Diolch, Dirprwy Lywydd. I'd like to start by thanking Members, both of the committee and of the wider Senedd, for their contributions, and I do welcome the opportunity to finally be able to respond to this debate and to the committee inquiry report today.

As you've heard here today during the debate, each of us here knows all too well how the COVID-19 pandemic has led to difficult times for our communities and for our country. We've worked hard as a Government to step in and provide support where we can, particularly to the most vulnerable individuals and families.

We saw early on in the pandemic the UK Government's Department for Work and Pensions making some changes to the financial support on offer and the way in which it was delivered. Although these changes were welcome, other potentially more critical interventions were met with what I can say is intransigence. And this is despite the repeated representations, not just of politicians and of this Welsh Government and the First Minister, but non-governmental organisations, citizens and stakeholders from across the country. The reintroduction of the sanction system and the utter refusal to waive the five-week wait for the first payment of universal credit are examples of decisions that have pushed vulnerable people further into financial hardship. Between mid March and mid July there were 120,000 new claimants of universal credit in Wales. These are people who need urgent support and a social security safety net to be there, not red tape.

Here in Wales, we acted quickly to ensure that support was in place. From 1 May we implemented significant changes to the discretionary assistance fund, which provides emergency payments to those facing the most extreme financial hardship. An additional £8.9 million was added to the fund to support an increase in applications from people affected, and the eligibility criteria was overhauled to include those most severely affected by COVID-19. This included people waiting for their first universal credit payment and those who were finding it difficult to make ends meet because of the financial pressure brought about by the pandemic. The number of payments made is now running at three time the levels pre lockdown. Since the beginning of the pandemic, this fund has supported over 64,000 awards and seen £3.9 million of emergency assistance payments made to people who were identified in the most dire situations because of COVID-19. On 4 August I announced an extension of the DAF rule relaxation up until 31 March 2021. This will mean that people facing hardship can continue to make five rather than three claims in a 12-month period, and the removal of the 28-day limit between claims will continue.

Throughout this pandemic, we've continued to build on the cross-Government support for vulnerable individuals and families through the delivery of a more generous social wage. This includes cash-equivalent services that enable Welsh citizens to keep much needed money in their pockets. An additional £40 million-worth of funding for free school meals was made available to help families feed their children while schools were closed, and we've allocated an additional £2.85 million for local authorities in Wales to meet increases in applications for the council tax reduction scheme.

We've also supported food charities and community food organisations to meet the unprecedented demand for access to emergency food from the people affected by the crisis. Funding of more than £1 million has been approved from our voluntary services emergency fund grant scheme to support food distribution, and in May I agreed funding in excess of £98,000 to be allocated to FareShare Cymru to develop a suitable mechanism for addressing food insecurity in north Wales through the redistribution of surplus food. More people than ever have had to turn to food banks and we've done a great deal to ensure those food banks themselves do not go without.

When we look at the impact of the pandemic on levels of poverty, including child poverty, we know it is likely to be substantial. It is against this backdrop that we have taken steps forward to maximise incomes and help reduce essential living costs for low-income households. Much of these actions have been informed by the committee's inquiry, and I would like to thank the committee for not just their considerable work in this area, but their considered work.

We've already started to work on improving the take-up of benefits and we're working with Oxfam Cymru to embed their sustainable livelihood approach into our DAF programme initially before we look to progress it into other Welsh benefit support programmes. I myself was hoping to participate in person in a practical workshop session, but that shifted online and I was pleased to take part in it with Oxfam Cymru on the sustainable livelihood approach to see the range of tools available first-hand. Oxfam Cymru have now kindly agreed to deliver more of these awareness sessions to our DAF approved partners during this month.

All of this work is based on the clear understanding that it's critical that all those eligible for support are aware of and are accessing the full range of entitlements available to them. The Chair of the committee, in his opening, talked about the need for awareness raising as one of the recommendations and to reinforce this approach we are investing £800,000 in the provision of income maximisation initiatives. We will carry out a communications campaign to coincide with changes to the job retention scheme in October, working with the third sector and local authorities to raise public awareness of existing benefits, services and programmes that mitigate or alleviate income poverty, and I'm sure that Members of this Senedd will be keen to help promote awareness of that alongside us.

Online training for front-line workers to enable them to provide income maximisation support to families living in poverty will be carried out between November 2020 and April 2021. Alongside this, we will work extensively with a range of partners to ensure advice services reach deep into communities and are delivered from places where people most in need go to.

Deputy Llywydd, our local authorities have responded exceptionally during this crisis to ensure support is provided for low-income families. We will continue to support them to provide local solutions, reviewing together how we can streamline the way that Welsh benefits are administered and make them more accessible.

Dirprwy Lywydd, I'd like to touch on some of the comments from the Chair in expressing his disappointment in terms of the response to recommendations 10 to 17. Whilst I can understand that he may feel that—[Inaudible.]—I really do want to reiterate the way in which many within Welsh Government, not myself, not Ministers, have gone above and beyond during this crisis to make sure we are able to respond and support effectively people who need the help right there. I would like to make clear that we wholeheartedly recognise as a Government that devolving certain powers relating to elements of social security could provide us with a wider range of tools to tackle poverty, which is why we asked the Wales Centre for Public Policy to undertake the work in this area in the first place and we will continue to look at evidence and also include the evidence of this committee in our work.

I hope Members will appreciate that, in the short term, our focus must be on using our existing powers to our best—and yes, in some cases, better—ability to ensure we support those people most in need in the here and now. That is what we'll continue to do and that's what we will keep demanding from others. Diolch yn fawr.