7. Member Debate under Standing Order 11.21(iv): Tackling Poverty

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 6:26 pm on 5 June 2019.

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Photo of Mike Hedges Mike Hedges Labour 6:26, 5 June 2019

I’d like to associate myself with the remarks of both Lynne Neagle and John Griffiths and most of what Leanne Wood said. I think that we’re in almost total agreement on these issues. There are far too many people in Wales, including many children, living in poverty, which means they’re inadequately fed, they live in houses that are going to be cold when they should be warm, and they live in houses that are not necessarily waterproof or windproof. The most commonly used measure of poverty John Griffiths outlined earlier, and, according to the Bevan Foundation, one in four of the population of Wales are living in poverty. It’s not just—[Interruption.] It's not just in every area. If it was one in four in every area it would be bad, but, actually, it’s one in four across Wales, but, in some areas, it’s close to one in two: children living in workless households, adults in workless households, social housing tenants, lone parents, people from non-white ethnic groups. In terms of the number of people in poverty, people who are disabled, people living in working households, social housing tenants—.

We’ve seen a huge growth in foodbanks, and that really has been a problem, that far too many people are in employment and they have to go to foodbanks to eat. Foodbanks have become the soup kitchens of the twenty-first century. There has been a huge growth in in-work poverty. Whereas we often highlight zero-hour contracts, a bigger problem is the low guaranteed-hour contracts: you’re guaranteed a low number of hours—perhaps five or seven hours a week—but you usually work far longer hours. Just don’t be ill, because then you go back to your seven hours. Or, in some weeks, when there’s not enough work, you end up having to work only those seven hours. And what happens then is you multiply the hours by your minimum wage and you’re in very serious trouble; you cannot afford all the things that you need to live.

Many work several jobs, several being three, four or five. They have to juggle childcare with these jobs, hoping that the hours—