7. What assessment has the Welsh Government made of the effects of the cost-of-living crisis on communities in South Wales Central? OQ57777

The cost-of-living crisis will affect families and communities across Wales, including those in the Member's own constituency. Recent analysis by organisations such as the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, the Bevan Foundation and the Resolution Foundation have each concluded that the coming year will be particularly challenging for those households on low incomes.

Thank you, First Minister. I've worked in Rhondda supporting our communities for the last 20 years. Never have I felt as concerned or angry as I feel right now. Residents in my constituency are facing a cost-of-living crisis through no fault of their own. Families on the breadline have been thrown into deeper poverty, and working families are experiencing poverty for the first time. I'm not sure Members on the Tory benches have been contacted by constituents who can't put their heating on, or food on the table, but if they have, can they please inform their out-of-touch colleagues in Westminster? They can try to dress it up any way they like, but let's make no bones about it: this isn't a cost-of-living crisis, this is a Tory cost-of-living crisis. Does the First Minister agree with me that the Tory Westminster Government are either too incompetent to use the levers available to them to support families, or are completely heartless and have deliberately plunged our communities into poverty, or both?

I thank the Member for that question. I notice, Llywydd, how, whenever anything goes wrong on the Conservative benches, this is treated like it was somehow an act of God over which they have no responsibility whatsoever. The fact that they've been in power for more than a decade, a decade of austerity, Llywydd, in which every time—every time—[Interruption.] I hear them shouting—

Can I hear the First Minister's response? I'm sure that you'd be enlightened to hear it and that you'd like to hear it. Can you carry on?

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.