Leader of the Welsh Conservatives, Andrew R.T. Davies.

Thank you, Presiding Officer. First Minister, two weeks ago, the Government announced that it was temporarily suspending its Ukrainian refugee scheme of being the supersponsor for refugees coming to Wales, a scheme that we welcomed when it was officially brought before the Welsh people to show what we could be doing in this part of the UK to help refugees coming out of Ukraine. Yesterday we saw again the horrors of the war there, where a shopping mall was hit by a military missile, with no military target in sight, and civilians suffering atrocious casualties. In your comments last week about the Ukrainian sponsorship scheme, you said that the Welsh Government had anticipated an initial 1,000 refugees coming, but, to date, 4,000 had registered. What is the Government doing to undertake to support the refugees that are already with us and, importantly, those refugees that have registered to come to Wales under the scheme?

I thank Andrew Davies for that question, Llywydd, and he's right to point to the continuing horrors of events in Ukraine. The Welsh Government has had to suspend temporarily our supersponsorship platform because of the outstanding success that the platform has been. We have had a far larger take-up of the potential offer to come to Wales, and we have already had far more people arrive in Wales than the 1,000 that we said originally that we would accommodate. The vast bulk of those people are in our welcome centres, and those welcome centres I think offer an outstanding service. The Minister for Social Justice and I were in Llangrannog on Monday of last week where there are 300 people from Ukraine—200 adults and 100 children—receiving the most amazing welcome and the most appreciated opportunity to regroup, to feel, as they said to me, a sense of healing having arrived from a place of such difficulties to a place where they now felt safe and looked after.

The real focus of our efforts over the coming weeks has to be on moving people beyond the welcome centres and into the homes of those many families in Wales who continue to be willing to offer a place in their homes so that people can continue to rebuild their lives. That is not happening as quickly as we need it to happen. There are reasons for that, because offers of help have to be checked, police checks have to be carried out, social services departments have to visit and so on, and that isn’t a process that you can hurry if you’re going to get the matches between the people who are in the welcome centre and the people offering accommodation right, so that we don’t see the level of breakdown in those arrangements that is being reported in some other parts of the country. That will be our focus over the coming weeks. As soon as we have a balance between people being able to leave the welcome centres and go to families and the number of people wishing to come to Wales, then we’ll be in a position to reopen the supersponsorship route.

Thank you for that response, First Minister. I’m in agreement with you that the centres offer that initial support, that initial sense of safety and sanctuary after coming from such turmoil as there is in Ukraine. But what’s really important is to understand how the Government are now identifying the additional resources that will be required to cater for people beyond the initial welcome centres, because I think you, like me, would agree that these centres are only temporary staging posts before a permanent settlement can be put in place for families that come to Wales.

I did point this out in my letter to you on 11 March of this year that I had concerns around the resources that Welsh Government had put in place to support the scheme. Could you give us some clarity, please, First Minister, as to where you believe you will identify the additional resources, in particular the housing resources, that will be required? [Interruption.] I can hear the Government shaking their heads and sniggering. It is a fact—[Interruption.] I can’t believe that you are—. You are sniggering, because you are taking a serious situation and believing it can be developed into a political point. There is an issue that there are people stuck in transit in places that were only temporary for them, rather than the housing stock that the Welsh Government should identify. I want to know where that housing stock is coming from. Can the First Minister provide that answer?

Llywydd, of course we want people to move on from the welcome centres as soon as it is safe for them to do so. There will be a variety of destinations for people leaving those centres. The bulk of them, I believe, will go to those families who have so generously offered to look after someone fleeing from the horrors of Ukraine, but there are other routes that are being explored. We are looking with a number of local authorities to bring more houses that will otherwise be unoccupied back into use. We are working with our local authority colleagues to make sure that, where there are opportunities in the private rented sector, people will know about those, and some of those matches could be made as well.

