Equality and Social Justice Committee

Welcome back to the Equality and Social Justice Committee and our second evidence session on the Welsh Government's draft child poverty strategy. I just want to clarify that I'm a member of the Bevan Foundation, and I wondered if anybody else had an interest to declare. Sioned Williams.

Yes, I'm also a member of the Bevan Foundation. Thanks.

Diolch yn fawr. So, I'd very much like to welcome Victoria Winckler from the Bevan Foundation, Sean O'Neill from Children in Wales, and Dr Rod Hick from Cardiff University. Thank you, Victoria Winckler and Rod Hick, for your interesting papers, which I'm sure we'll all have read. I just want to start off by asking you how effective you think the Welsh Government's draft child poverty strategy is likely to be at mitigating and/or reducing child poverty under the current, very challenging, circumstances. Who would like to go first? Sean O'Neill.

Thank you, Chair. First of all, I'd like to thank the committee for the opportunity to be with you today, and for holding this important inquiry. The Welsh Government's child poverty strategy consultation is now live, or it's just closed, but we've had an opportunity to contribute to that. We are witnessing greater pressure on children and families in low-income households throughout Wales, no doubt as the committee will know. I'd like to say little bit about the context, please, in which the strategy sits.

As part of the End Child Poverty Network Cymru, we welcomed the opportunity to inform the strategy, and since the publication of our manifesto—. We called on the Welsh Government to commit to revising their strategy, and also called for there to be a delivery plan in place with clear, measurable and ambitious milestones supported by transparent monitoring arrangements. Since then, of course, children and families have experienced an unprecedented level of adverse experiences, which have been well documented, aggravated by 13 years of austerity, the cost-of-living crisis and, of course, the global pandemic. Our annual child and family poverty report, which is published next week—and I'll make sure all committee Members have sight of that copy—will again provide us with a snapshot of the key issues that children, young people and families from low-income backgrounds have reported through our member organisations in the wider sector.

Practitioners are currently sharing a very bleak picture of the impact of poverty and the ongoing cost-of-living crisis in Wales, with 95 per cent of our respondents reporting that the situation has worsened over the past 12 months. Of the top five issues identified by practitioners working with children, 96 per cent of respondents identified the cost-of-living crisis as their biggest concern, closely followed by debt and food insecurity. So, some families will be reporting to be at breaking point, despondent and feeling little hope for the future, with parental and child mental health concerns prevalent throughout the report.

So, I think this gives us the context, which is why we had high hopes and expectations that the new strategy would include a clear and strong vision and a message of intent at the very beginning. We wanted the strategy to be ambitious, aspirational and forward-looking; we wanted it to be confident and decisive in tone; and we wanted it to provide children, young people and families, as well as all the services that work tirelessly on the front line to support children and families day in, day out, to have some hope and assurances that the strategy would make a positive difference to their day-to-day lives.

Can I—? I'm sure we will come to some of these issues. Thank you for putting all that on the record. I want to just point out that this committee has already done two inquiries on the cost-of-living crisis, so we're not unaware of the extent of the austerity that many, many families—and not just those in child poverty, but four in 10 households—are suffering at the moment. I would encourage our other witnesses just to be a little bit briefer, or we will not get through all the questions we want to ask you.

Can I go next?

Yes, please do.

Okay. I think the draft strategy is a mixture. There are some measures in there that have the potential to make a real difference to child poverty, but it's quite hard to sift them out from a lot of much more generic measures that actually apply to all children. Like Sean, I think we would like this strategy to be longer term, we would like it to be more ambitious. The legislation, at the end of the day, is about eradicating child poverty, so I think we need to have some sense of moving towards that. We'd also like it to focus on the families that we know are both the biggest numbers and at the biggest risk of poverty, and they are families with under-fours—families with under-fives, sorry, nought to fours—families with three or more children and single-parent families. And they need very different things, whereas we just have a very kind of blanket approach in the draft strategy.

Thank you. Rod Hick.

Thank you. I think my response, or my reaction, is informed significantly by the—. I've looked quite closely at the focus of the objectives—the five objectives and the five related priorities—and my reaction or thoughts are that these are five important and, indeed, sensible areas of focus, in quite a sensible order. It's good to see maximising incomes and reducing costs as being the first objective. I note that that's a repositioning from earlier child poverty strategies, and I think that is important in terms of signifying the importance of that objective, notwithstanding some of the challenges in terms of the nature of powers that might be said to impinge on that. Similarly, the second objective, in terms of pathways out of poverty, it's very pleasing to see that emphasised clearly and understood in quite a broad sense and prioritised.

But there is scope, I think, for greater coherence, perhaps, in relation to some of the other objectives, which are perhaps not quite as clearly defined, I thought, as particularly those first two. And there's certainly scope for greater specificity in terms of what exactly is the focus within these objectives and in these priority areas and what would be the tangible action that will result or that will be taken following publication of the strategy in these areas. So a number of the aspects I think are very pleasing to see in the draft strategy, but I think there's certainly scope for greater specificity and coherence.

Thank you. Obviously, some of the things, Victoria Winckler, that you mention as being important in your paper are not devolved matters that the Welsh Government can do anything about. I don't disagree that they're important, but at the end of the day, we can only do what we can do. In your paper, you say that you want to see child poverty tackled within a broader anti-poverty plan. Can you explain why you think that approach would be better than having a specific child poverty strategy?

Two reasons. The first one is that children who live in poverty are classed as being in poverty because of their parents' income, or their carers' income. So, the 180,000 children that we have living in poverty live alongside 100,000 adults who are in poverty. So, you can't just solve the child's poverty. Poverty, by definition, is measured by household. So, that's the first reason. The second reason is that people can change their status from being a single adult to being a parent in the space of nine months, and similarly, when a child turns 18, they suddenly are no longer classed as being in poverty. So, while I think there is a case for addressing the specific circumstances of children, I think to do so without looking at the wider picture means that you're potentially missing some of the issues and solutions.

Very good. Sean, in your view, how do the draft strategy and impact assessments focus on children's rights, and are they sufficiently focused on that?

In terms of children's rights, I know that you've got an evidence session coming up and there are a number of organisations that will go into a lot more detail on that, but I think whilst the strategy makes reference to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Rights of Children and Young Persons (Wales) Measure 2011, as you'd expect it to given the powers at the Welsh Government's disposal, and there are duties on Ministers to have due regard to the UNCRC in all their actions and functions, neither the UNCRC nor the Measure are used to underpin the strategy.

If I give you some examples of how the strategy could have been adapted to take account of the UNCRC, they could've drawn attention to the objectives and priorities and aligned them with the different articles of the convention on the rights of the child and the obligations under the convention. They could've drawn upon the children's commissioner's children's rights model, as they've done in other guidance, for example the children's rights scheme that came out the year before last. And they could also have taken this as an opportunity to refer to the recommendations from the state of children's rights report, which was submitted by non-governmental organisations across Wales to the UN earlier this year. And also, there's the recommendations that then came back from the United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child in June this year, with clear recommendations and concluding observations for Governments across the whole of the UK, not just about tackling child poverty, but about making sure that all children have a right to survival and development and have all their basic needs taken into account. So, we don't feel that the strategy has sufficiently taken into account children's rights, and could have been written somewhat differently.

I'm a bit surprised that, in particular, the children's commissioner's position on children's rights hasn't been taken into consideration, because she's on the Minister's expert panel on the cost of living. This is somebody who is regularly getting to see the Minister for Social Justice and will have put forward, I'm sure, her views on the importance of children's rights in discussing the efforts that need to be made around the cost of living and around COVID. Can you give us any insight into why that's been absent to date from this draft child poverty strategy?

Well, not wishing to speak on behalf of the commissioner—

I'm sure she'll speak for herself, yes.

I know you'll be speaking to the commissioner a bit later on, Chair. There's quite a lot of support across the sector for the children's rights model and approach that have been taken across Wales. We were very instrumental, as an organisation, in terms of taking forward the rights of the child Measure, and the children's rights model builds on that in terms of being able to identify actions that can be taken at a national level, but also at a local level, across public bodies. So, I don't know the reason why it wasn't used as a template. It could have been. As I said, there are other examples where that's been used as a template, and very successfully as a template. At this point in time, the Welsh Government have not chosen to use that as a template.

Okay. We'll obviously explore that further later on. I'd now like to bring in Jayne Bryant.

Thank you, Chair. In terms of tackling child poverty, to what extent does the approach set out by the Welsh Government strategy align with international best practice?

That's a billion-dollar question, if I may jump in first. There's international best practice on different things. There's a very good piece that was commissioned by the Welsh Government on what is an effective strategy, what are the ingredients that make a strategy that works. I'm not sure that there's a gold standard that would apply to tackling poverty for different groups of people, because the circumstances in different countries around the world are very different. I think what I would say is that there is a definition of child poverty that is in the legislation that is a resource-based definition, i.e. primarily but not exclusively income, and that we know the things that help to boost household incomes, whether it's through work, through fiscal transfers or through cutting costs. There is reference in there, but our response to the Welsh Government has been that they could and should do more on that. I don't know if Rod wants to add to that.

