Questions now from the party leaders. Leader of the Conservatives, Andrew R.T. Davies.

Thank you, Presiding Officer. With your permission, as it's the fortieth anniversary of the Falklands conflict, and today is the day that the cessation of hostilities was declared in the Falkland islands, I'd like to put my Conservative group's thanks to the servicemen and women who went out in 1982 and commemorate those who lost their lives—the 255 British men and women who lost their lives in that conflict, plus the three Falkland islanders themselves, but also the Argentinian soldiers who lost their lives as well. All war is a horrid function, but, ultimately, when the aggression of the dictatorship that was in Argentina that was perpetrated in 1982 was faced down, it had to be faced down by our military, who we time and time again call on to do that across the globe. I'd like to put on record our sincere thanks and gratitude, and our thanks also to the families that are left behind for the loved ones who will not return. 

First Minister, it is also today the date that, five years ago, the Grenfell Tower happened in London, that terrible tragedy of the smouldering inferno that is glued into our images and the suffering that occurred at that time. The Minister was to have a statement today that has been withdrawn off the order paper. I'd be grateful if you could enlighten the Chamber today as to what actions the Government is taking to make sure that people in Wales who suffer from the cladding scandal are going to feel supported by the Welsh Government and supported so they can sleep at night?

I thank the leader of the opposition for those questions, and of course share what he said in opening his questions this afternoon. This is the fortieth anniversary of the Falklands war. It is right that we use this opportunity to think both of those people who served directly in that conflict, but also the families of those people who never returned from the Falklands. I will be at Llandaff cathedral on Thursday, I've no doubt the leader of the opposition will be there too, and we'll see a bringing together of the military community in Wales, with others, in order to have a solemn moment of reflection. And I know that there are events in north Wales involving the armed forces as well. So, I entirely associate myself with his remarks in marking this occasion.

There was to be a statement today, Llywydd. It's five years since the Grenfell fire exactly. We took the decision not to make the statement, partly in order to respect that anniversary and to allow people's thoughts to be with those families who in that event too saw lives being lost and futures being scarred. The Minister will make a statement later in the month and that will update colleagues here in the Chamber on our repair programme. It will bring people up to date on the 248 expressions of interest we received earlier in the year and the 100 properties that have needed more intensive and intrusive survey work to be carried out, and on the investment that will now be made in those properties before the end of this financial year.

We will also, as we have said, bring forward our leasehold programme before the end of this month, and that will set out details of ways in which leaseholders who have been badly affected by the worth of their properties on the open market as a result of anxieties about the standards to which those buildings were completed—how we will help them as well. But, alongside that immediate repair work, we also have a reform programme, and that reform programme is fundamentally important, because what we cannot have is a system that in future just sees the difficulties caused in the past replicated. We will introduce a series of changes to the regulatory regime here in Wales to make sure that those who bear the responsibility for the problems that have been established, and that does not include those people who live in those properties—that those people who bear that responsibility will live up to those responsibilities in the future.

First Minister, I'm pleased in some respects to hear the reasoning, because I think some of us were a little sceptical that little progress had been made on this very important agenda item, and I hear the reasoning that you're saying is out of due respect to the victims of the Grenfell fire that obviously was five years today. I would hope that, at the earliest opportunity, therefore, the Government will bring this statement forward, so that those who are tied up in this horrible, horrible vortex that they find themselves in, where they feel helpless, and yet bills are landing on their doormats and leasehold demands, and yet they go to bed at night, living in what could potentially be a fire keg, because the cladding on their properties has not been replaced, and is still in existence here in Wales, and across many parts of Wales, in fact—. The Minister announced £375 million at the end of March. Are you in a position to confirm how much of that money has been allocated already, and where has it been allocated to? And if it hasn't been allocated, what is the timeline to issue that money out to people who can benefit from it? Because I recognise it is a significant investment, £375 million, but it's no good sitting in Welsh Government coffers; it needs to be delivered to home owners, so that they can put restitution measures in place.

Well, I absolutely agree with that final point: we want the money to leave the Welsh Government and to be doing the good that it's intended to do as fast as possible; it's for spending over three years. Can I make just one specific point to the leader of the opposition? This money is not just for cladding, and this is a big difference between the approach we are taking in Wales and the approach being taken elsewhere. Cladding is only one of the building defects that causes a risk of fire in those blocks. Compartmentalisation is another feature of the way in which buildings were not built according to the standards that would've kept people safe, and there were other aspects as well. So, our approach will offer a more comprehensive set of measures. That's why we have to have the surveys. I know it's frustrating; I imagine it must be hugely frustrating for people who are living in those conditions. The message we have to give to them is that by doing it properly, they will end up in a better position for the long run. That's why the surveys are important, that's why the detailed work is necessary. It will draw together not just the work to be done on cladding, but those other remedial actions that need to be taken. And then we need to see—and I know the leader of the opposition will agree with this—then we need to see those companies that were responsible for the work that was not carried out in the first place come to the table and to make their contribution. I pay tribute to those companies that have done so already, and there are companies in Wales who are playing their part; there are others who are not yet willing even to have a discussion, and the Minister wrote very recently to them again, calling them round the table, so that, alongside the money that the public will now provide, those companies that have profited from the sale and the construction of those properties make their contribution as well.

