The eighth FMQs of 2023 comes to a close.

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The Senedd will once again be lit tonight in the blue and yellow colours of Ukraine’s flag as a sign of solidarity with Ukraine and its people.

Image source, Senedd Cymru

The first minister and Conservative Tom Giffard debate Wales' performance in international tests in reading, maths and science.

Mr Giffard says "the last Programme for International Student Assessment results in 2018 showed Wales at the bottom of UK rankings for the fifth occasion running. We'll see what happens when the 2022 results come out later this year, but since then, we've only seen significant disruption to children's education in Wales over the last three years because of both the COVID-19 pandemic and now teacher strikes as well."

The first minister replies, "Wales was the only part of the United Kingdom to see an improvement in all three PISA dimensions when those figures were last published. I know that Conservative Members think it's their job to run Wales down, but, actually, the PISA results were at the opposite end of that spectrum".

PISA tests are taken every three years by a sample of 15-years-olds in 79 countries and regions.

The Programme for International Student Assessment is set by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and allows us to compare the basic skills of teenagers in places right across the world.

Image source, PISA

The first minister describes the A465 Heads of the Valleys road as an "astonishing feat of engineering", with "environmental aspects so carefully attended to".

The Welsh Government is turning the 30-mile stretch of the A465 between Abergavenny and Hirwaun into a dual carriageway.

Last month, the Welsh Government said all future roads must pass strict criteria which means they must not increase carbon emissions, they must not increase the number of cars on the road, they must not lead to higher speeds and higher emissions, and they must not negatively impact the environment.

Image source, Getty Images

On the UK government's agreement with the EU on major changes to the Northern Ireland Protocol, the first minister says the Welsh Government will "pay particular attention to the impact of the Windsor framework on the competitiveness of Welsh ports".

He adds, "the terms of the withdrawal agreement from the European Union handed Welsh ports a clear competitive disadvantage. Irish businesses bypassed the land bridge in favour of direct links to EU ports in France and Spain. Prior to leaving the European Union, Rosslare had, as I remember, four major routes, and they were between the island of Ireland and Welsh ports. Now, there are 40 routes of Rosslare and they're going directly to the European Union to the single market, despite the fact that it takes longer to do so, it's more expensive to do so, but they're doing so because of the barriers to trade that they now face when they route goods through Welsh ports and on to the European Union through Dover."

The protocol is the part of the Brexit deal which sets Northern Ireland's trade rules.

It keeps Northern Ireland inside the EU's single market for goods.

That keeps the Irish land border open but means products arriving into Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK are subject to checks and controls. The new deal should reduce the frictions on Great Britain-to-Northern Ireland trade.

Plaid Cymru leader Adam Price points out that regulated rail fares in England will rise by up to 5.9% from March.

He asks why the Welsh Government has agreed to the same increase in Wales.

The first minister says normal practice would have been to increase rail fares in line with inflation, which "would have meant a 12.3% increase".

Mr Price proposes that income taxes could be raised to help fund cheaper rail fares.

The Plaid leader says it was "hard to disagree with Labour's Shadow Secretary of State for Transport, Louise Hauge, who said this savage fare hike will be a sick joke for millions reliant on crumbling services".

Mr Drakeford says it was the "best bargain we could come to in Wales within the resources we have available", and that the contribution from the tax payer is increasing.

Mr Price adds: "What's the point of this place if we're simply a cut and paste parliament that passively implements Tory austerity?

"You could have done what the Scottish government did which is to reduce peak fares and pay for it through a progressive use of your income tax powers."

Mr Price also accuses Mr Drakeford of "slashing subsidy for the bus industry".

"You're effectively pushing large parts of the bus industry over the edge of a cliff at the end of June," he says.

Mr Drakeford replies: "I'm confident that we will be able to go on finding further money.

"The additional money is emergency funding - it cannot go on forever.

