It is a matter of concern, particularly for Welsh Government, that, after 19 years of devolution, Joseph Rowntree Foundation's 'Poverty in Wales 2018' report found that the proportion of households living in income poverty in Wales remains higher than England, Scotland and Northern Ireland, and that poverty among couples with children has been rising since 2003. 

Throughout the second, third and fourth Assemblies I routinely called on your predecessors to tackle the causes of disadvantage, poverty and deprivation, not simply treat the symptoms. I therefore welcome the recognition in your statement that practical change in communities needs to focus on the specific barriers that prevent individuals getting into work and then on to better paid work. Some of your predecessors didn't quite articulate that or acknowledge that in the same way.

However, as somebody who proudly previously worked in the non-profit mutual or social enterprise sector for more than two decades, I also recognise that they're not a golden bullet, that they can be run inefficiently, they can lose money, they can go bust, they can make people unemployed, as can a for-profit body and even sometimes public sector bodies—although, generally, they're not allowed to fail in the same way. 

Given that, with Communities First, when the Wales Audit Office looked at Communities First in 2009, it produced a report identifying corporate governance failings in financial controls, HR controls and audit trails, what corporate governance checks and balances are you putting in place so the foundations are right, thereby maximising the chances for these social enterprises, often fledgling social enterprises, to rise and hopefully fly with their employees on board?

You talk about working with a talented and innovative team of officials in Welsh Government and social partners in trade union movements and industry. Given that the Wales Co-operative Centre is the body funded by Welsh Government to support the establishment and management of social enterprises, what involvement have you had with them, and also with the wider third sector, given the work that the Wales Council for Voluntary Action has done on successors to Communities First models in the future, community anchor organisations and so on, and also the work currently being done across Wales by the growing co-production network exactly in these sorts of areas?

How do you respond to the Bevan Foundation statement, following the ending of Communities First, that the programme

'did not reduce the headline rates of poverty in the vast majority of communities, still less

in Wales as a whole' and that therefore a new programme

'should be co-produced by communities and professionals and not be directed top-down',  based on

'A clear theory of change that builds on people’s and community’s assets not their deficits' and that

'local action should be led by established, community-based organisations which have a strong track-record of delivery and which have significant community engagement'?

They also said that if people feel that policies are imposed on them, the policies don't work. So, how can you assure the Assembly and others outside that, in addition to the initiatives you describe in your statement, you're embracing those approaches to ensure that we don't repeat the mistakes of the past?

I'll conclude by referring to an event I hosted in April here with the Bevan Foundation and Big Issue Cymru on prevention and inclusion, when I sat beside and introduced the founder of The Big Issue, Lord John Bird. How do you respond, perhaps, to his statement, quote, 'Too much time is spent analysing poverty, not enough on dismantling it, too much making people a little bit more comfortable being poor, too little bringing the poor into the equation' and, he said, 'We need to get poor people'—his words—'to change the way they think about poverty, to open up so they can encounter the problems around them, turning social security into social opportunity', and, finally, to his comment that 80 per cent of social intervention money is spent on emergency and coping, but almost nothing on cure, and that when considering social spending we must therefore always ask whether the social pound is prevention money?