Poverty is number of priority for Islwyn AM Rhianon Passmore

AS A member of Caerphilly County Borough Council for around 15 years Rhianon Passmore is a familiar face to the people of Islwyn.

So it was little surprise when she was voted in as the area’s AM last May, winning more than twice as many votes as her nearest competitor, Ukip’s Joe Smyth, after her predecessor Gwyn Price decided not to run for a second term.

But, hearing about her background, a seat in the Senedd seems the obvious progression for the mother-of-four, who went to Newbridge Comprehensive and has never strayed far from her home.

“I’ve always been involved in the political scene,” she said.

“My parents were very much involved in the miners’ strike as friends of ours were miners.

“The first time I got involved in what you would call polticis was on that scene.

“I attended a lot of the miners’ strikes rallies with (National Union of Mineworkers president) Arthur Scargill and I sold my duck eggs because there were people who were literally going hungry.”

Later she became involved in the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp, which protested against nuclear weapons being based in Berkshire and gained an even greater understanding of where she stood on the political scale.

“I spent a lot of time listening to Neil and Glenys Kinnock who were involved in the peace movement at the time and we did a lot of work there,” she said.

“I watched my mother being arrested before my eyes.

“Those things tend to galvanise you and make you look at the world differently.”

As a young adult Ms Passmore was instrumental in setting up a number of tenants’ and residents’ associations in Wales, including at the Ty-Sign housing estate in Risca.

Now, with a seat in Carwyn Jones’ elected Labour group, she said she wanted to do anything she can to tackle poverty both in Islwyn and across Wales.

“The biggest issue for the people I see in this office on a regular basis is poverty,” she said.

“It is paying your bills, it is having a decent standard of living, it is employment rights, it is security at work, it is economic viability.

“Many, many, many people are suffering through a whole tranche of a tsunami of things which are being forced on them at the moment which is increasing poor mental health, which is increasing workload on our hospitals, which is increasing people’s unhappiness.

“You cannot have a society when you are having people working as hard as Steve Jobs on four part-time zero hour contracts when they don’t know if they’re going to have to go at work at 12 o’clock at night.

“This is not a happy society if that is where we are moving toward.”

She added: “If we want a healthy society that has less crime we need less inequality

“And that’s why I’m in politics.”

Ms Passmore added she was particularly concerned people who were in work yet still not earning enough to make ends meet, calling the issue “highly frustrating”.

“In my constituency we know we have a high proportion of benefit recipients, 70 per cent of them who are in work,” she said.

“That is why I get very, very cross when we have this ‘scrounger’ debate which is solidified and cemented itself.

“Yes, there will be the odd few, but the vast majority of people on benefits are in work.”

But she said she believed one of the key ways the fortunes of Iswlyn and the surrounding area would be improved would be to move forward with the proposed m4 relief road, which she called “a no-brainer”, and the South Wales Metro.

On the M4 she said: “We’ve been talking about this for a generation and a half.

“We need to have access to England which is effective.”

Although she conceded there was opposition to the scheme from environmental groups and other organisations, Ms Passmore said she believed the benefits outweighed the potential negatives.

“One thing I’ve learned is you always have to make imperfect decisions,” she said. “There is never a perfect decision.

“It’s about weighing up all those aspects and working out the best way forward.

“There will always we those who are unhappy but it’s about getting the most appropriate decision made for the vast majority of people.”

She added she believed the Metro, which would involve a network of buses, trams and trains connecting the region,

“If we don’t open up our Valley communities and we don’t get an integrated transport system we are not going to get economic benefit, and this is one of the main reasons we are having depopulation,” she said.

She added she believed the Cwmcarn Forest Drive, which has been closed since 2015 for a two-year tree felling project but is hoped will partially re-open later this year, would particularly benefit from the scheme.

“To me that is an absolute exemplar of a project that will fit in with an integrated transport network, which has already got an international visitor base and, quite frankly, could be a huge economic driver if it’s working with tourism, with the colleges or in combination with, perhaps, a Celtic Manor-style hotel.

“We have so much in the Valleys we do not celebrate in terms of how beautiful they are and we have people who would be absolutely delighted to work in tourism if there is a go-to venue for us.”

Looking forward, Ms Passmore said she hoped she could make the best of her time in the Senedd.

“If I could achieve one thing it would be to be well used by the Islwyn constituency in terms of them coming to me with their issues,” she said.

“It would also be to try and affect policy within the Assembly.

“By the time I finish my political career I would like to have inputted policy-wise in terms of narrowing the gap of inequality in the constituency I serve.

“That to me would be a reason for being in politics.”