Thank you for that answer, First Minister, but I didn't hear how much of that money had been allocated to date, which I think is important to give people confidence that the money is leaving the Welsh Government, albeit it might be to specific projects. And I fully understand that it does go to more than just cladding, but for many people, the cladding is the issue that they can quite clearly focus on, but compartmentalisation and other factors in the properties to be put right is another important aspect of this funding. But if you could, in your reply to me, highlight how much of this money has left Welsh Government coffers, I think that would give people confidence.

When you talk about developers being brought to the table, that is really important. And other parts of the United Kingdom have developed the strategy—the UK Government, for example, has brought those developers to the table, and significant sums of money have been earmarked to rectify the defects. I have an FOI here that indicates that, through the entire part of 2021, the Minister only met on three occasions with the developers, and those meetings were 45 minutes, 45 minutes and 60 minutes in total. Now, I have had engagement with the Minister, and I know how focused she is on this particular issue—indeed, from a constituency point of view, she does have issues in her own constituency—so I fully understand the direction that she's giving here. But when you see an FOI such as this, which indicates only three meetings taking place of such limited duration, and listing the developers that have engaged with the process, can you confirm to me, First Minister, that Welsh Government is making progress on holding these developers to account, making sure that they contribute to those restoration costs here in Wales, and that there is a stepping up of the intensity that the Welsh Government is using to make sure that those developers are held to account to put money into the system so that residents aren't waking up to a fire alarm, they're waking up to a bedside alarm instead?

Three points in reply to those questions, Llywydd. I don't have the figure in front of me and I don't just want to guess it from memory. Money is being spent from the £375 million, and I'll make sure that the Member has the accurate figure of what has been spent so far on the survey work and is due to be spent on the remedial and repair work during the rest of this calendar year.

On the meetings, I think the Minister has met regularly with the industry and that is in addition to all the meetings that take place at official level. I can assure the Member, as I'm sure he knows, that a 60-minute meeting with the Minister will have left those companies in no doubt at all about what was expected of them.

In relation to what more can be done with the companies, let me say we were disappointed that in the Bill that went through the House of Commons, the UK Government at the very last minute put in new provisions to raise a levy on those companies and didn't include either Scotland or Wales within those arrangements, despite the fact that, separately, both Scotland and Wales wrote to the UK Government asking to be included. On a more positive note, though, let me say that there was a meeting yesterday under the new inter-governmental relations arrangements involving Michael Gove, the Minister here and the Minister in Scotland as well, which discussed all of that and has resulted in an agreement that further work will be done to see whether it will be possible for us to be included within the scheme that we had hoped to be part of. So, I'm hoping that that work will now bear fruit and that that will give us the extra tool that is available now to Ministers in England, and that could have been made available in Scotland and in Wales. We don't have it at the moment; I hope the work that's been put in hand will result in us having that power and that that will allow us to do what the leader of the opposition has suggested and to accelerate our ability to draw those companies who have so far been reluctant to live up to their responsibilities back around that table.

Plaid Cymru leader, Adam Price.

Thank you, Llywydd. Gross domestic product is down in the UK for the second month running, an initial drop of 0.1 per cent in March followed by an unexpected slump of 0.3 per cent in April. Some would point to COVID and the war in Ukraine as the overriding reasons, but that doesn't explain why the UK is doing so much worse than other countries. According to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development the UK will next year stagnate and be the worst-performing economy among the group of seven leading industrialised nations by a significant margin. The Centre for European Reform last week said that Britain was £31 billion worse off than it would have been without the dual impact of Brexit and COVID, but that the bigger impact by far was the effect from Brexit. Isn't it the case that far from the promised sunlit uplands, Brexit is beginning to cast a long shadow on our economy at a time when we can least afford it?

