Diolch yn fawr, Llywydd. I do want to thank Plaid Cymru for bringing forward this debate on this really important subject, especially in the midst of a cost-of-living crisis, which, we all fear, will drive child poverty rates here and across the UK even higher.

Llywydd, Wales has a child poverty strategy; we have had one since 2011, and Wales was also the first UK nation to introduce legislation to tackle child poverty, and this placed a duty on Welsh Ministers to publish a child poverty strategy setting out how we will tackle it, and to report every three years on the progress we've made in achieving those objectives. Yesterday, I laid our child poverty progress report for 2022 before this Senedd, and issued a written statement. And I've given a commitment, as Members will see in my statement, to refresh our child poverty strategy so that it reflects the current challenging circumstances and sets out a renewed undertaking to supporting those who need support the most.

We're already engaging with partners and stakeholders. Indeed, in our cost-of-living Cabinet sub-committee, which meets weekly, we engage with those policy advisers, and people with lived experience, including, for example, the Child Poverty Action Group—you mentioned their evidence today. But also, voices from children and young people and the children's commissioner engaged, and we got that lived experience of the impact of the cost-of-living crisis. But a consultation on the refreshed child poverty strategy is now being taken forward, and we will be informed, in taking the strategy forward, by the research that we commissioned that’s been undertaken by the Wales Centre for Public Policy on what works in tackling poverty and looking at international comparisons, looking at ways in which we can learn from the evidence to take this forward, but also taking on board the findings of the recent report from the Auditor General for Wales, which looks at what more we could be doing if we are to meet the scale of the challenge with which we're faced.

The last three years have been unlike any that we’ve had to navigate since devolution, and many of our programmes came to a halt during the pandemic while others were escalated to address the urgent needs of people across Wales. In fact, we repurposed; we had new responses throughout the pandemic on all areas of policy across the Welsh Government. And, in fact, the progress report does, as you will read, capture the way that we refocused that funding and adapted our activity to meet the needs of people during the pandemic.

But this is an approach that we have continued as we respond to the cost-of-living crisis, which is having a disproportionate impact on families who are already financially vulnerable. As we heard yesterday from the Finance Minister in the statement about the draft budget—'a budget for hard times in hard times'—challenging, we continue to adapt our approach to ensure that we can continue supporting people through the cost-of-living crisis in the face of a perfect storm of financial pressures. And it was vital that that draft budget contained an additional £18.8 million to continue the support for the discretionary assistance fund, and it included funding to pay the real living wage for social care workers and additional support for our basic income pilot.

But the draft budget also will ensure that we can maintain all those other programmes in Wales, which put money back into people's pockets, from free prescriptions to universal primary free school meals—of course, as a result of our co-operation agreement with Plaid Cymru—support with the cost of sending children to school, and a 'Claim what's yours' campaign to ensure that people take up all the benefits that they're entitled to. It is important that I respond to the issue about statutory targets, which I appreciate you've put. The Welsh Government does set targets in relation to individual programmes that support families to prosper and thrive, and we do also use a set of child poverty indicators to measure our progress in achieving our child poverty objectives, and Members can see in our child poverty progress report the progress that we've made. Of course, that was published yesterday. And we recognise that calls have been made for targets in the delivery plan for tackling child poverty, and we're committed to having this as part of the development work as we consult and move forward.

But our best efforts continue to be hindered by decisions taken by the UK Government, and its wider policies on welfare support and inequitable funding. The pandemic, yes, has entrenched disadvantage for vulnerable households, and now the cost-of-living crisis is having a devastating impact on households that are already financially weakened. Families with young children are particularly at risk, as Carolyn Thomas has highlighted, and yes, Mark Isherwood, austerity was a choice and continues to be a choice of this Tory UK Government.