Questions Without Notice from the Party Leaders

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

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 2:24, 24 September 2019

Wel, Llywydd, it is nonsense, isn't it? The Member always manages to spoil a serious point he's making because he can't avoid a rhetorical flourish at the end. The idea that this party and this Government have not been interested in child poverty over the whole of the period of devolution simply wouldn't bear even a few seconds of examination.

When the Labour Government appointed its poverty tsar, child poverty in Wales had been falling for a decade. And that's the story of devolution: the first decade in which child poverty fell year after year—not far enough, not fast enough for many of us, but heading down every year—and a second decade in which, year after year, more children are in poverty because of the actions that a very different sort of Government with very different priorities has taken. Over the whole of that period, Llywydd, we have taken actions that leave money in the pockets of families who need it the most, whether that is free breakfasts in primary schools at the start of the period of devolution, or whether it is our holiday hunger scheme, which we have instituted in this Assembly term and which Scottish Government colleagues have been very keen to talk to us about to see how that can influence their actions in that sphere.

I want to learn from Scotland. I think that's the way—. Devolution is not a contest between good people over here and bad people over there. Devolution is a way in which we can learn from one another. There are lots of things that Scotland is doing in the field of child poverty that we talk to them about and we can learn from here, and there are lots of things that we do in Wales that Scottish colleagues come to Wales to study in order to inform the shared task that I think this Government and the Scottish Government have, which is how to deal with the onslaught on the lives of people in Scotland and Wales by a Conservative Government that has no interest in their futures, and to do everything that we can do to put different futures in place.