Diolch, Lywydd, and I move the amendment in my name. As we approach a month since Plaid Cymru formed their Government, we are still short on information regarding their flagship policy. It's all well and good making pre-election pledges and getting headlines, but Government isn't about headlines; it's about action. Both the FM and the Deputy FM have been asked on several occasions how this policy will be funded and when it'll be rolled out, but we still await detail.
Yesterday, we heard warm words and vague timelines, but that is not enough. Plaid Cymru claim this policy was fully costed, so what is the delay? As I've previously said time and time again, we all want to see more money in the pockets of parents, we really do, but it's not right to announce major spending commitments and ask parents across Wales to accept that funding on trust alone.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies said we would be looking at costs of around £400 million a year by the end of this term. Plaid Cymru must show where that funding will come from. Does that mean other initiatives will be cut? Who are the people that will lose out? And when will they find out?
Now, I don't intend to stop raising the £555 million allocated to Wales by the UK Government because of additional spending on children with special educational needs and disabilities—£300 million this year alone. Now, we may not have used as a Government a statutory override to manage additional learning needs pressures in Wales, but the First Minister is wrong to try to minimise the immense ALN funding pressures in local authorities and schools. I would be surprised if he could find a single local authority that agrees with him, or any school, especially those carrying budget deficits due to ALN pressures.
Now, we in Welsh Labour intend to scrutinise the new Government's use of every penny of those consequentials. And it'll surprise no-one that my concern lies with the children. Childcare is crucial, but it must be high quality. The first 1,000 days of a child's life is an absolutely critical period. It can determine lifelong trajectories for children. None of us can afford to get this wrong.
I didn't receive an answer yesterday to my questions on Flying Start, and Flying Start is so much more than childcare. It's enhanced health visiting, speech and language therapy, and, crucially, parenting support to underpin those parent-infant relationships and secure attachments that are fundamental to all our mental health. What impact will Plaid's childcare offer have on the Flying Start offer in Wales?
Now, there's no doubt that extra capacity within the childcare sector is needed for this policy to succeed. It can't simply be about access. If we are serious about rolling out this policy, it must be about the quality of childcare. We already have an early childcare and care plan in Wales that sets out that high-quality, accessible childcare can be transformational for children. But it is not clear what role the Plaid childcare offer is intended to play in supporting the development of all children, given that many are not eligible for the childcare offer.
What about children with disabilities—
Contributions
57 contributions on record. Newest first, by sitting day. Page 2 of 2. Counted by Siambr
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Of course.
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Thank you for that. If I can just point out that I am not a spokesman, I am a spokesperson. I'm very happy to clarify that our aim in this Chamber is to do the absolute best by the people of Wales, including our children, and that is the aim of our amendment today. So, as I was saying, what about children with disabilities? The Deputy First Minister will know all too well that there are major challenges for families with disabled children to access childcare, with evidence suggesting that just 5 per cent of Welsh local authorities have enough childcare for disabled children. Llywydd, we all want more free childcare to be made available, but in doing so we must commit to getting it right. As I've said, children must be at the heart of this roll-out, and we are calling today for the Senedd to recognise the importance of high-quality childcare in improving the life chances of children in Wales. Diolch yn fawr.
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I move the motion in my name. Llywydd, Wales has around 27,000 school support staff. I want to begin today by thanking each and every one of them. They help children to learn, keep them safe, support children with additional learning needs and allow teachers to teach. They build strong relationships with children and young people, which are crucial for their well-being, so that they can learn and reach their potential. School support staff are now the majority of the school workforce in Wales. Our schools simply couldn't function without them. They are quite simply the glue that holds our schools together. But in-work poverty is now a reality for many support staff. Most school support staff are only paid for work during term time, which makes up nine months of the year, whereas teachers have the same term-time working pattern, but receive a full year's salary. A Unison survey of more than 1,400 school support staff found that low pay is endemic, with 8 per cent taking home less than £1,000 a month, 18 per cent taking home between £1,000 and £1,199, and 38 per cent taking home between £1,200 and £1,399. The survey also found that more than half are in single-income households. More than 90 per cent of support staff are women, so this is also an equality issue. That's why, as Cabinet Secretary for Education, I committed to legislating for a school support staff negotiating body for Wales to provide a dedicated forum to negotiate pay, conditions, career progression, training and workforce development specifically for support staff working in schools in Wales. That's why it was a key commitment in the Welsh Government education strategic workforce plan I published in March this year, and it's why the Welsh Labour manifesto committed to ending term-time only pay as the body's first priority. I am proud of our record of social partnership in Government. Through the schools social partnership forum I chaired, I worked with trade union partners and local authorities to reach agreement that all level 1 teaching assistants who want to would move to level 2 from September this year, and I allocated £4 million of funding to local authorities to pay for it. That move will benefit up to 3,350 current level 1 TAs who will receive a pay rise of up to £1,350—a vital first step towards the goal of fairer paying conditions for all teaching assistants, and an investment in our children and young people, especially those with additional learning needs. But we need to go further if we don't want to see headteachers like one in my constituency, who has started a school foodbank just so her much-valued teaching assistants can get by on what they earn, if we don't want to see support staff being forced to take better paid and less stressful jobs in places like Aldi or Lidl, and if we don't want schools and local authorities to spend millions of pounds on supply staff to replace the support staff they've lost. Now, I wish with all my heart I could have taken primary legislation through the Senedd to make a school support staff negotiating body a reality in Wales. I was proud to speak at the launch of Unison Cymru's 'Time to value School Support Staff' report in December last year, to support their calls for a school support staff negotiating body and to tell them, and other stakeholders, that we had put a Bill manager in place to work on the legislation. From memory, the new Cabinet Minister for Education and Welsh Language was in attendance at that event. The preparation had begun. Now we want the new Plaid Cymru Government to commit to bringing forward legislation to create a school support staff negotiating body and to commit, as we did in our manifesto, to ending term-time-only pay for school support staff. Our calls are supported by the Welsh trade union movement, including Unison Cymru and the GMB. But valuing school support staff is not just the right thing to do for the staff; it's the right thing to do for our schools, our communities and every learner in Wales.
