Part of 1. Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Finance – in the Senedd at 1:35 pm on 18 April 2018.
Can I agree entirely with Jane Hutt? I said in my original answer that, of course, the Welsh Government wants to go on investing in advice services. But it is an absolute disgrace that we are having to provide those services to people whose income is being knowingly and deliberately reduced by the UK Government, when those people live at the very margins of poverty.
A number of women Members in the Assembly yesterday tried to get a discussion of the Equality and Human Rights Commission report that was published during the recess, including the leader of Plaid Cymru, because the figures contained in that report are absolutely stark and ought to be of concern to every Member of this Assembly. An extra 50,000 children being pushed into poverty in Wales not by accident, not because somebody has lost their job, not because there's been a downturn in the economy, but because of the deliberate decisions by the UK Government to freeze the benefits of those families who have the least to live on of all. And those impacts will fall not simply on children, but they will fall disproportionately on women as well. Estimates in that report suggested that women will lose on average £350 a year from these benefit cuts, while men will gain around £15. The Member is absolutely right to point to those underlying causes of the need for debt advice in Wales, and to point to those remedies, such as the real living wage, which would have a genuine impact on the circumstances of those families who live in the direst of circumstances, whose poverty is increasing, and whose prospects for the future are under such threat.