Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:11 pm on 12 January 2021.
First Minister, I thank you for that answer, and the figures are indeed, as you've just said, staggering, with the numbers of people who would be subjected to this decrease in what is, we know, the very basic income that they need to exist.
I assume, of course, that the UK Government did predicate this change on some evidence that people needed an additional £20 per week just to survive. What interests me now is what evidence they might have provided to inform them that those people can now survive on £20 less from next April. I haven't seen the evidence. I just wonder, First Minister, whether you've seen the evidence that I haven't.
We know that this is an extremely stressful time for all families in all areas of the UK. It does seem rather inhumane to me to keep that pressure on those families who are struggling, in all sorts of ways, and the uncertainty that it is giving them that, in just eight weeks, they might have their funds cut even further, and the choices that they're having to make on a daily basis being placed upon them. So, could I ask you, First Minister, when you next speak to your counterparts in the Westminster Government, could you ask them to provide the evidence that they seem to have to reduce this very basic of incomes for the families most in need?