3. What support is the Welsh Government providing to people in Clwyd South in light of the current cost-of-living crisis? OQ58196

Llywydd, over 12,000 households have benefited from the £200 winter fuel support payments in the local authorities covered by the Member's constituency. In April alone, over 2,200 payments were made from the discretionary assistance fund in those same local authorities and, of those payments, more than 90 per cent were cash help for emergency food and fuel.

Well, thank you, First Minister, that is enormous help for my constituents, but would you agree that the Chancellor's offer to households facing the cost-of-living crisis is simply not enough and, indeed, insulting, given it's to be paid from the cut to universal credit last year? So much more could have been offered to hard-pressed households had the Chancellor not lost £11 billion in failing to ensure against interest rate rises, or by losing £6 billion in fraudulent bounce-back loans. And why, First Minister, do you think that UK Government Ministers just can't bring themselves to call this 'a crisis'?

Well, Llywydd, Ken Skates makes a very important point in that contribution and, as a former Minister responsible for the economy here, I can see why he has wanted to highlight the fact that, while this Government struggles and fails to provide the sorts of help for people faced with a cost-of-living crisis, at the same time they are losing money hand over fist in some other schemes that they themselves have responsibility for.

The £11 billion to which Ken Skates referred was highlighted only last week. The Chancellor was warned, time after time, that rising interest rates would have an impact upon his ability to service the £900 billion of reserves created by quantitative easing. He failed to take out those insurance measures and, as a result, he is spending £11 billion more than he would have otherwise have needed to do. Now, imagine what the £11 billion could have done in the lives of the people we have been talking about this afternoon.

And when it comes to fraud from the bounce-back loan scheme, fraud is only a third of the loss that the UK Government itself say they now expect to make through that scheme. Five billion pounds lost directly in fraud, but £17 billion that the Government now does not expect to recover from those loans. Now, there are court cases, Llywydd, going through at the moment that show that those bounce-back loans, those fraudulent loans, were being used to pay for the purchase of private cars, for flying lessons, for pornography websites, and, in a case which is to be in front of the courts next month, a case where someone who obtained a bounce-back loan is alleged to have used it to fund terrorist activity by Islamic State terrorists in Syria. Five billion pounds, which, as we know, the National Audit Office says the Government has failed to take the necessary action to recover, and where the Government Minister, Lord Agnew, the anti-fraud Minister, resigned in January, describing his own Government's efforts to control that fraud as 'woeful'.

Now, the point that Ken Skates makes, Llywydd, is this, isn't it: we have a Government who say that, in the fifth richest country in the world it's not possible to provide enough money for people to stay warm and to be fed during this coming winter, but have managed to contrive the loss of tens of billions of pounds in just two schemes that I've highlighted this afternoon.