3. What were the Cabinet Secretary’s priorities when allocating money to the communities and children main expenditure group in the 2017-18 final budget? OAQ(5)0145(FLG)

I thank the Member for the question. The 2017-18 final budget aligns investment with key commitments in ‘Taking Wales Forward’. In the communities and children main expenditure group, that includes an additional £10 million in support of our free childcare offer, an additional £6 million for the prevention of homelessness, and £1.4 billion over four years towards the delivery of our 20,000 affordable homes target.

Thank you. Clearly, this portfolio covers things like families, children, welfare reform, financial inclusion, homelessness and housing advice in the voluntary sector. Getting advice in those areas is not only better for people, but it would actually save money for the public purse. Therefore, given that the Welsh Government had already commissioned, alongside the National Advice Network, prior to the 2017-18 budget, the report now published on modelling the need for advice on social welfare, what consideration was given to provision to take forward its conclusions, which they say now need to be properly framed within a wider policy discussion considering the potential severity of problems, their interconnectedness, and, of course, local insights?

Well, Llywydd, I understand the point completely that the Member makes about the need for good advice services and the way that good advice can allow problems to be solved before they escalate. The way the budget-making process works, however, is that it is for portfolio Ministers to identify priorities within the range of responsibilities that they exercise. We then negotiate together over a budget to deliver on those priorities and it would have been for the Cabinet Secretary responsible to make the decisions in relation to the deployment of resources across the wide range of responsibilities, as Mark Isherwood said, that lies within that particular portfolio. We have embarked upon the start of the budget-making round for next year. I will be meeting the Cabinet Secretary concerned in relation to his portfolio and I’ll make sure that a specific question is raised in that discussion on the point of advice services that the Member has raised.