2. Will the First Minister make a statement on the Government's strategy to eradicate child poverty? OQ57286

May I thank Sioned Williams very much for the question, Llywydd? Despite the head winds created by the United Kingdom Government, we will pursue the measures set out in our programme for government and the co-operation agreement with Plaid Cymru to bear down on child poverty in Wales.

Thank you, First Minister. I'd like to congratulate Plaid Cymru and the Welsh Government for drawing up an innovative and comprehensive co-operation agreement, which will make a positive difference to the lives of the people of Wales, in terms of tackling child poverty particularly. Since being elected, I and others in Plaid Cymru have questioned the First Minister on expanding free school meals many times in this place. And anti-poverty groups, such as the Bevan Foundation, have been campaigning hard for this. The co-operation agreement notes that this is a further step towards our shared aim that no child should go hungry in Wales, and that is to be welcomed. Now, given this ambition, as well as the fact that almost 10,000 secondary school children living in poverty are being deprived of free school meals, does the First Minister agree with me that we should also aim towards introducing free school meals for all secondary school pupils, when resources allow? In addition, unless there is an increase in the educational maintenance allowance, which provides crucial support for young adults in education from low-income households, then, by the end of the period of three years, it will have been frozen for 20 years in real terms. Will the First Minister therefore outline the Government's plans to increase this? Thank you.

Thank you very much for that question, of course, and I thank the Member for what she said about the agreement. We now have opportunities to take further steps, by extending free school meals and childcare provision. The Government will focus on what is contained in the agreement, because that is challenging and ambitious, but now we're able to co-operate in order to do what the agreement says it will do. Everything that we do will do more to protect our children from poverty. Naturally, there are more things that we could do in future—that we can think of doing—and the Member made a number of important points. But the important thing for us, as a Government, is to focus on those issues included in the agreement and to implement all of those. 

First Minister, as with the free school meals, of course, and it is welcome, but doesn't it concern you, like with your pilot for universal basic income, that millionaires will be benefiting from it? Do you think this is the real best use of resources for really tackling poverty in Wales head on? You've had 20 years, First Minister, to make your mark here in Wales, and yet this Government has delivered nothing in this regard. In fact, child poverty has increased to 1 in 3 children. That's 200,000 children still left in poverty here in Wales. What steps, what action are you taking, apart from those things, to really tackle poverty head on here?  

Well, Llywydd, I've explained previously on the floor of the Senedd that, as far as child poverty is concerned, the devolution period can be very easily divided into two periods. In the first period, the first decade, with a Labour Government at Westminster working with a Labour Government here, child poverty fell year after year during that period. It is in the last 10 years, with her Government in charge at Westminster, that we have seen child poverty grow not just here in Wales, but across the whole of the United Kingdom. Their latest and most cruel measure being to deprive children in families dependent on universal credit from that extra £20 a week on which they depended. If you want to know why child poverty has risen across the United Kingdom, then you simply have to look at the direct and deliberate actions that her party has taken while it has been in Government. 

And I entirely reject what the Member said in opening. It's always been the Tory party policy that services should be reserved for poor people, and yet we know perfectly well what that leads to: services reserved for poor people quickly become poor services. We rely, wherever we can, on universal services in which everybody has a stake, and everybody wants those services to be as good as they possibly can be. And where there are millionaires, the tax system is there to deal with them to make sure that, if they get the benefit, as I would wish them to, of universal services, they pay that money back through the tax system to go on supporting others. That is the way, Llywydd, in which to make sure that children in poor families are not just separated off from the rest of society and made the beneficiaries of the benign concern of the Conservative Party, but to make sure that they are properly included with every other child in everything that we would wish to see a child in Wales have as part of their citizenship.