Can I, before I begin, just say what a pleasure it is to serve on the committee under the stewardship of John Griffiths? I concur with many of the comments that he made in terms of the varied evidence that we've seen in various inquiries in the time that I've been on there and preceding me as well. And I very much welcome the Minister's statement in response to the report of the Equality and Human Rights Commission and the work that the commission is doing. I think this country of ours in Wales has led the way very much. It has built on the very good progress that we've made in the previous decade and more on a UK basis, but has carved its own way in terms of equality and human rights as well.

But I just want to focus on one area, because today I've been mulling over a report that deals with one particular area of inequality, and it's the area that deals with health inequality. I think there's nothing more stark than the knowledge that where you're born, the situation and circumstances you're born into, will materially affect how many years you have to live and the quality of that life. The Marmot report has come out in the last few days—a very authoritative report. The Government itself has welcomed the report, but I think it's probably going to struggle to deal with some of the conclusions that it has come to. I've been looking though, Deputy Presiding Office, some of the charts, because it helps me very often when I look at some of the pictorial evidence in front of us, when we see the charts that show that life expectancy is now falling amongst the poorest people in certain English regions. By the way, it says there are implications in Wales as well, which I'll come to in a moment.

In the past decade, a third of English children were living in poverty for three years running, and those numbers are going up. If we look at some of the other key ones, which I've printed off today, the increase in life expectancy at birth in England began to slow after 2010, and this is projected to continue. The UK has now a higher proportion of children living in poverty than Poland, Ireland and the OECD average, and if Members want to know what the OECD average is, it's 13.1 per cent living in poverty, and in the UK, it's now 17.5 per cent. All the indicators in England are going the wrong way, but they're also going the wrong way across England as well. So, how have we got to this position? And by the way, it does all point to a certain departure point where things started going wrong.

Well, what we see now is that life expectancy has now stalled in the UK for the first time in more than a hundred years, and it has reversed for certain groups, including ethnic minorities, and also the most deprived women in society. The report that has come out, the Marmot report, which is authoritative, is expert-led and is wide in its scope and deep in its expert research, has put that down largely to the impact of cuts that have come directly out of austerity policies. It is not me saying this—it is the report that is saying it. In fact, Marmot, who is the director of the UCL Institute of Health Equity said, and I quote directly,

'The UK has'—previously—

'been seen as a world leader in identifying and addressing health inequalities but something dramatic is happening. This report is concerned with England, but in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland the damage to health and wellbeing is similarly nearly unprecedented.'

And he goes on to say,

'austerity has taken a significant toll on equity and on health, and it is likely to continue to do so.'

It is responsible for life expectancy flatlining, people's health deteriorating and the widening of health inequalities. And if I can just go slightly further on, in a foreword to the report Marmot says,

'From rising child poverty and the closure of children's centres'—

Bear in mind that he's talking about England, but the impact of austerity has got a wide reach, because he says it also applies to Scotland and Wales as well.

'From rising child poverty and the closure of children’s centres, to declines in education funding, an increase in precarious work and zero hours contracts, to a housing affordability crisis and a rise in homelessness, to people with insufficient money to lead a healthy life and resorting to foodbanks in large numbers, to ignored communities with poor conditions and little reason for hope.'

Austerity, he says,

'will cast a long shadow over the lives of children born and growing up under its effects'.

He describes it as 10 lost years, and the generation that have gone through those 10 years will bear the burden of those 10 lost years, the children who are born within it.