The following amendments have been selected: amendments 1 and 2 in the name of Rhun ap Iorwerth.

We move on to the next item on our agenda, which is a debate on the Children’s Commissioner for Wales’s annual report. I call on Carl Sargeant, the Cabinet Secretary for Communities and Children, to move the motion.

Motion NDM6136 Jane Hutt

To propose the National Assembly for Wales:

Notes the Children's Commissioner for Wales' Annual Report 2015-16.

Motion moved.

Thank you, Deputy Llywydd. I welcome the opportunity to open the debate on the Children’s Commissioner for Wales’s annual report 2015-16. This report underlines the importance of the commissioner’s role in championing the rights of children and young people in Wales. It reflects her first full year in post and sets out many achievements. It also demonstrates her clear independence of both the Welsh Government and the Assembly. That independence is underpinned by the separation of the Government’s responsibility for the commissioner from the Assembly’s ability to hold her to account. We will, therefore, be opposing Plaid Cymru’s amendment 2, which would combine responsibility and accountability in the hands of the Assembly.

The Presiding Officer took the Chair.

The report is an important contribution to continuing dialogue between the commissioner, Welsh Government and the Assembly, all those working with children, parents and, of course, children themselves. Llywydd, we will publish a considered Welsh Government response to the report at the end of the month, and I expect that we will welcome and accept some of the recommendations, like those on promoting positive mental health for children and strengthening the provision of statutory advocacy. Others will require more thought and discussion with a wide range of stakeholders in order to identify the best way forward in the interests of children.

Today, we are asking the Assembly to note the report in order to start the process of wider engagement with the recommendations, and we will be opposing Plaid Cymru’s amendment 1, not because we oppose particular recommendations, but because it would be wrong to pre-empt the wider debate required. This has been a year of change and opportunity for both the commissioner and the Government and, in May, we reported on the implementation of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child. They praised Wales specifically for introducing a new domestic abuse offence, taking measures to address child sexual exploitation and abuse, and introducing a statutory defence for all potential victims of child trafficking and legislating for play.

Despite challenging economic circumstances, we have made significant progress in educational reform, with the development of childcare and early-years provision, making play opportunities available, tackling hate crime and discrimination, and improving health and social care services. ‘Taking Wales Forward’ sets out our programme to drive improvement in the Welsh economy and public services, delivering a Wales that is prosperous, secure, healthy and active, ambitious and learning, united and connected. Its aim is to make a difference for everybody, at every stage in their lives, including children and young people.

Llywydd, turning to some specific issues, both the commissioner’s report and the UN committee highlighted the issue of mental ill health, stressing the need to improve child and adolescent mental health services, for greater support in schools and better service collaboration. We take this persistent problem for children and young people very seriously. Our 10-year ‘Together for Mental Health’ delivery plan includes a plan to support all children and young people to be more resilient and better able to cope with the absence of mental well-being, when necessary. The curriculum reform process is a key aspect of how we’ll deliver this. The Together for Children and Young People programme and our CAMHS investment of almost £8 million are complementary and are progressing in parallel. Engaging young people in every aspect of the programme’s work is critical.

Additional learning needs are highlighted also in the report. It is a priority for this Government and an area where important engagement continues between us and the commissioner’s office. We are grateful for the commissioner’s response to our consultation on the draft Bill and for the involvement of her office in the development of reforms more generally, especially through the code content development group. The Minister for Lifelong Learning and Welsh Language expects to introduce the Bill in the Assembly before Christmas recess. The proposed legislative changes are just one part of a much wider additional learning needs transformational programme. The change in the law is not the end point: it’s the beginning of a transformational process of learning.

The commissioner also raised concerns about children who are under the radar of the universal services in health and education. We have revisited and strengthened our elective home education guidance and this will be published in the next coming weeks. We will need to consider and consult carefully on whether to move beyond that, but I want to be clear that our careful approach is about ensuring the best practical safeguards for all children. I recognise that early intervention is key to long-term health and well-being and I’ve outlined my priorities about tackling adverse childhood experiences and building resilient communities, and I think these align with many of the issues that concern the commissioner.

