Part of 1. 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:12 pm on 10 October 2017.
First Minister, yesterday, I was pleased to be able to go out and be a ‘The Big Issue’ vendor, alongside Cabinet Secretary Carl Sargeant, taking part in that process as a way of seeing how people who are, potentially, in between housing, who are struggling with many things in their lives, are using ‘The Big Issue’ to sell and not to beg. What I found was it was quite revealing as to how invisible I felt, quite frankly, to many people who were just going about their daily lives and didn’t really realise that selling ‘The Big Issue’ was part of a social enterprise and it was going to aid and help them to get out of the situation that they were in. So, I’m wondering if we could encourage, and you could encourage, people to actually buy ‘The Big Issue’ and if you could tell us how you are helping people in those situations into jobs, so that they feel empowered to live their everyday lives in a successful way.