What is being done to tackle child poverty in Wales?

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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.

Transcript

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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