5. What outcomes is the Welsh Government hoping to achieve from the universal basic income pilot for care leavers in North Wales? OQ58318

I thank Carolyn Thomas, Llywydd. The pilot is a radical and innovative project offering financial stability to over 500 people leaving care in Wales. Almost 100 young people in north Wales are eligible for the pilot, and this will enable them to make positive choices in line with the hopes and ambitions they have for their own lives.

Thank you. Can I begin by welcoming this trial and thanking my colleague Jack Sargeant for the groundwork that he's put in to make it a reality? Anxiety and money troubles can be all-consuming and prevent people from thriving or living healthy, happy lives. Financial stability could mean the difference between care leavers learning new skills, being able to afford to network and socialise and build confidence and be happy. It is not always easy to measure these things, but they are incredibly important, nonetheless, particularly for young people, who could really benefit from emotional support and someone they can trust to turn to.

What advice and caring support will the care leavers have access to? And how does the Welsh Government plan to measure the outcomes of the trial, including non-economic metrics, such as happiness and well-being? Thank you.

I thank Carolyn Thomas for that, Llywydd. One of the distinguishing characteristics of the Welsh Government's pilot is that it doesn't just offer an income to young people. The income is really important because it is guaranteed and it is reliable. I was disappointed to see the reaction of the Welsh Conservatives to the pilot. Thinking of the questions the leader of the opposition asked me earlier, we know that, for so many young people leaving care, securing reliable, decent accommodation is one of the major challenges they face.

At the launch event that I attended with my colleague Jane Hutt, I talked there with a young woman who explained to me that she'd left care, she had a flat of her own and the tenancy came to an end, she'd secured another flat, but there was a two-week gap between the flat that she had to leave and the flat that she was going to move into. She said to me that other young people who have families behind them wouldn't need to think about what to do in those circumstances; you know that you can go home for a couple of weeks and you can manage, and then when your new flat is available, you move in. For her, it was a disaster; she was homeless when the first flat ended, and by the time the next tenancy became available, her life had been so badly affected by those two weeks with nowhere to go that she wasn't able to take it up at all. Giving young people a basic income that they know they can rely on will enable them to make different sorts of decisions, investment decisions, in their own future. But because this is a vulnerable group of young people, then, in our scheme, they will also have access to regular advice from those people who they know already, who've been part of their lives already and will continue to be part of their lives during the pilot period. So, when they are making decisions, they will not be making them alone or in isolation, they will be making them alongside the advice and the guidance that they recognise themselves they will need to draw on in order to be able to make the most of the opportunities that are now available to them.

There is an evaluation, a rigorous evaluation schedule that has been agreed for the pilot. It will include qualitative as well as quantitative research. We'll collect the figures, of course, but we will also be collecting the lived experience of those young people in those interviews that allow them to speak for themselves and to make sure that we are able to draw the maximum advantage in terms of learning from the experiment that we will be trying here in Wales.