This week, I called on the Welsh Government to redouble their efforts to persuade their Labour colleague, Chancellor Rachel Reeves, to lift the cruel two-child benefit cap ahead of the UK budget next month.

Every constituency across the UK is home to children who are affected by the two-child limit: in Monmouthshire, twenty five per cent are affected. This is a horrendously high figure.

My Plaid Cymru colleagues and I used a debate in the Senedd to highlight our poverty reduction plan, which centres on the creation of Cynnal, a child payment for Wales.

I am pleased that organisations like the children’s charity Barnardo's Cymru have called for a scheme of this nature, as has the Children's Commissioner for Wales.

It was disappointing, indeed, that all parties in the Senedd chamber representing Reform, Labour and the Conservatives voted against this measure earlier this month.

Because poverty is a political choice. Labour could have taken greater action to tackle increasing levels of child poverty – but instead, they have chosen to scrap their targets to eradicate it, and have carried on supporting a UK Government that keeps the unfair two-child cap.

The Scottish Government, conversely, have used the levers available to them to tackle child poverty, such as by introducing the Scottish Child Payment. It is no coincidence, surely, that Scotland is now the only place in the UK where child poverty has fallen.

That’s why I have urged the Labour Cabinet Secretaries to support Plaid Cymru’s calls to implement our own, Welsh, child payment, and to re-commit to eradicating child poverty with measurable statutory targets.

Cynnal, Plaid Cymru’s direct child payment, would be transformational in tackling child poverty to sustain families and support communities. Doing nothing isn’t an option. We know what works, and we’re ready to start the work to give children the chance to grow, learn, play, explore and dream without poverty holding them back.