I might just pick up the point about that strategy document, that review that was led by Peter Kenway of the New Policy Institute. That seems to me to be a really important review that was conducted, commissioned by the Welsh Government. It doesn't take a strategy as being a desirable thing in and of itself, actually. One of the interesting points, I think, made in that review of strategies is do you actually need a strategy at all. Peter Kenway and his colleagues acknowledge that it is possible to take significant action on poverty without having a strategy at all. They cite the instance of the Blair Government and their commitment to end child poverty, which perhaps didn't have a formal strategy, but did, nonetheless, have an explicit goal and an associated set of targets, which I guess is some degree of formalisation.

But I think what their review does suggest is that if you do have a strategy, it needs to be a strategy. One of the key words they do emphasise is 'coherence', and also a phrase that they keep stressing is 'as a framework for action', and I think that's really central, that if you're going to have a strategy, you have to ensure—. One of the points that they make, I think quite neatly, is that the risk of a child poverty strategy, or the risk of a poverty strategy at all, is that it becomes a talking document to introduce lots of nice themes or ideas, but it doesn't provide that road map or that framework for action, hence the need for coherence and, indeed, specificity. And one of the things that the review document did note, and I thought it was quite significant, is that it had an in-depth review of anti-poverty strategies in five cities and/or countries. And one of their conclusions was that not every strategy has measurable socioeconomic outcome-targeting within those strategies, and so they took that as not necessarily an aspect of best practice, but that all of the strategies had some sort of policy output targeting, so all of them identified with a reasonable degree of specificity, you know, that, 'This is what the Government will do in order to tackle child poverty', even if it didn't make commitments in terms of the socioeconomic outcomes that those Governments hoped would arise from that.

But if we might move, briefly, just beyond the nature of the strategy itself, in terms of thinking about best practice, I think that a really important aspect of good practice right now—and perhaps this was addressed in a previous session that we only managed to hear a very small amount of—is in relation to the Scottish child payment, and that's undoubtedly an important, novel, ambitious payment that really has the potential to improve the lives of a significant number of children in Scotland, and I think it's undoubtedly the case that it will be highly desirable if within Welsh Government there was a significant degree of monitoring going on in terms of the roll-out and impact of that payment, so that lessons that are learned in Scotland can be shared with Welsh Government, because that seems to me to be a really positive example of good practice, albeit not within an identical devolution settlement, but probably a more similar devolution settlement than if we think about the actions of other nations, let's put it that way.

Okay. Thank you. Jayne.

Thank you, Chair. My question, really, just follows on, because you've just given the example of perhaps one thing the Welsh Government could learn from Scotland in terms of best practice: does anybody else want to mention any other countries, or places within Wales as well, which we should learn from? And also, how transferable do you think some of those approaches by other countries are in terms of tackling child poverty in Wales?

Who wants to go first? Sean?

We've not done a great deal of work in this area, so I've fewer remarks to make in this regard, but I think it's absolutely right to look at opportunities and models of best practice from other countries as well, but I think we need to be mindful that lots of other countries have higher taxation rates across the population, and public support for state interventions that tackle child poverty. So, it's challenging sometimes to look at other models and be able to transfer them to Wales without sustainable resources.

There are a number of innovations that tackle aspects of poverty, and you only have to look over the bridge at Bristol, who have recently introduced free bus and train travel across the city in a bid to cut air pollution as part of their environmental strategy, but this also enables children and families who have struggled with the cost of transport to access education, to access training and employment. It helps people move around more actively, it saves money, and it also tackles isolation as well. And I mention this because affordability and access to public transport is a constant and recurring theme raised by children and young people who we work with, as barriers. And, again, we would raise that as an issue that needs to be urgently looked at in terms of opportunities for free and supported bus travel options for children across Wales.

If you were to ask me what the ingredients are from around the world that we know will help solve poverty, I'd say there were four, and the first one would be seamless and affordable childcare right from the end of statutory maternity leave. And we know that that works in Scandinavia, and with the right-sized settlement we could do that in Wales. We also know that a generous social security system could help, whether that's through a higher rate of, perhaps, means-tested child benefit or all those other changes that we know in the UK social security system that have hit families really hard. Affordable housing, we know, would make a difference, not only in cutting households' housing costs, but also the scandal of the number of children in temporary accommodation at the moment. That is an important factor. Lastly, getting rid of the educational attainment gap. We know what works. It's around—. Well, we don't know that well what works, but we have some clues about what works, and that's about good-quality teaching, good-quality feedback, and high expectations of the children. Those are the things that we know on a very general global scale, but it seems to be very, very difficult to put them into practice.

Well, unless we stop doing some other things, none of those are going to happen at the moment, because of the financial situation.

These are choices.

Indeed. Rod Hick, did you want to add to—?

I'd agree with those four ingredients that we might want to focus on. Maybe a fifth, although it's maybe implicit in the first, is trying to support employment transitions, trying to support people into employment, into taking up additional hours of employment, and trying to facilitate second earnership, where there indeed are two adults within a household. This is obviously hugely important. It's implicit in the point about childcare, I think, but it is nonetheless hugely important.

The housing point is also very significant. I do think social security is a hugely important policy lever, and if we're thinking about the research evidence and the best practice, I think we know that social security is just hugely significant in terms of driving those overall child poverty rates. That's of course what we all want, but it of course is difficult in a context where powers are not always present or divided, and it's of course hugely expensive, which is why, I think, actually, direct intervention in relation to the housing market is an important area of focus. It's probably something that's been neglected, maybe, over the last—. Maybe not the last three or four years, but certainly the decade or two before that, in terms of trying to bring down costs, given the increasing proportion of families who are living in the private rented sector.

Jayne.

Thank you. Just following on from that, I'm just looking at the Bevan Foundation's written evidence, which highlighted that the policies to reduce childhood poverty through increasing household income through work and more generous benefits and initiatives to cut those household costs are proving to work. To what extent do you think that draft strategy addresses those areas, and are there any further actions you think the Welsh Government should take in those areas specifically?

It's welcome that the draft strategy gives a fairly substantial allocation of its page space to those areas, and that's really welcome. I think the Welsh Government does deserve some credit for some of the things that they've done—for example, the cash in lieu of free school meals in the holidays. I think that was probably one of the biggest fiscal transfers that there have been to low-income families for some time. I mean, £19.50 a week per child was no small amount of money, while the Welsh Government was able to have that scheme in place. So, I think we know that there are things that can be done, and we know that they can make a difference, and that they can be done outside of the UK social security system. We think there's more that could be done in terms of help with housing costs. There's more that could be done in terms of tweaking the council tax reduction scheme. There's more that could be done for secondary school pupils around, for example, raising the eligibility threshold for free school meals. And I think some very serious attention needs to be given to the nought to four-year-olds, because they aren't touched by school-based interventions, and yet they are one of the biggest groups of families with children in poverty. There are all kinds of ways that that could be done here—a baby grant; there are lots of ways. However, the Welsh Government is boxed in by its fiscal settlement, and by the other demands on its resources. And it is a matter for politicians to decide how far they do want to go and to what extent they are willing to put money into this legislative requirement.

Thank you very much, Chair. And just following on again, you suggested that the Welsh Government explores the potential for a child payment in the longer term. Can you just perhaps outline the benefits that it would have, and the financial and practical challenges that any implementation would need to overcome?

Right. I think we know from Scotland that it has made a quite significant difference. We know also that it's not been the sole answer to solving child poverty there, but, nevertheless, it shows up in the headline figures, and it also shows up in families' experiences, which is, arguably, the most important. The view in Wales to date has been, 'Oh we can't do that', whereas we think there needs to be a more considered view—would it make a difference, or would a version of it make a difference; how much might it cost, for example; should it be targeted on certain groups of people; how much would it cost, and where would funds come from? And it's only, in my view, when you've done that exercise that you can take a view that either this is something that really, really can't be done, or actually something that the Welsh Government might want to push for in the future. Now, the Bevan Foundation doesn't have a view either way on whether it would work or not, because we haven't done that work. But someone, in my view, needs to do it.

Thank you. Thank you, Chair.

Very good. Moving on to Sioned Williams.

Thank you, Chair, and good afternoon to you all. In your first response in this afternoon's session, you pointed to the fact that you didn't feel that the strategy was a very coherent one, that it wasn't decisive enough, and you also spoke about needing to take a longer term view on things. Could you give us some examples to evidence your claim in that respect, please?

I think you used the 'coherent' word, Rod. [Laughter.]

I think that might be me—[Laughter.] Okay, so in terms of objective 3, I think the description of objective 3 begins with an account of developments in relation to housing, and yet I think, when we move through that objective, housing falls away a little bit, I think, especially once we move on to the priority areas for action. So, I wasn't entirely clear about how, or what weighting was being given to housing in relation to objective 3. So, one of the first things I did when reading this document was try to sort of scribble down what, in essence, these objectives are all relating to, and my sense was that numbers 1, 2, mostly 4, and certainly 5, all seemed quite clear to me, but objective 3 seemed to kind of move between different policy domains, and I wasn't entirely sure what the core focus of that objective is.

