Questions Without Notice from the Party Leaders

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:57 pm on 15 March 2022.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 1:57, 15 March 2022

Llywydd, well I do not simply understand, I share a great number of those concerns with the UK Government's scheme, which is why we have worked with them to be able to put in place in Wales different arrangements that I think would give us a better chance of being able to welcome people here from Ukraine with the best prospect of responding to those needs and mitigating the risks of people coming here and not being able to re-establish their lives in the way that we would wish to see. I can confirm for the Member, because I had a letter overnight from Michael Gove in which he confirms that people coming from Ukraine will have recourse to public funds, will have access to public services and will be entitled to work. And I'm glad to see those assurances, because it does mean that people will be able to re-establish their lives in a way they wouldn't have been had those facilities not been available to them. 

What we want to do is to make sure that people who come to Wales have an opportunity to get the services they need, to make sure that the places they are going to stay have had at least the level of check you would need to make sure that there is no exploitation of vulnerable individuals, given that many people coming from Ukraine will be vulnerable and will be leaving those highly distressing circumstances, and that we can put together with our partners in local government—and we've been working very closely with them, Llywydd, in recent days—that we can put in place the education offer that will be necessary for children, that they are registered with the Welsh NHS on arrival, that there are housing services being mobilised and third sector support. We know the richness of third sector organisations in Wales who want to play their part. For that to happen, though, you have to have it on an organised basis.

My anxiety about the UK scheme is that it relies entirely on individuals to find one another. And as I understand it, should somebody in Wales, with the generosity we know that people are displaying, find themselves matched up with somebody on the Polish border, the UK Government will issue them a visa, and then it's up to them. How they get from where they are to where that offer of help has been provided will be a matter for that individual, in all the circumstances they face, to navigate for themselves. I think you just have to have a different level of public service support in place in order to make sure that the welcome we want to offer people, the success with which we want that scheme to operate, that it has the best possible chance of operating, and that's what my colleague Jane Hutt and I and others have been working hard to try to achieve alongside the UK Government. I think the letter from Mr Gove is encouraging in this way, that we will be able to do it in the right way here in Wales, and, in the process, avoid some of the pitfalls to which the leader of Plaid Cymru has pointed.