I now call on party leaders. First, the leader of the Welsh Conservatives, Andrew R.T. Davies.

Thank you, Presiding Officer. What I recall as being a paltry rise was the 75p a week that Labour voted through and Members of Parliament voted for back in the early 2000s when Gordon Brown was the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

But I'd like to ask the First Minister about something that he is responsible for and his Government is responsible for, and that is ambulance response times here in Wales, which we had last week. On the red alert calls, you had a literally one in two chance of having that call responded to. On amber calls, you've got a less than one in five chance of that being responded to in the 30-minute target time. Sixty-five per cent of red calls should hit that eight-minute response time. As I said, you've got a 50:50 chance now in Wales, regrettably, of having that happening. First Minister, some time ago, the health Minister, Eluned Morgan, said you were investing in the ambulance service and that this investment was paying real dividends. On those figures, clearly, these dividends aren't coming through. When are we going to see the improvements that the people of Wales deserve?

For 48 weeks in a row, until the pandemic hit us in March 2020, the ambulance service in Wales met its targets. I don't recall ever once being asked by the leader of the opposition about it then. The truth of the matter is, as he will know, that the pandemic has caused major challenges for the ambulance service, because every time an ambulance goes out and may transport somebody who has COVID—and with current rates of COVID in Wales, that means a very significant number of people who the ambulance service has to deal with—then the ambulance has to be deep cleaned again before it can go back on the road.

The figures for the last month show the ambulance service holding its own in Wales, despite the fact that the number of calls to the service has been running at all-time record highs over this winter. The Minister was right when she pointed to the investment that is going into the ambulance service, particularly in the recruitment of new staff. New staff are joining the ambulance service all the time, and there are more staff being recruited to help provide the service that people in Wales deserve to have. There's still a way to go in achieving that, there's no doubt at all about that, but the investment on the one hand, the staff on the other, and, hopefully, an ability to move beyond the pandemic, add up to a prospectus where the ambulance service will be able to return to the years of success that it enjoyed before the pandemic hit.

First Minister, it's been 18 months since the targets have been hit by the ambulance service. Time and time again, I've raised it with you, Members across the political divide have raised issues—heart-wrenching issues—of their experiences across the whole of Wales, where regrettably ambulances haven't been able to respond to life-threatening situations. We know the ambulance service has been supported by the military on several occasions—across the United Kingdom that support has been offered, I might add, not just here in Wales. That support is coming to an end come 31 March. What measures has the Welsh Government, along with the ambulance service, put in place to make sure that we don't end up with a cliff edge on 31 March and, ultimately, these figures deteriorating even worse than they are now?

Well, Dirprwy Lywydd, can I first just put on record our thanks to the military for the help that we have had here in Wales during the pandemic, and particularly, as the leader of the opposition has said, for the help that we have received from them in supporting our ambulance services, both in driving ambulances and in helping with the cleaning of ambulances so that they can be turned around as quickly as we can do that and put them back on the road again? It is inevitable that that help must come to an end, and there are many other calls, as we know, at the moment on the services of the military.

What the Welsh Government has been doing, as I've said, Dirprwy Lywydd, is to invest in new, permanent, full-time members of staff, trained to the level where they are able to carry out all the duties that you would expect the ambulance service to be able to undertake. And at the same time, more broadly, the Welsh Government has been supporting the ambulance service in a two-week reset of the service in the first half of this month. Now, the results of that reset are still being analysed. I am pleased to say that over the last two weeks we've seen a 10 per cent reduction in the daily average ambulance hours lost compared to the two weeks before the reset was established. And I think that gives us some optimism that we are creating the platform that will allow the ambulance service to deal with the diminution in the number of people available to it as military help is withdrawn.

Thank you for that answer, First Minister. As we heard last week in media reports, ambulance workers are telling us that, really, it is a soul-destroying job that they're facing at the moment, and many, sadly, are having to revert to anti-depressants to get them through the day. From covert recordings, we heard that, actually, from a management level, where genuine concerns are being raised, people are being put on pathways to disciplinary measures against them. That cannot be right, First Minister, and I hope you'll agree with me that that cannot be tolerated in a public organisation anywhere in Wales. These staff are under huge amounts of pressure. I'm grateful for you indicating the additional staff that are coming forward from recent recruitment drives, but what assurances can you give the Senedd, what assurances can you give ambulance workers and what assurances can you give the people of Wales that in the coming weeks and months we will see genuine improvement in the response times of the ambulance service across Wales and that these figures will start to improve, and that through the course of the summer the target times that your own Government has set the service will be met?

Well, the assurance that I can give to Members of the Senedd and people more broadly is this: the ambulance trust is doing everything it can, with its partners in the health service more generally, to provide the service that its staff want to provide, and the investment of the Welsh Government is there to support them in that endeavour.

The thing that I cannot say, and neither can the leader of the opposition, is the extent to which the current rise in the number of people falling ill with coronavirus will impact on that service over the weeks and months to come. The leader of the opposition will know that we have some of the highest numbers of people falling ill with the virus of any time in the whole of the pandemic. Only a matter of weeks ago, we managed to reduce the number of people in our hospital beds suffering from coronavirus down to around 700. It went above 1,400 yesterday, and that number has continued to rise. That has an impact upon the whole system's ability to deal with the demands on it, including the ambulance service. Because when you have that number of people in the hospital system suffering from COVID-19, then it has an impact on our ability to discharge people, and therefore to flow patients through the system from the front door when the ambulance arrives to the point where people are able to be discharged. Also, as I said, it has a direct impact on the speed with which the ambulance service itself is able to respond to the calls that it receives, and it drives up the number of calls that are made. So, while I think the service is doing everything it can, and the investment from the Welsh Government is there to support it in all of that, it continues to operate within a very challenging context, and a context that has been deteriorating, from a pandemic perspective, over recent weeks. All of that has to be taken into account in any assurances that anybody can make about the extent to which the performance of the ambulance will reflect that context in the weeks and months to come.