The point that my colleagues were trying to convey to the leader of the opposition is this: we are having to do all of this using our own resources. People coming from Ukraine have been short-changed by the UK Government. The money is simply not there in the system for public services to be able to absorb, as public services in Wales absolutely want to do, the people coming from Ukraine in the way that we would wish to see them welcomed. There is no money at all for people who come through the family scheme, and even for people who come through other routes, the level of funding is not secure—it’s for one year only. We have no certainty on what happens beyond that. So, £20 million-worth of Welsh Government money found from other sources has been put together to support the additional actions that we are taking. We don’t get a single penny from the UK Government for the welcome centres. All of that is funded from Welsh Government resources, and that £20 million is being spent very fast, because of the number of people who wish to take advantage of the opportunity to come here in Wales. There is no great stock of housing standing waiting to be used. We are still finding places for people from Syria and from Afghanistan, we still have 1,000 people every month presenting as homeless into local authority services in Wales, and we know that we have people who are on housing waiting lists waiting themselves to be rehoused. There are no easy answers—[Interruption.] I beg your pardon?

It's called failure. 

Of course there is failure in the system, and it comes from a decade of failure to invest in these matters by your Government—people who supported them over that period. But the idea that there is a large and easily accessible stock of housing just waiting to be brought on stream—it isn't like that, and that's why the offers from families will be the backbone of the way in which we are able to move people beyond the welcome centre and on to the next step in their journey here in Wales. 

First Minister, the point I'm making to you is that you took the plaudits, and rightly took the plaudits, that you identified yourself as a supersponsor Government for refugees coming from the horrors that we are seeing in Ukraine, and we all want to play our part. But you have to identify the resources to marry up to the demand. Now, you have indicated, in your own words, that at the moment there are 4,000 individuals who have been identified as wanting to come to Wales. That is something to be celebrated, that they want to come to Wales. If you've identified £20 million for the 1,000 refugees that the initial assessment was allocated for, that means that you have to find an additional £60 million to cater for the additional 3,000, plus the housing requirement as well to move people out of the initial welcome centres. That is what I'm trying to find out from you at the moment, First Minister: where this resource is coming from from your additional resources that have been made available from the UK Government. And also, where are you going to find the housing stock to put people into quality accommodation so that they can rebuild their lives, which is important because that's part of the resettlement process that we want to see? These were known factors when you made the offer; it is a fact now that you've suspended the scheme, so it is not unreasonable to ask where you are going to take the scheme with the resources that you require, or will the scheme remain permanently in suspension? 

Well, I think I've already answered most of those points already, Llywydd. I've explained to the leader of the opposition that, as soon as we're able to achieve a balance between outflow from the welcome centres, we will be able to reopen them to welcome more people here to Wales. I've set out for him where, in a very challenging set of circumstances, more permanent housing is being found for people who've come from Ukraine, and I'm hugely grateful to our local authority colleagues, our colleagues in the housing association movement and others who are helping us to do just that. The Welsh Government has no money from the UK Government to help with the actions that we are taking—none. So, I'll just be clear with him about that. There is not a penny piece that comes to us for us to do the work that we are carrying out, and we continue to work collectively across the Government to make sure that we are able to find the investments that we need.

Let me make this point clear, Llywydd: none of what we do here in Wales is about plaudits. That is an offensive idea. I'll tell him that. [Interruption.] Let me tell him that, because I want to make it clear to him: nothing at all that we do is about seeking plaudits from anyone. When I spoke to a seven-year-old child in Llangrannog last week, he was struggling in the few words that he had to explain to me what it was like to have arrived in Wales, and he pointed upwards and he said, 'No rockets in sky.' A seven-year-old child, who had been through so much. Those are the reasons that people in Wales have responded with the generosity that they have to this problem, and nothing else. 

The leader of Plaid Cymru, Adam Price. 

Diolch, Llywydd. Michael Gove said last year, after your prompting, First Minister, that the Westminster Government wanted to reset the relationship with the devolved nations. We now know what they meant by that, of course—they want it to be a relationship where they are in control and we are subservient, where their Parliament is supreme and ours is subordinate. In announcing, without a word to you as a Government or to us as a Parliament their intention to repeal the Trade Union (Wales) Act 2017 passed by this Senedd, they've shown their contempt not just for workers, not just for Wales, but our entire democracy. This is not just one more in a long list of power grabs; it's a turning point. It's devolution's breaking point, potentially. It rolls back the rights of citizens, but also denies those very citizens the right to decide their own future. Now, you've said, First Minister, that you will resist Westminster in its attempt to undermine our democracy, but the urgent question now is: how?