There's mention of children's well-being, which I think is hugely important, but, again, the account doesn't give a very clear sense of what aspects, what policy areas, what public or private domains are believed to potentially influence children's well-being. And then, I suppose, in objective 4, where I think the domain is clear in terms of what I think is labelled 'dignity and respect' but which I think of as being 'treated with dignity and respect', there's a need, I think, to move towards what tangible action will be taken as a result of this strategy that will ensure greater dignity and respect. I mean, I'm in entire agreement that that's an incredibly important objective; it's also one that's hugely necessary, given concern that there's been in other parts of the UK about rising levels of conditionality and negative treatment that people experience in job centres et cetera. But, I do think we need to be clear about what action will this focus ultimately lead to, and I think that's their point about specificity, that it would be really great to see something more concrete in relation to it.

Can I just go back to you, Professor Hick, and to housing specifically? You've mentioned a few times how important this is, and you've also suggested that perhaps it's not been made enough of a priority in the draft strategy in terms of addressing child poverty. Could you discuss what needs to be done in this area, in this draft strategy, in terms of housing?

I think the first thing is a point just about clarity about where the role of housing really is in the draft strategy because, as I say, it seems to appear in objective 3 and then seems potentially to fall away a little bit. As researchers of poverty, which I count myself as one, housing, I think, has been a blind spot in a lot of what we have been looking at for quite a long period of time, and that's really only now beginning to be rectified, but it does strike me that commitments to build new social housing and appropriate regulation of the private rented sector is going to be important, and my sense is, across policy, we're going to see an increase in the regulation of the private rented sector. My sense is that that's going to happen in many different places in a similar enough period of time, because I think the challenges—. The shift into the private rented sector is perhaps somewhat distinctive in the UK; I think it's been a bit sharper in the UK than in other parts of Europe, but growing concerns about affordability within the private rented sector, I think, are really quite prominent across nations. So, we've conducted a piece of research recently that shows that the gap in affordability between renters and owners that we would observe in the UK, we observe all over Europe, basically, and my sense is that, in the next five years, we're going to see a rise in the regulation of the private rented sector as a way of trying to deal with that. I think it's also hugely important, because the last thing you want to do is increase your social security spend and have any good that that might do hoovered up by rising rents. So, strategically it also matters. That's why it's also hugely important that objective 1 focuses both on maximising incomes, but also reducing costs. Those are necessary complements, and I think it's undoubtedly a positive that that's there.

Maybe the final point I'll make is simply that discretionary housing payments are playing an increasing role in enabling families with high rents to meet rent payments and, I think, are part and parcel of a growth, of a shift towards greater discretion within the social security system. And I think we need to learn more lessons about how that discretion is being exercised, what decisions are more effective than others, and how might it be exercised in more effective ways. That seems to me to be a bit of a black box at the moment, that we just don't really know enough about, that I think, in three to five years from now, ideally, we would want to know much more about.

Thank you. Can I ask you all, if you could change something about this strategy—? You've mentioned a number of weaknesses, perhaps, about how it's been put together, about some practical problems, for example, with housing. What else would you change about this? I'd like to hear about what we picked up from your written evidence in terms of a lack of long-term thinking, or longer term thinking.

I'll jump in. I would say three things: I'd say, first of all, targets and milestones on the way; I'd say a longer time horizon, possibly 15, 20 years; and I'd say fewer actions. There's so much in there, it's almost inevitably incoherent, because it's trying to solve everything and trying to include everything. If it focused on even just raising incomes or raising incomes and cutting costs, then I think, with fewer deliverables, we'd stand a chance. That's more than one, but three.

Thank you. We've also discussed the budgetary pressure that the Government faces, so bearing that in mind—and I accept the point entirely that all expenditure is a political choice and it's a political decision to do with priorities—what, in your opinion, needs to be prioritised, bearing in mind that budgetary pressure?

I would say, within the Welsh Government's powers, it's around a seamless and affordable childcare system, which doesn't necessarily mean free. But it does mean from end of statutory maternity leave up till start of school age, and that enables parents who want to work and train to be able to work and train and doesn't force, in low-income households, one earner to drop out because they can't afford childcare. And then—so, these are using existing levers—ramping up the construction of affordable, or, well, the creation of affordable social housing. I think those would be two things that would make such a difference, and those are within Welsh Government's powers. Yes, they'd stretch the budget, but not impossibly so.

Thank you. Does anyone else want to come in?

Yes, I'm happy to come in there. I think, for me, it's about guarding against cherry-picking what is a priority and what isn't a priority, as family situations will fluctuate over time, and this needs to be an overarching strategy from which more detailed guidance and policies fall underneath.

However, if I was pushed into a corner and had to pick a few priorities, I think I would definitely focus on hunger and food insecurity, as I raised earlier at the very beginning. I think one good-news story amongst all this is the roll-out of universal free school meals for primary school pupils, for a number of reasons, and I think that's something we need to celebrate and build upon. More and more practitioners are saying, 'Why isn't this available for children in secondary schools? Why is there that cliff edge when a child moves from primary to secondary school?' And we know there's a programme-for-government commitment in place to review the eligibility threshold, but we feel that this needs to be accelerated, it needs to be prioritised, because we know that lots of children, who are officially in poverty, still do not access free school meals and are still not eligible. So, I think, for me, that's a huge priority.

My other priority is necessarily about resources. It's about implementing existing legislation and guidance that we've already got, and our focus on school uniforms, because that's a major issue that's again come up in our report, which we're reporting on next week. It's repeatedly being raised by children and young people, the significant costs and barriers of children's education, which Welsh Government have the powers to do. We've got the guidance, we've renewed the guidance, which came out last year, yet the cost of school uniforms is a continuous barrier for children and families. Children are growing; they need clothes to be changed. This is especially an issue where schools are insisting on having branding and logos on clothing, which requires parents to buy clothes from certain outlets, which are twice the price of unbranded clothes from supermarkets. There could be significant savings, day-to-day savings, for parents, so that they could use that money for better things than spending it on logos and school uniforms. This is something that we have the powers to do. We've got the guidance—let's get on and do it. Practitioners are saying to this, 'Let's keep school uniforms, but let's have unbranded school uniforms for everyone.' That's the message across to us.

So, on that point, would you like to see those—? At the moment, it's up to governing bodies isn't it, in schools, what their policies are. We have guidelines produced by the Government that do recommend that they pay attention to the issue of cost and that there is no need to have logos. Would you like to see that being made statutory?

That's the certain message that we're getting back from practitioners and children and young people. They're questioning why we're having to have logos and branded school items. It's impacting on pupil absence rates. We know that some children are not going to school because they've got ill-fitting school clothes. Children are telling us they're being bullied from having ill-fitting clothes and not the right clothes. We know that some children are being punished by the school for coming into school with not the right items. And branded items are simply unaffordable for so many families currently, and it's having a big impact on family budgets. And finally, it's impacting on children's rights to education.

Thank you.

Okay. Lots of issues there, which we may wish to come back to. Altaf Hussain wants to come in at this point.

Thank you very much, Chair. My question is about supporting groups of children who are particularly likely to live in poverty. To what extent should the Welsh Government focus on the needs of specific groups in its approach to tackling child poverty? And can you tell us whether a more targeted approach works better than a broad-brush one, and why? And what do you foresee as the barriers to engaging with particular groups in poverty reduction efforts?

That's a huge question. I think it's essential that any strategy recognises that there are children in poverty in very different circumstances, not only because of, say, their ethnicity or disability in the family, but because of the size of the family or the age, or the number of children in the family. So, those things make for very different circumstances and also make for very different solutions. The kind of thing you might do to support a family with a disabled child might be different to one you would do for a family of black or minority ethnic origin. So, I think that we need a much more nuanced approach. I think it's not inevitable that it's difficult to reach those people, and I think the engagement exercise that the Welsh Government commissioned showed that those groups can be reached and heard. And I think, if some of those groups have the right kinds of actions—. I think in particular of the nought to fours; 100,000 children are in families with a nought to four-year-old. If you can do something specific that supports the families with very young children, with pre-schoolers, you could begin to make a measurable reduction in child poverty.

I'm not sure that answers particularly the second half of your question—oh, it was about targeted versus universal. Well, that's a long-standing dilemma, isn't it? The difficulty with universal approaches is that they cost a lot, and they don't close the gap. The advantage is that they take away the stigma, and they're often easier and cheaper to administer. So, I think the jury's out. I think you probably need a mixture of both universal and targeted measures.

Thank you very much. Now, a question for Victoria again. You have said the draft strategy could be much better targeted at groups of children who are more likely to live in poverty. Can you provide examples of how the strategy could be revised to do this? I'd be particularly interested in whether there are particular activities we'll need to take to work with ethnic minority groups and families who have no recourse to public funds.

