Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:22 pm on 1 March 2022.
Personally, Llywydd, I think we will need a different system. We were very proud to welcome families from Afghanistan to Wales, and as Members here will know, many of them lived when they first came here just across the road, literally, from the Senedd in the Urdd building. It's been one of the great pleasures for me in recent times, from the office that I work in here, outside my window, to see and hear children from Afghanistan playing safely in the streets here in Cardiff. You think of what those children have seen and experienced, and here they were in the fresh air playing children's games, speaking in Welsh to one another within a few weeks of arriving here. It lifted your spirits to see and to hear it. But we do know that the onward allocation of those families for permanent resettlement has not worked as quickly or as successfully as the Home Office had originally intended. So, there are lessons to learn, as I was asked, I think, by Mark Isherwood, and one of those lessons is I think we will need a different system if we are to cope with a different sort of refugee need, and that will involve the UK Government, of course, but working with the Government here in Wales and through us with our local authorities.