Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Social Justice – in the Senedd at 1:44 pm on 8 June 2022.
I thank Mark Isherwood for that question. We called for what was a very welcome announcement by the Chancellor of the Exchequer on 26 May. We actually called for additional support for households and, indeed, we called for the fact that we should not just get the funding, but that it should be clearly targeted at those who are most vulnerable. So, it is welcome that there will be that energy bill rebate of £400 to be applied to household bills in October. We called for it to be paid as a grant not a loan. It was always utterly wrong to say that it should have been a loan to be repaid. So, the UK Government has listened to us, listened to the Welsh Government and calls from this side of the Chamber, I know, for action.
We have still called for action from the UK Government in terms of the fact that this is a one-off, and we still do need to see more support given in terms of, for example, the warm homes discount, currently planned at £150. So, we have made that commitment, as you say, the £380 million, and we had our winter fuel support scheme. This is where we are learning how effective that can be and how we can extend our discretionary assistance fund. Perhaps it's an opportunity to update that, as of 30 April, local authorities have paid 166,049 households with crucial support from our winter fuel support scheme. So, we will be looking at all the ways in which we can support and learn from our investment not just in terms of tackling fuel poverty, but tackling food poverty as well, bolstering community food partnerships and also raising awareness of affordable credit.