There is a particular challenge with that group of families who are on low incomes. Not all people who have no recourse to public funds are necessarily in poverty. If they're in work with reasonable earnings, then you may have a view about how fair or not the system is when they're paying their taxes, but their families and children are not necessarily in poverty. The problem comes when, for whatever reason, the family income falls, and it can do so for many reasons, and then those children are prevented from accessing certain schemes.

The Bevan Foundation is working on the access to support in the cost-of-living crisis for families who have no recourse to public funds, and a key issue that's come out has been the availability of means-tested free school meals for children with no recourse to public funds. So, although it's technically possible, most local authorities choose, as far as we can tell, not to use their discretion to give those children a free school meal, and so we have children and families who may be near destitute being denied a free lunch. The Welsh Government has announced that they are looking at the provisions for families with no recourse to public funds, but I think—. We know some things, and I think making provision for children in certain circumstances, it should be absolutely part of the strategy.

Does anybody else want to add anything?

Yes, I'm happy to add a few points. Just on the back of what Victoria says, clearly we need a balanced approach, because, clearly, figures are showing a disproportionate number of children in poverty living in certain household types, and that's well documented. We've already got eligibility criteria for a number of programmes that target certain groups. For example, the basic income pilot is working to target care leavers, and we've got the school essentials grant, which is targeting certain age groups and certain groups in certain categories. So, I think it's important and absolutely right and proper that we continue to support the most excluded and disadvantaged, and groups identified in equalities legislation. However, in this context, I think there's a risk, perhaps, of moving towards a more targeted approach, as that means that some other people will inevitably miss out due to who they are or where they happen to live, as we've seen in examples through the Flying Start programme, and I know Welsh Government are taking to steps to close some of that.

So, I think there's a temptation in times of economic crisis to reduce eligibility to prioritise some children above others and we would guard against that, because it's clear under the UNCRC that all children up to the age of 18 have basic rights, no matter who they are. But it also recognises that some children need additional support to exercise those rights. We would not want to reach a stage where children have to get into crisis to receive a service. We would not want to reach a stage where children are not sufficiently poor to access a service. So, let's not wait until crisis point before we support children. Part of this strategy needs to focus heavily on the prevention of poverty as one of the steps towards eradication.

Any work with ethnic minorities who have no access or recourse to public funds?

I don't have any further points to make, Chair, on that.

Okay. I think we need to move on. I just want to pick up a few points around the draft strategy and the practicalities involved in making it a reality. No Government is going to put into a strategy something that they genuinely don't think they're going to be able to deliver.

Just going back to childcare, I was very interested to hear from our expert on Norway that a targeted service for low-income families for childcare for one to two-year-olds, 40 per cent of low-income families don't take it up. So, it immediately begged the question, which is the targeted childcare for two-year-olds in Wales. Have any of you any evidence as to the take-up of that? It may be something we can look at if you don't. Okay.

Equally, Victoria, when you're talking about seamless childcare to enable you to tailor the costs to the ability of the family to pay, are you basically arguing that those who are in better-off jobs would be making a contribution?

Yes. So, the broad model that we’ve advocated is that up to around about 15, 16 hours would be free or at a nominal cost, and that above that it would be means tested, depending on household income. So, yes, I think the current childcare offer for three and four-year-olds is a big subsidy for parents who are able to work those hours and make use of it.

Okay, thank you very much on that. Just turning to something else, another contributor, Chris Birt, who's an expert on Scotland, mentioned that there are two pilots going on for the Government to work with the Department for Work and Pensions and the relevant local authority to ensure that the passporting of benefits that people are entitled to is done automatically. That, it seems to me, is something that the Welsh Government could do, and I just wondered if you had anything to add on that. Because I think it's cost-neutral, and in fact it would potentially bring more money into the economy.

At risk of jumping in, the Welsh benefits system, for which, as you know, the Bevan Foundation has advocated, would do precisely that for devolved grants and allowances. So rather than having to make multiple applications for the school essentials grant, for council tax reduction, for Healthy Start, for all the different schemes, a single application would then open the door to those other schemes. And if that is linked with a claim for universal credit or for new claims, or if there are legacy benefits from a pre-existing claim, then even that could be triggered as well. And the Welsh Government is working on a plan to deliver this Welsh benefits system. It is a big task and it will take a while.

Okay. Some of the local authorities in England who introduced universal free school meals at an earlier stage used it as a mechanism for driving up the uptake of benefits. Have any of you any evidence as to how well schools are using the invitation to have a free school meal as a way of ensuring that hidden poverty is identified by asking all the right questions?

I'm not aware of any schools doing that in England, and I know there are mixed views within the education profession about the roll-out of universal free school meals, partly because of practical stuff like the impact on timetabling and lunch-time supervision, and also a view amongst some of them that that resource could have been spent on teaching. So, there is a mixed view in the first place, and we’ve heard anecdotes of less than enthusiastic responses to universal free school meals. I think schools do have a role to play, and some schools are playing that role in supporting families in poverty, whether that’s through having benefit checks, whether that’s through providing food parcel pick-up points, school uniform recycling, and so on and so forth. But that is variable and very much down to the initiative of the headteacher. I think there’s a limit—. While schools have an important role, at the end of the day their job is the education of children. I think making the whole system much more streamlined and much more accessible is the way to go, rather than expecting schools to try and sort out what is a bit of a bureaucratic nightmare.

Okay. Well, we probably can't go on much further than that at the moment. I would like to bring in Ken Skates. Sorry, I beg your pardon, Sioned Williams just wanted to come in.

Thank you, Chair. Just very quickly, to go back to the point about the Welsh benefits system, and the work that's being done on that at the moment. What do you understand to be the difference between what you have outlined, and what we heard evidence about in the previous session, about the automatic system that takes away responsibility from people in terms of having to apply for different kinds of support, and what the Government is now discussing in terms of the charter of benefits for local government, which won't have that statutory element?

I didn't catch everything that was said in the previous session, unfortunately. As I understand it, the Welsh Government began ahead of the field in trying to integrate and join together all of the different benefits. I think that the scope of it is bigger than in Scotland, but I don't know enough about the Scottish approach. What was the second part of your question, sorry?

I just wanted to ask—. The Government are talking about a charter for benefits—

Oh, the charter. Yes.

What's the difference between that and what you as an organisation recommend?

Initially, I was sceptical of charters, because they sound nice and everybody goes, 'Yeah, yeah', and then forgets about them after a few months. But I think that there is potential with this charter to be a bit more than that. In particular, from what I understand, it will begin to talk about some of the locally administered grants and allowances as being part of almost a citizen entitlement. I think that that language is actually really important because it frames them almost like a second safety net, if you like, rather than being handouts. So, I think that it is potentially significant, although perhaps not in the way that people might think that it is, if that makes sense.

Not entirely. But anyway, I think that we are in danger of not covering an important area of questions. So, Ken Skates, if you'd like to come in at this point.

Thanks, Chair. What's your view on the approach set out in the draft strategy to monitor and report on progress in tackling child poverty?

Where do we begin? I mean, to be very cynical, it's a bit like marking your own homework, isn't it, in that the Welsh Government reports on its own progress. I think that it's difficult to monitor progress when you don't have clear targets, because you are just reporting on trends. You're not actually reporting on the effectiveness of your own interventions.

Sean wants to come in.

Yes. As I said very briefly at the very beginning, we clearly need a delivery and action plan as part of this strategy, and the fact that we don't have this at this particular moment is unhelpful at best. We need to have national indicators. We need mid-term milestones. We need a monitoring and accountability framework, against which we can track and measure progress in achieving all of the objectives and priorities across the strategy.

All of the thousands of young people and stakeholders who contributed to this need to know what outcome—what difference this strategy is going to make at the end of the day. It's all well and good having a statutory strategy, but we don't want anything to sit on the shelf. We need to give hope and assurances to families living out there that this product will make a difference.

One of those ways that we can demonstrate that is having a framework in place, and a delivery plan that is subject to monitoring, reporting, transparency, accountability. We have a number of other models in the Welsh Government that we can draw on. We have got the LGBTQ-plus action plan. We have got the fuel poverty action plan. We have got the anti-racist action plan. A lot of those clearly set out who the action is for, who is responsible, when it is going to be done, what the timetable is, which department is going to lead on this, and what we can expect to see as a result of this. I think that the report of Audit Wales and Wales Centre for Public Policy have already made the case, last year, that we need indicators and performance measures. It's really difficult at this stage to know what we would be reporting wrong in the absence of that.

Now, under the Measure, there is a duty on Welsh Ministers to report against the strategy every three years. I would say, at a minimum, we should have a debate in the Senedd on that, there should be scrutiny on that by one of the committees every three years, but we can also—. Through a monitoring framework, we can track progress and make that more publicly available, and, as I said, there are some really good examples through a number of action plans the Welsh Government already have. So, we're not reinventing the wheel; we're just drawing from things that are working really well in other departments of the Welsh Government.

So, what targets do you think we should—do you think the Welsh Government should adopt?

Victoria, you wanted to—.

What would be the headline targets?

I didn't want to—. I was going to follow on a comment from Sean, if I may, Chair.

