Extract from Wales
Questions
Cost of Living Support
(East Renfrewshire)
(SNP)
10. What recent assessment he has made of the adequacy of cost of
living support for households in Wales.(905725)
(Glasgow North) (SNP)
14. What recent assessment he has made of the adequacy of cost of
living support for households in Wales.(905729)
The Secretary of State for Wales ()
This Government are supporting households across Wales with the
cost of living. Between October 2022 and the end of June 2023, a
typical household would have seen half their energy bills paid
for by the Government.
According to a study on hunger in Wales, around 753,000 Welsh
people faced hunger in mid-2022—that is more than double the
population of Cardiff—with Welsh Trussell Trust foodbanks
experiencing an 85% increase in the number of emergency food
parcels that they distributed compared with five years
previously. What specific conversations has the Secretary of
State had with Cabinet colleagues and the retail sector on the
high costs of food in supermarkets
Obviously, all Cabinet colleagues are absolutely committed to
making sure that we put our resources towards the least well off.
That is why pensions, benefits and the minimum wage have all gone
up in line with inflation, and it is why there have been extra
payments of £900 to people on benefits, £300 to pensioners, and
£150 to households with disabilities. But at least the people of
Wales are not in the same position as those of Scotland, where
1.4 million people are being hit with extra taxes.
Extract from Report
stage (Lords) on the Illegal Migration Bill
Lord Swire (Con):...All my amendment seeks to do is to say that,
on an annual basis, the Secretary of State must lay before each
House of Parliament a report on illegal migration in the UK and
the statistics as required by this amendment. It is not a
particularly contentious or difficult amendment. To those who
think, “If they are here illegally, how can we possibly find out
where they are?”, I say that you can find that out—the supermarkets
have a system and there are other systems that I spoke about in
Committee, which I will not repeat this evening. It is a question
of will to find out how many people are in this country already
and what the total population of this country is. I believe that,
once we have that information, it will better inform people’s
views about the levels of migration they want to see in the years
ahead...
