Questions now from the party leaders. The leader of the Welsh Conservatives, Andrew R.T. Davies. 

Thank you, Presiding Officer. Could I just send a warm welcome to colleagues in the gallery from Pakistan, who are attending from one of the regional assemblies and watching our proceedings today?

First Minister, why has the Welsh Government failed in its commitment, made some seven years ago, to eliminate the use of B&Bs for young people in the care sector here in Wales?

Well, Llywydd, I think there are a number of reasons that lie behind that unfortunate fact. The biggest one is that we take too many children away from their families here in Wales. This is a point that I have tried to make ever since I was the health Minister and responsible for social services. We take children away from their families in Wales at twice the rate that children are taken into care in England, and the result of that is that our local authorities find that all their budgets, all the staff that they have, are having to deal with the number of children who are already in the care of that local authority, and when new needs arise and children have to be attended to, there isn't the capacity there to respond in the way that we would like.

We have had a concerted campaign with local authorities over the last three years to try to address and reverse this trend. This is a trend of 20 years and probably more, Llywydd. Year after year, the rate at which children are taken away from families in Wales rises. That delivers a poor service for those children and it delivers a particularly poor service for those families who look for preventative help from a social services department, who find that there's no capacity to do that because their hands are so full of children already inside the care system.

There are local authorities in Wales that buck this trend, that manage to reduce the number of children and look after them safely in other ways. I commend particularly the record of Carmarthenshire County Council, which has a 20-year record of being able to keep numbers going in a different direction, and in more recent times the actions of Neath Port Talbot Council, which has significantly reduced the number of children they take into the care system, freeing up resources to help families to stay together. If you don't do that, then the system is under such pressure that, when children do come into the system, it struggles to provide the immediate help that is necessary for them.

I'm grateful for that answer, First Minister, but the fact of the matter is that a pledge was made seven years ago, in 2015, and some of the answer that you gave me today about highlighting good practice in local authorities such as Carmarthenshire, such as Neath Port Talbot, was highlighted as part of the Government statement at that time about how you drive good practice through local authorities to get rid of the use of B&B and other unsuitable accommodation. Here we are, seven years later, and that commitment has not been delivered.

The consequences of that lack of delivery are highlighted in the report that BBC Wales are covering today, and in particular the words of Gemma, when she said she'd been exploited by older men when she was young before being taken into care at the age of 14, when she'd become addicted to heroin. She had moved house 12 times by the time she was 15. She said:

'I've never fully unpacked anywhere. Nobody ever keeps me very long anyway.'

How can Gemma or any of the other 50 young people in Wales who have been placed in B&Bs, hostels or budget hotels in the last year, or indeed any of the 285 young people in accommodation that isn't regulated by the care watchdog, have any confidence that the accommodation that they are being placed in is safe and secure when you hear stories like that from Gemma?

That's a distressing story, Llywydd, but it exactly reflects the point that I made originally that children like Gemma would have been better served had the system invested in preventative action and early intervention to prevent that very sad story of what happens to children when they get drawn into a system that does not have the capacity to respond properly to their needs. I am sorry to say, Llywydd, that the conversations with too many local authorities have proved too difficult on this topic over that extended period. There are local authorities, despite everything that has been said to them, despite all the advice they have—and they don't lack advice. The leader of the opposition is right in that way. There are reports that the Association of Directors of Social Services in Wales have produced, there is independent advice that has been commissioned for local authorities to demonstrate to them how they can do this better, and yet we have local authorities in parts of Wales who, every single year, manage to find things moving in the opposite direction. There is more that they can do, there is more that they must do in order to be able to provide better outcomes for those young people.

I still think it's important, Llywydd, to put those numbers in their context. They are too high, I definitely don't want to see them, but against the 50 people that the leader of the opposition mentioned, 662 young people left care in the figures that are the most recently available, and of that 662, 628 saw 95 per cent of them assessed as being in suitable accommodation on the day when their care experience ended. So, the system still manages to respond to the needs of the bulk of young people drawn into it, but the answer to being able to do better is to do things differently, not just to do more and more of the same things.

First Minister, the Government in 2015 made that commitment to, obviously, phase out the use of B&Bs, hostels and budget hotels. Do you still stand by that commitment? I appreciate that seven years have passed, but is it still a Government priority to stick to that commitment? And if it is a Government priority to keep that commitment, will you commit today, in the time that you have left as First Minister, to make sure that that commitment is implemented, so that children like Gemma can have confidence in the system to look after them when they're entrusted to their care? 

I absolutely want to see a position, Llywydd, in which young people are not looked after in those very unsatisfactory circumstances. Since last May's elections, I have been meeting, alongside my colleague Julie Morgan, with leaders of the newly constituted authorities. One of my messages to those leaders is that this is an agenda for them and for their chief executives, not simply for cabinet portfolio holders and directors of social services. For us to make the difference we need to make in the lives of those young people—remembering that the local authority is the corporate parent of those young people; every single member of that local authority has a responsibility to every single one of those young people—then that has to be a responsibility owned in the office of the leader and the chief executive. They have to take responsibility across the range of services.

I mentioned earlier, Llywydd, the success that Carmarthenshire has had in this area. One of the reasons that the then leader of Carmarthenshire said to me for their success is that they have always run education and social services under the one portfolio for these purposes, so that there is no sense that what happens to a child is that when things start to become difficult, the education department thinks it's the social services department's responsibility, and the social services department thinks it should be dealt with by education. That's why I think it is a clear corporate responsibility that lies in the offices of the leader and the chief executive, because it is only by mobilising the support available across all those responsibilities—and that includes housing, of course, as well—that we will be able to make the difference in the lives of young people that we want to see, and I'm sure Members across the Chamber would want to see. 

