Questions Without Notice from the Party Leaders

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:50 pm on 7 May 2019.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 1:50, 7 May 2019

Well, Llywydd, let me find something to agree with in what the Member said, because the fact that we have this forum, and that the forum is an established part of the democratic landscape here in Wales, of course is a major achievement of the last 20 years and provides a forum in which debates of this sort can be carried out. The Member points to the fact that Labour, one way or another, has formed the Government here in Wales over that period. But there is a reason for that, Llywydd, and that's because, in every election since the Assembly was created, that is the decision that people who vote in Wales have made. And I absolutely understand that no party has any right to expect anybody to vote for them, and that my party has to earn every single vote at every single election that we are lucky enough to attract, and we will go on doing that and making that case to people in Wales as we approach another election. 

It will be for people in Wales, then, to decide whether or not what they want is another strategy, or whether they want the sort of practical actions that this Government is committed to making in the field of child poverty—in the things that we have done to more than double the school uniform grant; in the extra millions of pounds that we have found to bring thousands more children into free school meals in Wales; the fact that, even in this really difficult period of austerity, Wales is the only part of the United Kingdom that has a national approach to tackling holiday hunger, and we have nearly doubled the amount of money that we will put into that during the coming summer. It's for people in Wales to decide whether they would rather another strategy or would rather a Government that does those practical things, that uses the powers that we have every day to put to work to improve the lives of children in Wales.