I call on the party spokespeople to ask questions of the Cabinet Secretary. First of all, the Plaid Cymru spokesperson, Bethan Jenkins.

Thank you and good luck in your portfolio, Minister. I think it’s important that we have an objective view at this particular stage as to the nature of your portfolio, especially with regard to the poverty agenda. There was a very damning report a year ago, and also a report in the last term, by the Communities, Equality and Local Government Committee, with regard to the lack of robust data in relation to some of your anti-poverty schemes. While nobody could argue with the nature and the thought processes behind those particular schemes, it’s very important for us to understand how you analyse those data so you can see, moving forward, how successful those projects are. Minister, can you tell us, after your few weeks in this position, what you plan do to in relation to data and how you will communicate that effectively to Assembly Members?

I thank the Member for her question and message of goodwill, and likewise to the Member who will be shadowing me. Poverty is now the responsibility of all Cabinet Secretaries and Ministers within Government, and we all take a collective role. I have specific issues around poverty with communities, and I will be working with my team in Government to resolve some of those problems. I will be making a statement shortly about the principles of this department and what we are trying to achieve. I do believe that tackling poverty is very challenging for any Government. In the 17 years that we have been in power here, there are things that we can mitigate and try to mitigate against, but we don’t hold all the levers in terms of the challenging tasks ahead. I’m trying to concentrate my portfolio now specifically on two areas: one economic regeneration, and one well-being. The well-being aspect of this is around tackling ACEs, adverse childhood experiences, because I believe that if we can fix communities at an early age—early intervention with young people—we have a much better opportunity long term. But I will come back to the Chamber with more detail, and I’m happy to share more detail with the Member over a private meeting if the Member would like to have that.

Thank you for that answer. Obviously, I’m not against other Ministers having poverty within their portfolios, but we must make sure that there is, ultimately, one Minister who will be responsible. We have had experiences in committee where we have asked various Ministers questions on poverty, and they have always potentially not answered those questions because it has not been within their particular brief.

My second question comes to the economic aspect of your answer. The previous Minister, Lesley Griffiths, said that she had been focusing Communities First more on getting people back into jobs. While, again, I believe that that’s noble, we need to see how that is measured and how those targets are then followed through to make sure that these schemes are being appropriated in the most effective way to get people in our Communities First communities back into work. Can you tell us how, potentially, you will refocus Communities First in relation to that particular agenda, moving forward, and how you will encourage other parties to take part in that conversation?

We have many anti-poverty programmes and skills programmes and I’m working with the Minister responsible for that. One of our commitments is for 100,000 new apprenticeships, working with the Communities First programme and Communities for Work. Communities for Work is being put at high risk because of the referendum tomorrow. If we leave the EU, what happens to that, in terms of the people who are on those programmes, and programmes for the future? I do have statistics for the programmes we held in the last Government, and I’d be happy to write to the Member and place them in the Library, Presiding Officer.

Thank you for that answer. The third question, and I’m sure you are very much aware of this—. I had a Bill on financial inclusion and education in the last Assembly term, and I worked closely with the former Minister and a group working on new ideas and a new strategy for financial inclusion and education. Can I ask you what is happening with that crucial work? I had a representative on that group. Will that representative continue to work with me and with you, as Minister? What do you intend to do in that regard because it is such an important agenda?

Financial inclusion and financial literacy is something that we are seeking to build into the curriculum programme. I will be working with the education Minister to see how we can advance that in the weeks to come. Perhaps the Member would also like to write to the education Minister in terms of how she may be able to help her bring that to the forefront in our schools and colleges across Wales.

The Welsh Conservatives’ spokesperson, Mark Isherwood.

Diolch. Last December’s report by the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission, ‘State of the Nation 2015: Social Mobility and Child Poverty in Great Britain’, chaired by Alan Milburn, a greatly respected politician, found that absolute child poverty in Wales—children living in Wales are more likely to live in persistent poverty, and the number of children in workless households in Wales were the highest in Great Britain. It made three particular recommendations to the Welsh Government. How do you respond, bearing in mind your response to the spokesperson for Plaid Cymru that you are the single point of contact on this issue for the Welsh Government, to recommendation 1, which was to take a more rigorous, evidence-based approach to poverty reduction? It states:

‘If the Welsh Government is to achieve the greatest impact from its policies and programmes, it needs to undertake a review to ensure that: there is clarity about what problem the policies are trying to address, what they will achieve and how they will achieve it…that policies are cost-effective and appropriately targeted to maximise impact…. In addition, the Welsh Government should pilot new policies and programmes to assess impact and value for money before they’re implemented across the country.’

