Oral evidence: Working towards ending child poverty in Wales, HC 139
Oral evidence, 21 October 2026.
Witnesses
Laurie Ryall, Mabli Jones, Tom Wernham and Sarah Crawley.
Chair
Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to this oral evidence session of the Welsh Affairs Select Committee. My name is Ruth Jones and I am the Chair of the Committee. Before we begin, I want to draw attention to the Prime Minister remarks in Prime Minister’s questions this afternoon. Today we mark 60 years since the disaster that happened in Aberfan. We want to send our thoughts to the families and communities who continue to be impacted by those tragic events. It is good to commemorate that. Gerald Jones, who cannot be here today because he is at home in the constituency, with the King and Queen, sends apologies. We are talking today about child poverty in Wales. This is our first evidence session of our inquiry into working towards ending child poverty in Wales. As part of our work, we will be looking at the key drivers of child poverty in Wales and how the UK Government and Welsh Government work together towards ending child poverty in Wales. I welcome our witnesses today. We have Mabli Jones, head of policy at Bevan Foundation, who is appearing virtually; Laurie Ryall, national director for Wales at Action for Children; Tom Wernham, senior research economist at the Institute for Fiscal Studies; and Sarah Crawley, director of children’s services for Cymru and UK programmes at Barnardo’s. Welcome to you all. I ask that members declare any interests they may have before we start the session. [Interruption.] None? Okay, thank you very much. Mabli Jones, could you briefly outline the story of child poverty in Wales over the past 25 years? We are looking at where we were at the millennium—the turn of the century—and where we are now with the trends and things like that.
Mabli Jones
Yes, of course. Thanks for inviting us today. The general picture is probably one that people are familiar with. We know that one in three children in Wales live in poverty, and that is a figure that has not really changed over the last two decades. It has basically hovered around the one in three level. However, despite the fact that the headline income poverty rate has not changed, what has been happening under the surface is that poverty has got deeper, particularly over recent years. We know now that almost half—47%—of people in Wales who live in poverty live in what is classed as very deep poverty. That is an income that is at or below 40% of the median. We know that families who are experiencing that kind of poverty are likely to be going without many of the basics. Those are the headlines at the moment. Obviously, there is a lot more to discuss in how some of the characteristics of child poverty have changed too.
Chair
Thank you for outlining that so clearly.
David Chadwick
This is a question for Tom. I am sure everybody in this room is well aware that we have suffered job losses and lack of investment in Wales for decades now. How do that economic weakness and those economic failures contribute to the very high levels of child poverty that have been mentioned already?
Tom Wernham
It is definitely a key part of the underlying context. Obviously the labour market and the earnings are a key driver of household incomes. I think what stands out when looking at Wales and comparing it with the rest of the UK is that a gap seems to have opened up between Wales and the rest of the UK in employment rates, particularly since 2019. The data has got very uncertain since then, so it is hard to be sure of exact magnitudes. It looks like Wales had been catching up with the rest of the UK in employment rates up until then, and the gap has widened again. That makes the job of bringing poverty rates down a bit harder. It also makes it more expensive to bring poverty rates down because you have to either pay more in benefits to those families who are getting less money from work, or you have to take real efforts to restore that level. Then we also see lower earnings among those who are in work in Wales, and that has quite few contributors. There are fewer very high productivity industries like the financial sector and the tech sector, but there also seems to be lower productivity when comparing industries like for like with the rest of the UK. There are a few different challenges there.
David Chadwick
Do you agree that developing—growing—the private sector in Wales is the best long-term tactic to solving child poverty? Do you see any policies from either the Welsh Government or the UK Government that give you particular hope at the moment that this will be closed?
Tom Wernham
It is a good question. Wales also stands out: part of the story of the lower earnings is that there is a bigger gap between the private and public sectors in Wales than in other regions of the UK. If the UK Government or the Welsh Government want to boost incomes, boosting private sector earnings needs to be a part of that. That said, if you want to achieve quick reductions in child poverty, the benefit system provides the levers to do that quickly and deliver change now, but it is also the costlier option. Clearly, if you can boost household incomes by achieving increased employment or earnings, that saves money for the Exchequer and boosts families’ incomes, but it is a much harder job to do. It will depend on policies at both the UK and the Welsh level, so it is a bit of a trade-off there.
Sarah Crawley
Would you mind me coming in on this one? I think it is important because we have to have good work. We have to have well-paid work that is accessible and which people can get to. I just wanted to share that 74% of children living in relative income poverty in Wales live in a household where at least one adult is in work, so it is not a silver bullet to transforming people’s lives. It is also difficult to get to work, have good work and have access to the right level of childcare to do the hours that you would need not to impact on your income and then your benefits.
Chair
I am sure we will cover that in depth as we progress, but your points are well made—thank you, Sarah.
Andrew Ranger
Good afternoon, all. This is a question for the three witnesses in the room. All your organisations operate across the UK, but are there any trends or issues that impact Wales in particular, compared with the other UK nations? I will start with you, Laurie.
Laurie Ryall
Thank you for having me here today. That is a good question. In Wales we have some of the highest levels of personal independence payments, for example. We see a real difference in the level of need, and therefore in the level of support or the type of support that is required to support people to get out of poverty.
Sarah Crawley
Yes, we are seeing it deepening very quickly. We have families that are in deep levels of poverty now, so they are unable to afford essential goods—that includes hygiene products, so we are seeing hygiene poverty. They cannot afford shampoo or to wash their clothes. We are seeing children without beds, and so there is bed poverty—children are sharing beds. We are seeing children in families that are in one room, and that is particularly prevalent when we have families with no recourse to public funds. We are seeing greater levels of poverty, and families are really struggling to make ends meet. I am very concerned, and Barnardo’s is very concerned, about the rising cost of living. The cost of living has gone up in excess of 30% in the last five years, but families’ incomes from employment have not gone up by 30%, so they are really struggling in deep poverty. That is affecting children’s health, their life chances, their mental health and their education. We have to address this now; otherwise, we will have whole generations of children in Wales who are not getting the life chances and opportunities they should have.
