General election 2019: Claims about Wales fact-checked
- Published
Plaid Cymru leader Adam Price said Westminster policies had failed Wales, at the launch of his party's general election campaign.
He made a series of claims about problems in Wales, some of which can be checked.
"There is so much in Wales, isn't there, that needs fixing," he said.
"Child poverty is rising, life expectancy is falling... homelessness is at crisis proportions."
He is right on child poverty - the official government figures, external estimate that child poverty in Wales has gone up.
Child poverty in this case is defined as coming from a household that has income below 60% of median income (that's the one you get if you ranked every household in the country in order of income and take the middle one) after housing costs.
It estimates that 29% of children in Wales were in poverty in 2017-18, a rise of one percentage point compared with the year before, although it had been at higher levels for most of the previous decade.
The corresponding figure for England was 31% (reflecting higher housing costs) up from 30% a year earlier.
Mr Price is also right to say that life expectancy in Wales fell, according to the most recent figures from the Office for National Statistics, external.
Life expectancy at birth for males was 78.3 in 2015-17, compared with 78.4 in the previous year's figures.
For females it was 82.2, down from 82.3. The corresponding figures for England were 79.6 for males (a small increase) and 83.1 for females (unchanged).
When it comes to homelessness, the latest statistics from the Welsh government, external estimate that there were 2,631 households that were unintentionally homeless and in priority need in 2018-19, up from 2,229 in 2017-18 and 2,073 in 2016-17.
- Published4 May 2019