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Diolch. Can I thank all Members for their contributions to this debate? I'll try, in the time that I have available, to respond to as many points as I can. Sera, thank you for your contribution, and I wish your son well with his new role. I do have to say that you're incorrect in the statement that you made about the budget deal. There was no money from the budget deal that went into this funding for a pay rise for support staff. The budget deal was £112 million for local government and this is separate money. This is separate money. [Interruption.] No, it is separate money. You go and check it. It is separate money. The £112 million went into the rates support grant. The rest of the money was £180 million for health that was agreed as part of the Plaid Cymru budget deal. The £4 million that I provided to local authorities was separate money and is to be protected for that purpose. Several Members, including the Minister, have made references to the fact that of course it's not just about pay for support staff, and I have never suggested it is just about pay. It is about the complexity of what they're dealing with, the issues that Paul Rock referred to, and, yes, there is more work to be done in terms of ensuring they have proper career progression. That's why we included that in the strategic education workforce plan for schools: that commitment to that holistic view of what support staff are doing. But I am detecting a hint, in some of the contributions—yours, the Minister, and I've heard the First Minister say it in the past, and also Rebeca's—that somehow pay is not a really important issue. Well, I say to all of you, 'Go and ask support staff what they want.' Support staff want to be paid fairly for the job that they do, which is why we have made this call today. Thank you, Shav and Huw, for your support. Shav, you know I know how passionate you are about trade union rights, and I really appreciate your support. Thank you, Paul, as well. You spoke so eloquently about the range of things that support staff do, and it's all the more powerful based on your experience as a school governor. Sam, thank you for the Welsh Conservative support for the school support staff negotiating body. You won't expect me to agree with the political points you made about 27 years. The Minister also had a little pop there at 27 years. Let me say to all of you that I had two years in this post, and the Minister herself will discover that it takes time to change things in education. I set out in my speech, very clearly, the steps I took with the workforce plan, with the immediate pay rise for school support staff, and the commitment to the school support staff negotiating body. I note, Minister, that you're keen to look at other options to support support staff. Again, I say to you that they want all those things, but they also want more pay. And unless you are telling me here today that you're not going to be keeping the strategic education workforce plan for schools, then that commitment is there, in black and white, to have a school support staff negotiating body. I think you need to be clear if you're not going to do that, so that we all know it. The term-time pay is a different issue, because that was part of our manifesto. I will conclude by taking this opportunity to, once again, thank every member our school support staff in Wales. They do undertake that massive range of tasks. They are the glue that holds our schools together, those relationships with children, especially children with additional learning needs. I hope that we can all agree that we all need to do more to recognise the role of those support staff. But that also means recognising their hard work through fairer pay. I say to Helen Jenner as well that it's not another quango—it is a statutory body responsible for negotiating pay. We need to have those protections in place for the reasons that Sam Rowlands specified. There is variation and it is not always easy to get local authorities to agree on a consistent basis. That's why it took so long to get the agreement on the level 1 teaching assistants. The safest way to protect school support staff is to bring forward this legislation. I welcome the fact that you aren't voting against the motion today, and I hope that that is an indication of your willingness to work with me and others in this Chamber who are passionate about improving the lives of our support staff and therefore the lives of our children and young people.