I thank the Member for his question, but, look, you can’t keep your hands clean on this one, Mark. I said earlier on that tackling poverty in Wales was particularly difficult because we didn’t have all the levers. The UK Conservative Government starved Wales of £1.2 billion of funding, which has an impact on public services. So, while we will try and continue to work with our partners to deliver a better outcome for our families across Wales, I would also ask the Member to make representations to the UK Government to look for fair funding for Wales, so that we can pass that through to families here in Wales.

Of course, UK Government policy applies across the UK, but this report identified that Wales had the highest worklessness, the highest child poverty, and the lowest prosperity amongst the UK nations. That can only be because of the matters delivered at a devolved level in Wales over the last 17 years. So, how do you respond to recommendation 2?

‘Improve the quality of the workforce in schools…Ensuring that children have access to high-quality teachers in all subjects is fundamental to improving their life chances’.

They said,

‘The first step to achieving this is to make teaching in Wales more attractive to good-quality teachers…better mechanisms to encourage new students to undertake teacher training in Wales and newly-qualified teachers to work in Wales…improving teacher training in Wales…as would better identification, provision and assessment of teachers’ continuous development.’

That was their second recommendation. As the point of contact in the Welsh Government, I would be grateful if you could comment on that.

Of course, I recognise all the issues that are raised in that report, but I think the point you completely missed was the fact that a lot of these programmes require funding to do them. And we are extremely challenged in the way we are managing our budgets because of the challenge the UK Government has proposed on us. We are looking collectively at how we tackle poverty across the Cabinet Secretariat. We will continue to do that for the best interests of our children.

The budgetary environment set by the UK Government applies in England and Scotland too, but Wales is trailing in these areas. The third and final recommendation the commission set for Welsh Government was to involve business in its drive to reduce child poverty and increase social mobility. They said you should increase efforts to work with companies, including significant employers in Wales, to create a business compact to promote fairer access to high-quality employment, and said businesses should be encouraged to engage strategically with young people in schools, adhere to best practice on internships and apprenticeships; reform the selection process to eliminate unconscious bias; open up well-structured non-graduate routes to high-quality careers; monitor and evaluate performance on improving access; and sign up—something that you’ll agree with—to the living wage. Now, this was last December, after 16 and a half years of Labour Government, and after four and a half years of the last Labour Government. So, I’d be grateful if you could confirm how this Labour Government is going to do things differently to address these concerns.

I refer the Member to the tackling poverty strategy and the child poverty strategy, which we will be refreshing this year.

Llefarydd UKIP, Mark Reckless.

Diolch, Lywydd. On his visit to Cardiff City Stadium yesterday, the First Minister said that, following a ‘leave’ vote, the Welsh Government would develop its own separate relationship with the European Union. Does the Minister know what he meant, or how this will affect his portfolio?

Maybe the Member would like to refer that to the First Minister, as it is what he said and not what I said. But I do have a view on this; the First Minister has been very clear on the importance of being a member of the EU, and of Wales being a member of the EU. The Member—I know he’s not traditionally a Welsh resident, or with Welsh interests—but what we do have here, and what the First Minister is very keen on, is making sure that he represents Welsh people well, and that’s by being part of the EU.

I am a Welsh resident. I’m slightly concerned with the Minister not being aware about what the First Minister plans in this field. He’s waxed lyrical about European Union funds and community regeneration, but it seems that he and his Government seem to be going more down a separatist route through this joint working with Plaid Cymru. I just wonder, would he not be better deployed working with the Westminster Government to ensure that, as well as continuing to have all this money flow to Wales, we, in addition, get our share of the £10 billion independent dividend due?

I find the Member’s comments not surprising given the party that he now resides in. The fact is that working with another party—with Westminster—is something that we do on a regular basis. It’s not new to a devolved administration to do that, but it’s also not impossible to work with our friends across Europe either, and that’s what the Member should think about carefully tomorrow.

And on the projects that the Minister speaks of—community regeneration and beyond— where we’re told how wonderful this European money is, it often comes with strings and restrictions. I just wonder, are there any of those projects where the Minister believes that were the Welsh Government to be unfettered in its spending of those funds, it could do a better job?

The Member only recently appeared in Wales, pre-election, and he’s probably not too familiar with many of the areas that we all represent in this Chamber. But, let me just pick up one area of Monmouthshire, which I believe is in his region, where there are 305 enterprises assisted and 430 enterprises created, with 865 jobs in Monmouth alone, thanks to the EU funding that you and your colleagues are putting at risk.