5. Will the First Minister provide an update on Welsh Government action to promote financial inclusion in Wales? OAQ55014

Llywydd, our commitment to promoting financial inclusion is reflected through the £19 million funding we provide to offer people access to affordable financial services and quality-assured information and advice. This means people are able to make more informed financial decisions and better manage their finances.

Thank you, First Minister, and can I welcome the range of actions that you set out there, which I know assist many of my constituents in Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney? Many of us on this side of the Chamber also remember the actions of the last UK Labour Government in establishing child trust funds, and, of course, the additional support for this provided by the Welsh Labour Government. Trust funds exist, First Minister, as you know, to help young people with savings to support them into adult life—support that was abolished by the UK Tory Government. Since then, Tory Ministers have failed to link people with their accounts, meaning that millions could go unclaimed when all children in Wales born in 2002 will be eligible to access their savings this September. What representations has the Welsh Government made to the UK Government to ensure that young people are reunited with their savings?

Well, I thank Dawn Bowden for pointing to one of the great social policy experiments of this century. I deeply regret the fact that the child trust fund, launched by Labour in 2002 was abolished by the incoming coalition Government in 2010, because that scheme offered young people and particularly people from disadvantaged communities a chance to begin their adult life with an asset behind them, and in asset-based welfare, the theory is that assets change lives; that, if you have a sum of money that you can rely on, you make different sorts of decisions about your future. Now, we have this great natural experiment because we have these cohorts of young people born from 1 September 2002 until 2011 and the first generation of those children turn 18 in September of this year. There were 273,000 young people in Wales who had child trust fund accounts opened for them and some Members here will remember my colleague, Brian Gibbons, introducing a Welsh addition to those child trust funds, so that children in Wales, when they became primary school age, every child had £50 added to their account; every child from a disadvantaged family had £100 added to their account.

When the child trust fund was set up, Llywydd, the idea was not simply to put money into a child's account, but that that child would be able to track that account throughout their maturity—that, every year, they would have a statement telling them how much was being held for them. By the time they were 16, they were meant to be able to make decisions for themselves about where that fund would be invested. And, when the fund was abolished, unfortunately all of that was abolished as well.

That's why we are fearful, as Dawn Bowden has said, that there could be thousands of young people in Wales in September of this year who have had money invested on their behalf that could provide a platform for them as they go into adult life, who will know nothing about it. That's why my colleague Rebecca Evans wrote to Treasury Ministers on 22 January, urging them to take new action, so that those young people in Wales who have an opportunity to take advantage of their child trust fund will be identified and that we can be confident that, for those young people at least, this opportunity will be genuinely available. 

Finally, question 6, Huw Irranca-Davies.