I move amendments 1, 2 and 3. As our amendment 1 states, every human being has a right to a nutritious and adequate food supply. Every day, people in Wales go hungry because they're in crisis. There are many reasons for this, including low income, debt, access to benefits, substance misuse and mental health.

As foodbank network the Trussell Trust state, statutory organisations are often not able to respond quickly enough to these needs, yet a short-term crisis can easily escalate into difficult and costly long-term problems such as housing loss or criminal activity. Having been made aware of the problem of hidden hunger by a local mother, the trust founders, Paddy and Carol Henderson, launched the first Trussell Trust foodbank from their garden shed in 2000. They went on to develop the principles that still hold firm today: all food should be donated, and volunteers should be entitled to administer the food and provide non-judgmental emotional support. The first associated foodbank was launched in Gloucester in 2004.

When I first met the Trussell Trust, well over a decade ago, they told me that their goal was to open new foodbanks in every UK town. I attended the opening of the Flintshire foodbank in Mold, the first Trussell Trust foodbank in Wales, nearly a decade ago. In 2014, the Trussell Trust launched an essential new programme, More Than Food, which brings other support services into foodbanks, partnering with other charities and services to offer advice on benefits, housing, budgeting, even legal advice. Alongside the Trussell Trust, the Independent Food Aid Network includes over 500 UK independent foodbanks, committed to a future in which good food is accessible to all. Bringing together the charitable, public and business sectors with communities, foodbanks provide a co-productive solution to an enduring issue.

In five months' time, Labour will have been running Wales for a quarter of a century. The Joseph Rowntree report on UK poverty published in December 2018 stated that of the four countries of the UK, Wales has consistently had the highest poverty rate for the past 20 years. Last November, the Joseph Rowntree Foundation's 'Poverty in Wales' report stated that

'Wales has lower pay for people in every sector than the rest of the UK' and that

'Even before coronavirus, almost a quarter of people in Wales were in poverty.'

Research carried out for the UK End Child Poverty coalition published this May found that Wales has the worst child poverty rate of all the UK nations. Successive Labour Welsh Governments have failed to close the gap between the richest and poorest parts of Wales and between Wales and the rest of UK, despite having spent billions entrusted to them to tackle this on top-down programmes that did not do so. Had they done so, of course, they would have disqualified themselves from further funding.

In 2014, after another meeting with the Trussell Trust, I stated here that the trust

'told me that foodbanks are an expression of something that has been going on in the churches forever, namely feeding the hungry.'

But food poverty has been with us forever. It asked that we all worked together, putting aside whatever party political differences we may have, to focus on those in need. They told me that they would be putting this message to all parties and all agents. I pledged my support and I said to the Minister then, 'I urge you to do the same.'

UK Government measures, of course, include increasing the living wage, spending over £111 billion on welfare support for people of working age this financial year and delivering its plan for jobs, including the Kickstart programme aiming to create full-time jobs to reduce the risk of poverty. Our amendment 3 calls on the Welsh Government to work with the UK Government to deliver this in Wales. In addition, UK Research and Innovation, sponsored by the UK Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, has commissioned a research project on co-production of healthy, sustainable food systems for disadvantaged communities, led by Reading university. Working together with disadvantaged communities, this will establish effective methods for co-creation of policy, products and supply chains that can be implemented across the UK nations. As a result, every citizen will have the potential to make decisions about their food and will have access to a diet that is affordable, attractive, healthy and environmentally sustainable. We therefore call on the Welsh Government to ensure that the right to food is embedded in cross-governmental approaches to poverty. Diolch.