Yes. You follow up on the comment by Sean, because I think Ken—.

I think there's huge potential to get really hung up on the quality of the strategy as a strategy and to devote lots of time into, 'Does this fit with that? What measures have we got?', whereas I think the much bigger question is, 'What is the Welsh Government going to do that will make a difference?' And as Dr Hick said earlier, I'd much rather that there were three actions that made a big impact without necessarily having any strategy document at all, than a perfectly crafted world-leading strategy, with all the bells and whistles that that document needs, that makes no difference. So, I think it's about getting the right balance, and I think at the moment we don't really have either. But I would warn against putting huge amounts of energy into producing the perfect document if the contents of that document don't make a difference. Sorry.

Okay. But what targets? What would be the key targets that you would like to see introduced?

The headline one for me relates back to the legislation, which is that the strategies should set out the Welsh Government's plans to eradicate child poverty. Now, we can have a big argument about what do we mean by 'eradicate child poverty', but, for me, to be consistent with that requirement, there has to be at least some talk of a reduction, even if that reduction is 2 percentage points. I don't know what would be the right figure. But if the idea is to say, 'Halve child poverty in 10 years', then we know we'd have to go from 180,000 children now to 90,000 in 10 years. So, that's 9,000 children a year. Who are those children? What kind of families do they live in? Are they in work? Are they out of work? Are they large families? What can the Welsh Government do to, on average, lift 9,000 children out of poverty a year, if that was the target that was chosen?

But what target would you like as a headline target?

I'd go for halving in 10 years.

Great. Okay. That's great. And in terms of accountability, what process of accountability would you like to see introduced? Or what method of ensuring maximum accountability for delivery?

I think I would agree with Sean's suggestion just now.

Brilliant. Okay. Wonderful. Thanks, Chair.

I was going to come in just on the point of measures, if I could, because I think—. In some of the other submissions I note there's a number of alternative or supplementary indicators to the headline poverty rate that have been proposed. But I think one alternative that I didn't see in the other submissions is the possibility of including a child material deprivation measure, because one of the issues we have with the poverty rate, which does essentially capture the intuition of what we understand poverty to be, so it's important that we don't move away from that or try to move away from that, is it can be a bit insensitive through time. We only need to look at the poverty rate through time, whether in Wales or in Scotland or Northern Ireland or in the UK as a whole. It doesn't move around very much, sometimes despite changing circumstances. And we can see that in some of the international experiences that countries can go through: significant periods of rising living standards or a significant recession and the poverty rate can be more insensitive than I think you might expect. And I think one of the advantages of a material deprivation target included in a strategy is that those measures do tend to be more sensitive to what is going on with living standards. So, when living standards are rising generally, that measure does tend to show material deprivation falling and vice versa, and I think we see that in a variety of contexts. We saw it across Europe in relation to some of the financial crisis, we saw it in countries like Ireland, which went through a rapid period of economic growth in the 1990s and 2000s, and there's also precedent for including a material deprivation target in poverty strategies. So, it was one of the four official child poverty measures in the Child Poverty Act 2010 at UK level. It's included in the European Union's official measure of poverty and their associated monitoring mechanisms. Individual countries have also used it too. And I do think that that could potentially show up, or potentially could demonstrate, trends in living standards that might present a different picture, but still a valid picture in terms of what's going on in relation to children's living standards, especially through time in Wales, and, importantly, it's collected in major social surveys. So, it's collected in the family resources survey, it's collected now in the national survey for Wales, and recent innovations mean that it can be used to monitor the experiences of children specifically. So, I think a material deprivation target as a supplement to the headline income target would be something really worth considering.

I would agree.

Okay. Ken, have you got any further questions? I just wanted to add one thing that I'd forgotten to ask you about in terms of realistic things that the Government can do. So, in the first panel, our colleague from Norway was talking about the importance of targeted universal services, so putting universal services into the places where there's a—into poor neighbourhoods, basically. My personal view is that, in my constituency, Cardiff Council is doing that reasonably well, both in terms of advice services and as to where they're putting additional learning support, but I just wondered if any of you could give, if you like, a sort of broader view as to whether that's happening across Wales, because that's—. If you put it into a place where people have to walk to get the service, because they don't have the bus fare, those other people who need it can maybe drive there.

I don't have any experience of that, other than, in many of the disadvantaged communities that I'm aware of, the opposite has happened and we've seen a lot of public services being withdrawn from those places.

From the poorest communities. Okay. That is obviously a very worrying trend, if that were the case. So, you think that—.

But I don't know if that's happening on a systematic basis; that is just anecdotal from areas that we've worked in.

Okay. In particular areas of the Valleys, given that you're based in Merthyr?

And rural Wales as well, yes.

Okay. All right. Very good. Thank you very much indeed for your contributions. You will obviously get a transcript of what you've said and, if there's anything further you feel you want to add in terms of a report that's about to come out, please, do let us know. We thank you very much indeed. We need to remain focused on what I regard as the most important issue facing us at the moment. The committee will now take a short break and we will resume in public session at 4 o'clock.

We're now going to have our third panel session on the Welsh Government's draft child poverty strategy. I'm very pleased to welcome Rocio Cifuentes, Children's Commissioner for Wales, and Dr Rhian Croke, Children's Legal Centre at Swansea University.

Rocio Cifuentes, you don't mince your words in your analysis of the draft child poverty strategy that was out for consultation, and you are calling for it to be comprehensively revised. Can you outline the key changes that need to be made ahead of the final strategy's publication?

Thank you. Yes. The reason that my response was so forthright is because of the strength of feeling that I have heard from all the children and young people I've been engaging with since I came into the role, but particularly that those who responded to my annual survey, which was over 8,000 children and young people, really said loudly and clearly how much they were worrying about the impact of the cost of living on their lives. So, that was what was behind the strength of my response.

I do think that the draft strategy really lacks ambition and lacks really detailed actions, timescales and deliverables by which Welsh Government could usefully be held to account. There are many different bodies who have given very much the same message over a few years now about the need for a good child poverty strategy to be really detailed and clear and ambitious. I was able to watch the previous session, so I know that the report from Audit Wales was referenced, as was the report from the Wales Centre for Public Policy. The Wales Centre for Public Policy in particular said a good anti-poverty strategy makes a big difference and, if a strategy is to be more than a list of relevant policy initiatives, there needs to be a focus on the means through which the Welsh Government can ensure that those who can act do so.

I'm afraid that the draft strategy is, to me, at the moment, mostly a list of relevant policy initiatives and doesn't really spell out exactly what, how, when or who will actually deliver against those different policies in order to reduce and eradicate child poverty. So, the ambition is not there, the clarity, the detail, the actions aren't there, and the accountability mechanisms, which, incidentally, the UNCRC in their concluding observations—the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child—in their report to UK Government and devolved Governments, which they published in June, also said that all of those Governments should:

'Develop or strengthen existing policies, with clear targets, measurable indicators and robust monitoring and accountability mechanisms, to end child poverty'.

So, we are in a time of crisis, we need a coherent and robust child poverty strategy that really rises to the challenge that we're all facing, but the challenge that children and young people are experiencing much more acutely than any of us adults. I think it's very important that we realise that time, for children—. Time is a relative concept, and time is not experienced during childhood in the same way. The impact that living through a crisis when you are at key developmental stages in your life—those impacts are much more long term and have a much more serious and lifelong impact than they do at other stages of life. So, that is why I really think that Welsh Government needs to be much clearer and braver in protecting and ensuring that children and young people don't miss out on the rights to which they're entitled. So, yes, I do think it needs a lot more work.

Okay. But the strategy's also got to be realistic. In a time of really constrained public sector budgets, particularly the Welsh Government's budgets, there's no point in setting targets that it hasn't got the resources to deliver. So, what are the things that you think should be in there that would be realistic, completely accepting everything you're saying about the dire situation that many families find themselves in?

Welsh Government Ministers have a legal duty under the children's Measure to consider children's rights in all of their decision making, and I'm sure we'll come to this in more detail, but that children's rights lens was not clearly there in the whole strategy. There is also a duty on Welsh Government to publish a child poverty strategy every three years. So, while, of course, there is a need for realism, these duties are not optional. They are responsibilities and duties that are incumbent on Welsh Government Ministers.

I asked my young persons advisory panel what they thought of the strategy and what they thought should be in it. What they thought of it—one of the quotes sums it up. They said:

'Kind of vague with each of their points.'

But coming to what should be in it, what children and young people and members of my advisory panel said, one quote was:

'Think goals are good but should be focusing on food, education, healthcare, clothing.'

To me, the evidence that the draft strategy contains within it from their engagement, which was a very commendable part of the strategy, was that it drew on engagement with over 3,000 people, including over 1,000 children and young people. The evidence that is stated within the strategy gives us many of the answers and clues as to what the actions should focus on. We hear about the needs in relation to access to advice, we hear about public transport issues, we hear about food poverty, we hear about the issues for young carers and care-experienced young people; we hear that in the sections that talk about 'what we heard'. However, we don’t correspondingly then see direct actions and priorities that reflect those issues, so I think that there needs to be a much clearer read-across from the evidence that was heard in the Government’s own engagement strategy with children, young people and families and what they then propose to do to address that need. There are some clear and obvious gaps.