Laurie Ryall
On that point, I think it is worth mentioning that there is a difference for those who experience poverty in rural areas. I say rural Wales, but I also mean the valleys and the coastal areas of Wales, where access and transportation is even more difficult, so it is harder to access support. Poverty can be a little bit more hidden because we are not seeing the home conditions they are going back to, or what these families are experiencing. Sometimes there is even a lot of shame in coming forward to say, “I don’t have a bed to sleep in, I don’t have a warm home, I don’t have food on the table”. That is a real issue we also need to consider.
Andrew Ranger
Briefly, before I come to Tom, are the points you raised there specific to Wales? Obviously the cost of living applies across the UK and Europe, but is what you just described all specific to Wales?
Sarah Crawley
Those cases I was talking about all are, absolutely. They are occurring across the UK but we are seeing higher levels in our family support services in Wales, particularly around the Merthyr areas, Rhondda Cynon Taff and those valleys communities.
Andrew Ranger
You mentioned recourse to public funds as one issue, but am I right in taking it from the answer to the previous question that the elements in Wales—lower incomes and all that—are the driving force behind those differences?
Sarah Crawley
Yes.
Tom Wernham
It is partly the stuff I have already mentioned, and the just the background of weaker employment and earnings, that makes Wales stand out. I agree that the rising cases of ill health are a key driver of that. Wales does not seem to have higher unemployment per se, but there are fewer people in the labour market. On the differing nature of poverty, from my perspective—looking at the survey data rather than thinking about the experience of services for these families—it is difficult to draw rigorous conclusions, because there is not a huge amount of data from Wales. The main surveys do cover Wales, but the sample sizes are really small, so all the measures are noisy year to year. There are a few measures, such as material deprivation and deep material poverty, that try to get at whether families are able to afford essentials. Wales stands out less on those measures than on the income measures of poverty, but you cannot draw firm conclusions from that because these measures have not been around for very long, and the survey measures are so noisy. I do not want to contradict anything that has just been said, because there is a huge amount of uncertainty in all of the data.
Simon Hoare
There will be a dwindling percentage, almost to the point of invisibility, of society who will—because they remember or they heard from the preceding generation—draw up the 1930s as the decade in which the experience of poverty was most amplified. We are living in an age where the welfare state and its principal purpose—the safety net below which nobody can fall—is probably at its most complex but also most comprehensive. We have an incredibly advanced and comprehensive national health service that is free at the point of use, and a range of interventions in school to support kids from lower-income or no-income families. Concomitant to that, we have a rise in the fast-moving consumable goods on our high streets—vape shops, nail bars, mobile phones, large televisions and so on. A lot of people will sit back and ask—not in a cruel or nasty way—how we can join up those pieces of a jigsaw that create the picture that you have set out hitherto for the Committee, which is almost counterintuitive in how it manifests itself against the backdrop of the level of state support and supports that are available at the highest level. They have never been greater in volume at any time in our history. I do not know who wants to pick up that monumentally challenging doctoral thesis-type question. Maybe you could have a stab at it, Ms Jones.
Mabli Jones
On what has happened in recent years, we know that those benefits have not been able to give people the safety net that they perhaps should be expected to give. We know, for instance, that the two-child limit on the child element of universal credit was a big driver of child poverty, and there has been a clear link in recent years between families with three or more children making up a huge number of the children who are living in poverty—there is that. There are other policies that have been brought in over recent years, such as the overall benefit cap, the bedroom tax and things like that, which have meant that benefits have not kept pace with people’s living costs, particularly given the huge increases in the cost of living that we have seen in recent years. Taken together, those have been the drivers of the deepening of poverty that we have seen.
Tom Wernham
Partly it is that people mean different things when they are talking about poverty. We have a relative sense of poverty and an absolute sense of poverty. Certainly, if you construct a fixed poverty line and look back decades and decades, I think for almost all groups, poverty will have fallen on that measure. Sometimes people think that you need to be concerned about relative poverty, particularly over time, because you are concerned about inequality and the poorest families falling behind the standards set by society at large. That is what relative poverty statistics are getting at; the poverty line grows as median income grows. That is a real distributional concern. As for whether, in absolutes, there are people falling through the gaps of the safety net, if you think about cases like no recourse to public funds and that sort of thing, making those comparisons over time is probably just too difficult because of the low sample size, and we do not have comparable data over time. Trying to quantify whether there is, in an absolute sense, a certain group for whom poverty is persisting, and the scale of that over time, is a bit difficult to do just from the data.
Laurie Ryall
From my perspective, I appreciate that people might look back at poverty and how things have changed, but from what we are seeing, poverty is very real for the children and families that we are working with. We are talking about families who cannot put food on the table for children who are going to school. I accept that they might have free school meals—we know that that has been a benefit and has supported families—but when they come to school in the first instance and have not had breakfast, have not had a good meal the night before, do not have a good bed to sleep in, or even any bed at all, they are in real poverty. There are a number of measures in place to support families, and there are a number that are beneficial, but we also know that access to some of those benefits is a challenge. I know the UK Government and Welsh Government are keen to look at increasing the uptake of some of those benefits, but there are still issues that we need to look at.
Sarah Crawley
I think we should ask ourselves why Wales has a higher-than-average percentage of households receiving benefits. Is that related to a lack of opportunities for employment? Is it related to other factors to do with health? If we are comparing that across the UK, and more of them are on benefits, there is greater negative impact over time, isn’t there? We also have to take things like housing into account. Private rented housing is extremely expensive, and access to social housing is extremely difficult, particularly for larger properties, across Wales. Local housing allowances rates do not reflect the real cost of rent, so we are having to make up that shortfall. That means it is nearly impossible for people relying on a housing benefit to be able to afford private rented accommodation. It is a particularly difficult situation in Wales, where we have fewer than 1% of homes listed for private rent that are affordable for people on housing benefit. I think that is a substantial change, even over the last two or three years, in mortgage rates and private rented access. That has probably been one of the starkest changes over the last five to 10 years in Wales.
Simon Hoare
That segues well to my next question, which is the responsiveness to data from policymakers and lawmakers. We have effectively a mixed mosaic of Westminster, the Senedd and local government, all striving in the same broad direction. Do you have a word or two on how they join up to maximise the bang for the buck—if you do not mind my using that phrase—and are they sufficiently fleet of foot to meet the specific and bespoke problems as they arise in Wales?
