Questions now from the party spokespeople. The Conservative spokesperson, Mark Isherwood.  

Diolch, Llywydd. Welsh Governments have been responsible, as you know, for co-ordination of cross-cutting measures to promote prosperity and tackle poverty in Wales for over 22 years. As the Joseph Rowntree Foundation reported last year, Wales has retained the highest poverty rate of all the UK nations throughout devolution since 1999. Further, their 'Poverty in Wales 2020' report, last November, found that Wales still has lower pay for people in every sector than in the rest of the UK and that, even before coronavirus, almost a quarter of people in Wales were in poverty, living precarious and insecure lives. And, as the Bevan Foundation also stated, poverty was a significant problem in Wales long before the arrival of COVID-19. What alternative actions do you therefore propose to ensure that the Welsh Government works in real partnership with, and empowers, the voluntary sector, community groups and other social entrepreneurs to help deliver solutions to the long-term problems of our most deprived communities? 

I thank Mark Isherwood for that question and, clearly, sharing the concerns of the Bevan Foundation, and, also, pointing to the fact that they are concerned about the sudden withdrawal of UK Government COVID support schemes, such as furlough and top-up for universal credit, and I hope Mark Isherwood and his colleagues would support my call for the UK Government to maintain the additional £20 per week universal credit payment beyond the autumn. In fact, I've written to the Secretary of State, Thérèse Coffey, and told her about our work to maximise income, and this is where, of course, we work so closely with the third sector. But we do have to recognise also how deeply concerned we are about the financial impact of the pandemic and it has fallen disproportionately on those who are already struggling. In fact, that's why maximising incomes and building financial resilience for those who are affected are key. So, although the key levers for tackling poverty—powers over tax and welfare systems—sit with the UK Government, we're doing everything that we can to reduce the impact of poverty and to support those living in poverty.

Thank you. I regret you didn't answer my question, and I quoted various bodies that pointed out that these problems long pre-dated COVID, and they're calling, therefore, for a change of tack. As I stated here last November, the recent Building Communities Trust report, 'Building Stronger Welsh Communities: Opportunities and barriers to community action in Wales', is about harnessing the strengths and skills of local people so that they can build the social infrastructure and shape the services they want and need in their area. After facilitating a national conversation at 20 events held across the length and breadth of Wales, they found that, and these are quotes: 

'Disconnect between Government, public bodies and communities is a barrier to community action, despite examples of cross-sector collaboration', that,

'people in Wales feel increasingly less able to influence decisions affecting their local area...that "worthy words are not being backed up by action"...that public bodies are "doing to, not with" people and communities', and that,

'entrenched public sector ways of working characterised by poor communication, lack of trust, risk aversion, silo working, professional bias and staff demotivation' are significant barriers to greater community action. How will you therefore be engaging with them and other bodies, such as those I mentioned, to design, deliver and monitor a better way of working across Wales? 

Well, I clearly have responded to the very important report that came out this week from the Bevan Foundation. In fact, I made it my business to meet with Victoria Winckler of the Bevan Foundation early on when I had this portfolio for social justice. Social justice has to be about empowering communities, and, indeed, that's what brought me into politics. And it is about engaging with our communities to ensure that we are getting it right in terms of the interventions that we are making. And, of course, as I said, the key levers for tackling poverty, working with our communities, are about making sure that they can get the advice they need to resolve problems with welfare, benefits, housing and debt, but also support for a more generous social wage through our childcare offer, our council tax reduction scheme, our Warm Homes programme and free prescriptions. This is about actually enabling Welsh citizens to maximise their income, and our child poverty income maximisation action plan demonstrates how we have done that. But it is crucial that we take and work with our communities as we address these key issues.

As I've indicated, these were the bodies that made clear these are longstanding problems. Yes, we must treat the symptoms, but we must also tackle the causes. The Building Communities Trust 2021 manifesto for healthier, happier and more resilient communities in Wales begins, 

'Every community in Wales has the resources and influence it needs to build community capacity, and develop and run its own social infrastructure.'

