Questions Without Notice from the Party Leaders

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:55 pm on 14 June 2022.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 1:55, 14 June 2022

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.