Questions Without Notice from Party Spokespeople

Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Finance and Local Government – in the Senedd at 1:40 pm on 9 March 2022.

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Photo of Rebecca Evans Rebecca Evans Labour 1:40, 9 March 2022

I thank Peter Fox for that question and very much associate myself with the remarks at the start of his contribution in relation to the horror of the unprovoked attack and our desire to do everything that we can to support people in Ukraine, using all the levers that we have at our disposal. I just want to reassure all colleagues that there is work going on all day, every day, in relation to this right across the Welsh Government and right across local government in respect of making preparations to welcome refugees from Ukraine to Wales. There is work going on particularly in respect of housing. Obviously, we need to ensure that we are able to have suitable places to receive people into Wales, and then to move on to communities where they will be hosted. And we're hoping that the UK Government will consider, in respect of its sponsorship scheme, to provide Welsh Government with that kind of co-ordination role because we've done it before. We've done it very successfully, I think, through the pandemic, where we've faced a similar challenge in terms of housing large numbers of people very quickly, and we've done that through our response to homelessness and rough-sleeping during the pandemic. So, we have experience recently that we can build on there. 

We have had some really productive and positive conversations at official level with the UK Government in respect of funding. What we would expect to see would be a per head funding scheme, as we've seen with previous resettlement schemes, rather than a Barnett consequential, which would not be the appropriate mechanism in this particular case. But we are having those discussions about healthcare needs, housing needs, integration, and supporting people into employment as well when they get here.