2. What action will the Welsh Government take in response to the Equality and Human Rights Commission Wales 2018 report, ‘Is Wales Fairer?’? OAQ52990

Thank you for that question. I am very grateful for the report, which provides valuable evidence to support the efforts of all our public bodies to reduce inequality in Wales. I recently met with the Wales commissioner to discuss the challenges identified, and officials are now considering the recommendations in some detail.

Leader of the house, the Tory UK Government's political choice of austerity is causing more and more misery and hardship for our communities—rising poverty, homelessness and rough-sleeping, queues at food banks, mental and physical ill health. All of this in the world's fifth-largest economy. Professor Philip Alston, the UN rapporteur on poverty and human rights, has just issued a report, which is absolutely damning, regarding the callous and uncaring nature of the UK Government's policies, making the vulnerable pay the price for their failures. And the Equality and Human Rights Commission has published its report on fairness in Wales, showing discrimination and disadvantage hitting poorer communities, disabled people, women, and ethnic minorities. We know that many of the levers to address this situation are in the control of the UK Government, but, of course, Welsh Government also has key responsibilities. So, leader of the house, will Welsh Government now further consider how it can achieve a laser-like focus on tackling poverty, with specific targets, monitoring and evaluation in place, and further consider the issues in the case for devolving the administration of welfare benefits, given the impact of the roll-out of universal credit in Wales?

Officials are looking very carefully at the report in a lot of detail—laser-like focus, as John Griffiths says—with a view to having it be fed into the next iteration of our strategic equality plan, and, indeed, in the way that the previous strategic equality plan was based on the previous 'Is Wales Fairer?' report. We're very pleased that we've been able to work in conjunction with the Equality and Human Rights Commission in that regard. I've also had a number of meetings with other officials of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, with my management board, for example, in my portfolio responsibilities, looking to see what we can do to pick up on some of the data that we need, in order to be able to drive some of those issues.

Professor Philip Alston's report echoes what we've been saying all along that there's overwhelming evidence from a range of respected organisations, including parliamentary committees and the National Audit Office, as John Griffiths highlighted, that the UK is just hellbent on delivering its damaging welfare and tax reform policies, which are entirely regressive, and which we regret. We have a number of measures that we can put in place to try and ameliorate those, but, unfortunately, we do not have the levers at our disposal to completely take them away.

I'd just like to draw attention to two things that we're very keen on doing, that is making sure that well-paid work, through our fair work commission, is very much at the top of the agenda in Wales, because we know that's the best route out of poverty, and also to ensure that everything we do takes into account the needs of those people with all the protected characteristics. So, our recent consultation for disability action, for example, which is still open—and I would very much encourage all Assembly Members, Llywydd, to respond to it.

The Welsh Government is committed to providing 100,000 apprenticeships in this term. However, the 'Is Wales Fairer?' report found that, in apprenticeships, strong gender segregation remains, ethnic minorities are under-represented and the representation of disabled people is particularly low. What is the acting First Minister—your Government—doing to tackle gender segregation and to boost the employment prospects of ethnic minorities and disabled people through the apprenticeship system in this country?

We've appointed an equality champion to work with our apprenticeship providers in order to do that, and the Minister has been working very hard to ensure that we get very good representation from all groups of protected characteristics in particular. There is a wider society issue at play in the gender segregation, so you see very many more women in social settings, very many more men in hard engineering settings, and that's a wide social construct across UK society. We have been running a number of campaigns, and I'd just like to highlight the This is Me campaign, around gender stereotyping, to try and get the message out there that people should try to be the person they want to be and not something that's predetermined by their sex, in particular, or any other characteristic. If the Member hasn't seen that campaign, I recommend it to him—it's been one of the most successful we've had in terms of reach. We remain absolutely committed to working very hard on eliminating gender stereotyping, and therefore gender inequality, from Welsh society.