Reducing Child Poverty

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:14 pm on 2 July 2019.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 2:14, 2 July 2019

Well, Llywydd, of course we continue to consider the motion passed here on the floor of the Assembly. I'm in favour of what the Member said in the earlier part of her supplementary question. I'm in favour of action that makes a difference in the lives of children here in Wales. I'm in favour of building on the record that successive Governments have laid down where we institute policies and programmes here in Wales that mean that money is left in the pockets of families who otherwise would have to pay out money for services.

So, the fact that we have £244 million in our council tax relief scheme means that those families who otherwise—and across our border—would be paying out every week for council tax have that money left in their pocket here in Wales, and that means there is money that they have to spend on the welfare of children. When you abolish prescription charges, when you have the most generous childcare offer in Wales, when you fund new free school meals when they're not funded in England, when you have free breakfasts in primary schools, when we have the only national programme of school holiday enrichment—all of that, Llywydd, adds up to nearly £0.5 billion, and if it were not being provided by the programmes that successive Governments here have built up, families would be left paying for those things out of their own pockets. That leaves, in the pockets of families in Wales, anywhere between £1,000 and £2,000 every year. That's the sort of practical action that I think lies in the hands of Welsh public authorities.

I agree very much with what Lynne Neagle said about the need to take further actions so that families have money that they can spend to meet the needs of their children and their wider families. We will look to see what more can be done. We will look at it in the context of the motion that was passed here on the floor of the Assembly. But you will know—Members here will know—that the criticism of the National Assembly often is that we are a strategy factory and that those strategies do not always bite into the lives of families in the way that we would have wanted to see. I'm interested in the things that we can do that make a difference and make a difference in the lives of children who otherwise would be living in poverty, and that's what we will be focused on.