Firstly, I’d just like to welcome your emphasis on the importance of the north and south Wales metro in ensuring that isolated communities are able to take up the job and training opportunities and that if they’re not connected, they simply can’t get there. So, I look forward also to your Better Jobs, Closer to Home project, because I know that in many isolated communities, there’s an in-built resistance to going too far afield.

I very much appreciate your commitment to tackling the messages we get from the analysis of adverse childhood experiences and the long-standing damage that it does to children. We have to bear in mind that the two most common adverse child experiences are verbal abuse and parental separation. Obviously, the root cause of this is often that people have children before they become adults themselves. So, there’s obviously some work to be done there to ensure that people understand just how difficult, challenging and lifelong it is to have a baby.

But I want to pick up on something—. Whilst I agree with John Griffiths and Simon Thomas about the importance of having all our schools being community focused, like Llanedeyrn Primary School in my constituency, as well as Pembroke Dock, this misses the point, which is, if we look at the EPPI-Centre evidence, which is the biggest longitudinal study that’s ever been done on childhood outcomes, we know that the die is cast by the time the child is two. So, we cannot rely on schools to meet this need. Therefore, I’d like to know a bit more about what can be done. We know that the most effective way of breaking that link is integrated, high-quality childcare.

I know that your emphasis in your department is on delivering the free childcare for three and four-year-olds of working parents. We do have a particular job here, which is partly being done by Flying Start but only within certain postcodes, and that is to ensure that we both meet the needs of those children and are delivering that parental support and family education. So, I’d like to know a little bit more about the community learning centres, and these child zones for Wales, as to how we can start to ensure that the very poorest children who are most at risk of adverse childhood experiences are getting that high-quality childcare to help them get that best start in life that we expect for all our children.