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First Minister, 'Our Bravery Brought Justice' must be a watershed moment for children in Wales, and I pay tribute again to those young people whose courage has meant that Neil Foden faced justice. The previous Labour Government accepted every single recommendation of the child practice review and was also committed to driving implementation across partners. Will you take this opportunity to state your Government's commitment to every single recommendation? But will you also commit to maintaining the ministerial assurance board with Cyngor Gwynedd so that we can be assured as well that lessons are learned at a local level and that we never slip back on these things?
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Can I congratulate the Deputy First Minister on her appointment and welcome her to her post? Every child does deserve the best start in life, and under the last Welsh Labour Government, we rolled out free school lunches for all children in primary schools, serving over 50 million meals. We have continued to invest £150 million per year in the pupil development grant, and we continued to support families through the school essentials grant. And the UK Labour Government, which lifted the two-child benefit cap, will make an immeasurable difference in tackling child poverty here in Wales and across the UK. We all want to see more money in families' pockets, but we know too that families are keen to know more about Plaid Cymru's plans, and it is now for them to set out the details, and the details have been fairly scant in terms of how those policies are to be funded or some of the timescales around them. If I can ask, first of all, about the Cynnal payment. Commitments have been made in the media that that would be rolled out as soon as possible after the first 100 days. The BBC reported that you'd been asked would the payment start after the first 100 days, and the BBC reported that you had said 'yes'. But now we see that there is to be a steering group, so I wanted to ask if you could update that assessment of the timescale. I tabled a written question asking what representations you'd made to the UK Government on this issue, because information sharing will be vital where non-devolved benefits are concerned. You didn't answer the written question, but you told me I would receive a substantive response, which I'm waiting for, and I'm sure that I will get in due course, but I would like to ask you whether you have now had the opportunity to talk to the UK Government about accessing data that will be necessary to roll out this payment, because families living in poverty want to know when they are going to receive that money. There's been some discussion already about your flagship childcare policy, which does come with a very large price tag. I do think there is a lot of anxiety about how this policy is to be funded, and some estimates suggest it could be up to £400 million. Will it, for example, be taken from other programmes to tackle child poverty? I'm very anxious that you may use the consequentials that are coming to Wales for additional learning needs to fund that policy. So, I would like to ask you what initial assessment have you made, given that there is now a steering group in place, about where that money will be coming from. Now that you've appointed a steering group, I'm assuming that you've also had discussions with them about the timescales for their work, and I wondered if you could set out some more detail on that today. We all know that the first 1,000 days of a child's life are absolutely crucial and can determine their whole life chances going forward. I'm really keen that when we talk about childcare, we're not just thinking about working parents; we're also thinking about a really high-quality offer that is very child focused. So, I wondered if you could say a bit more about how you're going to ensure that what is delivered will be fundamentally child focused. We know that there are lots of issues with school preparedness now, that we've got children who are starting school unable to use language, that we've got children starting school still in nappies. To what extent will tackling some of those school preparedness issues be part of your work? The Flying Start programme isn't just about childcare, as you know. It's got four components: speech and language, enhanced health visiting, parenting support, and childcare. What assurances can you give that the families who need that multifaceted offer will continue to get that support? And finally, can I say that I welcome the commitment in your statement to a rights-based approach to policy? You've said that you'll look to incorporate key UN conventions in Welsh law. Can I just ask you to clarify that that will include the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child? Because I do believe that we've got more work to do in making sure that our often-stated commitment to children's rights is fully embedded into law.
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In the spring statement, the UK Labour Government announced a further £555 million for Wales over three years. Most of that funding arose from extra money allocated to meet the needs of children with special educational needs and disabilities in England, and included £300 million extra for Wales this year alone; money that came too late to be allocated in the final Welsh Government budget. We face exactly the same funding pressures, with rising numbers of children with ALN with increasingly complex needs in Wales. First Minister, how much of that £300 million is your Plaid Cymru Government going to spend addressing the needs of children and young people with additional learning needs?
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Trefnydd, can I ask for two statements? The first is from the Cabinet Minister for health and social care. On the back of the Audit Wales report into Aneurin Bevan health board's dealings with the eHarley partnership, I and the Torfaen MP made representations to Audit Wales. The report that they've published found that the health board did not conduct proper due diligence before letting multiple contracts to the eHarley partnership. But the report also says that Welsh Government guidance in this area has not been reviewed since 2006. So, I would like to ask for a statement from the Cabinet Minister setting out how the Government will respond. I would also like to ask for a statement from the Deputy Minister for Skills and Tertiary Education. I was really concerned to see in the list of responsibilities for his new post that, given the huge challenges that we face in tertiary education, the No. 1 item was reform of the Seren programme. Now, I am really proud of our Seren programme. It enables our young people to go to some of the very best universities across the UK, including in Wales, and I am sure that none of us would want to see a situation where the opportunities of our young people are limited. I would like to ask for a statement setting out the priority that this will be for the Government.
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Abstain.
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