second largest industrial project in UK history. This is exactly the sort of project that we should be trying to attract here in Wales and secure its foundations here in Wales. Britishvolt has secured financial backing and will open its gigafactory in Northumberland. It seems that the project slipped through your fingers. What went wrong, First Minister?

The Welsh Government was in conversations with Britishvolt. The St Athan site was one of the main sites that they considered. In the end, they decided that their first investment would be elsewhere. That does not mean to say that we've not had further conversations with them. As a company, they are ambitious to do more in the field of battery development. We continue to be in conversations with them and if it is possible to bring that development to south Wales, of course the Welsh Government remains actively interested and actively engaged in that, alongside many other opportunities.

First Minister, your own joint press release that went out when the announcement was made that they weren't taking up the offer of the St Athan facility said that it was because, and this is the quote from the joint press release, 'the ambitious timescales that the company were working to were not achievable'. As far as I know, planning resolution and construction time frames are no quicker in the north-east of England than they are here in Wales. Yet, still, this project has leaked out of Wales and at a huge cost to our economy. According to media reports with people associated with the project, the Welsh Government's decision, to say the least, was lacklustre and it was never a top priority for the Welsh Government. A leading industrial surveyor, Chris Sutton, has been conducting a review on behalf of Welsh Government into how the project was handled.FootnoteLink Will you commit to making that review available for us all to see, and can you confirm today the progress on that review being completed?

I don't agree at all with what the leader of the opposition said. The Welsh Government was very closely involved in discussions with the company and those discussions progressed to the very final stages. If it was a lacklustre effort, it did remarkably well to be in the final running for the location of that business for the first factory, as I said, that it plans to create. Conversations about further possible investments in St Athan, or, indeed, elsewhere, remain part of what the Welsh Government will continue to take forward. Of course, it is important that, in doing so, we reflect on the experience of our initial discussions with that company. That is why we have asked for a piece of work to be done, and not done inside the Welsh Government, but with the help of external eyes as well. Because, to return to my first answer to the leader of the opposition, we want to make sure that, when there are genuine opportunities that can help us to build the Welsh economy, we will always be actively involved and interested to bring those to fruition. I will make sure that, as that work proceeds, it is properly reported to other Senedd Members.

Leader of Plaid Cymru, Adam Price.

Many people will have seen Andy Davies of Channel 4's sobering film of his visit to Penrhys last week—a community already struggling now perched on the precipice of poverty the likes of which we certainly haven't seen since the 1980s. Last week, the House of Commons voted in favour of a windfall tax on energy companies. The UK Government has said that it will ignore that Parliament in the same way that it does this. Spain has cut VAT on energy, but the UK Government will not, despite Johnson and Gove's pledge to do so post Brexit. France has capped the rise in energy bills to 4 per cent, while in the UK they will rise in April by 54 per cent. Do you think the powers to tax and regulate the energy sector, to set a windfall tax, to cut VAT, to set a price cap, and, if necessary, to restore public ownership, should reside here in Wales where we can use them, or lie in Westminster where they won't?

Correction: Chris Sutton is not leading a review into the handling of this project.

Well, Llywydd, for me, that is not the central question. I agree very much with what the leader of Plaid Cymru said in the first part of his question, that there is a wide range of actions that the current UK Government should and ought to take to deal with the Tory cost-of-living crisis. It's the policy of my party that there should be a windfall tax on the gross profits that are being made by energy companies who profiteer from the rise in prices, just as people in Penrhys and other parts of Wales suffer from them.

My colleague Julie James wrote to the Minister in the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy back in January, setting out five separate practical courses of action that could be taken in order to alleviate the impact of fuel and other price rises on households in Wales. That did include reductions in VAT, it did include a differential cap on price rises to protect the lowest income households, it talked about changes to the help that is available through the Westminster Government, it made suggestions about the way in which people who owe money already to fuel companies could have those debts dealt with. For me, it's not a choice between whether the power should be in Wales and exercised here, it's simply a matter that we need a Government in Westminster prepared to do the right thing.