I want to ensure that our policies tackle the underlying problems that can lead to adverse childhood experiences and have long life effects. Over the next coming months we will look afresh at how this Government can support resilient communities, which can offer children the best start in life. I’m confident, Llywydd, that this Government is working to make children’s rights a reality in every part of Wales and I’d like to thank the commissioner and her office for this annual report. We will give the recommendations detailed consideration and encourage the widest possible public debate so that we can ensure the best outcomes for children and young people in Wales. I look forward today to listening to this debate.

I have selected the two amendments to the motion and I call on Llyr Gruffydd to move amendments 1 and 2, tabled in the name of Rhun ap Iorwerth.

Amendment 1—Rhun ap Iorwerth

Add as new point to end of motion:

Calls on the Welsh Government to resolve to implement the report's recommendations, and in particular those relating to:

a) improving children's experiences of mental health care;

b) introducing a national approach to statutory advocacy as a matter of priority;and

c) strengthening the registration requirements of elective home education.

Amendment 2—Rhun ap Iorwerth

Add as new point at end of motion:

Calls for responsibility for the Children's Commissioner for Wales to be transferred to the National Assembly for Wales.

Amendments 1 and 2 moved.

Thank you very much, Llywydd. I move amendments 1 and 2 in the name of Plaid Cymru. I want to start by congratulating the children’s commissioner, not only on the annual report, but for her work over the past year. I know, of course, that that work is based on firm foundations following the ‘What Next?’ consultation—the biggest consultation ever with children and young people, carried out by the commissioner’s office, with over 7,000 children and young people responding. That was a firm foundation for identifying priorities, planning a programme of work and, of course, driving some of these recommendations contained in the report forward.

The first amendment is tabled quite simply not because I’m not happy to note the children’s commissioner’s annual report—of course I’m happy to do that—but I just don’t think that noting the report is enough. It doesn’t seem to do justice to the recommendations contained within the report. I believe that it would be beneficial for us to send a stronger message to reflect how determined we are to tackle the issues that have been highlighted in this report.

Therefore, in addition to noting the report, as the first amendment suggests, I would say that we should decide to take action on those recommendations. It’s a clear statement of support, a vote of confidence in the children’s commissioner and a statement that we are standing shoulder to shoulder with her and with children and young people in Wales, by not just acknowledging problems but to be more purposeful in placing more emphasis on tackling those problems. But I do hear the Cabinet Secretary’s comments that the Government will respond, but I just think that the message from this place this afternoon would be much stronger if we were to accept the amendment.

Of course, we do welcome the ambitious new targets for child and adolescent mental health services, but, as the commissioner states, it is a very inconsistent picture across Wales. Some services have reduced waiting times very significantly. Betsi Cadwaladr University Local Health Board in north Wales is one of them, going down from 550 waiting to 82 young people waiting. It’s the most dramatic fall that we’ve seen in Wales perhaps. But then we look at the figures in somewhere such as Abertawe Bro Morgannwg, and we see an increase in the numbers waiting, up to 630 children and young people waiting to be seen by CAMHS services—over 200 of them waiting longer than 14 weeks. Those figures are very different to the figures for adult mental health services, where the numbers waiting are far lower in all health boards. So, progress has been slow in some areas and has been inconsistent across Wales, and I do feel that we need a stronger statement of intent to tackle those problems.

The importance of advocacy, of course, and ensuring that children in receipt of care have access to independent advocacy is particularly important, particularly after the Waterhouse inquiry found that those who had been physically and sexually abused over a period of decades in north Wales care homes weren’t believed. Nobody listened to them, to all intents and purposes. The previous children’s commissioner mentioned his frustration at the slow pace of response to recommendations that he made for independent advocacy in ‘Missing Voices’ and in the report that followed that, ‘Missing Voices: Missing Progress’. The need to implement a national approach to statutory advocacy for children and young people is now the subject of an inquiry by the Children, Young People and Education Committee here in the Assembly. We are still awaiting confirmation as to whether local authorities and the Welsh Government will implement a national model for statutory advocacy services in accordance with the Social Services and Well-being (Wales) Act 2014.