Leader of Plaid Cymru, Adam Price. 

Diolch, Llywydd. Yesterday, the leader of the Labour Party, Keir Starmer, said that the United Kingdom would not rejoin the European Union, the European single market or the customs union if Labour returned to power. Do you agree with that policy, First Minister, and is it the best policy for the people of Wales?

Well, I agree, Llywydd, that the world has moved on. The United Kingdom is no longer a member of the European Union. That is to the regret of many of us in this Chamber, but it just remains a fact. I can't remember how many times I will have said here that once the referendum was held, the focus of the Welsh Government was not on the fact of Brexit because that had been decided in a referendum, but on the way in which we left the European Union. The speech given by the leader of the Labour Party is focused on our future relationship with the European Union, a relationship in which we are no longer members of the European Union. And we'll have to work very hard indeed to repair the damage done to that relationship, which continues to be done every day, by the current Conservative Government in Westminster.

You've answered the first part of my question, but can you specifically say whether you support the Labour Party's position now not to rejoin the single market or the customs union? Yesterday, Sadiq Khan, mayor of London, said that there are times when he's prepared to disagree with the leader of the Labour Party, when he thinks that to do so is in the interests of the people whom he represents as mayor of London. So, similarly, what is your position as the First Minister of Wales? You've previously said:

'We cannot allow different parts of the UK to be more favourably treated than others. If one part of the UK is granted continued participation in the Single Market & Customs Union, then we fully expect to be made the same offer' here in Wales. Have you changed your mind or has Sir Keir's speech yesterday changed it for you?

Here is my position, Llywydd, and here's the position of the Welsh Government: we are in favour of the closest possible frictionless trade with the European Union. The idea that you can simply pop back into the single market or the customs union is fanciful. We may wish that we could, but we simply can't. We are no longer members of the European Union. The conditions in which we could do that simply do not exist.

The well has been poisoned in the relationship between the United Kingdom and the European Union, and continues to be poisoned by the fact that we have a Government that's prepared to breach international law and to override the agreements it itself signed up to and commended to people as a deal that they should vote for in a general election. The notion that you could simply rejoin something that has moved on, and where the invitation to rejoin does not exist, is not the basis for a sensible policy.

What Keir Starmer set out yesterday, Llywydd, was a different approach in which a Labour Government will renegotiate a very different relationship with our nearest and most important trading partners; a relationship based on respect—respect that is so sorely missing in the way that the current Government treats those partners—and a relationship that will achieve the closest possible frictionless trade for businesses across the United Kingdom and here in Wales. That is a realistic possibility.

The idea that, in a debating society sense, we should say that we should rejoin something that's no longer available for us to join does not seem to me to be the sort of policy that would actually make the difference we'd like to make.

With respect, we had this debate, didn't we, when we jointly presented the White Paper, where, yes, the phrase that we landed upon in the end was 'unfettered access to the single market'? That is not the position that Keir Starmer has now set out.

One example of how Wales loses out from being outside the single market, which is now Labour Party policy, is what's happened at the ports of Holyhead, Fishguard and Pembroke. As your Government predicted, the Welsh ports, subject to the full weight of the new barriers to trade, have lost business through direct-to-Europe sailings from the Republic and, also, through Northern Irish ports that currently are enjoying an indefinite grace period to export through Scotland. It's now more attractive to send goods from the Republic to Belfast and on to Scotland than it is to export them through Wales.

Now, the so-called 'landing zone' for the implementation of the Northern Ireland protocol, exempting them from most of the required checks, that your Labour Party leader set out yesterday will make that disadvantage for Welsh ports permanent, and it'll do the same for Welsh agriculture and for Welsh manufacturing. Did he consult you before his speech? If he did, did you warn of the clear risks to the future of Welsh ports that this represents?

Let me make these two points to begin with to the leader of Plaid Cymru: first of all, he's completely right, of course, that in 'Securing Wales' Future' we argued for leaving the European Union on the basis that we would remain in the customs union and the single market, but that was before we left the European Union. At that point, that was a perfectly plausible policy, and, in fact, Theresa May came quite close to actually being able to deliver it at her Chequers meeting before the current Prime Minister walked out of her Cabinet.

Unfortunately, we have left the European Union since then, and imagining that the prescriptions we put forward in those circumstances are simply still available to us today—. I just say to the leader of the opposition that it simply isn't there to be done. So, while I agree with what he says about the damage that is being done to Welsh ports and to Welsh businesses, the problem he has is that he is advancing a solution that he doesn't have available to him.

Just returning to the single market, it's not like leaving Plaid Cymru and agreeing to join it again next year. [Interruption.] [Laughter.] There we are; we know. We see how easily that can be done. It is simply not the same sort of enterprise to think that you can walk back into an agreement with the European Union, years after we have left, with a trade and co-operation agreement already in place—. And that's legally binding. That’s how I would regard it. I know the Tories don't regard it as such, having signed up to it, but the TCA is a treaty signed in international law. To say you can just walk back into the single market and the customs union acts as though that international agreement had never been signed up to.

Here is what we would wish to see as a Government. We want to see constructive steps, and you can only have constructive steps if you are in the room together talking, to fix the Northern Ireland protocol. We want to see those unnecessary trade barriers reduced and we want to secure access to those joint programmes, particularly Horizon 2020, which this UK Government said it had negotiated as part of the deal when we left the European Union. All of those things were put in front of the UK Government yesterday, by my colleague Vaughan Gething, in meetings with them. All of those things appear in the speech made yesterday by Keir Starmer. What the leader of the Labour Party is interested in is a genuine realignment of our relationship with the European Union, based on the realities that we face, rather than, I'm afraid, magical thinking.