2. What action is the Welsh Government taking to support children in poverty in Wales? OAQ55025

I thank Mike Hedges for that question. The major levers for addressing child poverty remain firmly with the UK Government. The Welsh Government is focused on using devolved powers to leave more money in the pockets of families with children, particularly those children living in poverty.

Can I thank the First Minister for that response? I very much welcome that the Welsh Government has committed to additional funding for the discretionary assistance fund, which has helped individuals and their families during times of crisis and, quite frankly, destitution. To ensure the fund's long-term future, additional funding will be required. Will the First Minister outline his proposals for the fund in future years?

I thank Mike Hedges for that supplementary question. He is absolutely right to point to the success of the decision made here in the National Assembly to have a national scheme. When the social fund was abandoned by the UK Government, here in Wales we decided that we would have a fund that would be run on a Wales-wide basis with no local lottery in it. In England, we know that many local authorities took the money that they were given when the social fund was broken up and provide no service for poor people with it at all.

Here, we have helped 280,000 applications to the fund since its inception. The budget has increased year on year in this Assembly term. It was £7 million in the first year of this Assembly term; it's £11.2 million in this year. It went up £2 million in this financial year; it will go up by another £1 million in the next financial year. The number of applications has gone up remarkably quickly in an age of austerity: 65,000 applications in the first year of this Assembly term; 160,000 in this financial year, to the end of December; so it's going to be more than 100,000 additional applicants to the fund.

And not only have we sustained it, Llywydd, by more money to keep the fund available to people, but we've extended its scope as well. We've made sure that it can respond to the needs of refugees and asylum seekers here in Wales. We've made sure it's available to people who are discharged from prison with absolutely no possessions at all. I wish there wasn't a need for a discretionary assistance fund. I wish that the social security system provided people with enough to be able to meet their needs without this final safety net of the welfare state. But while it is needed, here in Wales we go on investing in it and making sure that those whose needs are the very toughest in our society have somewhere in Wales that they can go.

First Minister, Wales was the only UK nation to see a rise in child poverty in 2017-18. And of course, poverty is considered a contributory factor to children ending up in care. Last week, Cardiff University published the results of a survey of school students aged 11 to 16. They show: that young people in residential care had the lowest mental well-being score; that 56 per cent are being exposed to bullying; that more than a third had been badly affected by alcohol in the past 30 days; and that nearly a third had used cannabis in the last month. Your Government seems to be failing our most vulnerable young people: children in care. So, what responsibility will you take and what urgent action will you take to ensure that stronger support is provided to help improve the lives of our children in our care system?

Llywydd, it takes an extraordinary ability to distort the facts to provide a question of that sort. Because of the decisions of the Member's Government in Westminster, the Institute of Fiscal Studies—[Interruption.] I see that the minute you're provided with some real facts, the opposition thinks that the answer is to muddy the waters by muttering. The Institute of Fiscal Studies tells us that, because of the actions of Conservative Governments since 2010, there will be 50,000 more children in poverty in Wales in 2020 than there were in 2010.

Are you not ashamed? Are you not really and deeply ashamed of the fact that the direct result of cuts in benefits to families living on the breadline by your Government produces 50,000 children, who have only one childhood to live, having to live that childhood in Wales in poverty? If you are a child in Wales being brought up in a single-parent family, the direct results of the decisions that your Government has made mean that that family has £3,720 less to manage on, to provide for that child, to give that child the future that that child deserves. That's the truth of the matter behind the question that the Member raises. 

I wish there were fewer children in care in Wales. I want to work with local authorities to do everything we can to reduce the number of children who have to be taken away from their families. But is it any wonder that families struggle and cannot do what they want to do for their children, when every single week they have tens and tens of fewer pounds to manage with, because of the actions that the Conservative Government in Westminster have deliberately and callously taken?

The First Minister is, of course, right to point out that many of the levers for tackling child poverty do, at present, reside with the Westminster Government, and I was pleased to hear what he had to say about the discretionary assistance fund in his response to Mike Hedges. But I wonder if the First Minister will agree with me that the most effective way to deal with children growing up in poverty is to put money into their parents'—particularly their mothers'—pockets. I take that from what he's just said to Janet Finch-Saunders.

I wonder if he'd agree with me that, now we do face another five years of a Boris Johnson-led Government, we cannot expect—[Interruption.] Well, I'm very glad that Janet Finch-Saunders thinks that's a good idea, because I can tell you that the single mothers in the region that I represent would not, on the whole, agree with her. But given that that is the case, Llywydd, I wonder if the First Minister would agree with me that now is the time to look at making urgent progress on what we can do to seek further devolution of the benefits system to Wales, so that we can use our discretion. We have the evidence that suggests that devolution of the benefits system could, in fact, take pressure off the Welsh budget for some of the reasons that he's just described in his response to Janet Finch-Saunders.

So, I wonder if he would be prepared to commit today to looking to make urgent progress in seeking to devolve some of those key levers that currently do not rest in the hands of this place, so that we can put money into parents'—particularly mothers'—pockets and lift some more of our children out of poverty. Because we certainly can't, as he's just said himself, rely on the other end of the M4 corridor to do that for us. 

I thank the Member for that question. I agree with the first point she makes that putting money into the pockets of people who live in poverty is the best answer to the poverty that they experience. It's why there's £90 million extra in our draft budget for families living in those circumstances, on top of all the things that this Government already does: from the council tax reduction scheme, through to Families First and Flying Start. 

I've always, myself, Llywydd, made a distinction between the administration of the benefit system and the devolution of it. I believe that the benefit system ought to be part of a glue that holds the United Kingdom together and that it's a way in which the better off make their contributions so that the less well off are able to enjoy the chances that they themselves have been fortunate enough to have in their lives. 

The administration of the benefit system has been the subject of work in the Equality, Local Government and Communities Committee. We have commissioned work from the Wales Centre for Public Policy. And, given the fact of another five years of a Conservative Government, I agree that working on that agenda has a new urgency.