The leader of Plaid Cymru, Adam Price.

Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. In 2016, Scotland gained control over 11 welfare benefits and the ability to create new ones. The Wales Governance Centre published a report in 2019 that stated that giving Wales the same powers over benefits as Scotland could boost the budget of Wales by £200 million a year. Now, last week's spring statement, as you said, was unforgivable—it'll lead to a million plus increase in absolute poverty for the first time ever outside a recession. Now, coming from a Chancellor whose own family fortune is tainted by Russian blood money, and who's had to file his own partygate questionnaire, his moral tone-deafness should come as no surprise, perhaps. But doesn't this also mean that simply replacing Johnson, say with Sunak, will do nothing for struggling families in Wales? If powers over Welsh welfare—those 'great levers' that you referred to, First Minister—remain in Westminster's hands, is not this the time now, finally, to make the united case for a Welsh devolution of welfare more radical and far-reaching even than the Scottish model?

Dirprwy Lywydd, I have no ambition to replace Johnson with Sunak. My ambition is to replace Johnson with Starmer, and that would make a very big difference to the way in which the United Kingdom operates and the way in which people who rely on—[Inaudible.]—not just—[Inaudible.]—fundamentally on—[Inaudible.]

First Minister, can I ask you to halt for a second, because you're breaking up a little bit? We want to just check the IT system. Can we have a two-minute break, simply to make sure the IT is working properly? So, I call for a two-minute break.

Plenary was suspended at 14:22.

The Senedd reconvened at 14:28, with the Deputy Presiding Officer in the Chair.

First Minister. 

Dirprwy Lywydd, diolch yn fawr. So, I had just started to reply to the leader of Plaid Cymru's first question by saying that I am not interested in replacing Boris Johnson with Sunak, I'm interested in replacing Boris Johnson with Keir Starmer, and that's what would make a difference to people here in Wales, but not just people here in Wales. This is where I differ from the leader of Plaid Cymru, because I am interested in a child who lives in poverty, whether that child is in England or in Wales, and my recipe for the United Kingdom is a place where everybody, in all parts of the United Kingdom, is able to benefit from the great insurance policy that being a member of the United Kingdom provides. There is a way of doing that, and that is to replace this Government, and that's what I will be aiming to do. 

I'm reliably informed by the Deputy Presiding Officer that the problem just now was at the London end, and isn't that the point? It's simply not good enough to say, 'Oh, it'll be all right when there's a Labour Government', when, since the Reform Act, Wales has never, ever elected a majority of Tory MPs, and yet we've had Tory Governments for more than two thirds of the time. The Bevan Foundation has recently strongly made the case for the devolution of power over housing benefit and the housing element of housing credit as a matter of urgency. Why? Because this would allow the Welsh Government to move from a model that essentially subsidises rent to a model that subsidises social housing supply, which is ultimately the only answer to the question. When even an organisation that is named after Aneurin Bevan, who was certainly no friend of Welsh nationalism, is making the case for the devolution of welfare, doesn't it show, First Minister, that we're on the right side of the question, and, unfortunately, you're still on the wrong side?

Well, of course, I don't agree with that for a moment. I am interested and want serious work to be done on the devolution of the administration of the welfare system. I think there is a growing case for that, and we would administer housing benefit, for example, differently if it were devolved to Wales. That is different to the break-up of the tax and benefit system on which people in Wales have relied over a great deal of the time that the Member points to.

It was a Welshman—not Aneurin Bevan, but James Griffiths—who put on the statute book the underpinnings of the welfare state, which has stood people in Wales well over much of the period since James Griffiths passed the national insurance and allied Acts back in 1947. Griffiths was a great Welshman, and a great socialist. I think the recipe that he put forward continues to be the one that benefits people in Wales. 

And Jim Griffiths, from my mother's home village of Betws, was also an ardent supporter of Welsh home rule right throughout his political life. 

The Welsh Government can also directly address the cost-of-living crisis itself, of course, for lower paid workers within the public sector. Teaching assistants are currently only paid for 39 to 43 weeks of the year. They're not paid for the summer six weeks, but are bound to the school and can't sign on to get another job during this period, while teachers, of course, are paid for a full working year of 52 weeks. The summer months are amongst the most expensive, not to mention the detrimental effect that this absence of pay can have on pensions later in life. Given that much of the COVID recovery efforts have been placed on the shoulders of TAs, and the essential work that they provide for pupils who are vulnerable or those with additional learning needs, isn't it time that this valuable workforce is finally valued in full? 

Well, Llywydd, I certainly agree with the leader of Plaid Cymru about the work of teaching assistants. And many of them, of course, do get paid during the school holidays here in Wales because they are the bedrock of the school holiday enrichment programme that we have had in Wales from the start of the last Senedd term—the only national system anywhere in the United Kingdom in which children are able to attend school and to receive a proper meal and get other enrichment activities. And teaching assistants are at the heart of all of that, and they're paid here in Wales for the work that they do.

There is nothing to prevent local authorities, if they choose to do so, to have different terms and conditions for teaching assistants, and that would, of course, include those local authorities where Plaid Cymru is in charge, and could, no doubt, make the choices that the Member has advocated this afternoon.