5. Which policies will the Welsh Government follow to address entrenched poverty levels in Wales? OQ56775

Poverty levels in Wales have been worsened by the actions of successive Conservative Governments since 2010. The decision not to extend the £20 weekly addition to universal credit from September will abandon thousands of families in Wales when they most need support. The Welsh Government continues to mitigate these developments to the fullest extent possible.

First Minister, I very much agree with you in terms of the effect of those UK Government policies. Much entrenched poverty is rooted in social class, and working class communities in areas of industrial decline in the Valleys and on our social housing estates are suffering intergenerational disadvantage, which has been around, sadly, for many years. This affects all stages of education, employment and, of course, standards of living. It sometimes results in poor health and well-being, and sometimes in alienation and hopelessness. It has been and is very difficult to address these issues for any Government and for all of our public services. First Minister, what policies will this Welsh Government follow to address early years issues, education issues, economic development, community development and youth services?

I agree with what John Griffiths said about the continued importance of social class in determining people's chances in life in Wales. It's not just a matter of class, as we know; it's often a matter of gender and ethnicity as well. John Griffiths is right, of course, Llywydd, that there is accumulating evidence of the challenges that young white working class men face in securing an economic future for them, and young women certainly need additional efforts to ensure that they know that the widest range of possibilities is open to them here in Wales. 

I probably can't deal with all the policy areas that the Member highlighted, Llywydd, but for young men, I've always thought that the foundation phase and the Flying Start programme are a genuine example of what we refer to as progressive universalism in Wales. There is the foundation phase, a universal service designed to make young people at the very earliest age love the thought of going to school and learning—that learning is to be enjoyed and to be rewarding. For those boys who come from the backgrounds that the Member has referred to, the foundation phase, I think, is so important in making them feel from right at the start of their lives that school is going to be something that they're going to get a lot out of and is going to give them those chances.

For young women, as I said, we have to do more to make sure that they are not faced with a set of gender stereotyped choices that they can make. Earlier this year, in April, I went with the Member for Blaenau Gwent to Thales in his constituency and heard a fantastic story of the way in which that company is making sure that young women in that area know that there are careers for them in those newly emerging industries. The programme was led by two fantastic young women, who explained to us everything that they were doing to make sure that those opportunities were known to young women in the Blaenau Gwent constituency.

For both young men and young women, the youth employment guarantee that this Government offers will be a fundamental building block in making sure that, as the economy recovers from the economic consequences of coronavirus, those young people that John Griffiths refers to are not left behind, that they have genuine opportunities, that we work with them to make sure that they can see a chain—a chain from where their lives are today to where they would like their lives to be in the future. 

First Minister, thank you so much for mentioning women and young people in your previous answer, but I'd like to focus on older people. The older people's commissioner for Wales, in 2018, reported that an estimated 112,500 older people actually live in poverty here in Wales, with 50,000 people living in severe poverty. Last year, the charity Independent Age produced a report saying that hundreds of thousands of elderly people could be lifted out of poverty with a full uptake of pension credit. Independent Age said 61 per cent of those eligible are receiving the benefit and that some 450,000 pensioners could move out of poverty in the United Kingdom if uptake was increased to 100 per cent, thereby reducing pensioner poverty to its lowest ever level. The Welsh Government strategy for older people referred to Communities First as a mechanism to address older people's financial inclusion and improve their ability to access appropriate financial advice and services. The continued poor uptake of financial entitlement suggests that the programme failed to achieve its target. What action is the Welsh Government taking to ensure that older people are aware of their entitlements, know how to apply with targeted help and support, and have the confidence to claim their entitlement? Thank you.

Natasha Asghar certainly identifies an important issue. The person in Wales who is least likely to take up their entitlement to welfare benefits is a single woman living on her own aged over 75. There are many, many reasons for that, and many of them are rooted in the gendered experience that I referred to in my earlier answer. They are women whose husbands have died, and they relied in the past on somebody else taking care of money matters within the home. So, there is a lot of work that has to be done to try and give those people the confidence to come forward to claim the things to which they are entitled. It's why we invest such large sums of money in our single advice service; it raised £42 million in unclaimed benefit in Wales in recent times, which shows that it can be done, even though it requires a lot of effort. With some older people particularly, you are dealing with issues of pride as well, and issues of not wanting to get tangled up in a system that they fear may leave them worse off rather than better off. Of course, one way in which older people in Wales can be better off is for the UK Conservative Government not to break another election promise and not go ahead with the triple lock on the rising of pension entitlement, a promise that they made a great deal of in the election campaign of 2019—a guarantee that pensions would rise by whichever of those three measures was the highest. Now it turns out that it's not convenient for the Chancellor. It wasn't convenient for him to pay international aid, it isn't convenient for him to pay universal credit, and now it's inconvenient for him to pay pensioners as well. People will draw their own conclusions, Llywydd, about where the values of such a Government lie.