Questions Without Notice from the Party Leaders

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:20 pm on 24 September 2019.

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Photo of Adam Price Adam Price Plaid Cymru 2:20, 24 September 2019

The job description reads as follows: the first task of the successful applicant will be to develop a better understanding of what is happening in the lives of children living in poverty. Now, I say this with the greatest of respect, but after 20 years of devolution, surely your Government should know the answer to that question. A third of our children—over 200,000—live in poverty, 90,000 live in severe poverty and Wales was the only UK nation to see a rise in child poverty last year. In 2016, you dropped the target, as a Government, of eradicating child poverty by the end of the decade that you just referenced, and you got rid of a specific Minister responsible for achieving that target, moving to a coordinating role. Now, at that time, the Children's Commissioner for Wales called for a child delivery plan similar to that in Scotland, but there hasn't been a progress report even, since, because there's been no progress. Isn't the biggest poverty of all poverty of ambition?