Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:37 pm on 12 March 2019.
I thank John Griffiths for that very important question. He's absolutely right to say that economic chances determine social chances, and your relationship to the economy right at the start of your life has such an impact on the chances that are available to you. But, as John Griffiths knows, our commitment to a more equal Wales is also about narrowing the gap between those who have more than they will ever need, or know what to do with, and those who struggle every day to meet the most basic needs that they have. And more equal societies not only promote better economic chances, but they determine the chances you have at the start of life. A female child born in Japan today will live, on average, to be 100 years old, and that's because the gap between the top and bottom of society in Japan is the narrowest of the sort of economies that Japan represents.
Now, here in Wales, we are determined, as part of our Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015, to create that more equal Wales, and that does mean, as John Griffiths has said, investing in those earliest years, those first 1,000 days of a child's life, because of the way that that goes on making a difference to the rest of the life course. It's why we introduced the foundation phase in our schools, to make sure that learning through play meant that children from those backgrounds learnt from the beginning that schooling and education was for them as well as everybody else. In the budget that was passed on the floor of this Assembly in January, we more than doubled the amount of money going into the new pupil development grant access fund, and that, again, is there to make sure that, from the very beginning, we equalise some of the unfair chances that children are dealt, so that the benefits of those investments can go on being felt in the rest of their lives.