I grew up in the 1980s in Merthyr Tydfil and I lived through Thatcherism and the devastation it caused to my community and others across Wales. We saw that a generation of children growing up in poverty during that period too often stayed in poverty as they entered adulthood and they fell into the criminal justice system. I was trying to think of an example of how I recognised poverty at an earlier age in my life and it was an experience I had when going to work experience in the courts in Merthyr with a local law firm. I realised that I knew quite a lot of the young people who were going into the court that day, and I also met some of them afterwards. In fact, when I went in there as a witness to this experience, on work experience, somebody thought that I was the girlfriend of somebody who was being charged that day. I think that's where it hit home, because I really wasn't very happy or comfortable with the fact that a lot of my peers in my school age group were in that particular predicament in their lives. And they shouldn't have been in the criminal justice system, but they just hadn't been supported throughout their lives, because of the poverty that they were living in, because of the circumstances that they grew up in in Merthyr in the 1980s. And it's continuing to happen to this day in many of our communities across Wales.

But the difference between now and the 1980s is that we do have a Welsh Government, and we did not have that then. But where is that Welsh Government? I'm not going to suggest that they hold the full responsibility, although they would never do that anyway, as we've seen from their amendment today. I know that the toxic mix of right-wing economics and pernicious welfare changes that have been ushered in by the UK Government have been a cause and a barrier to this problem, but nor should there be any sense of complacency that there isn't more that can be done by this Government in Cardiff Bay. We don't want to continuously describe the problem; we want to come up with real solutions here in Wales.

The Labour amendment today portrays their lack of seriousness on this issue, unfortunately. Yes, there is an acknowledgement that they and the UK Government are responsible, and it has outlined some worthy projects and we agree with those projects. But, in our view, no Government can claim to be taking the scandal of our poverty seriously unless they aspire to hold all the levers of change that could affect it here in Wales. The truth is that the welfare needs of all of our citizens are not being equally met. Now, in the here and now, are you seriously content to sit on the sidelines? Their needs are equally being undermined by the UK Government and it really is frustrating to hear, time and time again, that we must do this in an equal way when it's a race to the bottom at the moment. Do we really want to leave the powers of welfare reform in the hands of the Conservatives in the UK as opposed to taking our own stake in this, having our own view on these projects? That's what I find fundamentally difficult to understand from the Labour benches here in Wales. How can Labour attack Tory welfare changes as the biggest driver of the problem on child poverty when they completely reject even trying to gain control over the very powers that could alleviate the effect of, or even stop, some of those changes? To us, it portrays a fundamental lack of energy and a hunger to be nothing more than a regional grant-distributing body.

In 1964, the United States launched—and I quote—'the war on poverty', an economic opportunity Act, the long title of which reads,

'An Act to mobilize the human and financial resources of the Nation to combat poverty'. 

I'm not suggesting we have the same variety of tools to emulate that particular plan, but the sentiment and the drive of a Government drawing on all the levers at its disposal to tackle a national emergency is simply lacking here in Wales.

I also want to touch on something important. This is a debate that is taking place in other devolved nations, and those devolved nations are doing better than our country. In Northern Ireland, despite the enormous structural, social and economic discrimination faced by so many of the population, and the instability of the Troubles and its devolved Government emanating from that particular Good Friday agreement, it has a lower child poverty rate than Wales. Scotland also has a lower child poverty rate than Wales, despite not using much of the fiscal powers and advantages it has until very recently. The economic growth o both countries and their GDPs, relative to the UK average, has been stronger than in Wales. In the late 1990s, Wales had a higher GDP than Ireland. No guesses as to where we are with that one today. People in Wales will be rightly asking where is our devolution dividend after two decades of Labour rule. The Welsh Government may point to their current programmes, but what about the last decade? I think Labour needs to ask itself a serious and heartfelt question: how does it want its era of Government to be marked in this period of devolution?

As I mentioned, I remember what it was like growing up in the area that I grew up in, in a place stricken by poverty and decline—and it has got better. I fear now that poverty that was more visible in the 1980s in terms of shut factories and abandoned industrial spaces has now become more hidden. We are going through our second period of widespread poverty in Wales in my lifetime, if, in fact, it ever truly went away. At this point, many people will recognise the Welsh Labour era of the last decade as the era of poverty, the era of decline, the era of struggle. I take no partisan joy in that prospect; there is only sadness and frustration for me at the thought of yet another generation that has been let down.