In terms of what I think really needs to be focused on, from my own survey and my own evidence, food poverty is a huge issue that needs a much clearer focus. Public transport is another issue that I have heard many times from different groups of children and young people, and I know it's also an important call of the Welsh Youth Parliament. My office has worked for a very long time to highlight the issue of the impact of the cost of the school day, and produced a charter for change in 2019, which had many recommendations that have yet to be implemented. So, those are some of the areas that I think might need much clearer focus. But overall, I think there just needs to be a more robust and a more detailed set of actions that correspond to the identified needs. I think the needs assessment exercise has been commendable and robust, but the response to that less so.

Thank you for that. Dr Croke, you focus very much on the importance of children’s rights and the UN convention. Is that something that needs to be a priority at the moment, when there are all these other issues that the children’s commissioner has just highlighted?

I think just to add to what the children’s commissioner has just highlighted, we’re also very concerned that there should be a greater sense of urgency, and we’re concerned that there is a lack of a clear framework with a strong vision grounded in children’s rights and the children’s rights approach that you just alluded to. We’re disappointed that the draft strategy does not articulate ambitious rights-based outcome targets and measurable rights-based indicators within a robust monitoring and accountability framework focused on eradicating child poverty as a part of the children and families Measure. We can’t see an obvious strategic approach to progressively addressing child poverty in the draft strategy. While it reports on numerous and very welcome interventions to tackle child and family poverty, it doesn’t articulate a clear strategic framework to identify, prioritise, plan and implement actions, allocate resources, develop targets or monitor progress and promote accountability for interventions to tackle child poverty now and in the future. The many initiatives reported under each of the five objectives report on progress rather than articulate a strategic approach to tackling child poverty.

It’s just important to amplify again what the children’s commissioner said earlier: that child poverty is an issue that cuts across so many children’s rights and damages so many children’s lives. Too many children have been failed from one generation to the next, with intergenerational impacts both devastating and far-reaching. Earlier legislative targets set to eliminate child poverty by 2020 have been and gone. It needs to be captured more powerfully in the draft child poverty strategy that children living in poverty in Wales is a crisis, is a public emergency. The strategy needs to show greater ambition, a stronger vision, to address with clear reference to the impact on respecting, protecting and fulfilling children’s rights.

Child poverty, as the children’s commissioner also said earlier, was strongly communicated with the deepest concern by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child in their concluding observations published just in June 2023. They noted with deep concern the large number of children living in poverty, food insecurity, and also homelessness. Living in poverty undermines children’s rights guaranteed by the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. It has a negative impact on children's right to life, survival and to develop to their maximum potential, to an adequate standard of living, to adequate food, clothing and housing, the right to social security, to the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health, to education, to participate in forums and spaces to influence decisions, to play and enjoy recreational activities and culture and access essential services without discrimination. So, failure to address child poverty is a breach of the obligation both on the UK Government and devolved governments to respect, protect and fulfil all rights guaranteed by the UNCRC, and it's not compatible with what is in a child's best interests. So—

Okay. Thank you for that really clear statement. I think, if you don't mind, I'm going to cut you off there because we have read your paper, and I'm sure that it would be best if we move on to specific questions where, obviously, you've got the opportunity to come back. So, Jayne Bryant, would you like to ask your questions?

Thank you, Chair. Just around the five principles for a children's rights approach, perhaps you could explain how a children's rights approach could be applied to the strategy.

Who would you like to take it?

Go ahead, Rhian. You don't need to unmute yourself, the clerk will do that remotely.

Okay. While we see the commitment to a children's rights approach in the strategy, and it's really welcome, we are concerned that it's not quite apparent how the approach has been applied to the current strategy coherently. We note that we have the children's rights approach, 'The Right Way: a children’s rights approach in Wales', as set out by the Children's Commissioner for Wales. That provides a clear and workable framework for policy development generally, and it has the advantage of being adopted by the Ministers as the framework for the children's scheme compliance report as well as other strategies. It's also consistent with the human rights approach to policy in Wales, recommended by the strengthening equality and human rights research that was commissioned by the Welsh Government and accepted by the Welsh Government. We just think it could be more rigorously applied in terms of the current approach that exists at the moment in terms of the strategy.

I can run through the five principles, if that would be helpful, in terms of where we believe that it could be strengthened. I'm not sure how much time I've got to go into it in depth.

We haven't got time for that. We've got the five principles already. Back to Jayne, please.

Thank you, Chair. And to the commissioner, you've said in your written evidence that taking a children's rights approach would go some way to the Welsh Government meeting the duty of due regard under the Rights of Children and Young Persons (Wales) Measure 2011. Can you just explain how this would help the Government to meet its duty, and what further action do you think is required?

Thank you. The due regard duty says that consideration of children's rights should really be a driver in all of the Welsh Government's considerations. The strategy as it reads currently doesn't clearly demonstrate where children's rights are impacted or where any negative impact could be mitigated. I was pleased to see a children's rights impact assessment be published as part of the overall integrated impact assessment, but I think, again, that could have been strengthened by having more detail on how particular articles could be impacted by different measures and how any negative impacts can be mitigated. So, I think, overall, children's rights, as Rhian has said, don't seem to have really shaped the strategy, and I agree that it could have been much more usefully presented in alignment with the five principles of 'The Right Way'.

I won't go through the five principles, but one of those principles is accountability, and that to me is the area, the principle, under which the strategy is weakest, because there is currently no apparent accountability mechanism by which the Welsh Government can be held to account. There is mention within the draft strategy of commissioning independent research to develop a monitoring framework, but it doesn't indicate when or how this would happen. We're not in the position where we can kick this into the long grass. That monitoring framework should have been commissioned. I think it says it will be consulted upon as well, so that hints at an even longer time frame. That really should have been done at the same time as the publication of this draft strategy. I would also have liked to have seen the publication of the full evidence from the engagement published. That would have really helped stakeholders understand the extent to which the strategy was effectively responding to the identified need or not—I've already talked about that aspect. But I think talking about consulting on and commissioning a monitoring framework in the future, at an unspecified date, is just not very convincing, unfortunately.

Thank you, commissioner. Obviously, you've touched on a few things there in relation to more detail and stricter timelines. You've both raised a number of concerns in relation to the integrated impact assessment and children's rights impact assessment accompanying that draft strategy. How else do you think—? Is that just on detail, then, that you think that the Welsh Government could address that, by providing more detail, or what else do you think the Welsh Government could do to address those concerns that you both have?

I think there could have been more—. Within the children's rights part of the integrated impact assessment, there could have been a drawing out of the specific actions that are intended to deliver the different articles. Currently, there is just a list of relevant UNCRC articles, but they aren't linked in any detailed way to the draft strategy and the actions, or the priorities and objectives. Also, there isn't any detail there in terms of how potential negative impacts and specific rights could be mitigated. So, that could have been a much more robust process. But beyond it being a better children's rights impact assessment on paper, the purpose of doing these impact assessments is to influence practice, and that is really the key—the process of thinking through what specific children's rights would be impacted by delivering or not delivering specific actions is intended to prompt a thought process, which can then look to put in place mitigating actions. There's a lot of room for improvement. I'm glad to see that at least a children's rights impact assessment has been published, which does not always happen. Furthermore, I would like in the future for the Welsh Government to consider extending the children's Measure so that it could also be applicable to local authorities, so that they could have the same duty as Welsh Government Ministers currently do to consider children's rights in all of their decision making. I think that would go a long way.

Before I hand over to Ken Skates, I just wanted to ask you specifically about your predecessor's recommendation that the auto-enrolment of eligible families to both free school meals and the school essentials is an example of how we don't wait for people to find out they're eligible for something—we do it for them, because that's what they're entitled to. So, what insight have you had into why we haven't done that, given that it was a 2019 recommendation?

Thank you. I fully support my predecessor's recommendation around that. I—and the office, I know—have been disappointed at the lack of progress. Obviously, the pandemic was a clear interruption of that process, but—

Okay. I understand that, but here we are now, and we're in 2023.

Yes. So, the auto-enrolment and passporting, and the principle of making it easier for families to access their entitlements is one I very much support, but I'm pleased to say and see that it has also been part of the discussions that I've been having as part of the cost-of-living expert group, with many other organisations, including the Bevan Foundation, for example. So, it is something that I still hope can happen, but I think the time that it has taken to get to this point is definitely frustrating and shouldn't have happened.

Okay. Thank you for that. Ken Skates.

Thanks, Chair. To what extent does the approach set out in the Welsh Government's strategy align with best practice in tackling child poverty?

Thank you. I don't know if any—. I don't know how much consensus there is in terms of best practice on tackling child poverty. I don't think any country has necessarily cracked it. However, I'm aware that you are considering evidence from Eurochild, for example, which I think is positive. The statistics do show that Wales has the highest levels of child poverty in the UK. So, we can look at what is happening in Scotland, England, to identify some good practice lessons. For example, the Scottish Government's child payment system has been shown to have significant benefits, and I know Sean, in the earlier session, talked about a free public transport initiative under way in Bristol.

