Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 5:43 pm on 5 June 2018.
Well, I know the Member is extremely well intentioned in what he's seeking to do, and I'm just going to run through what the aims of this project are, and they are to use Government procurement spend in a market intervention where the market has really failed to produce any kind of employment opportunities in areas of very high unemployment, particularly in the foundational economy for people who face multiple barriers to work. Of course, we want to do that as part of an anti-poverty programme, but these are very specific, targeted pilots in order to see if any of these vehicles can produce the kinds of sustained employment engines that we hope to see to allow people to climb out of poverty in well-paid work. Because we know—and I'm afraid the benefits system that the Conservative Government at the UK level is currently implementing is exacerbating this—that poorly paid work actually drives people into severe poverty and mental health. A lot of the people who live in poverty are actually in work, so it's not for us to be creating poor working conditions. The whole point of this TUC initiative is to get people into better jobs, closer to their homes, so that we tick off a large number of things that I'm sure every Member in this Chamber shares. So, these four different pilots are all specifically designed to test a model that allows us to divert Government spend or to use the leverage of Government spend in order to produce those results that I'm sure we all want.