Diolch yn fawr, Dirprwy Lywydd, for giving us another opportunity to provide an update to Members about our ongoing work to support people from Ukraine seeking sanctuary in Wales. When I last updated you almost a month ago, Wales had welcomed just over 1,120 Ukrainians under the Homes for Ukraine scheme, including under our supersponsor route, and I'm pleased to say this number has nearly doubled since then. Almost 2,200 people from Ukraine, sponsored by people from Wales, had arrived in the UK by 7 June. There have also been arrivals, of course, under the Ukraine family scheme, but the UK Government does not provide that data.

More than 5,200 visas have now been granted to people from Ukraine who have sponsors in Wales, so we can expect the number of arrivals to continue to grow quickly in the coming weeks. Our partners in local government, the NHS, the third sector, volunteers and, of course, all those people who are acting as sponsors are making phenomenal efforts to support sanctuary seekers with the services and information they need. The Minister for Finance and Local Government and I met with local authority leaders and chief executives last week to restate our shared commitment to this work following the election.

Last week, I announced that we would be temporarily pausing our supersponsor scheme for the rest of this month. The supersponsor route has been an enormous success since its launch eight weeks ago. We set out to sponsor 1,000 people and it has far exceeded our expectations. The published data for Wales, up to 7 June 2022, shows that over 3,000 supersponsor scheme visas have been granted, but operational data suggests that that could now be as much as 50 per cent higher.

We set up the supersponsor route because we wanted to reduce the safeguarding risks and reduce barriers for people from Ukraine, mostly women and children, who are fleeing this deadly conflict and seeking sanctuary. Last week I visited one of our welcome centres, alongside the Counsel General, and it was a real pleasure to see the positive impact of this work in action.

As part of marking Refugee Week next week, the First Minister and I also intend to visit another of our centres. We have set up and funded the welcome centres, with their wraparound support, to accommodate our initial commitment of 1,000 people. Our current welcome centres are at capacity, and we are urgently seeking to establish further centres and other sources of temporary accommodation. We are pleased that we can provide a route to sanctuary for so many, but it is a huge challenge for us to ensure that we can scale our offer to support everyone arriving.

It would be wholly irresponsible for us to keep this route open unless we were confident that we have everything in place to ensure everyone we sponsor has a good-quality experience when they arrive in Wales. This temporary, operational pause will provide us and our partners with a short space of time to ensure all our processes and services are in place to support everyone we have made commitments to. Being a nation of sanctuary is about ensuring that we are able to make good on the promises we have made to people who want to come to Wales. We fully expect to reopen the scheme for applications next month. I will update you again when we complete our review at the end of June.

We continue to work closely with local government and others, particularly the third sector, to ensure everyone arriving and staying in the welcome centres is supported as they begin to settle into life in Wales. Housing options for Ukrainian refugees are being planned with partners in the public and private rented sector. We do not want people to stay in the welcome centres for longer than necessary. We have contacted everyone in Wales who's expressed an interest in hosting someone from Ukraine but has not yet been matched. Local authorities are undertaking property and safeguarding checks daily.

Dirprwy Lywydd, we are working closely and relying on the third sector's expertise and experience in supporting people seeking sanctuary. People arriving from Ukraine are likely to need a range of support, including advice and advocacy, as they settle into life in Wales. Our contact centre, which I visited recently, has now made approximately 21,000 outbound calls and answered over 2,000 incoming calls, providing essential information and advice to Ukrainians and Wales-based sponsors. We will also be extending our Wales sanctuary service, led by Welsh Refugee Council, to ensure that Ukrainians have access to this vital service. Within the service we will ensure provision of peer support opportunities, immigration legal advice, casework advice services and advocacy.

We are incredibly grateful to all of those who have opened up their homes. We have regularly updated our guidance for sponsors, and we are working with Housing Justice Cymru to make information sessions, training and trauma-informed peer support more widely available.

In my regular meetings with the UK Minister for Refugees, I continue to make the case for parity of funding to support people arriving under the Ukraine family scheme. The UK Government is yet to agree to this. Here too, we are working closely with third sector partners to make wraparound support available for all those families who have been reunited via the Ukraine family scheme, and need support. We are finalising the details.

We will also ensure that 'thank you' payments are made to secondary hosts, where Ukraine family scheme accommodations break down. I urge the UK Government to properly support this work.

Finally, Dirprwy Lywydd, we are holding a series of workshops to engage third sector organisations about the challenges that Ukrainians will be experiencing across Wales. We are working as quickly as we can to ensure people can access all the services they need, from interpretation to language tuition, casework support or health services, but some of this will continue to take time to build up capacity. This is a real Team Wales effort to be proud of.