§ Mr. Llew SmithTo ask the Secretary of State for Wales what is his latest assessment of the causes of changes in the level of poverty in Wales since 1979; and what steps he has taken to alleviate it. [5987]
§ Mr. HagueRecent work from the Institute for Fiscal Studies and Essex university has shown that the poor are not a constant group and that people tend to move into and out of poverty over time. Recent Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development research strongly suggests that people's earnings mobility, the extent to which, at different stages in their careers, people move into higher or lower income bands is very high; over a five-year period, about half of all workers move into higher or lower brackets.
The single main cause of poverty is not having a job. Unemployment in Wales is falling fast—for the past six months, at an average of 1,000 a month.