Finally, and this is an issue that I have raised with the First Minister previously, there is no legal requirement for parents to register with the local authority if they educate their children at home, and neither is there any requirement on local authorities to monitor or to inspect the home teaching provision. That isn’t acceptable, in my view. In her report, the commissioner raises the issue in the context of the death of Dylan Seabridge. He was home educated and he had no contact with public services during the seven years prior to his death. I understand the concern among a number of people that there is risk of us tarring everyone with the same brush in trying to tackle that risk, but whilst there is an element of risk to one child in Wales, then I don’t think that it’s an overreaction for us to go further than what we have seen happening in the past. It’s not acceptable, in my view, that the current situation should persist. We need to tackle this issue as a matter of urgency.

The second amendment, of course, refers to the need to transfer responsibility for the children’s commissioner from the Government to the National Assembly. This is an issue that has been aired in this context and in the context of other commissioners in the past. I do believe that the arguments as they were put forward then are just as valid today, and I also believe that it would be desirable for the Assembly to support that amendment. That, of course, is also the view of the commissioner herself, and we shouldn’t forget that within this debate.

Thank you, Minister, for bringing this debate forward today in Government time. I think it’s always very useful for us as a National Assembly to reflect on the annual report of the children’s commissioner, and the excellent work that she and her team do across the whole of Wales. I want to put on record my thanks to her for making regular visits to north Wales, including to places in my constituency, to engage with children and young people there.

I think it is important that we reflect on the many recommendations in the commissioner’s report, and I’m pleased that Plaid Cymru have drawn attention to a number of them in the amendments that they have tabled. I support wholeheartedly their calls for a greater focus from the Government on dealing with some of the appalling waiting times for access to mental healthcare for children and young people in Wales. We’re halfway through a programme that is supposed to address these excessive waiting times, and yet those waiting times are exactly the same at the moment as they were at the start of that programme. There have been some changes in some parts of the country but, unfortunately, they’re stubbornly too long. Frankly, it’s not good enough that we’re treating our children and young people as second-class citizens when it comes to accessing some of these very important services. I benefit in my constituency from having a flagship CAMHS unit in Abergele, alongside the hospital there, and it is a great tragedy to me that that unit is not full—not all of the beds are in use—and yet local young people from north Wales are being sent out of the country in order to access services many miles away from their support network. So, there neds to be a greater focus on addressing some of those things, and I’m pleased that Plaid Cymru have brought that amendment forward.

I also note, of course, the conversation that has been going on around the death of Dylan Seabridge, and note the Government’s response to that earlier in the year and, indeed, the comments that the Cabinet Secretary has made today about the way in which he is approaching taking forward some of the learning from that very, very tragic case. I think that the Government is taking the right approach here in terms of cautiously moving forward without leaping to a conclusion that there needs to be compulsory registration of home-educated children. The Cabinet Secretary no doubt will be familiar with the facts that home-educated children are twice as likely as schoolchildren or under-fives to be investigated by social services, yet half as likely to be placed on a child protection plan. So, it’s a clear indication that there appears to be less of a risk associated with home-educated children, and not a greater risk, which is what Plaid Cymru seem to be asserting. So, let’s not have a knee-jerk approach. I think that the cautious approach that the Government is taking is the right one, and on that particular issue, it’s not something that I agree with in terms of one of the recommendations that have actually been made by the children’s commissioner.

We know as well, of course, that, particularly in Dylan Seabridge’s case, this family were known to statutory authorities; they were known to the professionals in different organisations, and a whistleblower did contact the local authority to express concerns about the family, and these things did not trigger, in my view, the appropriate responses from the authorities. So, we don’t know what the outcome would’ve been had things been handled differently, but I suspect very much that simply having a compulsory register would not have made that much of a difference.

