Here we are again, lamenting the fact that, in an allegedly developed and civilised state, substantial numbers of people rely on food banks for basic nutrition and live in homes that make them ill. According to the Institute for Public Policy Research think tank, more than 120,000 deaths in the UK could have been prevented since 2012, had it not been for austerity. The Westminster Government's policies are killing people, and I won't apologise for saying that.

Recent statistics from the End Child Poverty coalition show that almost one in three children in Wales are in poverty—one out of every two in some council wards. Wales is the only nation in these islands to see an increase in child poverty. To call these figures a wake-up call would imply they were unexpected, but sadly we've got used to such bad news on a rolling basis. It's easy to describe the problem, but what about solutions? What do we in Plaid Cymru say that the Welsh Government should do? What would we do if we were running the Government? 

We often use the term 'co-production' without really meaning it, but the concept remains a valid and potentially helpful one. Too often, people living in poverty and working-class people in general are not listened to. Policy is something that's done to them, rather than something that they are a part of. So, I want those who oversee the delivery of services crucial to tackling poverty to ensure that proper representation of people experiencing poverty in decision making. The recent remarks of Philip Hammond, claiming that poverty doesn't exist and dismissing the findings of the UN rapporteur, illustrate the battle that people in poverty face getting their problems taken seriously by wealthy millionaires who make decisions about their lives. How many MPs are now millionaires? We have to tackle the under-representation of working-class people in all aspects of public life. I want any bodies that are tasked with tackling poverty to be able to demonstrate how they are tackling this imbalance, how they are including and listening to people who are living in poverty. That is how real co-production would work.

The second solution: we must have administrative control over welfare immediately. Only this will enable us to start joining the dots, allowing us to create a Welsh new deal—a green one, of course—that helps people into careers and provides them with the means to be able to provide for themselves, rather than bully and sanction them for things like attending funerals.

Third solution: we must stop the poor decision making we're seeing by various public services. We've seen cuts proposed, even if some have been reversed, to eligibility for school uniform grants, free school meals, bus services that serve poorer communities, cuts to subsidies for the sports clubs that service deprived areas—the list goes on and can be extensive. But it reflects a culture where public services to poor people are the collateral damage of a failure to plan truly preventative services. Austerity has resulted in the poor being worse off while the wealthy have become wealthier. This has to stop.

Homelessness is a growing scourge on our society. The Welsh Government must adopt a housing first policy as the philosophy underpinning homelessness policy, which of course means that you must stop dithering and you must abolish priority need, like everyone is telling you to do. Implement the recommendations of the crisis report immediately. We can't wait for that to happen over the next 10 years. It's a scandal that there has been no strategy, no overarching programme to tackle poverty, since the Communities First programme was abolished. With Brexit set to pull even more millions of pounds out of Wales's most deprived communities, how can we ensure that these communities don't sink even further?

I remember back in 1997 the campaign to set up this Assembly—how, after almost two decades of Tory rule back then, we needed an Assembly to protect people against the Tories' worst excesses. In Scotland, with their stronger devolution settlement, they've gone some way towards mitigating the worst effects of the Tories' policies. It's more than disappointing that we've not been able to do the same here, and it's about time that we changed it.