We're pleased to support this motion. As figures today show, soaring food costs and the energy bill crisis are driving consumer prices up at their fastest rate in 30 years, with UK consumer price inflation at 5.4 per cent last year. Of course, this is not restricted to the UK, and inflation has risen in economies across the world; for example, I think 6.2 per cent in the US last October. As the Bank of England's chief economist stated three months ago, inflation has been increasing rapidly for much of 2021 because of the strong economic recovery from the coronavirus crisis, surging energy prices and global supply chain disruption. Those of us who remember inflation and its consequences in the 1970s and 1980s know that it is an economy and jobs killer, with devastating impacts on household budgets, and understand that this must be tackled, that massive liquidity injections to power us through choppy waters will therefore no longer be available, and that tighter fiscal policy normally follows, including further central bank interest hikes, although this will also need global responses to supply pressures.

Although UK inflation is expected to fall back later this year, it is not expected to drop to the Bank of England's 2 per cent target until 2023. I know that the UK Chancellor has stated today that he understands the pressures people are facing and will continue to listen to people's concerns, as he has done throughout the pandemic, adding that the UK Government was already providing support worth £12 billion this financial year and the next to help families cope. He's already delivered over £407 billion of economic support since the pandemic began, now backed by a further £1 billion package for key sectors to mitigate the impacts of omicron, and is also delivering £4.2 billion of support to help with the cost of living; keeping the energy price cap in place to protect consumers from the global spike in gas prices, or help that; delivering £1,000 tax cut for working families; by cutting the universal credit taper rate, costing £2.2 billion; increasing the national living wage to £9.50 an hour; freezing duty rates on fuel and alcohol to help with the cost of living; and enabling the Welsh Government to launch its household support fund by contributing £25 million towards this from its £0.5 billion fund to help households in need to buy essential items.

But regrettably, people in Wales were already particularly exposed. In four months' time, Labour will have been running Wales for a quarter of a century. The December 2018 Joseph Rowntree report on UK poverty stated: of the four countries of the UK, Wales has consistently had the highest poverty rate for the past 20 years. Last November's Joseph Rowntree Foundation poverty in Wales report stated that Wales has the lowest pay for people in every sector from 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 last May found that Wales had the worst child poverty rates of all UK nations, and official statistics show that 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 the 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. Even yesterday, they were talking as if this funding was not only ever intended to be temporary. Despite criticising other bodies that invest temporary funding in ongoing revenue costs, they've done the same. As the UK Chancellor has also said:

'The best way to help people to get on in life, and raise living standards across the UK, is to help people into work and to progress once in work.'

But the Welsh Government's ongoing reactionary and regressive rhetoric conceals the fact that the equality and social aspects of cost-of-living pressures are inextricably linked to the economy.

The Welsh Government's action plan should not only include steps to help vulnerable households facing higher costs, especially when the energy price cap is lifted, but also detail how it will at last work hand in hand with business to create the conditions for a higher wage, high-skilled economy, and how it will at last develop a systemic, community-led strategy for tackling deprivation and promoting social justice. We've waited too long.