4. Debate: The Draft Budget 2023-24

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:41 pm on 7 February 2023.

Alert me about debates like this

Photo of Jayne Bryant Jayne Bryant Labour 4:41, 7 February 2023

I’m speaking this afternoon in my capacity as Chair of the Children, Young People and Education Committee. As a committee, we are all very much aware of the significant financial difficulties facing the Ministers setting this year’s budget. We know that children and other vulnerable groups of people are disproportionately impacted by the cost-of-living crisis. An estimated 31 per cent of children in Wales are living in relative poverty.

In a survey of 7,873 children and young people last November, the children’s commissioner found that 45 per cent of children aged seven to 11, and 26 per cent of young people aged 12 to 18, said they worry about having enough to eat. This is the stark reality of how poverty affects children, and the backdrop against which the Welsh Government sets its 2023-24 draft budget. It demonstrates why it’s so important for the Welsh Government to give children and young people their fair share of resources.

At the heart of the Children, Young People and Education Committee’s scrutiny of the Welsh Government’s draft budget is this key question: has the Welsh Government allocated enough resources to children and young people? Unfortunately, we do not know for sure. Once again, the Welsh Government did not publish a children’s rights impact assessment of its draft budget. Our committee is clear in our recommendation on this: the Welsh Government must comply with its duty to have due regard to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child when setting its draft budget.

We asked for a lot of information in preparation for our scrutiny, and we are grateful for the co-operation of Ministers and officials on this. Sadly, not all of the written evidence we receive to support our scrutiny was clear, and we look forward to the Finance Committee’s forthcoming consultation. Despite those challenges in seeing what’s spent on children, we have made a series of recommendations to the Welsh Government this year, some of which aim to mitigate the impact of the cost-of-living crisis on children and young people across Wales.

The school holidays free school meals programme, which is due to end after the February half term, should be extended. Children in Wales should not have to worry about having enough to eat. The school meals programme is an effective way to mitigate the impact of food poverty on our most vulnerable. We welcome the Welsh Government’s decision to extend the scheme thus far and urge it to do so again.

A number of Members have already mentioned the education maintenance allowance, and we believe that the time has come for the education maintenance allowance to be properly reviewed. In its response to our draft budget report last year, the Welsh Government told us that it hasn’t reviewed the EMA in part because a 2014 review suggested that it was

'an essential source of financial support for only the minority of students.'

That review is almost now a decade old. An awful lot has changed since then. Meanwhile, since neither the EMA eligibility threshold nor the support rate have been revised since 2011-12, the EMA is of less real-terms value to fewer students every year.

These recommendations, alongside others, feed into the final recommendation of our report. This year, we join the children’s commissioner, Audit Wales and many others in calling for the Welsh Government to produce a child poverty action plan with clear, costed, deliverable, measurable and time-bound actions. We understand that the main levers for alleviating child poverty lie with the UK Government. But that does not negate the need for the Welsh Government to set out clearly how it will use the levers that are in its gift, and the money that it does have, to reduce child poverty here in Wales. And I know that we are not the only ones who will be paying close attention to the Welsh Government’s response to that recommendation, in particular.

And finally, I would like to thank my fellow Senedd committee Chairs and committee members for their support and collaboration this year. It is so important for the Senedd to be as holistic as possible in its scrutiny of the Welsh Government’s draft budget. As well as drawing on the expertise and excellent engagement work of the Finance Committee, I know that some committee reports this year—including ours—have joint recommendations with other committees that have shared areas of interest. I hope very much that we continue to build on this collaborative approach to scrutiny in future years. Diolch yn fawr.