Questions Without Notice from the Party Leaders

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:46 pm on 14 June 2022.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 1:46, 14 June 2022

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.