I too share Plaid Cymru’s aspiration, though, regarding the need to ensure that there is accountability to this National Assembly for the children’s commissioner. We have a number of commissioner posts now here in Wales, in addition to other corporations sole, such as the Auditor General for Wales, and all of the ways in which they are appointed are inconsistent. That cannot be right. We need to have more consistency about these sorts of roles, and therefore, I would welcome the Government taking a different approach to the appointment of the children’s commissioner. I know from previous conversations with the Government that there is an appetite to have more consistency, but for some reason, nobody appears to be actually moving forward with making any changes. So, we will be supporting the amendment 2 that’s been tabled by Plaid Cymru on that matter.

But it is important that we’re having this conversation. I’m grateful to the children’s commissioner for the work that she does. There are lots of recommendations in this document. I’ve highlighted just a few that we’ve got the time to discuss this afternoon, but I very much hope that her powers also, as part of any review, will be extended, so that she’s got bigger teeth to bite people with if necessary.

I wanted to pick up on two things that are in the report and one that is not. First, I would also like to hear from the Minister about the children who are at risk when they’re being home educated, simply because they’re not being seen regularly by other services. As the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child observes, they do need to be seen by a professional at least annually, so they can express a view about their educational experiences, apart from anything else. So, I would press the Minister for a response on that particular point.

One of the most important things that is raised in the annual report is around the rights of children to be able to walk or cycle to school safely. I’m glad to see that she’s done this school journeys report with Sustrans. The message from the children is absolutely clear: they enjoy walking, scooting or cycling to school, and nearly half of them do that, but there is a core number of children who are still travelling to school by car—43 per cent—and that is pretty damaging for their health, as well as for the environment. So, I would like to see much more focus by the Government on ensuring that we actually implement the active travel Act, because it does oblige local authorities to ask everyone in the area about making better routes for travelling by bike or on foot. So, I would like to see local authorities asking every school to be involved in making an active travel plan for that school, so that children have the information they need, parents have the information they need, and we can be actively promoting this as the best way of travelling to school, so that they’re ready to learn. I think that large sums of money are taken by local authorities in parking fees, certainly by my local authority, and I want to see more of it spent upon active travel.

The thing that is not in the report, and I’m very surprised it’s not in the report, is a reflection of the obesity levels amongst children in Wales. We are the most obese or overweight nation in the UK, and also in Europe. So, we really need to worry about this, and I’m very surprised that it is not reflected in the children’s commissioner’s recommendations. We’ve got 26 per cent of four- and five-year-olds arriving in school overweight or obese, compared with 21 per cent in England. I mean, that is bad as well, but the point is that we are doing even worse than other nations of the UK, and we really need to give a lot more focus to this.

Children have a right to be fed normal food, and I find it absolutely despairing to see people feeding sugary drinks in bottles to babies. We need to know that we are really addressing this matter. I know the extended health checks need to pick this up, but really it needs picking up at the very early stages, i.e. at the beginning of the pregnancy and in the first 12 months of the child’s life. I think we also need to adopt the example of St Ninians Primary School in Stirling, where each child in this primary school runs a daily mile. The teachers take their pupils out of lessons onto a specially built circuit around the school for a daily mile whenever it best suits the timetable for that particular class. It’s been going for over four years and there isn’t a single child in that school who is overweight. Why are we not doing this now? Because it doesn’t require extra resources; we might need some modification of the school playground, but really this is not a lot of money, and we really do need action on this matter. I hope that the children’s commissioner will give more emphasis to this important matter. Children have a right to grow up healthy, and that includes healthy food and healthy exercise.

I fully support the vision for Wales that Sally Holland, the new Children’s Commissioner for Wales, has, where she states that all children and young people should have an equal chance to be the best they can be. We all want that for children and young people in Wales and the rest of the UK. At the minute, it’s too early to give a view on whether the post itself and attendant costs are beneficial to children and young people in Wales. Only time will tell. However, the most telling response will be that of the children of Wales themselves and their feedback.

