Social Justice Priorities

Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Social Justice – in the Senedd at 1:31 pm on 5 October 2022.

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Photo of Jane Hutt Jane Hutt Labour 1:31, 5 October 2022

Thank you very much, Huw Irranca-Davies, for those two really important points in my portfolio for different Ministers in the UK Government. I met with the Scottish Government Minister Neil Gray earlier on today, and we now understand that there’s a new Minister for refugees in the department for levelling-up, so we’re writing to him today to again call for an increase in the £350 payment, which actually was called for by the previous Conservative refugee Minister, Richard Harrington. He said it should be doubled; we said at least £500, because so many of the host families want to continue, and also we have new host families coming forward. But also we’re writing to them about many other issues to do with the fact that there’s no guarantee of money for the next two years. We still have no money from the Government for English-for-speakers-of-other-languages provision or for health services.

Now, very important is the point that you make, and not just in terms of uprating benefits in line with inflation. Let’s wait and see if this Government actually does stand by that commitment made by Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak that they would uprate welfare benefits in line with inflation. I hope we have a strong message from this Chamber today, on which we expect and we hope that our Conservative colleagues will back us. Hearing Iain Duncan Smith saying, ‘Well, obviously, it makes sense, doesn’t it, because they actually spend money in their communities’, was quite interesting yesterday.

But I have to say, we have also written—I’ve written, with the Scottish Minister for social justice and the Northern Ireland Executive Minister for social justice—about this important issue of abolishing the benefit cap, which undermines so many in their living costs, and also the two-child limit, saying that we should uplift the UK universal credit to £25 per week, not the £20 that we lost before. So, there is a lot for us to do in taking this forward with the UK Government.