Questions Without Notice from the Party Leaders

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:52 pm on 28 June 2022.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 1:52, 28 June 2022

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?