Sarah Crawley
That is another very large question. I think it is about having access to good data, and data being held within different places—so it is held within the local authority or the Senedd. Seeing and analysing all that data for a specific purpose is quite tricky to do. We did work alongside the Bevan Foundation to look at nought to four-year-olds impacted by poverty—we used it there and did that collectively. That was an effective use of data, but we are not able to necessarily leverage that data as a voluntary, third sector or charitable organisation.
Simon Hoare
Is that just due to our old friend GDPR?
Sarah Crawley
We only have the data that we hold on our service users, or that we work with partner organisations to calculate or utilise for policy or practice directions. What we are seeing is that we are able to then raise the voices, the stories, the experiences of those children and young people, to go alongside the data that we do have. It is the quantitative and the qualitative experiences. I think that is probably more our area of bringing change, we hope, and focus and rigour to addressing the issues of child poverty. We are not seeing an alignment of data and information between, say, the Welsh Government’s developing tackling child poverty strategy and the UK Government’s tackling child poverty strategy.
Simon Hoare
Is there an anxiety that we, as a Committee, should be aware of, of effectively benign turf warfare getting in the way of maximising meaningful solutions?
Sarah Crawley
I do not think I would call it turf warfare. I think the Welsh people and Welsh Government are trying to do the best for children and young people in Wales, and trying to set up a child poverty strategy, but what they need to do—
Simon Hoare
I am not for a moment suggesting that they are not, but sometimes there can be a tendency of effectively being very precious about remit—“Oh no, that is at Westminster. Oh no, that is devolved. Oh no, that is local government” and so on. That matters not a jot or tittle to people who are looking for services and support. They do not care where it comes from as long as they get it and it is meaningful in delivering change. I suppose the question I am asking directly, and would, in all honesty, appreciate a black or white answer on, is whether we should be concerned about territorial protections getting in the way of maximising solutions? I think Laurie is absolutely itching to answer; she can barely restrain herself!
Chair
Then we will come to Mabli afterwards.
Laurie Ryall
I think you have identified a key issue. Although the UK Government and the Welsh Government are aligned in some aspects of this strategy, as I think I mentioned earlier, we have seen instances where the universal basic income pilot, for example, was rolled out and it had unintended consequences because there was no join-up between the Welsh Government and the UK Government. We are now looking at the Cynnal payment in Wales, for example, and at how we can work together. That needs to happen quickly to make sure that that does not have unintended consequences. I think there are areas where there needs to be better alignment. We need to stop the, “Oh, this is your area, that is your area”, because different levels of Government are working on different things. They are working in silos, and that creates real difficulty. Going back to accessing benefits, again that is a real challenge because there are some benefits at Welsh Government level, or it might be through the UK Government, DWP. There are different access routes to all that, which is overwhelming for families. They do not always know what they are entitled to or where to go. It is confusing; it is a minefield and there is no single point of access. We need to do work in that space.
Simon Hoare
Thank you, that is enormously helpful. Ms Jones, do you have a word or two? And then, I say to the other Ms Jones, I really will shut up.
Mabli Jones
To reiterate a lot of what Laurie said about how some of that joined-up working is not happening, we know that not all local authorities in Wales have data-sharing agreements with DWP, for example. If that was done more effectively, we know that people would be accessing more of the support they are entitled to. I think the Cynnal pilot will be a key test of the attitude that you are referring to. We commissioned expert legal advice earlier this year that showed that Welsh Government do have the power, under devolved powers, to introduce a trial payment for Wales, but the risk is that DWP and HMRC treat the Cynnal payment as an income and then families lose out on some of the money that should be coming to them. I think that it is a good example. If UK Government were able to facilitate that pilot happening, a lot of learning could come from these schemes about what works to tackle child poverty. We have seen in Scotland that the introduction of the Scottish child payment has had a real impact on driving down rates of child poverty there. There is a lot we can learn from that.
Tom Wernham
Just to add my voice to some of this, one interesting thing I found when I have spoken to various civil servants in the Welsh Government in recent months is they often had a different view on precisely what is the power of Wales to do things like the Cynnal. That does not seem like a very healthy set-up for effective policymaking if the policymakers do not know what the powers are, for which there should be co-ordination. I also add my voice to the idea that there should be more effective data-sharing between Governments and even within Governments. Often UK Government Departments do not share data with each other in the most timely manner, and they will say they have good reasons for that. I do not want to make an overall judgment, but that is definitely a pattern that we see all the time.
Chair
We will return to the lack of data or the lack of coherent and joined-up data. Thank you for highlighting that.
Andrew Ranger
I think we have agreed that we all need to work better together. I just want to focus on the UK Government strategy separately. I am interested to hear what you think are the key barriers that may prevent Wales from achieving the ambitions of the UK Government’s child poverty strategy.
Mabli Jones
It depends on what you define as the ambitions in that strategy. Our opinion of that strategy is that it is not sufficiently ambitious, given all the levers that are at the disposal of the UK Government. While we welcomed the decision as part of the strategy to lift the two-child benefit cap, we know that that on its own is not likely to be sufficient to tackle child poverty. Forecasts by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation show that, over the coming years, child poverty rates are likely to creep back up without further action. I think that is important to know. It is probably also important to note that the Welsh Government have their own child poverty strategy, and they have a legal duty since the Children and Families (Wales) Measure 2010 to have a strategy to eradicate child poverty. There will be different priorities. We know that the new Welsh Government are committed to developing a new Welsh child poverty strategy and have particular policies in this area. It is one of their priorities in Government, which takes us back to the question of how well these different strategies work together. There is also a point about often UK Government policies undermine efforts in Wales to tackle child poverty. We heard earlier that although housing is a devolved area, local housing allowance is not, and that is a huge driver of poverty for families in the private rented sector.
Andrew Ranger
It might have been a bit unfair of me not to outline the themes of the UK Government child poverty strategy, just so we are all talking about the same things. The main three themes they were looking at were boosting family incomes, driving down the cost of essentials and strengthening local support, such as the Pride in Place programme and things like that. They are the strategy themes there. I will come to the same main question for Laurie, please.
Laurie Ryall
On realising the ambitions, we have talked about some of the things already. We mentioned that there is a focus in that on getting people back into work, but a lot of families living in Wales are unable to work, whether it is because they have caring responsibilities or health or disability needs so they cannot get into work. We cannot just focus on work being a route out of poverty because that is not going to work for a number of our families. Working in silos, as we may have already mentioned, is another barrier that we need to overcome. There is a lack of indicators and milestones set out. I know that the Welsh Government are now looking at what the measures and targets could be in the Welsh strategy, but it is unclear what they are in the UK strategy at the minute.
