As the End Child Poverty Network Cymru states, official Government figures published in June 2016 show that 29 per cent of all children in Wales are in relative income poverty, equating to 200,000, which they said remains higher than the UK average and greater than that of the other devolved nations. How, therefore, do you respond to their calls to the Welsh Government, firstly to provide clear and strong leadership on tackling child poverty to ensure that all children in Wales are able to reach their full potential, to include engaging with the UK Government, public bodies in Wales and all sectors, including employers; their call to put in place a monitor, a specific child poverty delivery plan with, quote,

‘ambitious milestones and targets…which promotes evidenced programmes and services’; and their third call, to ensure that tackling child poverty remains a priority within new arrangements under the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015? They say Welsh Government should also ensure that clear accountability measures are in place.

Your statement does refer to progress in tackling child poverty being assessed under the national indicators underpinning the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act, and you refer to having published in November a set of well-being objectives, demonstrating the Welsh Government’s commitment to supporting families and having a clear focus on tackling poverty. How, therefore, will you ensure that the purpose of the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act to make public bodies work better with people, with communities and each other, taking, quote, ‘a joined-up approach’, which the future generations commissioner described in her first report as ‘co-production’, actually goes forward on the ground? I don’t want to get into quibbling about terms; it is an international term supported by hundreds of organisations now across Wales, but it’s more about how that joined-up approach at street level actually happens, turning the power thing upside down, designing the system backwards, ensuring that things are done with people, not to or for them.

You state it is time for a new whole-Government approach to building resilient communities, and I think that obviously until today and previously in the context of your thoughts around the future around Communities First. At that time, I asked you if you could respond to the call by Oxfam Cymru for the Welsh Government to embed its sustainable livelihoods approach in all policy and service delivery, as that is aimed at helping people break out of poverty. That was based on their three-year Building Livelihoods and Strengthening Communities in Wales programme, which helped over 1,100 people and had very commendable and measurable outcomes. I hope, by now, you’ve had an opportunity to look at that and you could respond with your views on their call and that model as something that could be taken forward.

You’ve obviously, and rightly, referred to the need to mitigate the effects of adverse childhood experiences, and of course you’ve appointed my colleague David Melding to chair a working group looking at this area. But, what are your expectations as to how what you actually do in this area will change things? And, in particular, regarding one demographic, how will this recast the narrative of children in care and foster care?

As I mentioned last week, charities Carers Wales, Contact a Family Cymru and Learning Disability Wales are calling on the Welsh Government to rethink its proposal to make £5.5 million funding cuts that provide vital grants to low-income families with severely ill or disabled children in Wales. They say the Welsh Government seems to have made the decision without considering the impact it would have on the most vulnerable families with disabled children or, I might add, the much greater additional costs this would impose on statutory sectors, particularly health, education and social or children’s services.

You refer to nearly 72,000 children living in workless households. That is close to the Office for National Statistics figures published in July, which said that one in eight children in Wales are living in a long-term workless household—higher than the UK average. That’s defined as households where all adults have been out of work for more than a year or never been in paid employment. Given the research showing that children living with long-term unemployed parents do less well at school and are at a higher risk of being unemployed later in life, what work are you doing with your Cabinet colleagues, particularly your Lib Dem colleague in this respect, acknowledging that and the interconnectedness and interrelationship with your agenda?

The final set of questions I have relate to the commission on social mobility and child poverty and its state of the nation report 2015 applying to Wales. They said that while trends in employment are moving in the same direction as the UK as a whole,

‘Wales has higher rates of low pay than other UK countries, keeping many children in poor working families.’

They said that educational attainment in Wales at all levels remained unacceptably low and significantly below other parts of the UK. I’m not going to re-rehearse recent figures, but they simply reinforce those concerns. The commission said

‘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.’

How do you, therefore, respond in your wider consideration about the future, about building resilient communities, to their findings that more than 65,000 children whose families receive out-of-work benefits or child tax credits in Wales were not living in Communities First programme areas and, in fact, more than 25,000 children in families receiving out-of-work benefits or child tax credits were living in the top 40 per cent most deprived areas in Wales, but still not in areas benefiting from Communities First; and to their recommendations that the Welsh Government should take a more rigorous evidence-based approach to poverty reduction with a review in order to ensure that there is a clarity about what problem the policies are trying to address, what they’ve achieved and how they will achieve it; and to their call to the Welsh Government to improve the quality of the workforce in schools, recommending making teaching more attractive to good-quality teachers and encouraging students to become teachers in Wales; and their call to the Welsh Government, finally, to improve business in its drive to reduce child poverty and increase social mobility, working with companies and developing a business compact to promote fairer access to high-quality employment? I’m talking about education and employment, but this is in the context of child poverty and how we tackle, not only the root causes in their young lives, but also the wider socioeconomic contributory factors. Thank you.