I just wanted to point out one element of the report that is close to my heart, which is page 37 and the piece on school closure consultation. Pupils, via their school council, wrote to the commissioner complaining about their dissatisfaction with the consultation process run by the local authority in relation to school closure proposals. The children felt that the consultation process was poorly run, and they didn’t feel that their voices had been heard. It seems, from reading the report, that the school was still closed anyway, and that the most the pupils got from this was that their voices were heard as regards transition arrangements to their new school. The question I would like to know the answer to is this: whether this means that local authorities, the majority of whom are Labour in Wales, just don’t listen to people and children in their home areas. Are the Welsh Government conceding here that pupils only get their voices heard via a children’s commissioner? It’s a very poor show if that’s the case.

I also welcome this report and congratulate Sally Holland on it. I also particularly welcome the consultation that has taken place, ‘Beth Nesa’, because it is, as Llyr Gruffydd said, a solid base for her to base her recommendations on. Six-thousand children took part in that consultation, aged three to 18, to try to find out what were the main concerns of children in Wales—what’s the state of children in Wales. I’m very pleased that the commissioner says in her report that the voices that she listened to were not just the voices that perhaps we’d be more likely to hear, but the voices of those children who are seldom heard. She listed homeless children, care leavers, and Gypsy and Traveller children. Of course, I thought it was particularly good that there were 758 responses from under-sevens, because I know our emphasis in this Assembly is trying to reach children as young as possible and I think to reach those children under seven is a great achievement, because I think we do need to consult with children at a very early age and to get information from them about how they feel about their surrounding lives. One of the interesting things that’s not surprising is that, the youngest children consulted, one of the things they wanted was more places to play, because I think we all know how vitally important play is, and, of course, the Welsh Government has been praised for the fact that it has legislated for play. In 1926, David Lloyd George said:

'The right to play is the child's first claim on the community. Play is nature's training for life. No community can infringe that right without doing enduring harm to the minds and bodies of its citizens.'

I really believe we should be making use of every opportunity we have to create the opportunities for play for our children. So, I think it’s really important that we look at the environment, particularly the built environment, to ensure it reflects the needs of our children.

Looking at the survey that the children’s commissioner sent out, the survey asked children to pick up to three favourite places to play from a list of nine places. It’s interesting that 61 per cent of them chose the swimming pool as one of the three favourite places to play, and the other two most popular were parks and beaches. Very few children actually chose the street as one of their favourite places to play. I think that does reflect how society has basically changed, and children aren’t able to go outside their door and play. Obviously, we know that is because of the build-up of traffic, and I think that this is something that we should actually be taking a lot more action on, creating safe places to play. I know that there are such things as play streets and street play games, street play initiatives. But, in order to get children to naturally play as part of their everyday lives, I think that we should be taking a lot more initiatives along those lines. I’d wondered if there was anything the Government could think to do to prompt more street closures, creating safer spaces.

I personally think there should be more places in the city centre for children to play. I think it’s very important in an urban environment, and it is important that we get the feedback from children on the places that we do have and what they mean to them. One of the great joys, I think, of this job is meeting school councils when they come into this building and we hear from them, first hand, exactly what their views are, because consultation with children and giving them a chance to have their say I think does really make them realise that they can decide things and they can change things.

I think they have been able to do that through the works of the children’s commissioner, because I’m sure people will remember, for many years, there were huge complaints via the children’s commissioner’s reports about school toilets. Now, the school toilets I’ve visited now are much improved; they’re much better. I don’t know if that is reflected by other Members, but, now, I think we need to move on to the provision of public toilets that are suitable for children to use and that are easily available, because I think that is a situation that is getting worse by the day. I think it’s very important that public toilets are available and that libraries have public toilets available, because that doesn’t happen in all libraries.

I’d just like to finish with a really great example of where children have been consulted in my constituency. We’ve a group there called ‘Awen at the Library’. It’s been set up to support the arts and develop the library for wider use in the community, and it recently held a competition for children to draw their ideal library. I think seeing those drawings was so stimulating and so interesting. Linking back to the consultation, it‘s really interesting to see that, a lot of the children—the majority—actually had swimming pools in the libraries. They had rooms where they could go and sit quietly, they had soda fountains—they seem to want to bring all the pleasures of their life into the libraries. I thought that was a very interesting reflection of how important the libraries were for them and how they wanted them extended. Thank you very much.