Sarah Crawley
I have very similar points, to be honest. On the depth of poverty that we are seeing and experiencing, trying to lift 32% of children out of relative poverty and deep poverty is a big target, so we would welcome some aligned measures between both strategies. Also the social security system, which we have already talked about, is not sufficient at the moment to be able to afford those families what they need to not be in relative poverty. I have mentioned earlier that we have a lack of data and information about families, particularly those with no recourse to public funds, and so they are not even experiencing that safety net—they are unable to access universal credit, child tax credits and so on. We have a very hidden group of children in those families experiencing poverty, and they are more likely to experience deep poverty and homelessness. I do not think we can see child poverty strategies as homogenous; we have to see them as layered. We gave examples earlier, such as the Bevan and Barnardo’s reports that found the likelihood of nought to four-year-olds being in poverty within families is far higher than for other age groups. We need to have nuanced, addressed and targeted poverty strategies that are aligned with clear measures around those groups, and the targeted indicators and drivers for change that we really need to see.
Tom Wernham
In some sense, the challenge is the same in Wales and the rest of the UK. It is just a question of what happens to incomes in general and the fact that the really fast ways of achieving reductions in poverty through the benefit system are also the most costly. Earnings and employment of course have to be taken seriously as a lever, but I agree that there are challenges. To add an example, there have been policies in the past where, through the benefit system, with tightened conditionality, the UK Government have tried to get more parents into work, but they have got into low-earning or part-time jobs that do not help with long-term career progression. That is not going to provide a huge amount of help for families in getting them out of poverty in the long term. Thinking about the wider ambitions, clearly there are some areas where the Welsh Government have more responsibility for local services or education and health than the UK Government. It will be a question of whether the policy priorities are aligned and whether they are talking to each other and making sure the policies do not undermine each other. On the indicators point, I think that the UK Government have quite a good range of indicators broadly, in that they are looking not just at incomes but at spending on core essentials and that kind of thing, but it is not disaggregated very much. It is not zooming in on Wales—it cannot because the survey data you need for that is just not large enough in Wales. More evidence would be valuable to answer these big questions of which particular groups in Wales and in the rest of the UK are struggling. Also, the joined-up working thing is important. Another example I recall from the English case was when the removal of the two-child limit was announced. It was announced quite late, so local councils in England were not able to adjust their own support schemes to take account of it, and some families would have seen lower council tax support because of the UK Government increasing their benefits, which probably was not anyone’s intention. There is a matter of policy announcements happening in a timely manner and the data being shared in a timely manner. That kind of thing could easily happen between the UK and Welsh Governments if policy intentions are not communicated well and the data is not shared. These policies can be designed in tandem.
Chair
We will move on to the issues in rural Wales.
Ben Lake
Thank you all for appearing before us this afternoon. Ms Jones, following on from the UK Government strategy, do you think there are any particular challenges for rural Wales in benefiting from the UK Government strategy?
Mabli Jones
Yes, definitely. One thing has been alluded to already. For us it is it is not just about the communities that we consider purely rural. We have been doing a lot of work this year with communities in Caerphilly borough. Many of those communities are as cut off from services as those areas that are considered more traditionally rural. One issue that comes up when we talk to families all over the country in rural, post-industrial and coastal areas is transport—that is a consistent theme. We know that access to public transport provision has fallen. Reliable, accessible bus routes and bus services are really key. That has an impact on people’s ability to access employment opportunities and training opportunities, or just to go back and forth from services or childcare settings, increasing a family’s likelihood of living in poverty. We know that a third of low-income households in Wales do not have access to a car, and if you are living in a rural area, that makes life much harder. It makes a family’s ability to access support, increase their income or manage costs much harder.
Ben Lake
Ms Crawley, do you have anything to add about the challenges that more rural areas face? I think it is important that we are clear about what we mean by rural areas. I suggest that access and transport, or the lack of public transport, might be a helpful definition in that regard, but are there any other specific issues that you have identified for rural areas benefiting from the UK Government strategy?
Sarah Crawley
Barnardo’s in Wales is a town and city-based charity working with families, but when we have worked in rural areas we often see them as quite cut off. For example, in Merthyr valley communities, if a third of people have no access to a car, they are relying on bus routes. For access to schools and education, if you live more than three miles away from a school, you can potentially get access to home-to-school transport, but if you live less than three miles away, you do not have that funding support. You could be walking your child to school or ensuring that your child gets to school by walking over five miles a day, and that is putting a strain on time and ability to work—access to transport, access to education. There is also the oil issue. Rurality often means having oil containers for heating. It is much more expensive, more difficult, much more costly to fill up. We have certain communities living with that issue as well, and no great solution to it at all. That is what we have seen generally, but mostly we are working with town or city communities.
Ben Lake
Thank you. Nearly 73% of the households I represent are off-grid, so I very much hear your concern about the heating oil situation. Ms Ryall, is there anything you would like to add?
Laurie Ryall
Action for Children in Wales supports a number of families who live in rural communities in north, south and west Wales. Last year, Action for Children took part in the Welsh Government lived experience exercise to get the voices of children and young people. In some of the themes that came from that, families living in rural communities raised exactly the things we have been talking about today—challenges with transport, accessibility of services. Lack of opportunities for children and young people in those rural areas means they are much more isolated, which affects their emotional wellbeing. They do not have the experience of even leaving their community area, and unfortunately that sometimes can build a generational sense of, “There is nothing out there for me, so we’ll stay where we are”. There are lots of issues throughout rural areas that we need to consider.
Tom Wernham
From my perspective, one important thing to consider is that the broad income poverty statistics do not take account of lots of the differences in costs between rural and urban areas and the benefit system does not take account of these differences in costs either. Those main levers, and some of the main indicators, are not going to shed light on all of these issues. We all still aware of them because we are talking about them, and that is good, but it is important to bear in mind that there are not loads of indicators that will help us very easily track progress in this over time, which is a bit of a shame. I think there should be a focus on trying to make sure the survey data is there to try to measure the prevalence of these difficulties and test if policies going forward are helpful in addressing them.
