It's not a new problem, but universal credit has made it worse for the unemployed. We all did—or most of us did—fought an election and we had a month off work when we didn't have any income. And how did we survive? Savings and credit cards. How do people who haven't got those survive when they have to go on for months without universal credit? They don't. They either fall victim to doorstep lenders, or they end up having to borrow from family and friends who are often equally as badly off as they are.

The poor are paying the price of austerity. I was hugely disappointed at the closure of Communities First. There were faults with it, but I thought it was something we should've kept going; put it right, rather than closing down. I was also hugely disappointed that the First Minister did not create a Minister dealing with poverty and disadvantaged communities.

The actions the Welsh Government can do are: develop an anti-poverty strategy that clearly sets the steps that the Welsh Government intends to take to reduce the number of people living in poverty in Wales; ensure that all public sector workers employed by bodies directly funded by the Welsh Government are paid the real living wage; make paying the real living wage be a pre-condition for contracting with public sector bodies funded via the Welsh Government either directly or indirectly; make paying the real living wage a pre-condition of grants and loans to private companies; ban exploitative contracts by Welsh Government funded bodies and their contractors and sub-contractors; make financial support for companies, both grants and loans, dependent on non-exploitative contracts; commit to turn Wales into a living wage country; and learn from the errors made in Communities First and create a new anti-poverty scheme based upon the best of Communities First. Many of us had some excellent Communities First schemes in our communities, which have very sadly been lost.