Child Poverty - plenty to be done

The Bevan Foundation's report on child poverty was launched last week, and has already attracted an encouraging response - see Valleys Mam, A Change of Personnel and Syniadau.

As part of the report's launch a panel of AMs (Eleanor Burnham, Mark Isherwood, Helen Mary Jones and Huw Lewis) discussed what more should be done in Wales.  Although the consensus about the need to tackle child poverty is now standard, what was more surprising was the broad agreement about what else is needed. Both Huw Lewis and Helen Mary Jones were pretty critical of Assembly Government to date - Huw pointed out that it took Wales 6 years to get round to its child poverty strategy (during which time child poverty nevertheless improved!) compared with Scotland's very rapid response, whilst Helen Mary questioned whether the priority given to child poverty was any more than rhetoric. Instead she said Ministers needed to get tough, really tough,  with each other, with civil servants who deliver, and with other public bodies. She called for Chief Executives to be held accountable for performance on child poverty and for Ministers to give an annual report to the Assembly on progress.  It was clear that both these AMs were champing at the bit to see some action.

There was also a broader mood of 'toughness', with both Huw Lewis and Helen Mary Jones commenting on the huge increases in public spending that had yet to make a visible impact on poverty, and frustration with public bodies who did not seem that poverty was anything to do with them.  All good stuff.

PS Sorry for the delay putting the report on our website following some technical difficulties (aka slo-band in Tredegar).