Chair
I am conscious of time and we have a lot more questions to get through. Your answers are comprehensive, but if the point has already been made, you are more than welcome to reference it and say I have made that point. That would be very helpful.
David Chadwick
On that note, I definitely want to emphasise the importance of transport. Brecon used to have a direct service to Cardiff, which meant that it was easier for local residents to be connected with employment opportunities all the way to Cardiff. Going the other way, it made it easier for tourists to get to Brecon, and clearly tourism is one of our major industries, so that has had a disastrous knock-on impact. My question is for Tom. What are the distinct economic challenges in rural Wales that we should consider when talking about child poverty? I fully agreed with Sarah when she mentioned the importance of heating oil and LPG, because those prices are going through the roof at the moment.
Tom Wernham
I do not have a huge amount of detail on this point. Looking at broad patterns in the labour market, it seems that rural pay versus urban pay is a significant factor here. The difference between employment rates in rural and urban areas does not seem great, but the rural jobs are lower paid. That interacts with transport and there is less opportunity for people to migrate within Wales to higher-paid jobs. Beyond that, it is a matter of thinking carefully about what extra costs faced in rural areas might be missed by the system as it is, and what the optimal policy levers are to target them. I do not have a huge amount to add beyond that.
Ben Lake
Forgive me, Mr Wernham, but I am coming back to you on something you mentioned in answer to my question, about how the statistics—please tell me if I am misquoting you—perhaps do not always reflect the differences between the challenges that an urban household and a rural one may have. Is it correct to conclude that the way that we currently measure poverty and the statistics we currently use fail to truly appreciate and give us a proper idea of rural poverty, however we may wish to define rural?
Tom Wernham
Essentially, statistics are headlining income poverty. They only take account of costs in so far as you have families of different sizes and differences in housing costs. They do not take account of any of the other different costs at all, so they will be very much blind to that aspect. Maybe one area has higher housing costs than another, but because it has better public services, people will want to want to live there. In general, the after-housing-cost measures of poverty are better at predicting deprivation. You need to be a bit careful when comparing areas. Sometimes there can be other things going on, like in that example. Beyond that, we have our material deprivation indicators and those sorts of things, which should indirectly take account of these different costs in that, even if they are not explicitly asking about the transport and types of heating available—if these things are eating up families’ budgets, that might make them more likely to be unable to afford essentials. We have the statistics there that should be getting at these things. Whether they are really optimally getting some of these specific rural factors—maybe not. I am not an expert in what those specific factors are so I cannot be definitive on that, but I have made the point several times now that we have really small sample sizes, so even with the best measures in the world, we are asking so few people in Wales—in urban Wales and rural Wales—that the measures bounce about year to year and it is really hard to rigorously keep track.
Ben Lake
On that specific point, the Committee received some evidence last week that touched on the inadequacy of the survey data from Wales just because of the small samples. How useful would it be if, for example, a Government body of some sort—I will not name which one—decided, “Let’s get a better baseline understanding here and actually invest in more extensive survey data”? How helpful would that be?
Tom Wernham
More data will always be helpful as long as it is designed in a sensible way. If your goal is to just boost the sample size for income measures or deprivation measures, you would want to make sure you are asking the same questions so you can combine those measures. By all means, ask additional questions to find out Wales-specific information, but you do not want land up with a different survey that is asking questions in a different way so you cannot pull it together. That is important. Another point is that, with surveys in general, we have seen big drops in response rates in recent years. It is not just about the numbers of people you survey but whether they are representative of the population. We have reasons to think that has got worse even at a UK level. We have not studied specifically what the situation is in Wales but I would not be surprised if we also had concerns about representativeness there. Partly you can get around that by re-weighting the data, which we do, but that is not going to solve all of this problem, especially when you have very low proportions of people answering the survey. Thinking about how you make sure you reach everybody with a survey and how you incentivise people to answer and to give accurate answers is also important.
Llinos Medi
This question is about intergovernmental working. You have already touched on this, so if you have already answered, obviously do not repeat your answer. The question is about the importance of the co-operation between the UK Government, the Welsh Government and local government in ending child poverty. Do you think that those three layers are committed to working in partnership? You have already touched on that with the Cynnal payment. Do you think the Cynnal payment might be the first test of such intergovernmental working? Ms Crawley, you started on this, so can I start with you?
Sarah Crawley
Yes, the Cynnal payment is definitely the test bed for us. If we can get DWP and Welsh Government and others working together, and we can get that devolution and devolved powers, that would be fantastic, but they are only suggesting £10—that is quite small. It will support many families, but it is probably not enough. We have already talked about the benefits system, the social security system, being part of the big driver for getting families out of poverty. I think it is a good start, but it needs to go much further. My thing is around local authorities understanding their own data—understanding the poverty levels of single-parent households or of larger families, and looking at services that can be targeted towards those communities. We have had certain programmes—Flying Start, Families First, Communities First—for quite a long time. They are supporting families with these issues, but they are not putting money directly in their pockets, when that is what they need. I would advocate for a better and greater understanding at a local level—with powers and changes that are devolved—and at Westminster level.
Mabli Jones
The Welsh Government have the power to introduce that payment. What they do not have is the power to legislate to give it a longer-term basis—as Scotland did, having further devolution of powers over social security. What is needed from DWP and HMRC in the short term, just with that pilot, is to agree not to treat that £10 a week as additional income for those families, and to make sure that that pilot is able to operate effectively and that we can see what difference it might make. As Sarah says, it is only a £10 a week pilot, whereas the full child payment in Scotland is just over £28 a week, which per child can obviously make a big difference to families’ experiences. We definitely want to see that full programme and roll out for the longer term. We want to see further devolution of powers over social security to give that a legislative long-term basis and potentially the additional funding that comes with that devolution as well.
Laurie Ryall
Can I add one quick thing to build on what Mabli said about longer-term support? That is really key. A number of the measures that are in place at the moment provide crisis support, when what we need to be looking at is how we can support families in a much longer-term approach, rather than at the point when they are in crisis and then we are providing crisis grants or discretionary assistance funds. Action for Children continues to provide crisis grants for families, even though they already have access to the discretionary assistance fund, for example. It is that longer-term need that is key.