Firstly, can I join everybody else in thanking the Children’s Commissioner for Wales and her staff for presenting us with such a comprehensive report? Again, like others, she should be applauded, I think, for the wide-scale consultation undertaken by her and her staff, having met with the thousands of children, parents and professionals that she did.

The report does cover several significant areas, and others have really dealt with that, so I just want to cover two, if I may. Firstly, the evidence in the report of a level of concern over the current regime for supporting children and young people with additional learning needs is something that has certainly been raised with me by parents of children with special educational needs, who tell me about their struggle to get the right support for their child. And, in Wales, we've seen a rise of over 6,000 in the number of children with SENs since 2011, and, in Merthyr alone, there are 2,500 SEN children, nearly 200 of whom have statements. So, I was delighted when, in July this year, the Minister for Lifelong Learning and Welsh Language indicated that a new additional learning needs and educational tribunal Bill will be introduced before Christmas, representing a significant step towards addressing the concerns identified by the children's commissioner, as it moves us towards a more modern, multi-agency approach to dealing with ALN.

Secondly, given the economic challenges still faced in many constituencies, like my own in Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney, I was interested in the report's conclusions on child poverty, and I could spend a lot longer than the few minutes that I've got in this debate this afternoon talking about that particular issue, but I'm pleased that the report recognises that tackling child poverty isn't just a question of parents securing employment. We know that many hard-working men and women are having to cope daily with the scourge of in-work poverty, as outlined earlier by Julie James in her statement. Families with children are continuing to face damaging cuts to welfare support imposed by the Tories in Westminster, keeping them in poverty despite them often being in full-time employment. The enormous strides that were made by the last Labour Government in reducing child poverty have been rolled back, as the most vulnerable in our society continue to be the victims of austerity measures, where the poorest are hit the hardest. In-work poverty, therefore, is very much a theme that I've been focusing on in my constituency and, in the area of employment, stressing the need to ensure that, if new jobs come into an area, they are well-paid, they are not on zero-hours contracts, and they’re provided by companies who have a commitment to becoming a sustainable part of the local community, and who can now link in to the ‘Taking Wales Forward’ programme with local colleges and training providers to deliver skills and training that employers need. Because parents in skilled, secure, long-term employment are a crucial element in taking children out of poverty.

I'm also hopeful that the renewed commitment of the Welsh Government to support Flying Start and Families First with a more flexible tackling poverty framework and a cohesive community-based approach to tackling child poverty, through decent, sustainable employment, supported by Welsh Government when necessary, will start to address the issues identified by the commissioner, because, frankly, we cannot allow us to fail this generation of children.

I speak in this debate today in my capacity as Chair of the Constitutional and Legislative Affairs Committee. At the end of the fourth Assembly, the committee suggested in its legacy report that we should consider exploring issues surrounding the appointment and accountability of commissioners. It did so because it saw these as important matters of constitutional principle. Following our report on the Wales Bill, we have started to address our forward work programme and, as part of that process, we’ve been considering the merits of undertaking some work on the appointment and accountability of commissioners. As a first step in this process, we held an informal, productive meeting with some experts yesterday. While we have not fully formed our thinking on these issues, I thought it appropriate to draw the Assembly’s attention to the likelihood of the committee taking forward work in this area. With the approval of the Business Committee, I intend to make a committee statement on our agreed way forward in due course. Thank you very much.

I call on the Cabinet Secretary for Communities and Children to respond to the debate.

Thank you, Presiding Officer, and I thank Members for their comments on the report today. This report outlines the excellent work of the commissioner and her office, and raises important practical issues affecting children and young people. I listened very carefully to the contributions of Members here this afternoon.

