Part of 2. 2. Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Communities and Children – in the Senedd at 2:25 pm on 22 June 2016.
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.