So, there are real examples that we can learn from and draw on, but in terms of the overall approach, the overall objectives, I think they do align to other existing anti-poverty approaches and strategies. I don't disagree with the objectives or the overall approach. I would really just like to see the detail under those high-level objectives. That, to me, is the main problem: that lack of detail. The high-level aims and aspirations, I certainly don't disagree with.

Thank you. And do you think it's fair to say that the Welsh Government shouldn't just consider where best practice is available from, but also how transferrable that best practice is to Wales? Because, often, we've been told by academics for many, many years that you can't just transfer cultures necessarily, and you have to ensure that best practice is brought into a country in a way that can easily be implemented.

Yes, absolutely. There does need to be that analysis and that assessment. However, I also think that there has been—. There is a significant consensus in the children's rights sector, and in the children's third sector, and even across Europe, and all the reports that I've already mentioned, in terms of what is needed, and what will help make a difference on the ground. Even the evidence from the engagement that Welsh Government itself has reported on in its draft strategy does give us enough, I think, intelligence and evidence to actually build a robust and coherent strategy on. I don't think we need to keep looking for more evidence, and asking again what works, and why, and how. We have many of the answers already; we just need to deliver and implement them.

Thank you. Just finally from me, in regards to the Bevan Foundation's suggestion of a child payment being made in the longer term, what are your views on the potential of such a payment?

I would welcome that being a possibility. I understand it would mean Welsh Government having to seek greater powers, so this is a medium to longer term aim, but it's one that I very much support. I think the evidence from Scotland does suggest that it has made a significant difference. So, yes, I'm very much supportive of that.

Okay. Thank you. Thanks, Chair.

Okay. Dr Croke, did you want to add anything to the questions that Ken Skates has just asked?

Really, just to amplify again what the children's commissioner said. I do think that it would be a really good idea to actually explore the child payment in terms of Scotland and look into that in a lot more detail, and consider how we might be able to apply it in that context. I think, given the proximity to Scotland and just some of the shared environment there, that we could work collaboratively with Scotland in finding out what works and has an impact on child poverty over the next few years. They already have a delivery plan that is reviewed annually, with interim targets and longer term targets. Their poverty rate is already slightly lower than ours. As we've just said, the Scottish child payment is clearly demonstrating a number of positive impacts for children and families already.

Okay.

And they also have free transport for young people, which I think will really assist so many children. So many children are calling out for that, in terms of the Welsh context and it being an equality issue as well, in that older populations are able to access transport, but what about younger populations as well? So, I think the time is now very much right to look at the Scottish context, particularly as well as they're moving towards the direct incorporation of the convention on the rights of the child, and everything that means, in terms of the translation of that into that context, in terms of public authorities having to comply with that legislation and legal recognition of children's rights in courts of law.

Okay.

So, I think, yes, if we can work collaboratively, then we might be able to really seek to create and harness some real positive impact for children. But, yes, we look to other countries, particularly the Nordic countries as well, in terms of application of impact.

Okay.

Thank you.

I'd like to pass over to Sioned Williams. I'm tempted to say, 'There is no more money and, for a big-ticket item like the child payment, £35 a week, a lot of other stuff would have to be dropped', so we'd need to think what that would be. Anyway, Sioned Williams.

Thank you, Chair. I'd like to come back to the budgetary pressure point. We know that the Welsh Government are very vocal on this that, at least in the short term, those pressures are huge. But, of course, the nature of politics is to prioritise different things, and you've both mentioned, in very clear terms, that this is a crisis of the first order that's going to affect future generations in a very serious way, and therefore our future as a nation. So, bearing in mind those budgetary pressures, what steps within the draft strategy should be given priority in terms of achieving them, at least in the short term, in order to try and reduce child poverty?

Who's going to go first?

I'd like to just mention, if possible, just some of the considerations around budgets. Is that possible that I just start off with that?

Yes.

So, I'm just a little bit concerned that, in determining the priorities and the budgetary pressures, we actually need better evidence regarding whether due regard to the UNCRC has actually been appropriately given within the allocation of budgets. So, it's not clear from this strategy or indeed some other strategies, or in terms of the draft Welsh Government budget, to be honest, the proportion of expenditure on children or indeed the allocation of funding to address children living in poverty, or indeed disaggregated groups of children in poverty. So, we need more transparency to improve the understanding of the link between policy intentions, public expenditure and improve outcomes for children and young people. So, there's a lack of transparency at the moment in terms of public expenditure on children, which means that it's not quite possible to tell, without more detailed analysis, whether the Welsh Government is using available resources to the maximum extent to fulfil children's inter-related rights not to live in poverty, and that's an article 4 obligation underneath the convention on the rights of the child. So, I think, in terms of being an advocate for children's rights, I really need to see that evidence clearly to be able to hold Government to account and also to consider what the priority should be, going forward.

Thank you. Commissioner, would you like to add to that?

Yes, I think I would reflect what I heard from my young persons' advisory panel where they were just a bit confused, as their reading of the strategy didn't really respond to the substantive issues that they were talking about and experiencing. So, the basics: food, education, healthcare, clothing, school uniform, housing—how and where in the strategy are these basic, fundamental issues and human rights being addressed and responded to?

I think, unfortunately, that most of the content of the strategy refers to a lot of high-level policies and programmes that Government already has under way; it doesn't really spell out how the experience of food poverty amongst children, young people and families is going to be addressed. It talks about some of the free school meals programmes that are already under way, but then, confusingly, it talks about using the learning from the roll-out in primary schools to inform a review of the eligibility for other ages, whereas I don't see how—. The whole principle of universal free school meals is that there are no eligibility criteria.

So, there is just no coherence at the moment between what children and young people are worried about, and talking to me about, and what is in the strategy in terms of substantive issues. And, even, there is no coherence, as I've said already, between the priorities and the 'What we are doing about it' heading; it doesn't link to the, 'What we have heard'. The 'What we have heard' section spells out very clearly, for example—I'll just read one part:

'The cost and availability of public transport can also be a barrier to accessing central advice locations. These needs were particularly acute for Gypsies and Travellers, Roma families and Asylum Seeking and Refugee families.'

That's in 'What we have heard'. In the corresponding priority and 'What we are going to do about it', there is nothing that talks about either public transport or the specific needs of Gypsy, Travellers, Roma or asylum-seeking and refugee families. So, it just doesn't make sense to me; there is a lack of internal coherence in the strategy.

However, as I think Victoria said earlier in the session before this one, it shouldn't only be about how coherent the strategy is, but I do think that that is a necessary starting point; we can't deliver a good strategy if it's not good on paper. So, there are just some fundamental, basic issues that aren't clearly addressed as it's currently laid out. There's a lack of clear action, timescales and deliverables, and who's going to do exactly what, by when, and how we're going to measure that.

There needs to be ambition. That's the least that we can do for children and young people; that's what we owe them. They're not the architects of the crisis that we're living through and that we are making them live through, but we at least need to show them that we can see a way out of this crisis, and that we have a plan to get there. We need to have milestones; we need to have indicators; we need to measure ourselves and hold ourselves up to scrutiny and public accountability on these issues. And, also, we need to be clear on how we're going to feed back to children and young people directly on how we're doing. There is very little on that currently within the strategy, and that was also picked up by the children and young people who I've spoken to. It just doesn't sound to children and young people like we really have much faith in our own ability to even deliver the aspirations that are in the strategy; it sounds like a very defeatist approach, where we're focusing more on what we can't do and why, and Wales not having all the levers and so on, which of course I recognise, but nevertheless there is a substantial and important amount that Wales can do, and should do.

Thank you. You've painted a very clear picture, both of you, in different ways, of what's unclear or what is a weakness in terms of the way that the strategy has been drawn up. You mentioned, commissioner, earlier, the need to be more brave; you said that the Government needs to be more brave in order to meet the needs and deliver the rights for children, to ensure that they're able to get the rights that they deserve. What brave steps—for both of you—would you like to see this strategy address?

I'll go first, if that's okay, Rhian.

Yes, go ahead.

Diolch. Diolch, Sioned. It would be brave, I think, for the Welsh Government to actually set itself a target to reduce and eradicate child poverty—so, when does Welsh Government think that it can eradicate or at least reduce child poverty. And even if that target was not met, we can at least all try, and we can measure ourselves on how well, or not well, we're doing against that. So, I think that would be brave. It would also be brave to really set out which specific departments, which Ministers, which bodies are responsible for delivering specific elements and actions within that strategy, and then that would enable the public, including children and young people, to hold those different departments and Ministers and bodies to account.

