Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:09 pm on 27 September 2022.
Well, we can see the turmoil of what the mini budget last Friday did. It's incredible the chaos that has been caused by Liz Truss, just a few days after moving into No. 10. I'm really pleased that you had the event, because clearly it's something that we need to raise awareness about, and tackling the impacts of child poverty is a priority for this Government and we will continue to support learners who are disadvantaged by poverty throughout their educational journey. You mentioned some of the initiatives that the Minister for education has brought forward; we're also clear no child should ever be hungry in school, and we've commenced the roll-out of universal primary free school meals. One of the figures—I was reading some figures while preparing for First Minister's questions today, and it was stating that absolute poverty is on track to rise by 3 million over the next two years and relative child poverty is projected to reach its highest level—33 per cent—in 2026-27, which I think is just so stark and shows where the UK Government could have given confidence in their mini budget last week but they declined to do so.