4. Will the Minister provide an update on progress towards a Welsh welfare system? OQ57799

We are co-producing with stakeholders a charter that will underpin the delivery of a coherent and compassionate Welsh benefits system. However, the immediate focus is on ensuring our existing and new financial support payments reach households across Wales whose incomes are being stretched like never before.

I'm sure the Minister is aware of the work by the Bevan Foundation on the Welsh benefits system. Their analysis of the current situation is that although the Welsh Government has provided unprecedented levels of support, efforts are undermined by the complex way in which support is administered. The foundation suggests that a low-income family with two children would have to present nine different application forms. Creating a reformed system of grants provided by the Welsh Government, which would mean that you could apply for all the support that you're entitled to in one place, would improve families' access to support by making it more accessible. The past few months have shown how important it is now for us to make progress on this issue, so I ask the Minister to accelerate the Government's work in this area. We need a more co-ordinated system in place now that provides support for those that need it most as soon as possible.

Thank you very much, Luke Fletcher, for your very important question.

It's crucial that we get the funding, the benefits, to the households with the lowest incomes, and we need to move that forward, learning lessons and taking forward many of the recommendations, I would say, made by the Equality, Local Government and Communities Committee in the previous Senedd around benefit take-up. I have talked about the development of a charter for the Welsh benefit system, but also, going into the point of your question, to enable a more joined-up and simplified system so that more people can access their entitlements. We're now in discussion to ensure that we have a council tax protocol for local authorities, which is going to be crucial in terms of accessing those budgets with our charter. But I can assure you it's a top priority in terms of developing that social security system that we believe, in Wales, should be compassionate, fair in the way it treats people, and should be designed so it actually does make a positive contribution to tackling poverty. The current social security system in the UK falls far short on many counts.