3. What is the Welsh Government doing to tackle child poverty? OAQ54069

The Welsh Government is committed to working across Government to tackle child poverty. My colleague Julie James is leading a review of Welsh Government funding programmes to ensure they have maximum impact on the lives of children living in poverty. In addition, Lesley Griffiths will act as an advocate for poverty during budget preparations, to identify opportunities to increase the impact of collective investment. 

Thank you, Deputy Minister. The discretionary assistance fund, which was introduced in April 2013, is a critical fund that supports the very poorest families in Wales. Children and families in the most pressurised circumstances and facing financial crisis have access to this fund. An evaluation was undertaken in 2015 to examine the effectiveness of the fund, which included suggestions on how the fund and its administration could be improved. Could the Minister outline if there has been any further evaluation on the discretionary assistance fund, or whether there has been any progress on addressing the suggestions for improvement in the 2015 evaluation?

I'm going to start by saying that I absolutely agree with the Member with regard to the importance of the discretionary assistance fund, whether that be through individual assistance payments or emergency assistance payments. And I actually visited the Wrexham centre where it's facilitated not too long ago, and I sat and heard first-hand some of the distressing calls that are made by people who are really very vulnerable and struggling to make ends meet.

Like you say, an evaluation was undertaken and published in 2015, which made a number of recommendations for improvement, including making use of the DAF partner network to help support clients to apply successfully. They have all been implemented. A further survey was also carried out in 2016, but, in addition to this, an audit was carried out by Welsh Government in August 2017, which made a number of recommendations for improvement, which included things like simplifying the application process to assist vulnerable clients, making online applications for emergency support funding, without them needing to have that partner support that was needed beforehand, and I'm pleased that these have all been actioned.

Child poverty in Wales has been rising since 2004. It had already reached the highest level in the UK before the credit crunch, when more than one in four children in Wales were living in poverty, with 90,000 in severe poverty. We know that, last month, the End Child Poverty Network stated that Wales was the only UK nation to see a rise in child poverty last year and, although the Children's Commissioner for Wales said in March that the Welsh Government should write a new child poverty delivery plan focusing on concrete and measurable steps, the Welsh Government failed to support calls for any tackling poverty strategy during the individual Member's debate calling for this two weeks ago here. How, therefore, do you respond to the representations made to me after that debate by sector representatives regarding my emphasis on the need to focus on Welsh policy levers that the Welsh Government has within its power, that 'This is exactly the area in which we would like to focus our influencing as we agree there are powers the Welsh Government can and should be using to tackle the root causes of poverty', i.e. within a plan or strategy rather than a generic approach, which has left us at the bottom for more than 10 years?

Llywydd, I do find a hint of irony in the question from the Member without actually talking about the impact of austerity on child poverty in Wales and across the UK and how that has been significantly amplified as a consequence not just of austerity but of the regressive welfare reforms as well.

We are committed to taking action to reduce and ultimately eliminate child poverty by not just using the levers at our disposal across Government, whether that be through housing, education, health, but also the First Minister is committed to and work is under way on the First Minister's commitment to reorganise Welsh Government funding programmes to ensure that we have maximum impact on the lives of children living in poverty in Wales.

We now have some communities where one in two children are living in poverty, and that is utterly disgraceful, but it is something that your Government can do something about. The Welsh Government could have an anti-poverty strategy—that would be a good start—a strategy that includes raising the threshold for free school meals to that of Northern Ireland, for example. Hunger, which is linked to poor attainment in school and is a consequence of poverty—I don't see much action from the Government on the question of hunger. And being a lot more proactive on the devolution of the administration of benefits to Wales would also make a difference, as the austerity consensus that has existed in Westminster has brought so much misery to our communities here in Wales. But do you agree with me, Minister, therefore, that it is neither enough nor acceptable to hide behind the pernicious policies of the Tories in Westminster while there is so much that could be done here in Wales to mitigate this child poverty?

The Member's absolutely right that one child living in poverty is one child too many, particularly in 2019. That should not be the case, and I share the Member's passion for tackling this. On a Welsh Government level, we are committed to using all those levers at our disposal, as I just said to Mark Isherwood, whether that's through what we can do in terms of education, supporting childcare—. And that is a commitment that the Minister is taking forward—my colleague the Minister Julie James—in terms of actually how we maximise that funding and those things to actually bring it together across Government and really have the impact we want in terms of minimising and reducing and ultimately eliminating child poverty.

The Member refers to welfare reform and the potential devolution of the administration of welfare reform. This is something that I'm taking forward on behalf of the First Minister. We've tasked the Wales Centre for Public Policy to do a piece of work on that with us. I will be meeting them in the next couple of weeks to take that forward, and I'm more than happy to keep the Member updated, because I know you're so passionate and interested in this area, and to speak to you about this in the future.