• 2 days ago
Child poverty in Wales is a serious issue. Almost a third of young people currently experience poverty, according to The Child’s Commissioner for Wales, which also says that almost half of 7 to 11 year old worry about whether they’ll have enough food. Senedd members are calling on the first minister to fix the issue.

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00:00Child poverty is a national scandal and it's a national emergency.
00:06Scotland has introduced statutory targets to tackle child poverty and they're the only
00:10UK nation predicted to see child poverty fall.
00:13That's not a coincidence.
00:15Do you agree that Scotland's statutory child poverty targets and greater powers over welfare
00:20has allowed them to take meaningful action on child poverty?
00:24Will you introduce legal child poverty targets for Wales and are you making the case for
00:29Wales to have greater powers over welfare?
00:31The fact that we have a council tax reduction scheme, for example, that helps 260,000 people
00:38on low income and in vulnerable households, that makes a difference to the money that
00:43they would otherwise have to find.
00:46And it's quite remarkable that, of course, the answer that Plaid Cymru have always is
00:51to spend more money.
00:52They want to increase child benefit, they want to extend free school meals and they
00:57never tell us how they're going to pay for it.
01:00Labour's Alan Davis believes that the last more than a decade under the Tories in Westminster
01:05has been a leading factor in child poverty here in Wales and says the current two-child
01:09cap on benefits is massively impacting people across the country and wants to see his party's
01:14government in the UK overrule that policy.
01:17It is, Presiding Officer, a standing rebuke to our politics that we are willing to tolerate
01:21such high levels of child poverty and we hear the crocodile tears from a Conservative party
01:26that presided over industrial-sized increases in child poverty across the whole of the United
01:34Kingdom.
01:35Do you agree with me, First Minister, that if we're to address the issues of child poverty,
01:40the two-child benefit cap must be lifted?
01:43There is obviously concern around the two-child limit and I know that the Cabinet Secretary
01:50for Social Justice has raised this issue personally in the UK Government's Ministerial Child Poverty
01:58Taskforce.

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