Can I say, firstly, that anyone who thought a £30 million-a-year programme would eradicate poverty was somewhat hyper-optimistic and delusional? This is echoed by the evidence of Caerphilly council. Can I just say that to expect a single programme to singlehandedly reduce poverty is naïve and unrealistic? You will never eradicate generational poverty by a single anti-poverty programme. It has been very successful at some things and not so successful at others, but actually, poverty, fundamentally, is down to economics. Anti-poverty programmes and employment support programmes are all well and good, but, unless you have a robust economy, then we’re never going to eradicate it.

We also know that the first thing that the majority of people who live in a homogenously poor area do when they increase their income sufficiently is move—they move to a more affluent area. I think the Chair will be able to tell us about that. But we know the characteristics of poor communities: poor health; high numbers of people on benefits; those not on benefits on low pay and irregular hours; general low educational attainment; few books in the home; with many, a sense that things cannot get better. Where you have an area that is disadvantaged, then, to quote the Welsh Local Government Association, if you look at the most disadvantaged areas, they’ve got the most parts of the system where intervention is needed, so they need a multi-agency approach, an intensive piece of work, to put all the bits back, and get them working again. In a more affluent area, where you’ve got pockets of poverty, the system isn’t quite as broken, and, therefore, you need fewer interventions—more specific interventions—to help those people get back up and running’.

Ynys Môn council said:

The programme has reaped success for changing and improving individual people’s lives by supporting them into training, volunteering and work opportunities and improving their life skills’.

To quote Swansea council:

Community based, accessible services allow staff to understand communities, building relationships and trust that support disengaged people to participate in and access services that they would not otherwise’.

Turning to recommendation 1, which I think is incredibly important, what’s going to happen to what has been done? I think it doesn’t matter if you call it Communities First or you call it ‘Swansea First’ or if you call it ‘Making a community better’. It doesn’t matter, the title—it’s what’s going to happen to the schemes.

Communities First successes in Swansea include—and I’ll just talk about health first—weight loss programmes, improved diet, smoking cessation programmes, exercise programmes. Will Abertawe Bro Morgannwg University Local Health Board or Health Improvement Wales take these on? Because these really are important, in my opinion. I think, far too often, for health, we keep on thinking it’s hospitals—we need more money in hospitals; we need to do more in hospitals. I believe that we need to do more of getting people fit and well so that they don’t end up in hospital. I know how the life expectancy in some of our poorer areas can be up to 10 years less than that in some of our richer areas. You’ve got to improve lifestyle.

On poverty: a project that looked to help people to reduce their utility bills; a clothing shop project, which recycled unwanted clothes; a project that promoted the local credit union and getting people out of doorstep lenders, which is one of the biggest problems that happen in some of our poorest communities. These doorstep lenders, some are meant to be national companies, but they certainly do cause huge problems and they end up paying massive interest rates, some of our poorest people. Who will take on projects like these?

Low educational attainment is a major cause of poverty. Projects prioritised improved educational attainment by helping adults back into learning. Family learning projects operated in partnership with local schools. Homework club sessions targeted children and parents who don’t have ICT and internet facilities at home, supporting young people with their education. I was very fortunate that I was brought up at a time when I was not disadvantaged, because no household had more books than I could access from the local library. Now, there are those who are ICT-rich and those who are ICT-poor, and that does make a huge difference to the educational attainment of very many children. I think that’s one of my greatest fears at the moment, that, if you’re poor now and you don’t have access to all the ICT equipment, then you’re going to be disadvantaged as a child. A parent and toddler group aimed at increasing the development and learning of pre-school children. A homework club provided support to children with their homework and, more importantly, ICT facilities for them to be able to do it. There was also a scheme that encouraged a learning environment in the family home. Who is going to take these over?

On Flying Start, what the Chair of the committee has seen in Newport is replicated in Swansea East, where relatively affluent areas distort the data, so the poorest areas in Swansea—Plasmarl, the terraces of Plasmarl—do not get Flying Start. Yet, the converse is true. I’ve got large detached houses that are in a Flying Start area, because they’re close to a very poor council estate. This cannot be right, and I think it really is important that we ensure that Flying Start targets individuals and is not based upon somebody living 10 streets away being rich.