Part of 2. 2. Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Communities and Children – in the Senedd at 2:50 pm on 28 June 2017.
Well, six years after you chose not to be advised by the Wales Council for Voluntary Action report, ‘Communities First—A Way Forward’, which said the missing ingredient was community ownership, and after £0.5 billion having gone into the programme, you told the Equality, Local Government and Communities Committee last week that the programme would not be replaced, that the record of its work in Wales’s most deprived areas had been mixed, and that the figures aren’t moving. You’ve now said that joined-up Government would ensure that all spending decisions would have tackling poverty in mind, which, of course, is what you and your predecessors have consistently said. But how are you engaging with the Wales Council for Voluntary Action and its partners on this agenda to ensure that that missing ingredient doesn’t remain missing as we move forward?