Universal Credit

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:19 pm on 12 January 2021.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 2:19, 12 January 2021

I thank Helen Mary Jones for that question. Of course, it's an important one. She will know that the Welsh Government has led the way in making sure that free school meals are available to current beneficiaries through the school holidays, not now just until the end of 2020, but for the whole of 2021. The policy that the Member advocates is one that would have to be looked at very carefully. I'll give her the costings of it: if we assume that those 70,000 families had one child each, then that would cost us £33 million. If we assume that they had two children each, it would cost us £67 million, and if we thought that they had, on average, three children each, it would cost us £101 million. That is very serious money indeed in the circumstances we find ourselves in, and that money will have to be found from somewhere else, because there is no money sitting around in the Welsh Government doing nothing. So, I think there's a case to be made—of course there is—and I've seen it made by the Child Poverty Action Group and others. But I just have to put it to the Member that it is not a choice between doing that and letting everything else carry on; it is a choice between doing that and stopping something else that is undoubtedly necessary and important to many other Welsh citizens.