2. Will the Leader of the House outline how the Welsh Government is tackling inequality? OAQ52349

Yes. Our strategic equality plan details our equality objectives that are ensuring the way we govern has an effective impact on making our society fairer and more inclusive. The rapid review of gender equality, which is under way, will identify actions to drive forward equality and fairness in Wales.

Can I thank the Cabinet Secretary for that answer? The greatest inequality, if not the greatest, is the difference in life expectancy between the more disadvantaged areas and the more prosperous areas of Wales, often within the same local authority area, and, in fact, within the same constituency, as the Cabinet Secretary is aware. Since the ending of Communities First and the work it did on reducing smoking rates, reducing obesity and increasing exercise, what is being done to improve life expectancy in the most disadvantaged communities?

Improving health for everyone, especially those in poverty, is a central ambition of 'Prosperity for All' and we're prioritising actions to both tackle the root causes of that poverty and to target support for people within the most deprived areas of Wales. The Member has correctly identified that there are a range of issues that affect life expectancy. What we need to do is get upstream actions, as they call it—so, at-source actions—to redistribute social determinants, and also to help people better cope with the circumstances that they find themselves in. Mike Hedges will know that, in Swansea, we have communities that can actually see each other, because of the ways the hills work, where the life expectancy is quite severely different. That has a range of issues around poverty, but also around air quality and a number of other issues. The Government has a whole plan in place to make sure that those social determinants are not determining people's quality of life as we go forward.

Talking of Swansea, you may recall a few years ago that the council failed to apply for a second tranche of Government funding for discretionary housing payments, and that was not long after they'd had to return almost £1 million to Government as they could not find a way of using it to reduce poverty. This is a council which has a history of spending money on things that perhaps we don't value, but why does its current Labour leadership find it so difficult to spend funding that's dedicated to tackling the inequalities of poverty? 

We've worked very hard with the council, actually, in a number of areas, to make sure that they have a good plan in place to address social inequality across the city. One of the big issues for everyone is the employability of some of the areas of Swansea. We do still have, across Wales, small pockets of high unemployment and some parts of my own constituency, Llywydd, are affected by that, and obviously Suzy Davies's region. Our employability plan is specifically designed to assist people who find themselves in those circumstances to get not just work but well-paid work to lift them out of the poverty that we know affects many of their lives. We're working very hard with Swansea and the city deal in general to make sure that those moneys are well spent.