3. Will the First Minister outline the actions being taken to ensure children and young people in the Cynon Valley do not go hungry during school holidays? OAQ(5)0715(FM)

We’re providing £500,000 for 2017-18 to accelerate the roll-out of the Welsh Local Government Association summer holiday programme, and Penywaun Primary School in Aberdare is one of the sites benefiting from funding.

Thank you, First Minister. During the year 2015-16, there were over 8,300 children who were eligible for free school meals within Rhondda Cynon Taf. This means that more than one in 10 of all children in Wales who are eligible for free school meals reside within my county borough. New research from the Trussell Trust suggests that, and I quote,

‘lone parents and their children are notably more likely to use foodbanks, suggesting that, even compared to the low-income population, lone parents and their children are particularly vulnerable to needing food banks.’

This is especially a problem within larger families and is exacerbated greatly during the school holidays, when these families have no access to free school meals. We know that the Welsh Government has plans for an extended system of lunch and fun clubs, so I’d like to ask: how are preparations going ahead of the school holidays, which start in just a few weeks’ time, and what evaluation of the scheme in tackling holiday hunger will take place?

We are working with the WLGA in order to move the scheme forward, of course, in the coming summer holidays. Evaluation is in place. Evaluation, for example, of the previous scheme—of the pilot scheme, rather—was done, and indeed was published in February 2017, and the findings made in relation to health, social, and education outcomes, and the findings that we saw from the pilot scheme, are very encouraging.

First Minister, this is a very important issue, and I commend the education Secretary’s announcement, earlier this year, to pilot these lunch and fun clubs for primary schools at first. But I just wonder if it’s going to be a scheme you will examine for the secondary school sector, because helping those that receive free school lunches, in terms of healthy nutrition, eating, and a healthy programme of activities, educational attainment—all these things are very, very important. That group has some of the poorest educational attainment of any that attend school, some of it because the school holiday itself is not very conducive to keeping their pattern of learning going. So, this is an area, I think, that needs careful examination.

Of course, we’re—. Money restricts what we might want to do, but, with the programme rolling out over the course of this summer, of course there will be an evaluation of it, as I have said, and in future years, of course, we’ll keep under consideration how the programme might be extended, when and if the finance becomes available.

First Minister, your party has been running the Welsh Government for 18 years, and yet there are still children going hungry—200,000 children in Wales live in poverty. Don’t you think that it’s a disgrace that a member of your own party has to stand up here and ask you about children going hungry in the Cynon valley, when you’ve had so long to do something about that? Why have you failed? Why have you failed?

What does he do, as deputy leader of Cardiff, I wonder, in terms of taking this forward? Not much, I suspect, but he’s always keen, of course, to point the finger elsewhere. Look, he is right to point out that there are children going hungry. Much of that is to do with the current policies of austerity pursued by the UK Government, over which we have little or no influence, but we can see that there are more and more children who find themselves in families who are unable to cope financially, which is why we’re putting this programme in place, in order that, in Wales, we have a programme that helps young children through the summer, and makes sure that they can have food in their bellies over the summer. That is, to my mind, true socialism—true socialism—and something, indeed, we should be proud of in terms of what we’re doing in Wales.