Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:25 pm on 15 March 2022.
I hear them shouting, Llywydd, because they've got nothing else that they can do but to make a noise to try to cover up the truth of their own record—a decade of austerity, supported week in, week out on the floor of this Senedd by Members of the Conservative group here. That's what lies behind the cost-of-living crisis—a decade in which benefits were held down, in which wages were held down. People are in a position that they would otherwise not have been in had it not been for the cost-of-living crisis made by the Conservative Party; they would not have been in the position that they are in today. And then, on top of that, you have the cruelty of the cut in universal credit at the end of last year—the shameful cut in it: £1,000 taken away deliberately, knowingly taken away from the poorest families in the land. How you think you can possibly defend that decision in the light of what people are going to face from next month onwards, I do not know. In April, Llywydd, benefits will go up by 3.1 per cent, a decision of the Conservative Government. Inflation will go up by 7 per cent in April and may reach 9 per cent or 10 per cent during the year. By itself that will take £300 on top of the £1,000 out of the pockets of the poorest families in Wales. No wonder people in the Member's constituency ask themselves whether it's incompetence or malice that lies behind it.