Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:02 pm on 15 February 2022.
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?