Emergency Question: The Russian Invasion of Ukraine

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 1:48 pm on 1 March 2022.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 1:48, 1 March 2022

I thank the Member for those questions. I welcome the Prime Minister's announcement earlier today, but I think there is more that could and should be done, and I look forward to opportunities to explore that with the UK Government and other colleagues this week. The WLGA has been very receptive to the meeting that will take place tomorrow. We expect the leaders of every local authority to be available at that meeting, and I think there will be a ready reception in all parts of Wales of the need to prepare to do the most we possibly can. And that does involve, as Mark Isherwood has said, learning the lessons from the Syrian experience and the more recent Afghan experience. I think all local authorities in Wales have played an enormously positive part at a time when there are huge demands on their own resources and their own housing services. But, in the face of the unprovoked attack on Ukraine, I think they will want to go further. We will want to support them in that and we will want to work with UK Government colleagues to make sure that the financial and other supports that will be necessary, if we are to ask our local authorities to take on these further responsibilities, that that funding flows through the system and does so in a way that overcomes any anxieties that front-line providers of those services may have, so that they can get on with the job that they want to do without feeling that they have to hesitate before doing so in case they don't have the backing that they will need to do the job we want them to do.