Carl
Sargeant’s
appointment
was part of a
wider reshuffle
of personnel and
responsibilities
within the Welsh
Government
that saw former housing minister
Huw Lewis become minister for
communities and tackling poverty.
Lesley Griffiths became the new
minister for local government and
government business. Mark Drakeford
joined the Cabinet as minister for health
with Gwenda Thomas remaining as
deputy minister for social services.
Responsibility for children and families
moved to Huw Lewis’s new portfolio.
This will focus on protecting families and
communities and encompass the Tackling
Poverty Action Plan, Communities First,
equalities, children, welfare reform and the
voluntary sector as well as an overarching
responsibility for sustainable development.
In an interview with The Guardian,
Huw Lewis explained that the
Government felt that the impact of
austerity and welfare reform meant that
poverty could no longer be a specialist
programme attached to a junior minister.
The UK’s first-ever poverty
minister said he was already seeing
the consequences of the bedroom
tax in his Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney
constituency. ‘This is just beginning to
hit people as a reality now. Over the
next six months, particularly in the runup
to Christmas, when people are really
beginning to feel the pinch in terms of
their family finances and so on, we will
begin to see an unravelling of people’s
ability to cope. I don’t think communities
have seen anything quite like this since
the poll tax.’
The plan is to co-ordinate spending
across departments and remove policy
silos so that tackling poverty is central,
whether in education, health or local
government. Public expenditure will
be biased towards the people and
communities worst affected by austerity.
One of the first results of that seems to
be greater support for advice agencies,
credit unions and the voluntary sector.
‘I’m not going to see Welsh advice
agencies fall off a cliff in a way that they
may do in England,’ the minister told The
Guardian.