Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:34 pm on 17 May 2022.
Llywydd, can I thank Buffy Williams for those points? And she's right, of course, that we need to make sure that households in Wales are as aware of the help as possible. And we're doing that in a number of ways, working closely with our local authority colleagues, making sure that, through third sector organisations, there's readily accessible information for people, and that, when somebody appears in one part of the system looking for help, we make sure that, at that point of entry, they're given good advice about any other forms of help that are available here in Wales. Now, we do that within the limits of the powers and the funding that we have available to us, and independent commentators have recognised that the degree of help available through the Welsh Government is greater than is available in any other part of the United Kingdom.
But, the point that Buffy Williams started with, Llywydd, is surely the most important one—the UK Government needs to do more to make sure that people are helped, and the single most obvious source of assistance is so readily to hand. Only last week, the chair of Tesco said that he thought there was an overwhelming case for a windfall tax. The chief executive of BP gave an assurance that, if there were a windfall tax, it would not affect that company's intention to invest £18 billion over the next eight years in energy measures in the UK. The Prime Minister tells us that he doesn't like a windfall tax and he doesn't think it's the right way forward on the same day that the Chancellor of the Exchequer was saying that no options were off the table and that he was open-minded about a windfall tax. Well, which is it? It really is time that the UK Government sorted out their own position on this matter, and did so in a way that takes money from firms that are making enormous excess profits because of the rise in energy costs and provides that money to exactly the sorts of households that Buffy Williams has highlighted this afternoon.