The Co-operation Agreement

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:10 pm on 6 December 2022.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 2:10, 6 December 2022

I thank Hefin David for that, Llywydd. The expert group that was established as part of the co-operation agreement has carried out its work. Its report has been received; we published it on 10 November. We're very grateful to the members of that group for the very detailed consideration they gave to the challenging circumstances of social care.

It's undebatable, I think, Llywydd, that the context has changed since the co-operation agreement was signed and we asked that group to carry out its work. Prime Minister Sunak has pulled the plug on the social care funding that Chancellor Sunak set up when he was in that office. Prime Minister Sunak has pulled the plug on the paying for social care arrangements that Prime Minister Johnson had put in place while Mr Sunak was the Chancellor. All of that means that we have had to think again about the report and ways in which we can think of paying for social care in the future. And that does mean, as I said, and as the leader of Plaid Cymru said last week when we were talking together on this, that we should revive the work that was done in the last Senedd term—some very detailed work done looking at the Holtham review, the proposals for a social care levy—to see whether it does provide us with an alternative route, given that the UK routes that were meant to be in place have now been closed off, and whether that offers us an alternative route to funding social care in Wales in the future.

The difficulties that Hefin David pointed to remain. The line that divides devolved and non-devolved responsibilities in this area is a very blurred one, and there are actions that lie in the hands of the UK Government that can have a fundamental effect upon the way in which actions we might take would have their impact in the lives of Welsh citizens. That's why it's so disappointing to see the things that we believed were in place now being reneged on once again, because it throws all of that back into uncertainty. The good news is that the work that was chaired by my colleague Vaughan Gething in the last Senedd term is all there for us to go back to. Now my colleague Rebecca Evans will take that up and make sure that in the new circumstances, and with the report that we've got available to us, we look to see whether that offers us any fresh chances to design a system that would work for Wales.