There will be a refreshed strategy next year, but there’s no mention of targets, and, given the answer the Prif Weinidog gave yesterday to my colleague Peredur Owen Griffiths regarding the need for a child poverty strategy, I must say I’m slightly worried about that too, and the Government’s commitment to it. The Prif Weinidog said that he wanted his

'civil service colleagues and those we work with to be focused on...those practical actions that make a difference in the lives of Welsh citizens. Writing strategies is not something that is going to put food on anybody's table or help anybody to meet their fuel bills this winter.' 

No, I agree that writing strategies doesn’t feed hungry children or wash their clothes or keep them warm, but, as I said earlier, it’s essential to be able to focus, target, evaluate and drive work across Government.

Melanie Simmonds, head of Save the Children Cymru, recently wrote about coming across a Save the Children report published 15 years ago, around the time she joined the charity. It was called ‘Listen Up!’, and based on research conducted with 100 children and young people aged between five and 16 who lived in areas of high deprivation across Wales in 2007. ‘It sadly resonates’, she says,

‘with what we are hearing from children and families we work with today’.

The children who took part talked, she says,

‘about missing out on many aspects of childhood including social activities. They felt excluded and bullied because of the clothes they wore. They described the impact of poverty on children’s diets and how this could lead to poor health in later life. And they talked about how they instinctively knew when their parents felt sad because they couldn’t provide for their children.’

She then says:

‘Fast forward to 2022 and we’re hearing similar heart-breaking stories of children as young as seven being upset at school and telling their teacher that they heard their mum crying because there is only a tin of beans in the cupboard. We’re hearing from another mum left with just £50 to feed a family of four after paying her bills and not knowing what else she can cut back on.’

‘We have also heard of parents who have had to send their children to live with other family members over the school holidays because they can’t afford to feed them, and of children who missed out on trips to places such as Barry Island over the summer simply because the bus or train fare was out of reach.’

Children, she says, are paying the price for the cost-of-living crisis, which is unacceptable, and urgent action is needed. She goes on to ask what can be done. She rightly points out the duty of the UK Government to increase benefits, scrap the benefits cap, ensure wages keep up with costs. But she also calls on Welsh Government to present what she calls

‘key targets and milestones to provide an urgent, co-ordinated approach to tackling child poverty at a local and national level allowing public and third sectors to work together.’

Audit Wales in its recent report also notes

'there is currently no specific target for reducing poverty in Wales', recommending the Welsh Government 

'set SMART national actions;

'establish a suite of performance measures to judge

delivery and impact;

'sets target for alleviating and tackling poverty'.

The children’s commissioner is also unequivocal. She calls on Welsh Government to set ambitious targets to tackle child poverty. She says:

‘Without targets it's very difficult for me to do my job and hold the Welsh government to account and really see how well they are doing or how poorly we are doing.’

So, how would targets help? Writing about the argument for setting targets, Dr Steffan Evans of the Bevan Foundation says they would

‘provide the Welsh Government with an opportunity to develop a clear and coherent vision’, measure progress and also make scrutiny better. He, however, rightly also warns that successive Welsh Governments

‘have developed various child poverty strategies and set itself the target of ending child poverty by 2020’, but no significant progress was made. But lessons must and can be learned, says Dr Evans, which would lead to setting new targets that could have a real impact on poverty levels—targets that could reflect what is achievable with devolved competence, as this would allow the Welsh Government to be held to account for how effectively it’s implementing its own policies, and we would agree entirely with that.

Most importantly, he says

‘Too often in Wales we have fallen into the trap of setting aspirational targets or developing strategies and documents that set out well-meaning goals and values but with little detail as to how these will become reality. Any poverty targets should therefore be set alongside clear and focused commitments by the Welsh Government on the practical measures that it intends to adopt to meet them.’ 

This is crucial advice. This is what our motion is about. I look forward to hearing contributions.