Coronavirus-related Poverty

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:48 pm on 1 December 2020.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 1:48, 1 December 2020

Well, what did we hear in the comprehensive spending review last week, Llywydd, but the poorest people in the world will now face a cut in the aid that one of the richest countries in the world provides to them? A deeply disappointing day, as David Cameron, a former Conservative Party Prime Minister, said, that in this country, it will be the poorest people who are penalised when they don't have that lifeline £20 a week. And the public servants, who've been praised from the benches here throughout the coronavirus crisis for the way in which they have been on the front line, or refuse workers or local authority workers or teachers—how many times have I heard opposition party Members here praise them for what they have done, only to find now that their reward is to be to have their incomes frozen once again? And it's not the first time, as Huw Irranca-Davies says. This comes after a decade in which those wages have been held back by successive Conservative Governments, and here we see it again. Scratch them, and you see what you get. They are a party who've always believed that the rich should prosper and the poor must pay the price. And here they're at it again.