Can I thank you for your statement, Minister, and the Welsh Government for its efforts in trying to tackle this issue? Because I think it is important to recognise the Welsh Government does not hold all the key economic levers in this situation, and that you've worked against that backdrop of Tory austerity that you've already referred to, and which as you rightly point out includes the callous welfare reforms responsible for much of the continuing scandal of child poverty, coupled with, as you've already highlighted, the in-work poverty of many working parents caught up in insecure low-paid employment.

Now, under the last UK Labour Government, contrary to what we heard from Mark Isherwood earlier, 600,000 children were lifted out of relative poverty, but under this Tory Government, to their eternal shame, it's now predicted that child poverty will rise to its highest level in 60 years. Indeed, in my own consistency of Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney, child poverty remains amongst the highest in Wales, despite some significant improvements in area like the Gurnos.

Minister, given that women are still the primary carers in most families and households, it's crucial that we tackle women's poverty in order to tackle child poverty, and to make sure that our policies are informed by an understanding of the gender differences in both the causes and consequences of poverty. And I've picked up a few statistics that I think help to create a picture of that situation: 46 per cent of single-parent households in the UK are living in poverty, and 90 per cent of single parents are women. And 27.8 per cent of females are economically inactive, compared to 19.6 per cent of males, and this is four times more likely to be because they are looking after the family or at home.

Women also make up 58 per cent of working-age benefit claimants, so any changes or cuts to benefits and any long periods of waiting for payments are more likely to affect women. So, tackling these issues requires all of us in devolved and UK Governments to work together. And if we're going to make real progress, we need two Governments pulling together in a common cause to tackle poverty. But I have to say that, at the moment, it feels like Welsh Government is spending to mitigate the impacts of child poverty caused by the UK Government's policies and battling a UK regime that clearly does not share the same passion or priorities. And I hope, like you, Minister, that that will end on Thursday of this week. In developing our actions against child poverty, can you assure me that the Welsh Government's policies are also gender informed, given the statistics that I referred to earlier?