It would also be brave if there was a really clear mechanism by which all of the important stakeholders, including children and young people, could meet with and hear from those different bodies, to hear how they are doing. And there could be a way, whether it be annual or a different regularity, but a regular way of measuring, tracking, monitoring, holding to account, of having that dialogue and maybe needing to make changes along the way. No strategy, none of us, can predict the future; things do change. There needs to be a way of being able to tweak and revise and go back and change things, if they're not working. But, unless we have clear indicators and targets and timescales, there isn't even a framework to enable that, and that's what we need.

Thank you. Rhian, would you like to contribute anything?

Sorry, you're on mute at the moment, Rhian.

I would certainly echo everything that Rocio just outlined. But, again, to really be brave about the sense of urgency. I said it earlier, that this is a crisis, this is a public emergency. It just needs to be captured more powerfully in the draft documents. Nowhere in the document does it really clearly say that child poverty is a breach of so many children's rights, and the Welsh Government should not have any constraints in taking the political lead to assert that this situation is actually unacceptable. And, within the limits of the current devolution settlement, they should be doing absolutely everything they can to address it. We need the framework grounded in children's rights because this creates a robust accountability framework, to have due regard to the rights measure. And also, we also have the human rights framework that we are moving towards in terms of the incorporation of human rights treaties in the Welsh context, so we need to really be brave about that and expedite that.

The tone at the outset of the document is a bit 'it's not us, it's them', because of the welfare benefits with Westminster. And certainly, as Rocio just said, while we don't dispute those challenges, it's the role of the Welsh Government to really be on top of this and challenge policies that demonstrate a clear lack of compliance with children's rights. So—

Okay. Can I interrupt, because we just need to move on?

Sure.

You're reiterating a really strong point, a really important point, but I think we've captured that. Altaf Hussain.

Thank you.

Yes. Thank you very much. My question is on supporting groups of children who are particularly likely to live in poverty. Now, to what extent should the Welsh Government focus on the needs of specific groups in its approach to tackling child poverty? Can you tell us whether a more targeted approach works better than a broad-brush one, and why? And my second part of this question is: what do you foresee as the barriers to engaging with particular groups in poverty-reduction efforts?

Who's going to go first? Rocio, and then we'll come back to Rhian.

Diolch. I commend the success of this strategy in engaging with a very broad group of children and young people, from very diverse backgrounds, including carers, including ethnic minorities, including Gypsy, Roma, Traveller young people, asylum seekers and refugees. I think that's a real success. And some of the specific needs of those groups are already outlined and detailed within the strategy, and I'm sure there will be far more detail from the individual responses that many different organisations will be submitting in response to this strategy consultation. So, yes of course, child poverty is not a universal experience—it is a targeted experience. It affects, mainly, children and young people from specific backgrounds. Therefore, a response to child poverty, in my opinion, needs to be, in the main, targeted.

There are some really welcome and effective universal interventions that Government has already delivered, and, most notably, the free school meals initiative, which I am a huge supporter of, and I think is going to—. It's already having a big impact, but I would really look forward to seeing a robust evaluation of the impact that it's had. But we can't get away from the fact that it's children from ethnic minority backgrounds who have twice the rates of child poverty compared to white Welsh children and young people. Very similar for disabled children and young people and families. Very similar, if not higher, for Gypsy, Roma and Traveller children and young people. Children who are either young carers or care-experienced have significantly higher child poverty rates. So, these are exactly the groups of children and young people who we absolutely need to have at the very centre of a child poverty strategy.

Fortunately, around 70 per cent of the population in Wales has absolutely no need currently for a child poverty strategy; unfortunately, a very stubborn 30 per cent or so do need this and need it desperately. We have a lot of evidence—we don't need to go digging for more and more and more evidence. As I've already talked about, the evidence of need is clear, and the groups that need this most is very clear. We have lots of statistics to tell us that. What we need to do is clearly—. And I think we have a duty, and it's on us, to really have the integrity to respond to these needs. Fortunately, it's not likely to be the everyday experience of any of us on this call. However, it is an everyday and often an inter-generational experience for many of the children and young people that this child poverty strategy is intended to address.

We talk about the cost-of-living crisis as if it only started last February; that is not the case for these children and families. They have been living in poverty mostly for all of their lives, and most probably their parents and grandparents have done similarly. Of course, the cost-of-living crisis has exacerbated all of that and has brought it into the mainstream because it is impacting more on families who may not have been quite in that poverty bracket previously. But this is a targeted issue, so I think, therefore, just to answer your question, most of the interventions need to be effectively targeted at those most in need.

Rhian, did you want to come in?

Yes, I think universal and targeted approaches can both work, depending on the context and what is evidenced to have the most impact. But as an aspect of the delivery of the principle of equality and non-discrimination, and the implementation of article 2 of the UNCRC, we would always expect any policy or budgetary decision to consider how this principle is given effect in, for example, the ongoing analysis of the impacts of poverty or the potential impact of interventions on specific groups of children. So, it always needs to be made clear what are the mitigation strategies the Welsh Government will employ to ensure that children from specific groups have their inter-related rights not to live in poverty addressed. And this is a very important aspect of a children's-rights approach, which you can obviously refer to more within the paper.

Thank you. Altaf.

Thank you very much. How could the draft strategy be refocused to meet the needs of specific groups, and can you give some examples of actions that could be taken to do this? And, commissioner, I'm happy that you mentioned ethnic minorities. Out of the three panels, you're the one who did. Are there particular activities we need to undertake with ethnic minority groups and families with no recourse to public funds?

Brevity at this point, please. Rocio.

Thank you. I think there are clear specific barriers for ethnic minority children and families, and one of those is access to advice—advice about benefits and entitlements. And that evidence is, again, referenced within the strategy, and there's also reference to the barrier of public transport—the lack of availability and the cost that public transport presents in trying to access advice centres, and so on. And I'm sure that's the case for not only ethnic minority families, but children and families living in rural areas as well. So, access to advice in terms of language is another element, and digital exclusion—it's a very long list of forms of exclusion and barriers. But the good news is that we have all of that evidence and intelligence. Wales is a very small place and we have that. So, it's definitely something we can draw on.

Okay. Briefly, Rhian.

Just very, very briefly, just to add that there is a dearth of accessible legal advice and representation for particular groups in terms of certain populations across Wales at the moment. I do think that this needs to be addressed urgently.

Thank you. Thank you, Chair.

Thank you. Jayne Bryant.

Thank you, Chair. Just to follow up on some of the issues around accountability and targets, at the moment, in the draft strategy, what's your view on how the Welsh Government intend to monitor and report on progress of that draft strategy?

So, there's very little detail of what the intention is currently beyond the reference to the intention to commission work to inform an independent monitoring framework, and to consult on that in the future. So, it's very vague and very unspecific. It doesn't say whether or not that would involve listening directly to children and young people, or to different stakeholders. It's literally a paragraph.

So, that is something that the Welsh Government could do to reassure you. You've mentioned targets and how they could help, and you've outlined, commissioner, quite a few ways that the Welsh Government could monitor and use targets to help focus attention on reducing child poverty. Are there any other instances that you haven't covered yet that you think would be important for Welsh Government to be able to set targets to monitor? And just finally, really, because I know we're short of time, you also touched on the issue around understanding which Minister or department is responsible for delivering individual measures. Do you have any particular views on that point and who you think should be accountable for delivering the strategy?

There is, obviously, one lead Minister currently, but the point I was trying to make is that the different elements of the strategy need to come under the responsibility of many different Ministers. And I think there needs to be a clear way of co-ordinating that effort and feeding back to the different stakeholders.

So, some clarity on all those set out in a way that would be helpful. Brilliant. Thank you. Thank you, Chair.

Okay. Rhian, is there anything, finally, that you wish to add on these issues about how we can see effective monitoring of some tangible targets?

I think, just to again echo what was earlier mentioned, that we do need clear targets for eradicating child poverty. We've got the examples of Scotland and New Zealand. They've set short-term, mid-term and long-term targets. I think that we could certainly start to do that to help focus minds, set a series of commitment devices for Welsh Government and other public bodies to really focus on. But the ultimate target, headline target, I have to say, is eradicating child poverty as is outlined in the Children and Families (Wales) Measure 2010, and then we can have associated rights-based targets that flow from those headline targets—so, a clear children's rights framework, which I referred to earlier. I do wonder whether, in terms of the accountability, the First Minister should have ultimate responsibility. This is such a grave and serious issue, and maybe he should have oversight of delivery and accountability of child poverty. However, it should be made clear, all the different levels of ministerial responsibility across all the different portfolios, because of course child poverty is multifaceted, cuts across all children’s rights, and those clear lines of accountability should be laid out. And it’s obviously not quite there yet in that strategy, so I think we would certainly welcome that.

Thank you very much indeed. Thank you both for your contributions. I apologise for the technical issues that we experienced earlier. You will of course be sent a transcript of what you have said, and please use the opportunity to make sure we've accurately recorded what you intended to say. Thank you very much indeed both of you for participating today. That brings this session to an end. We can write to you if there's anything further we need to follow up, but thank you for your time.

I'd just like to invite Members to agree to a motion under Standing Order 17.42 to exclude the public from the remainder of the meeting and for the duration of the committee's meeting on 2 October, i.e. next Monday.