First of all, Llywydd, let me say this, that it was deeply, deeply disrespectful of the UK Government—disrespectful to devolution, disrespectful to this Senedd—yesterday to have smuggled out, in an explanatory memorandum, not even in the statement that they made, their intention to attempt to repeal pieces of legislation that were passed through this legislature. Not a word in advance, not a letter to say that this is what they intended to do, and, if it hadn't been for the eagle eyes of people looking to see what they were intending to do, then we wouldn't know about it today, would we? 

I look at the Conservative benches. There's nothing they're not willing to defend, is there, if it comes out of Westminster? They're willing to defend a UK Government stating its intention without the simple respect of making those who will be affected know their intentions in that way. They had their opportunity, Llywydd. That piece of legislation passed through the Senedd. They could have referred it to the Supreme Court if they felt that it was in any way beyond the power and the authority of this Senedd. They chose not to do so. The reason that they revive it now—it's part of their vindictive approach to trade unions, and it's part of their disrespect agenda when it comes to devolution. 

How can we in Wales—at least those of us who care about our democracy in this Senedd—respond now in a way that makes Westminster rethink and retreat? A letter isn't going to work; that's been tried before. We can no more look to the Supreme Court for protection than progressives in the US can, because they have already ruled that Westminster has an unlimited power to legislate, even in devolved areas. Now, we have a very simple answer to this situation, which would remove Westminster's right to run roughshod over our democracy permanently, not just in the brief interludes of a Labour Government every 20 years, and that's independence. Now, isn't that an idea whose time has come? Now, the First Minister may not want to come that far, but could you accept that one way to send a clear message to Westminster that will make them sit up and listen is for you to say that your unionism is not unlimited, and for Wrexham's march for independence on Saturday to become the biggest ever, a march in defence of Welsh democracy, swelled not just by the ranks of my party's supporters, but your party's supporters as well? 

Well, Llywydd, I just don't see the purpose of continually re-litigating this issue in front of the Senedd. It was in front of the people of Wales a year ago, and it could not have been in front of them in starker terms. I stood next to the leader of Plaid Cymru in debates in which he attempted to persuade people that independence—breaking away from the United Kingdom—was the best way to secure Wales's future. I made a different case—I make it still—that the way to ensure that people in Wales continue to exercise the level of control over our own affairs is to make sure that devolution is entrenched, that it cannot be rolled back in the way that it is currently. And there is a way to do that, Llywydd, and it'll come at the next general election, and that cannot come soon enough. 

We don't have a Government at Westminster, Llywydd. We have a set of headless chickens who run around trying to save their own skins. It's time for them to clear out for people to have a chance to choose a different and a better Government, and, when that different and better Government comes, we will be able to make sure that the incursions that we have seen on the powers of this place, on the finance that we should have had, that was promised we would have and that has never arrived—to entrench those things. And that will be the way to make sure that people in Wales have what I think they demonstrated in May of last year that they wanted. They want to have powerful devolution. They want to have a Senedd able to do the job that we were elected to do. But they want, as well, to be part of a successful United Kingdom.

I have to say to the First Minister, and with regret, that I’m not hearing resistance from him; I’m hearing resignation. What if Labour loses the next Westminster general election, and the one after that? What if Boris Johnson is the Prime Minister well into the 2030s, as has been recently reported? What do we do then? Now, you've consistently said that the United Kingdom must be a voluntary union. Do you agree that there needs to be a clear and legally secure route for the nations of the UK to choose their constitutional future, Scotland and Wales? And isn’t one of the options to us, in response to the decision by the UK Government to nullify our democracy—and surely that is a change that we have to recognise; the context is changing—to request the power for a referendum on the future of our democracy, a section 109 request in our circumstances, based on whichever model or models emerge from the constitutional commission that you've set up?

In Scotland, they hate referenda—the UK Government says—but, in Wales, they say that they like them. Why don’t we give them one? And if it’s framed as Wales versus Westminster, it’s surely a referendum that we can win.

Well, Llywydd, I've always argued—and I’ve got into trouble for it from time to time—that if the people of any constituent part of the United Kingdom vote for a referendum on their future, then they should be allowed to hold that referendum. I think that that would be the case in Wales as well. If a party that stands for that at an election wins a majority of votes in Wales, then of course that referendum should happen. But that hasn’t happened here in Wales, and, until it does, I think that the case that the Member makes is fatally weakened.