Part of 2. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:12 pm on 29 June 2021.
Well, Llywydd, if only it were just that simple that the Welsh Government could conjure out of the air the many, many millions of pounds that would be required to bring about such a policy, with all the other opportunities to do important things in the life of children in Wales and other Welsh citizens that would have to be forgone by doing so. I'm afraid being in Government is a matter of choices, not of magic solutions where you simply say, 'Why not find £100 million to do something?' as though that had no cost to anything else that the Welsh Government could do. Nor is it possible, in the way that the Member suggested, to accelerate the collection of data that we need to carry out the review. The pupil-level annual school census data will become available and it will become available in the normal way. The Welsh Government doesn't have an ability simply to issue an instruction that would magic that data out of thin air either.
In the meantime, Llywydd, it's important to put some facts on the record as well. In the month prior to the pandemic, so when things were—to use the Member's word—normal, prior to the global pandemic, 66,000 children in Wales were in receipt of free school meals. Last month, the figure was 105,000, so that's nearly 40,000 extra children in receipt of free school meals in Wales in just over a year. Of course this Government wants to increase the number of children in Wales who are able to take up that offer, but we will have to do it in a way that is informed by the latest data and that is negotiated through the budget round, in which there will be many, many very important needs that his party and other Members of this Senedd will advocate for, and that, in the end, we will have to weigh up against one another and do the best that we can from the inevitably limited resources that will be available to us.