Poverty must be centre of Gething’s agenda

As new Welsh Labour leader and likely next First Minister, Vaughan Gething must put solving poverty at the heart of his administration, says Bevan Foundation Director, Victoria Winckler

Gething is no stranger to poverty, having held the role of Deputy Minister for Tackling Poverty in 2013-14. But unlike that stint, in which poverty was regarded as an add-on to the real Welsh Government business of delivering public services, as First Minister Gething needs to make sure that solving poverty is integral to every single aspect of the Welsh Government’s work.

What has he promised?

The commitment in his manifesto to progressing a Welsh benefits system and to reviewing the eligibility thresholds for devolved grants and allowances is a welcome start.  So too is his pledge to tackle child poverty, especially in the first 1,000 days of a child’s life. The Bevan Foundation will be monitoring progress on these issues and sharing our findings.

But it is in the areas of the economy, housing, education and health that Gething needs to make a real difference to change the trajectory of poverty.

There is a welcome commitment in his manifesto to fair work – good jobs that have the ability to lift the incomes of people in work out of poverty. Recent research by IPPR Scotland shows that paying all workers the real Living Wage and increasing the number of people in work could achieve a striking reduction in in-work poverty. The challenge for Gething will be extending the reach of Wales’s fair work legislation to improve terms and conditions in the parts of the private sector that are rarely if ever involved in public procurement, such as hospitality and retail, as well as replacing those good jobs lost for example at Tata Steel.

On housing, Gething restates the Welsh Government’s commitment to building more social homes, rent control and ending homelessness – both key to reducing poverty.  But with progress on construction lagging way behind schedule, the manifesto is light on how he will achieve the number of new builds required.  We hope that the Bevan Foundation’s work on increasing the supply of social and community housing, and on reducing the number of people in temporary accommodation, will provide some pointers.

The commitment to closing the attainment gap in education and to a wider range of post-16 opportunities in vocational and technical areas, including provision for low-paid workers, is welcome. But, as with housing, it is unclear how he will do so at the scale needed to shift the dial on poverty and inequality across Wales as a whole. Without investment specifically to support the learning of children and adults from low income families, the waste of talent and resulting inequalities will continue.

And last, the challenge with which Gething will be all too familiar – health. Accounting for more than half the Welsh budget, the NHS is daily saving lives, curing disease and easing pain. But too many people in the queues for treatment are there because they live in a cold, damp home, face the stress of struggling to make ends meet, and are skipping meals or eating the kids leftovers. The latest figures show that 166,000 people are economically inactive in Wales because of temporary or long-term sickness. Tackling the root causes of inequalities in health – poverty, poor housing and lack of opportunity – is fundamental to narrowing the gaps.

Our latest Snapshot of Poverty findings showed the shocking lack of hope for the future felt by the majority of people in Wales. The survey found that 57% of people thought that living standards in Wales would get worse in the next 12 months, compared with just 9% who thought they would get better.  You can argue about whose fault this is, but for the new First Minister, along with his new Cabinet colleagues, improving living standards, including reducing poverty, has got to be a priority.