1. Will the First Minister make a statement on the Welsh Government's efforts to tackle poverty? (OAQ51171)[W]

Our objective is to help and support everyone to live healthy, prosperous and rewarding lives. Our national strategy, ‘Prosperity for All’, sets out how we will build a Wales that is prosperous and secure, healthy and active, ambitious and learning and united and connected.

You confirmed here last week that the Government won’t publish a poverty action plan. Now, this is a huge disappointment and matter of concern to Plaid Cymru and the cross-party Assembly committee who have been studying this area. I understand that you are eager to work holistically and work on a cross-departmental basis, but, without a central strategy that you can follow, the work of different departments of Government, including measuring progress through targets and milestones, will be impossible to achieve. Can I ask you to reconsider this decision and ask you to create an action plan as a matter of urgency?

Well, I would argue, of course, that the strategy does this already. It demonstrates the framework where the Government can work as a whole in order to enhance and increase prosperity and to consider cases of poverty in a manner that is more effective and connected. This isn’t something that belongs to any particular Minister or any particular department; it is something that the Government owns completely.

First Minister, I see from reports today that your Government has refused to release full sets of data to assist the Prime Minister’s race disparity audit. And its findings are stark contrast for both the UK and Wales. I do wonder, though, is your reluctance in releasing the data because you haven’t got it, or is it simply that you won’t get it? And the reason why this is so important is because that data would help us to identify areas of poverty in black and minority ethnic communities, where we might actually be able to take some action and make some differences to those people’s lives.

Oh dear, that is wholly untrue, because Scotland has refused to co-operate; we have not. I’ll give the Member a chronology of what we’ve done in the meantime. On 26 October last year, we agreed to the Welsh Government’s participation in the work. On 8 December last year, our equality team arranged for officials from the race disparity audit unit to attend the Wales race forum. On 21 December last year, we signposted RDAU to publish data. On 28 February this year, there was a meeting between our officials and RDAU in Cardiff. On 11 May, there was another meeting with RDAU. We were concerned at that point by an apparent lack of progress on their website. They asked us at that point, for the first time, to undertake work to analyse the Welsh data. We thought at that point that they would be undertaking that work. They acknowledged the lateness of that request. We made it clear that we didn’t have the resources to support that work at that time, and expressed concern about being asked to undertake such a large exercise before the launch date in July. At that point, we were informed that the Scottish Government had decided not to engage with the project.

On 26 May, RDAU responded to a letter from us with a provisional list of data that would be on the website. On 2 June, again we agreed to continue working with the unit, by providing advice on the Welsh data sources, and providing data sets for the RDAU to analyse. On 4 October, a third meeting between officials and RDAU took place. They gave us a glimpse of the content of the website, but did not provide us with a copy of the 45-page report. I think we have engaged properly, and perhaps it shows the shambles at the heart of the UK Government that they cannot tell Wales and Scotland apart.

One of the things that’s absolutely designed to undermine the Welsh Government’s efforts to tackle poverty is the introduction of universal credit, rolled out across Wales. We’ve seen in parts where it has been rolled out that it’s led to an increase in rent arrears and numbers of people going to food banks. Now, the Scottish Government has got responsibility for the administration of welfare, which has enabled them to reduce the amount of time that applicants have to wait, to two weeks, which is the same as jobseeker’s allowance, and also, to ensure that landlords can continue to receive the rent payments directly. So, I wondered what conversations you’ve had with the UK Government on enabling us to mitigate the worst effects of this ghastly new proposal.

Well, we know from experience that where we take control of aspects of the benefit system we get into a situation where the budget settlement is never enough. We saw that with the council tax benefit—£20 million was taken from that as the responsibility was transferred. So, I have no faith at all that the UK Government, if they were to transfer responsibility over universal credit, would actually transfer the budget to cover it and that is the problem. To my mind, what is needed is a proper benefits system across the whole of the UK administered by a Labour Government in London looking after the interests of the many, not the few.