Shadow Minister for Communities and Local Government, Mark Isherwood AM, has hit out at Labour Welsh Government Ministers for failing to tackle child poverty, which has been rising in Wales since 2004.
In the Assembly Chamber yesterday, Mr Isherwood said Welsh Government policies to tackle the issue have been failing for years and questioned the Deputy Minister for Housing and Local Government, Hannah Bythyn AM, over what action is being taken to address this.
He said:
“Child poverty in Wales has been rising since 2004. It had already reached the highest level in the UK before the ‘Credit Crunch’ (in 2008), when more than one in four children in Wales were living in poverty, with 90,000 in severe poverty. We know that, last month, the End Child Poverty Network stated that Wales was the only UK nation to see a rise in child poverty last year and, although the Children's Commissioner for Wales said in March that the Welsh Government should write a new Child Poverty Delivery Plan, focusing on concrete and measurable steps, the Welsh Government failed to support calls for any Tackling Poverty Strategy during the individual Member's Debate calling for this two weeks ago here.
“How, therefore, do you respond to the representations made to me after that Debate by sector representatives regarding my emphasis on the need to focus on Welsh policy levers that the Welsh Government has within its power, that 'This is exactly the area upon which we would like to focus our influencing as we agree there are powers the Welsh Government can and should be using to tackle the root causes of poverty', i.e. within a plan or strategy rather than a generic approach, which has left us at the bottom for more than 10 years?”
The Deputy Minister replied: “We are committed to taking action to reduce and ultimately eliminate child poverty by not just using the levers at our disposal across Government, whether that be through housing, education, health, but also the First Minister is committed to and work is under way on the First Minister's commitment to reorganise Welsh Government funding programmes to ensure that we have maximum impact on the lives of children living in poverty in Wales”.
Speaking outside the Chamber, Mr Isherwood said:
“Labour Welsh Government Ministers have been making the same empty pledges since they took power two decades ago, but their policies have failed. Child poverty levels in Wales rose to 29.3% last year, but they stood at 29% in the spring of 2007 and rose to 32% in 2008. As I said a decade ago, ‘It is a national tragedy that more children are falling into poverty in Wales and that the Welsh Government's policies to tackle it appear to have failed. Over the last 10 years we've had plenty of rhetoric from Labour instead of measures to tackle the root causes of poverty’. After a further decade, that national tragedy has become a national betrayal".