"We have to find a way of agreeing with the industry a sustainable solution in the context that passenger numbers using buses have not recovered to where they were before the pandemic.

"I'm confident from the discussions we had yesterday that we will find further funding beyond the £12m to sustain emergency funding to the first quarter of this year and we will do it alongside the industry to come to a sustainable financial position".

Mr Drakeford said public transport is a "very important priority for this government".

Andrew RT Davies, leader of the Welsh Conservatives in the Senedd, calls on the Welsh Government to adopt UK laws protecting leaseholders.

The Building Safety Act, external means developers in England can be made to fund repairs like replacing cladding.

"Why isn't the Welsh Government coming forward and adopting the legislation that has been put down in England, to take section 116 and 125, to give rights to leaseholders so that they themselves can exercise those rights in holding the developers to account?" asks Mr Davies.

Campaign group the Welsh Cladiators has said Wales had "no enforcement plan".

The first minister replies, "the minister keeps all those arguments about sections 118 to section 125 under review."

He adds, "the position, though, is that those regulations - those sections - were specifically written for the building safety regime in England. It is not as simple as simply picking them up and dropping them into the very different Welsh context.

"And there are some disadvantages for leaseholders, who find themselves within that regime, because here in Wales our intention is that leaseholders should not be required to pay for the remedial action that is required to their buildings, whereas those sections expose leaseholders to bills up to £10,000, and we don't intend to do that in Wales."

Following the 2017 Grenfell Tower tragedy in London, a number of apartments blocks in Wales were found to have fire safety defects.

Work fixing defects on many of these blocks is yet to be carried out, amid rows over who should pay.

Labour MS for Cardiff Central, Jenny Rathbone, asks “what progress has the Welsh Government made on embedding prudent healthcare into every aspect of health and wellbeing”.

The first minister replies it has long been Welsh Government policy.

He provides an example, "I do recall, some years ago now, when I was health minister, visiting Penygroes, a Welsh-speaking area in the Ammanford coalfield, to see a dementia service, and being told by the GPs who ran it that their most important source of referrals were hairdressers on the main street of the village, because those hairdressers knew their clientele; they could spot the person who wasn't quite managing as well as they used to, with the money, with the organisation, and they would make an early referral into the dementia service, so that people could get that preventative intervention that is possible when you manage to identify people early on that journey. The barbers in Cardiff, the postal workers in Cardiff, who we know have those day-in-day-out interactions on the doorstep, all these are people who we can make helpful to the health service in that prudent healthcare way."

When Mr Drakeford was Minister for Health and Social Services, he set out in a document in 2016 that “prudent healthcare describes the distinctive way of shaping the Welsh NHS to ensure it is always adding value, contributes to improved outcomes and is sustainable”.

The principles of prudent healthcare, according to the document, external, are:

• Achieve health and well-being with the public, patients and professionals as equal partners through co-production.
• Care for those with the greatest health need first, making the most effective use of all skills and resources.
• Do only what is needed, no more, no less; and do no harm.
• Reduce inappropriate variation using evidence based practices consistently and transparently.

The first minister denies the assertion by Conservative Joel James that there is a "postcode lottery" in the health service in Wales.

Mr James says, "Cwm Taf Morgannwg health board, which covers the Cynon valley, along with Bridgend, Merthyr Tydfil and the rest of Rhondda Cynon Taf, had a staggering 13,732 patients waiting more than 14 weeks for diagnostic and therapy services, out of a population of 450,000. This represents 36 per cent of the total amount of people waiting more than 14 weeks in Wales."

The first minister replies, "it is because Cwm Taf Morgannwg serves one of the oldest and sickest populations that we see anywhere in Wales. And the demand for health services reflects the needs of that local population."

Hello and welcome to our live coverage of the eighth session of First Minister's Questions in 2023.

The meeting is held in a hybrid format, with some members in the Siambr (Senedd chamber) and others joining by video-conference.

You can click on the play button above to watch the proceedings.