Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:03 pm on 4 October 2022.
To start, I do recognise everything that the Member has said about the situation in west Wales, and how much people rely on different ways to heat their homes and who aren’t having any support from the Westminster Government. We are doing many things already. We have extended the discretionary assistance fund to give more help to people who depend on that as way to buy their fuel or energy, in the way that Cefin Campbell set out. We have a new scheme and that was opened at the end of September, with £4 million to the Fuel Bank Foundation. That’s going to provide support to people who depend on prepayment meters, but also will provide support to those buying oil in the way the Member described. And also, of course, we have provided funding to local authorities, on top of the funding that they’ve had to distribute to every household who pay council tax, funding that they can use in the appropriate way for their areas. We were very pleased to see in the scheme that Powys County Council has just announced that they are going to use that additional funding to help children and to help disabled people, but they’re also going to provide—. I have this in English here.