One of Diverse Cymru's key asks in their 2021 manifesto is co-production, as they state, 

'Legislation, policy and practice must be co-produced with individuals representing the diversity of...Wales across all characteristics to ensure that it respects every individual and advances equality for all.'

And yesterday's Bevan Foundation briefing on poverty, which you just referred to, in Wales this spring stated that a key theme that has emerged is that, without intervention, our recovery is likely to be unequal. What, therefore, if any, specific plans—not restating the aspirational comments that you've been sharing with us for as long as I can remember in this place, and which I almost entirely share with you—do you have to establish genuinely asset-based community development as a key principle within community development, empowering the people of the community and using existing community strengths to build sustainable communities for the future?

I don't think we have any disagreements, Mark Isherwood, in terms of the way forward to empower communities and, indeed, I think, probably in sharing with you during election campaigns in hustings with the Building Communities Trust and hearing some powerful examples of social enterprise community engagement, which you can see in terms of many of the initiatives that we're supporting in terms of tackling food poverty, fuel poverty, and ensuring that our communities are accessing the policies that we are putting forward to address poverty.

You asked me about addressing poverty and how we can engage the third sector. I met with the Wales Council for Voluntary Action last week, and one of the key points being made was the strength of volunteering and the ways in which we need to address inequalities as a result of the pandemic. And indeed, it is very important that you do also join me in calling for the UK Government to address the inequities in terms of our welfare benefits system, which has had such an adverse impact on the lives of people in those communities.

Plaid Cymru spokesperson, Sioned Williams.

Diolch, Llywydd. Weinidog, we've heard already this afternoon about the recent report published by the Bevan Foundation, which has provided us—as the title of the report suggests—with a snapshot of poverty in Wales during this spring 2021 period. The report makes for shocking reading, I'm sure you'll agree. What's more shocking are the problems the pandemic has exacerbated. The stark inequality it reveals is not new, and even more disturbingly, that inequality is deepening; deepening at a time when many of the protections put in place during the last months for the most vulnerable are now ending.

One of the key issues discussed in the report is the housing crisis that is affecting so many of our people and how it is driven by this inequality. Perhaps the most shocking statistic is that 6 per cent of households have already been told that they will lose their home. That's equivalent to 80,000 households who have already had to or will have to find a new home, and this despite protections from eviction being in place when this evidence was gathered. And it's those most economically and socially vulnerable that are having to deal with this crisis: it's mainly lower income households, disabled people, working-age adults. Clearly, the damage has been done to many individuals and families beset by fear and anxiety due to insecure housing, facing eviction, some of the temporary measures that have supported them, such as the ban on no-fault eviction, which is now being lifted.

I'd like to welcome the new tenancy hardship grant announced today. It will help some people stay in their homes, but for many, risks will remain, and so, with these things coming to an end, the no-fault eviction ban, furlough support, universal credit coming to an end, and these new grants only being processed—beginning to be processed—by mid July, can I ask the Minister what steps she and her Government will take, apart from the tenancy hardship grant and its finite resource, to ensure that people facing housing precarity don't lose their homes and slip through the cracks?

I'm grateful for that question, because it does go to the heart of the need of tackling poverty in Wales and the challenge that we've got. Can I say that having the role of Minister for Social Justice provides a huge opportunity for me and the whole Government to address the issues that you raise? Because we have to tackle that inequality, which some of you might have heard Professor Michael Marmot on the Today programme this morning talking about, and the fact that the deepening of inequalities as a result of the pandemic means that we have to build a fairer, as well as a better, recovery, and that, I'm sure you'll agree with me, is the way forward.

And that's why, in terms of tackling poverty, not just in terms of looking at our own work and the way the programme for government is focusing on the power of all of our collective efforts across the whole Government to address this, we are and I'm sure you would join me in urging the UK Government to change their ways in terms of extending universal credit to ensure that it goes forward in terms of that £20 a week beyond the autumn.