Llywydd, Adam Price is right, of course. Those were very concerning figures published yesterday, and for the first time since the pandemic began we've had two consecutive months in which GDP has fallen, and, for the first time, we see those falls across all three major sectors of the economy: the service sector shrunk, industrial production shrunk, manufacturing shrunk. These are not solely to be explained by the short-term shocks of the war in Ukraine and by COVID, the leader of Plaid Cymru is absolutely right. It is a recognised impact by the Bank of England and by the Office for Budget Responsibility. The UK economy is 4 per cent smaller than it would have been had we not decided to leave the European Union and will be perpetually. There is a very high price being paid by the UK economy for that decision, but it's not an impact that anybody should be surprised at, because this was pointed out well in advance, and we were told to disregard the views of experts. Well, I'm afraid that expertise is turning out to have been right all along. 

Indeed. The First Minister is absolutely correct. Of course, even the Government's own advisory body, the Office for Budget Responsibility, made this very forecast, which has been borne out by the evidence presented. The latest regional gross domestic product figures show London and Northern Ireland are the only parts of the UK that have grown beyond pre-pandemic levels. As the economist Jonathan Portes has been quoted as saying:

'There is some emerging evidence that London’s economic dominance, and hence regional and geographical inequality, has, if anything, been further exacerbated by Brexit.'

So, not levelling up, but levelling down. And the one outrider outside of London, Northern Ireland, is, of course, within the single market. So, First Minister, do you think that's why they have performed better over the last two years compared to Wales and, indeed, every other part of the UK outside of London?

Llywydd, I don't think there's any doubt at all—how could there be—that the availability of being within the single market is having that additional positive impact on the economy in Northern Ireland. Here in this Chamber, many of us advocated a form of Brexit recognising and respecting the result of the referendum but wanting a different form of Brexit, a Brexit that would not have been so damaging to people here in Wales, and continued membership of the single market, proposed, of course, by Mrs May, and a form of continuation in the customs union, would have allowed us to have left—[Interruption.]—would have allowed us to have left the political arrangements of the European Union—we would not have been members of it—but we would have continued to have been part of the trading arrangements with our nearest and most important neighbours, and that would undoubtedly have supported the Welsh economy in the way that the same arrangements can be seen to be supporting the economy in Northern Ireland. 

Westminster, of course, is now risking a trade war over the Northern Ireland protocol, which will not just plunge Northern Ireland into political uncertainty but also add further to the economic pain families are already experiencing throughout the United Kingdom. Now, given that cost-of-living crisis and the challenges we're facing in every sector of the economy, as the First Minister said, in every part of the UK bar London, isn't there a very simple practical solution, which you've just alluded to, which is returning to the principle at the heart of 'Securing Wales' Future', the White Paper we jointly published between us, which is rejoining now the single market and the customs union, as even some Tory MPs have been arguing in the last couple of days? Indeed, even the former Member of the European Parliament, Baron Daniel Hannan, Baron Brexit, has been arguing we should never have left the single market now. Will you make that—? Is that still the policy of the Welsh Government, and will you make that case for single market membership, not just to Boris Johnson, but also, I should add, to the leader of the opposition, who's been a little bit vague on this question to date?

Well, Llywydd, I continue to believe that, if Wales and the United Kingdom were inside the single market, all those barriers to trade that we see doing such harm to the Welsh manufacturing industry and to Welsh agriculture, those will be removed. It's an inescapable fact that our nearest and biggest trading partners are still in the European Union. Now, trade with them—. Uniquely, as you will remember, nobody was able to find a single example of a treaty agreed that put more barriers in the way of trade rather than trying to remove them. All of this, Llywydd, is now under even greater strain because of the publication yesterday of the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill, a Bill that 52 of the 90 seats in the Northern Ireland Assembly—parties representing 52 of those 90 seats—described today as something they rejected in the strongest possible terms. This is what they said to the Prime Minister:

'We reject in the strongest possible terms your Government’s reckless new protocol legislation, which flies in the face of the expressed wishes of not just most businesses, but most people in Northern Ireland.'

And yet, despite all of that, the Prime Minister's solution to the problem that he himself created—this is his protocol that he agreed, that he described to us in such glowing terms—. He is now prepared to tear that up. The UK Government admits, it says so itself, that it breaches international obligations. It damages our standing in the rest of the world. The good news for this Senedd is that, in the letter received yesterday to my colleague Vaughan Gething from the Foreign Secretary, the UK Government say that the provisions in the Bill are such that a legislative consent motion will be required from the Senedd. And having told us nothing about the Bill, and giving us no advance sight of the Bill at all, the letter has the nerve to go on asking that the Minister should reply confirming that we are content to support a legislative consent motion in front of this Senedd. Well, such a legislative consent motion will be brought forward and it will give Members here an opportunity to look in greater detail at the case for this breach of international law and the impact that it will have here in Wales as a direct result of the barriers to trade that the Prime Minister's deal has imposed upon us.