I welcome your statement. You say you want to break the cycle and shift resources into prevention and protection and you cite access to jobs, giving people the right skills and support for those jobs, adverse childhood experiences and empowerment—empowerment in communities and empowerment of communities. All of this is something I’ve been arguing for for many years and in recent weeks. I hope that means you might be, in future, supporting some of those proposals.

In proposing to phase out the Communities First programme, you state:

‘Resilient communities are empowered with a strong voice in the decisions that affect their everyday lives…and help communities take ownership of community assets, where appropriate. Implicit within this, and, indeed, throughout our new approach to communities, is an important role for the third sector.’

Why, with the benefit of hindsight, didn’t you accept the recommendations, five years ago, of the WCVA commission’s report, ‘Communities First—A Way Forward’, which said exactly that? Unfortunately, despite me and others presenting their arguments at the time, you personally rejected that.

For 15 years after the start of Communities First, child poverty levels in Wales were above England, Scotland and the UK, and so were working-age worklessness figures. Even working-age adults in Wales living in poverty, measured by the 60 per cent median income level—. The level has stayed at the same level, according to Bevan, as 1997, 1998, 1999 and 2000—the beginning of devolution, the beginning of the Communities First programmes.

Last year, the commission on social mobility and child poverty said in its state of the nation report that:

‘Trends in employment are moving in the right direction, but Wales has higher rates of low pay than other UK countries, keeping many children in poor working families’ and that:

‘Educational attainment in Wales at all levels…remains unacceptably low’.

How do you respond to the statement that the Welsh Government needs to ensure that services and support will be available to all families, including those not located in the most deprived areas? We clearly need to radically rethink the way in which we support our communities, something the sector’s been saying for goodness knows how long. Do you agree, therefore, that the Welsh Government needs to explore ways to build capacity in local communities so that they can take the lead on regeneration projects instead of the Welsh Government deciding what those projects and programmes should be directly, or through commissioned programme deliverers?

Two weeks ago, I hosted an event with Co-production Wales, Lives Through Friends, and a team of citizen and user-led organisations in the Assembly, to facilitate a conversation about how there is much more to life than services, recognising that, for too long, policy makers have mistakenly failed to nurture a caring society and have increasingly redefined care as a financial transaction with the consequences of a waste of public money, diminished citizenship and weaker communities.

The Care Council for Wales is going to be putting forward expert classes in co-production and there’ll be workshops run by the Wales Co-operative Centre. How will you and your officers engage with those training programmes so that the Welsh Government is fully on board with these community resilience programmes that are already being delivered in Wales and can light the way forward? In fact, the Co-production Network for Wales has highlighted the 1000 Lives team at Public Health Wales as a stalwart in supporting this and other co-production initiatives. The Wales Audit Office are at the forefront of co-productive evaluation and behaviour-change initiatives. Working With Not To is building a great network in north Wales, and links with the School for Social Care Research and a host of statutory and third sector organisations are already making things happen on the ground. How will you engage with them, again, to hopefully together share planning, design and delivery to take this forward?

Finally, on that theme, how would you respond to concerns expressed by Oxfam Cymru, who said that the future of the Communities First programme, the Welsh Government’s largest tackling poverty programme, remained unanswered in the Welsh Government’s programme for government, ‘Taking Wales Forward’, and they suggest reforms to Communities First based on the sustainable livelihoods approach. As they say, this three-year Building Livelihoods and Strengthening Communities in Wales project has helped over 1,100 to get their lives on track, helping people identify their strengths and assets in order to identify the root problems preventing them from reaching their potential. They also say it makes financial sense, securing an average return of £4.39 for every £1 spent across Wales—something, I believe, we emphasised in two recent debates in the Assembly. The Welsh Government, they say, must secure lasting change. Do you therefore agree with them that embedding the sustainable livelihoods approach or the asset-based development approach in all policy and service delivery in Wales will help people to break out of poverty and help build resilient communities? Thank you.