Andrew Ranger
I know we have touched on the point about co-operation between Governments quite a lot already, but you may have further points to add. There are two elements to this question. How does having two child poverty strategies—for Wales and at the UK level—influence the degree of co-operation and co-ordination between the two Governments? How could it, or should it, strengthen that co-operation in future?
Laurie Ryall
I think having separate strategies across UK Government and Welsh Government is not a bad thing on its own, but a lot more join-up is needed. We see that there is some crossover across the two areas, but how is the Welsh Government strategy influencing the UK Government strategy, and what kind of consistent measures are there around that? Mabli might have a better answer than me on that one.
Mabli Jones
I do not know if it is a better answer, but I think you would naturally expect to have two different strategies because the Governments have different responsibilities and powers over different areas. Likewise, some local authorities will have their own anti-poverty strategies for the areas that they are responsible for. In general, our sense is that some of the weaknesses in those child poverty strategies at both the UK Government and Welsh Government levels in the past have been very similar, in that current strategies from both Governments lack milestones and targets, which is something that we want to see. Going back to Laurie’s point about how often the programmes or policies put in place are more about dealing with mitigating the impacts of poverty rather than really tackling the root causes, that is something that we would like to see a lot more of from both Governments.
Andrew Ranger
It is interesting that you say that, because we said right at the start that child poverty has remained pretty constant for the last 20 years or so in Wales. I think that there are similar figures from across the UK. Ultimately, are we ever going to solve this with the types of systems we have now? While helping people in need at the current time is obviously clearly important, are we always going to rely on redistributive policies or do we actually, as you just mentioned, need to get to these root causes? Some of them have been mentioned, including transport and infrastructure. We have talked about jobs, economy and services. It feels sometimes that we entrench poverty rather than providing services and support to get people out of it. I am probably being quite simplistic there, but it just feels like we are never going to solve this, because although so much great work is being done, the situation has not, as we said, changed in 20-odd years.
Mabli Jones
It is a good question. When we are talking about what drives poverty, it is the dual issue of people’s incomes not being sufficient to meet their costs. That is ultimately what is behind the fact that those child poverty levels have not shifted; people’s incomes, whether from work or the social security system, have not really kept pace with how much costs have gone up. I think if we want to tackle the root causes of poverty, that is where the work needs to focus. That can be through things that are in the UK Government’s hands, such as the social security system or overall powers of the labour market and the economy, but there is a lot that the Welsh Government can do as well. Housing costs are obviously a huge driver of poverty. The Welsh Government have a lot of powers over housing. They have powers over things such as childcare, which is why we have advocated for more funded childcare hours universally to enable more parents to take up work or more hours of work. There is a very clear link between the number of parents in a household, the number of hours they work and the likelihood of the children in the household living in poverty. Things need to happen at different levels, but from our perspective, we definitely always need to keep those core drivers in mind.
Henry Tufnell
The hon. Member for North Dorset talked about turf warfare. Could we talk a little bit more about that? We have UK Government agencies, like jobcentres, and we have Welsh Government agencies and local authority action. Can we have some real-world examples of where these agencies are helping or hindering in addressing and bringing down child poverty across the country?
Laurie Ryall
From our experience, there are some good examples of where local authorities are providing a single point of access for our families, for example. That single point of access will link into a range of support systems to be able to bring families to one point of contact to say, “This is all the support you are entitled to, this is where you can get it from, and we can help you with that”. That is where it is working really well. For other families, it is a bit of a postcode lottery because local authorities do not always do that consistently. Then families do not know where they can access support, how they can access it or who they need to speak to, and it becomes a complicated system of application forms and criteria that they do not really understand. Something that is working well is when local authorities have a single point of access that links into all those different areas across Governments, and it is easy to give that information to families.
Henry Tufnell
You have skills advisers in England. That is done by Careers Wales, but I do not know how. Is there another concrete example of agencies helping or hindering in meeting their objectives? I do not know whether it is helpful to focus on more specifics. I appreciate your point there about local authorities and single points of access.
Sarah Crawley
In Wales, as a charity we do not support parents directly to get into employment, training or skills. We leave that to existing organisations and parties. That does not mean that we do not direct and signpost them, but we do not do that directly as a charity.
Henry Tufnell
Do you mind if I change the topic slightly, because I do not think we have talked about education? I was wondering about the impact of education. We have seen the shocking results from PISA schools in Wales. Compared with England, Welsh children are two years behind on science and consistently performing worse. Can you comment on whether you think that has had an impact on a higher child poverty rate in Wales, as opposed to other parts of the UK?
Laurie Ryall
Can I reverse the question? For me, the impact of child poverty is affecting the educational attainment rates for children across Wales, rather than it being the other way around. As I mentioned right at the beginning of the Committee, for children who are living in poor home conditions, with families who cannot afford to put food on the table, heat their home or have bedding or a bed to sleep in at night, that will impact not only on their emotional wellbeing but on their ability to engage well with education and achieve what they potentially could achieve if they had all that support in place and a reasonable standard of living. For me, it is about poverty impacting on education.
Henry Tufnell
After housing costs, 38% of children in London were living in relatively low-income households in 2022-23 to 2024-25, but the quality of education in London has gone up. How would you reconcile those figures?
Laurie Ryall
I think it is difficult to compare London and Wales. For a start, they are very different geographical areas. There are lots of things there. Without understanding that dataset completely, I do not know if I can answer that question. Tom, do you have anything to add.
Tom Wernham
I have done some research in this area that is relevant to this question. We can think of the potential causal direction in both ways. Poor education today might lead to lower earnings in the future, and poverty rates going forward when they grow up. As for the other way around, we have, broadly speaking, stark correlations with poorer children doing worse educationally than richer children. The best way to close that gap is not clear. One example we have looked at is the two-child limit, where we were able to evaluate the effect on early educational attainment of the two-child limit. The way the policy was designed meant you could get quite a convincing group who were affected and a group who were not, who were otherwise very similar. Even though the two-child limit drastically reduced children’s family incomes, it did not seem to move the dial on of their early educational test scores at all. That does not rule out effects down the line, but that is one point. That does not mean that there are no interactions between poverty and educational attainment, but closing that gap might be a question of improving access to services and other things, rather than just giving cash income. Where we looked at Sure Start centres in England, they were shown to have quite strong effects on educational outcomes by comparison. To some extent, if that finding is borne out as we look at other outcomes, it does make the job a little bit harder. Do you want to support living standards now or do you want to close some of those longer-term inequalities with more targeted measures, through services and so on? But yes, it is a question where there is ongoing research to do on the causal connection between income and these wider outcomes.