Our advice and advocacy services are absolutely critical to tackling poverty as well. So, you'll be aware of the single advice fund: £9.6 million of grant funding available for provision of advice services during this financial year. That's going to be crucial in terms of supporting those tenants who are now going to be able to access the tenancy hardship fund announced today. But also recognising what we've done over the past year, which isn't going to change: funding of £166 million to local authorities through the housing support grant, because homelessness prevention is critical, and it is where local authorities are playing their part to prevent people from being homeless. Our tenancy saver loan scheme—that's for those low-cost loans available to private sector tenants—those moving into the grant will be crucially important, but working with the Minister for Climate Change Julie James, making sure that we lever in the advice services, Citizens Advice, Shelter, as well as our local authorities, to ensure that that tenancy hardship grant will be backed and supported by all the agencies as well as the local authorities at a local level.

Thank you. The same report has found that one in three households in Wales don't have enough money to buy anything beyond the daily basics. We're talking around 110,000 households, roughly the same number of households as are in the city of Swansea. Hundreds of thousands of people across the nation are forced to borrow money, taking them further into debt, having to cut back on food, heating, clothes, and once again, those who have seen the greatest decline in their income, according to the Bevan Foundation, have seen the greatest increase in their costs of living.

In expanding the provision of free school meals to the 70,000 children in poverty that aren't eligible at the moment, we could decrease child poverty and inequality significantly, by decreasing living costs for parents who find it difficult, and give a better start in life to children. It's an affordable measure. If eligibility were expanded to include every family who are in receipt of universal credit, the additional cost would be £10.5 million. Child poverty and widening inequality is clearly a social justice issue. So, Minister, when can we expect further action on expanding the provision of free school meals by this Government?

Thank you for that question. You know that the Minister has undertaken to undertake a review in terms of free school meals, and I think it is very important again to note what the First Minister said yesterday about the uplift in the take-up of free school meals from 66,000 in January 2020 to 105,000 in January 2021. But I'd also like to draw attention to some of the other ways in which we can particularly support children and families in relation to tackling poverty, and draw attention to the holiday enrichment scheme, for example, which is going to result in many families in our schools, in our communities, who are going to benefit from the holiday enrichment scheme.

But it is going to be through every aspect of Welsh Government, whether it's education, housing through the climate change ministry, in terms of jobs and employability, that we can tackle poverty. We are tackling worklessness, reducing economic inequalities, we're tackling educational inequalities with the pupil development grant, and of course we have the most generous offer of free school meals in terms of the reach out to children during the school holidays. Can I also draw attention to the great schemes that are going on now in the Valleys, in Llynfi valley, Aberdare, Merthyr and Ammanford, for example, with the Big Bocs Bwyd scheme? I think Mark Isherwood might like to visit those schemes as well.

In such a bleak economic landscape, and without the power, as you referenced earlier, to ensure a fairer, more humane welfare system than that on offer from the Tory Westminster Government, the discretionary assistance fund is a vital source of support. While the Welsh Government invested an additional amount of money into the DAF and made eligibility criteria for accessing the support more flexible in response to the COVID crisis, this additional flexibility is due to end in September. So, given this picture painted by recent research and the Government's own data, this is really concerning, given that people will continue to face financial hardship and crisis after this date, and for whom the DAF has provided crucial support during such an exceptionally difficult time. Will the Minister and Welsh Government therefore consider continuing the additional flexibility for accessing the DAF beyond the end of September to ensure that those who need this support are able to access it? Diolch.

We're very proud of what we've been able to achieve in terms of tackling inequalities by ensuring that there is that flexibility in terms of the discretionary assistance payment fund, but also to ensure that more than one payment can be made. That was one of the restrictions to ensure that people could access the fund. It's very much part of our income maximisation action plan, and indeed also will be very much linked to support to be given to private sector tenants, linked to the tenancy hardship fund.

Question 3 to be answered by the Deputy Minister. Darren Millar.