Thank you. I think, when you last held this portfolio, I held the shadow portfolio, and I’m still spokesperson for my party on this issue. Can I start by giving credit to people who aren’t here: Jocelyn Davies, who led on this for Plaid Cymru in the last Assembly, and Peter Black, for the Liberal Democrats, who worked with me to strengthen the Bill with the Minister, particularly at the end? Those of you who were here will remember in those last weeks, particularly the last week, how tense matters became, because we as members of the committee that scrutinised it at Stage 1 had said the Minister should amend the Bill to make provision for compulsory whole-school age-appropriate education programmes on healthy relationships, and we still hadn’t achieved that at Stage 3. The Minister came forward with some concessions that enabled the Bill to go through with unanimous support at Stage 4.

Today, you referred to the whole-education approach, the good practice guide, the national education conference, and statutory guidance on education to make local authorities designate a member of staff for the purpose of championing violence against women, domestic abuse and sexual violence matters in schools and other settings. At Stage 3 and 4 the Minister had said the statutory guidance then would provide or include provisions for approaches such as how schools can drive forward a whole-school approach by appointing a staff, pupil and governor champion, and it therefore doesn’t require them. Can you therefore confirm that this will make local authorities introduce that staff champion? But also, could you perhaps respond or develop the omission here in terms of children and governors, who your predecessor had also referred to in this context?

You referred to developing a package of best practice for use in education settings across Wales. The Minister at Stage 4, and I quote, said:

‘Mark Isherwood asked specifically about how we keep up to date on the curriculum and the implementation of the Donaldson review,’ and you propose that healthy relationship education is developed within the curriculum followed by all schools. Your predecessor said

‘that is certainly something I will want to be reporting on’.

So, I wonder if you could add comments in the context of the Donaldson review recommendations.

You say that, for the future, we know a big part of tackling violence against women will be to tackle perpetrators, and that we’re working with the National Probation Service and the national adviser on guidance on perpetrators. Well, again at Stage 4, the previous Minister said:

‘I can also give Mark Isherwood an undertaking, given his continued pressure throughout this process on the importance of perpetrator programmes, that, of course, we will be reporting on those as well, where they operate, bearing in mind that the research in this area is still being developed and we need to ensure that we are putting in place programmes that actually work.’

In my contributions I’ve referred, for example, to the work of Relate Cymru and their voluntary perpetrator programme, which found that 90 per cent of the partners they questioned, sometimes after the end of the programme, said that there has been a complete stop in violence and intimidation by their partner. I’ve also referred to the knowledge and expertise of an organisation you also hold close to your heart, the domestic abuse safety unit on Deeside. I wonder if you can comment on whether or how you could extend your work with this to organisations like that, so you may access the front-line expertise that they and their partner organisations already have.

The Stage 1 committee report in the last Assembly recommended that the legislation should ensure that services are tailored to the specific needs of men and women respectively. I quoted then from the domestic abuse safety unit of Flintshire, who’d given me a booklet, a men’s health forum booklet, which said that it’s important to recognise that men experience domestic violence both as victims and perpetrators, and I referred to the Barnardo’s ‘Hidden in Plain Sight’ report on the sexual exploitation of boys and young men. They said this begins to address the gap created by the focus on female victims with little attention given to males. Well, there was a call for gender-specific approaches for women, yes, absolutely, but also for men.

At Stage 4 I said I’d be looking to see how the Minister developed his pledges in this respect. Could you comment on the pledges your predecessor made in this respect, and how you might be looking at this in the future?

My final point: at that stage I also identified concern that the name change from ‘ministerial’ to ‘national’ adviser was apparently just that—a name change. The Minister previously acknowledged what he referred to as inconsistencies within the Bill created by the name change and stated his intention to clarify these. Again, could you confirm whether you have or how you will be addressing those inconsistencies? Thank you.