Simon Hoare
Can I follow up on Henry Tufnell’s question? Forgive me, but I am a little confused. Maybe you can help me. Mr Tufnell asked you a question, and you said no. You reversed the question—poverty is feeding into lower educational attainment. The poverty figures show, as Mr Tufnell has pointed out, that London is higher up in the poverty figures than Wales when housing costs are taken into account, and yet London’s educational attainment, notwithstanding that data, is markedly higher than that of Wales. Either Mr Tufnell was asking the question in the right order or your contention, Ms Ryall, is not passing my logic test.
Chair
I think the witnesses have already answered the question in the way they wanted to present their evidence. If they wanted to reverse the question and say that you cannot compare London and Wales, I think we accept that that is their evidence.
Simon Hoare
It will manifest itself with some nuance, but if poverty is poverty, and if the lack of a bed, a lack of bedding, a lack of a hot meal in the evening and so on has a broadly similar impact on an individual, irrespective of where they are living, there must be some correlation, surely, as Mr Tufnell appeared to be driving us towards. You get into this sort of spiral that lower educational attainment feeds into less opportunity for well-paid economic activity. It also reduces the attractiveness for entrepreneurs, investors and job creators to look at a particular area because of the educational attainment. The two are inextricably linked, are they not, irrespective of which end of the telescope you might be looking from?
Laurie Ryall
That is a fair point, but I still stand by my original point that the poverty does affect children’s educational attainment.
Sarah Crawley
You are not taking into account some other dynamic factors of rurality: lack of access to services in general, educational materials, as well as the opportunities and schools that they might have in London. There are other dynamic factors at play within that position.
Simon Hoare
Okay, that is a fair comment.
Tom Wernham
You cannot just compare London and Wales and say that one has higher poverty but also higher education. There are lots of other factors at play in access to services, the quality of the schools and those sorts of things. Where we have been able to do research on the two-child limit that isolates the effect of income while holding everything else constant, it tells us that maybe if you just give poorer families more money and do nothing else, it will not necessarily move the dial on these gaps. However, it does not mean that you should not target resources at poorer families in other ways to try to close these gaps.
Simon Hoare
Absolutely. But let us just tease out—
Chair
I am conscious of time, Simon, and we do need to move on.
Simon Hoare
I just think you are asking us to accept, on the face of it, what you believe to be true, without necessarily having it fully interrogated. Let us move away from London and look at the figures for the north-west. They are—again, after housing—identical to Wales, at 32%. In the south-west of England, the part of the country that I am lucky enough to represent—in Dorset—the figure is 21%. There is clearly a differential between that and Wales. In the north-east, where there will be very similar demographics, geographies, access points and everything else compared with Wales, the figure is sitting at 30%, much closer to the Welsh figure of 32%. Yet educational attainment is better in England than it is in Wales, so there must be something else that is playing into that.
Chair
Okay, you have made your point, Simon. Thank you very much.
Simon Hoare
It was more of a question than a point.
Chair
I know, but I am conscious that education is not an issue that we are covering today. We are looking at child poverty—although I accept the links with education.
Llinos Medi
You mentioned at the beginning that the data being used here is after housing costs. Can you explain the housing costs and other pressures on Welsh families from rurality, deprivation, deindustrialisation for decades and so on, and that falling housing costs are not a true reflection of the challenges facing our children and young people? How can they can succeed educationally in those communities? Please provide evidence if you have any.
Mabli Jones
I think it is important to note that there is a belief that the lower child poverty rates in Scotland and Northern Ireland are in part due to lower housing costs in those parts of the UK, whereas in England and Wales we generally have higher housing costs, and there is a very clear link there with that as a driver of poverty. Members will know that those higher high housing costs apply across the country. Pressures around the supply of social housing, affordable housing and the private rented sector apply all over the country. There is a really clear link there with families’ experiences. The point about the different measures of poverty is an important one. There is no single measure of poverty that is perfect and that can give you a complete picture of children’s and families’ experiences on its own. What we would recommend, particularly as the Welsh Government develop their new child poverty strategy, is to look at including measures and targets across a range of different measures of poverty. Taken together, they can provide a more complete picture of incomes and costs, material deprivation and depth of poverty, and that is needed to give a more complete picture.
David Chadwick
This is a very quick question. Laurie, you mentioned that there is one local authority that has a single point of access. Which local authority is that?
Laurie Ryall
Cardiff.
David Chadwick
Thanks.
Chair
I like that answer.
Llinos Medi
Over the summer, the Committee was fortunate enough to sit down down with Young Farmers members and were able to speak to teenagers and young people about the impact of rural poverty and so on. Obviously, the voices of children and young people are extremely important. Do you have any good examples of where children and young people have been able to influence you and share their experience, and then see a policy change following the intervention?
Laurie Ryall
Action for Children has young ambassadors who support us. They are from across Wales, but also from across the UK. We have young ambassadors from every nation who can share their experiences with us and share the experiences of other young people and that influences policy change in Action for Children. We give them the space to be able to speak to councillors, MPs and MSs where possible, so that they can directly influence decision making there as well. We also have a young person in our Headlands school who attends the Welsh Youth Parliament. They are able to influence from that perspective, which is a really good opportunity for them, and they feel really valued and heard within that, which is really helpful. We have also seen that young people are often engaged in consultations and they share their experiences. I think it is important to note that when children share their experiences, they often feel quite vulnerable in that, even if it is just writing it down, because they can be embarrassed, as I mentioned earlier, or it just brings up feelings of trauma that they are having to relive. They do not always hear back from those consultations about what actually happened following that: “What has my voice led to? What changes has it led to? What impact has it had?” We talk about consultation fatigue as well, which is a real thing. I think we mentioned earlier the lack of uptake in surveys and I suppose we do not want to risk doing the same thing to our children and families, and then having them not willing to engage so that we cannot hear what their voices are saying.
