Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:09 pm on 28 June 2022.
I thank Peter Fox for those points, Llywydd. He's right to say that the Act passed by the UK Parliament is an Act for England only. What it requires is for public authorities to take account of guidance—guidance that, as yet, has not been published. But of course—I certainly give him this commitment—when the guidance is published, we will look to see whether there is anything that we can draw on here in Wales. The reason that we concluded, in those discussions with the UK Government, that there was no case for Wales being included in that Bill was because the National Health Service (Wales) Act 2006, the Social Services and Well-being (Wales) Act 2014 and the Additional Learning Needs and Education Tribunal (Wales) Act 2018 already require public bodies in Wales to do what the UK Act now requires to be done in England. And the learning disability plan, which my colleague Julie Morgan introduced here in an oral statement on the floor of the Senedd on 24 May, has both education and employment as one of its six core themes.
Does that mean that there is not more to be done? Of course not, and I absolutely recognise the point that Peter Fox made about the continuing difficulties that are in the path of young people with Down's syndrome. I will discuss with my colleague whether a meeting of the sort that you describe would be worthwhile. I myself have met very regularly with organisations that represent people with learning disabilities, and, as a Government, our commitment to making sure that they have the sorts of futures that we would want to see for them, where their needs are safeguarded but their prospects are improved, that is absolutely the spirit in which our learning disability action plan has been constructed.