Questions Without Notice from Party Spokespeople

Part of 2. Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Local Government and Public Services – in the Senedd at 2:33 pm on 3 October 2018.

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Photo of Mark Isherwood Mark Isherwood Conservative 2:33, 3 October 2018

Well, I hope the Welsh Government will help local authorities better understand how they're supposed to reconcile commissioning and procurement requirements with co-production and co-design of services with local people, where the co-design may be different to the commissioning choice. 

My final question relates to poverty—again, not a matter in your brief, although many of the key agencies and services are. In the middle of July, I went to a Wales Centre for Public Policy event in Bangor University, 'Reigniting Debate on Rural Poverty: Evidence, Practice & Policy Implications'. This emphasised the importance of the third sector, it highlighted a lack of integrated rural policy, an asset-based approach in line with the well-being Act being required, the need to value expertise and reach the voluntary sector and wider community through local empowerment and the Welsh Government's leader approach, and identified a gap between policy and practice, with good intentions not followed through.

Similarly, last week, you might have seen that the Bevan Foundation circulated a report from the Social Metrics Commission, which is an independent commission that has brought to bear thinkers from across the political spectrum to look at a new approach to measuring poverty. They tell us that the remeasurement will have more accurate estimates of things like housing, childcare, disability, the length of time a family's been in poverty and so on, that 24 per cent of the population of Wales live in poverty, and a higher proportion of people live in poverty in Wales than any other nation. And they say they welcome—the Bevan Foundation welcome—the launch of the new measure, and the new measure provides a much more realistic and nuanced understanding of poverty in Wales. But how do you respond to their statement that this should be used to inform a comprehensive and practical action by the Welsh Government, local authorities, businesses and other bodies, such as those referred to in the rural poverty report I mentioned earlier, to solve poverty in Wales?