Sarah Crawley
I will give you a quick example of where we have raised children and young people’s voices—young carers in Newport. We run a Newport young carers service. The education maintenance allowance was doubled with their voices going directly to the Senedd to say, “We need more money to be able to access our education, to travel to school, to get the books we need and the resources we need”. That is a direct example of young people saying what they need, how they need access to it and what will make a big difference and change. We are trying to do that all the time. W are speaking about policy changes and practice changes as well, and also directly influencing organisations like ours. How do we direct our services? How do we direct our resources? What do we choose to do that could make a bigger difference? We are always listening to children and young people to try to do that. We are also working with local authorities and commissioners to say where is the feedback that we are getting? What could we do differently with this service? How could we make it more accessible to children and young people? We are always working within that sort of environment, a more dynamic environment of feedback. We also deliver the child poverty fund through Barnardo’s. Whether we want to see that data or not, what it is absolutely telling us is the levels of poverty and deprivation people are experiencing. One of the things was a lack of opportunities that people, children and young people, experience when they are living in relative poverty and deep poverty. I just want to give you a quick example. In the last year, we have supported 1,450 children and young people in Wales with a spend of over £126,000. It is about that sticking plaster—do they need utilities payments, suitable clothing, winter coats? But the one thing I wanted to focus on was that 30% of that spend was for what we called the “winter wonder offer”. That was children and young people saying, “I would like a present. I would like that this year.” That could be a toy, an experience, that they were not going to have access to otherwise. We have been able to give children and young people some treats over the festive period, and we have done the same over the summer period as well, because friends might be getting access to days out and trips out and things that you would hope all children and young people want to experience. They do not have access to that. It has been charities like Barnardo’s that have stepped in and really given those opportunities. That is where we hear it most and directly from individuals. What do you need, what would you like and what could you have? We can support that.
Llinos Medi
You mentioned one example of the impact on a Government decision. Have any other decisions come from young people?
Sarah Crawley
Baby bundles. Although it is postcode related in deprivation, and it is through the Flying Start programme, on average it costs about £500-plus for parents to bring their baby home from hospital and have just the items that they need to ensure that baby is safe, well and supported. We have influenced that through work with families and the Bevan Foundation, as I referenced previously, and we now have baby bundles being implemented within Wales, which is fantastic. Again, it is a start for families bringing their children home. There are particular cases where parents are incredibly anxious about bringing their child home. We have assisted with parenting skills through our Parent Factor programme, and we have the Baby and Me service, where we support families to try to stay together through changes in their parenting ability. That is actually preventing children from being removed, going into care and actually costing an awful lot more money and having poorer life chances. We are always trying to ensure that we can maximise the opportunities for families to stay safely together. Baby bundles are just one small part of that, but they are also reducing and removing stress and anxiety at a very difficult time—a stressful time—for families.
Laurie Ryall
I am mindful of time but let me give one example. We have developed a young carer ID card and app for our young carers in north Wales. That came from young people telling us it is really difficult when they are having a difficult morning with caring responsibilities. They do not always want to tell people what has happened. We have developed an app that links directly into the school so they can contact the school and say, “We are having a bad morning.” That change has made a real difference to the lives of young carers—that communication. We have also worked with young people around our Jay review, which is around the criminal exploitation of children. Young people’s voices were instrumental in that inquiry, and obviously there have been some changes as a result of the Crime and Policing Act as well.
Ben Lake
I think we have discussed quite a bit the inadequacies of the data available to us. My final question is this: do you believe, from the evidence and the data that we currently have, that we have a reliable and effective picture of the situation facing people in poverty in Wales at all? Is it the case that we have a firmer grasp of the levels of poverty in rural areas versus urban areas, or are there deficiencies across the board?
Mabli Jones
I do not want to repeat the points that have been made about the quality of some of that data and how it has actually reduced over time. It would be good to improve that data and improve some of the sample sizes in Wales, particularly to allow us to go a bit more in depth for different groups, who is more likely to experience poverty and what that looks like for them. However, in general, that should not be seen as a barrier to putting policies in place now, because we do know enough about some of the larger groups that are most likely to be impacted by child poverty. That is going back to the larger families—those with three or more children—and particularly households with a child under five in the household. There is a very clear link with the likelihood of the children in that household living in poverty, and current policies are not designed to support families with younger children. There is a clear gap there where the data is showing something, but the policies are not responding to it.
Ben Lake
Thank you.
David Chadwick
Are there any specific gaps that you would recommend are addressed as a priority?
Mabli Jones
Families subject to no recourse to public funds is an obvious gap that has been referenced already. We also do not tend to be able to do demographic breakdowns of ethnicity in Wales due to the sample sizes that we have. However, the evidence there is shows that there is a higher risk for households from ethnic minorities to be living in poverty. There are definitely gaps there that could be addressed.
Laurie Ryall
We need to better understand the impact of some of the measures that are already in place. For example, we have Healthy Start vouchers, and we know that there is a good take-up of them and that they are having an impact, but what does that mean longer term? What impact are they having? Do they improve the lives of families in the longer term?
Tom Wernham
It is a very big picture. We can get big-picture ideas of which groups are struggling by looking over a long time period, combining data and thinking about commonalities with the rest of the UK. Really, the gap is because we have small sample sizes, and trying to measure how Wales is diverging and how that is being affected by policies starts to become a bit of a hopeless task. Even though we have some big picture facts we are confident about, trying to precisely measure how things are changing in Wales for different groups becomes very difficult with the data landscape as it is at the moment.
Chair
To finish, we have talked a lot about data today, and a lot of our inquiries seem to find that data is poor across the board. I wonder, though, if we could end on a positive note. Is there anything, with the data that is out there at the moment, that has enabled you, in your organisations or your knowledge, to make sure there is a more effective policy design or delivery? Is there anything you can think of? Mabli, you are nodding.
Mabli Jones
Following on from my previous point about the link between having a child under five in the household and the risk of child poverty, and the work we did with Barnardo’s on that, I think that has helped us advocate for new policies around increasing access to funded childcare, a child payment for the youngest children, and more support targeted at those families. That is an example from us.
Chair
Thank you, Mabli. If no one has anything else to add, I will bring this session to a close. Thank you very much for your time this afternoon. You have given us some in-depth answers, and I am sure we will be using those answers to build on as we go forward in our inquiry into child poverty in Wales and how we can mitigate against it. Thank you all very much.