Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:19 pm on 2 July 2019.
Well, Llywydd, I'm absolutely in favour of child poverty policies being shaped in a dialogue with those people who are on the receiving end of policies. When I talk to families in my constituency who are at the sharp end of child poverty, then the things that they talk to me about are the fact that their benefits have been frozen since the year 2015, that they have to pay the bedroom tax for the privilege of having somewhere where grandchildren can come and stay with them, and where, if you're family with more than three children, you are penalised by the Conservative Government's child cap. So, the story of child poverty during devolution, Llywydd, is that for the first 10 years, child poverty in Wales fell year on year, and in the second decade, we will end the decade with 50,000 more children in poverty than when we began. Of course we need to design our responses alongside those people who are on the receiving end of those policies, but those are the policies that have caused child poverty. They have done so deliberately and knowingly, and it's time that parties in this Chamber who have responsibility for those policies owned up to that.