As welcome as the new money that you as the Welsh Government have announced today certainly is, can you understand the criticisms that anti-poverty campaigners have made of the council tax rebate approach, that it spreads the money too thinly and fails to target the hardest hit? If the organisations at the cost-of-living crisis summit you've convened on Thursday come up with better made-in-Wales alternatives, are you prepared to reconsider, improve the plans you've already announced? Can you also comment on how you will deal with groups like students, for example, also facing rising costs but who are largely exempt from council tax, so won't get the rebate? And in the case of the discretionary assistance fund, will you agree to raise the cap on the number of applications that people can make, from five to seven, as the Trades Union Congress has been calling for, so we won't have thousands of people in desperate need being turned away?

I thank Adam Price for those additional points. Well, first of all, of course the point of having a round-table is to collect new ideas and to test ideas that we have already adopted with a wide range of people from across Wales. So, we will certainly be doing that on Thursday of this week. I don't think that criticism of the council tax rebate in Wales is completely fair, because it's not the same approach as has been taken in England. In England the money will be spread more thinly; here, we will provide the £150 not simply to households who pay the council tax, but we will also provide that money to the 220,000 households who are exempt from council tax because we have retained the council tax benefits system here in Wales. That costs £244 million by itself, way in excess of any consequential we may have had from the UK Government as a result of its council tax scheme in England. So, on top of all of that help, those families will now get an extra £150 to help with the cost-of-living crisis. And I think that is both a very efficient, but I think it's also a very progressive way of making sure that we have progressive universalism. Every household in bands A to D will get some help, but those households who need the help the most will get extra help here in Wales that they wouldn't get elsewhere.

As far as the discretionary assistance fund is concerned, here is another fund that was retained in Wales while it was abandoned elsewhere. We are finding a very significant sum of money, way, way in excess of any money that came to us when the social fund was abandoned in England. The ability to make five separate applications to the fund is two more than was possible when the fund was originally established, and we raised the number from three to five to take account of conditions during the pandemic. We're going to sustain that higher number into next year to take account of the cost-of-living crisis as well, and I think that, by itself, demonstrates our commitment to putting as much money as we can directly into the pockets of those families who will suffer the most from the additional costs that they will now have to bear. 

The scenes last week in Swansea of a queue for a food-share scheme, the soup kitchens of our day, in a city where the demand for emergency food parcels has reportedly doubled in just a week, are images of mass poverty we have not witnessed since the hungry 1930s. One of the leading organisations that will be at Thursday's summit will be the Bevan Foundation. They and others have championed the role that free school meals can play in combating poverty. Can we look at the ideas that the foundation and others are suggesting, whether it's accelerating the introduction of universal free school meals in primary schools, increasing the current free-school-meal allowance level for secondary-age pupils or extending the free-school-meal support that has been provided during the pandemic over the summer holidays again this year? These small changes will make a huge difference to many, many families that are currently living life on the edge.

Well, Llywydd, I'm very glad indeed that the Bevan Foundation will be part of Thursday's round-table and very much welcome the work that they do here in Wales. Today's announcement does include £22.5 million to extend free school meals during the school holidays, through the Easter holiday and right through to the end of the summer holiday this year as well. That, once again, is money that goes directly to those families who will struggle the most in the face of the cost-of-living crisis.

The really troubling thing about it all, Llywydd, is, as Adam Price has said—. Look at the struggle that families in Wales face today before the price rises that they face in April, before national insurance contributions will go up, before tax thresholds are frozen, drawing a disproportionately greater number of families in Wales into taxation than in other parts of the United Kingdom. So, I look forward very much to working with him as part of the co-operation agreement on our joint commitment to ensure that, during this Senedd term, all primary-aged children will receive a free meal as part of their daily education. It is a major step forward here in Wales, and I look forward to working with him to see what we can do to accelerate the rate at which we can achieve that ambition, particularly in the face of the sorts of scenes that he described in his final question.