Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Finance and Trefnydd – in the Senedd at 1:52 pm on 13 January 2021.
Thank you very much, and I fully understand that it's a matter of prioritisation, but I hope that you as finance Minister would agree that there isn't a much greater priority than providing the necessary support for children living in poverty and, indeed, bringing them out of poverty. Having undertaken those costings, you decided for some reason that this wasn't a sufficient priority to include in the draft budget. Will you now reconsider your position on this whilst working on the final budget?
And in terms of what we heard from the First Minister yesterday, unless you can correct me I think the First Minister yesterday misinterpreted what we're looking at by suggesting that we're talking about 70,000 families here. If there were one child in every family, it would cost £33 million he said, more if there were two children, and as much as £101 million if there were three children in the family, but we are talking about 70,000 children here. Given those figures that we received from the First Minister, should we assume that the cost would be £33 million were we to extend free school meals to those 70,000 children?