I continue to work closely with the commissioner to ensure that all children receive the active offer of advocacy. This offer is a priority within the implementation plan for a national approach to advocacy, and I’m aware that Llyr and others raised that particular issue. Our programme of ‘Taking Wales Forward’ includes a range of commitments that will have a direct impact on delivering the objectives of our child poverty strategy. Dawn Bowden made strong references to the impact that in-work poverty particularly has on families and young people. It’s something that we are very conscious of, and working across Government with, particularly, Ken Skates, the lead Minister. Tackling poverty is something that we’re conscious of in terms of our manifesto commitments on jobs, growth and opportunity.

The commissioner has welcomed our commitment to providing children with equal protection. ‘Taking Wales Forward’ reaffirms our intention to take forward on a cross-party basis legislation that will remove the defence of reasonable punishment. We need to help parents with ways of being the very best they can for their children. Jenny did mention the issue of growing up healthy, and part of that programme is about encouraging parents to be good parents so that they can give their young children a good start in life.

I’d like to pick up on some of the points that Members have raised and have strong views on here today. I’ll try to respond to the majority of those points, if I may. On the first issue, Darren Millar mentioned home education registration, as well as Llyr, and they had slightly opposing views, but the principle I think behind both Members’ comments was about the protection of young people, and I think that’s what we’ve got to be mindful of. Kirsty Williams and myself are in discussions about what they may look like for the future, but, ultimately, the issue for us all should be around the safeguarding of an individual. I think that’s what has to drive our decision-making process but I do recognise that there is also lots of evidence from either side that is presented to both ourselves and Members in terms of making decisions longer term.

Can I pick up the issue of mental health and child and adolescent mental health services? Again, I think we’ve made great strides in terms of delivery. Darren Millar mentioned the unit that is within his constituency, a flagship unit, and I’m grateful to him for raising that issue here today, recognising the great work that goes on there. But I think what we also have to do is turn the telescope the other way round, actually, because treating mental health is a fact, and we have to do that, and continue to do that, but, actually, what we’ve got to do is stop young people suffering from mental health issues in the first place. The start of that journey is around the things that Jenny has talked about and Julie has talked about—the well-being of an individual, with a rounded approach to success, tackling the issues around adverse childhood experiences so we don’t fall into that trap of mental health services later on. We’re firefighting at that end. Actually, what we want to do is stop the feed, stop them coming into the system in the first place. That’s why the Government’s approach around health and well-being is around prevention and early intervention. I think that’s absolutely the right thing to do. We are conscious of the pressures in the CAMHS system, but we strive to deliver on that.

Darren Millar made reference to the independence of the commissioner and commissioners, and it would be wrong to say that the Assembly doesn’t have a role in this, because the scrutiny and call-in procedures of committees are current, and Members can call in the commissioner to independently scrutinise that process away from Government. So I don’t recognise the issue around compromising commissioners and their ability to be independent. The Assembly does have a strong role in that.

Will you take an intervention?

I’m just conscious of the time, if I may.

The issue of making sure that we look at young people through their lifestyle and how they grow up: Jenny, you’ll be familiar, I hope, with the 1000 days project that we are running in some of the programmes where we look at pre birth up to the age of two—a very successful programme, again, looking at the opportunities and how the brain forms in a young person in that two-year period; it’s a very important one.

On the daily mile, as you talk about, in schools, I can assure you that we are doing it in schools. I declare an interest, not in doing the daily mile, but my wife is in Bryn Deva school in Flintshire, which does that on a daily basis. So, they should be congratulated, and many other schools across Wales are contributing to the well-being of our young people.

I’ll pick up the point of Michelle Brown. I’m slightly disappointed with her comments trying to suggest that we don’t listen to people, and in particular we don’t listen to young people. I’ll remind the Member that this Government introduced the children’s commissioner and this Government introduced the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act, and we’ll take no lectures off the Member in terms of this. The most damaging thing I think we’ve got to think about with our children is the way we’ve approached Brexit and the racist comments that come from her party with regard to young people in the communities that we all represent. That’s the real problem we have for our young people.

Llywydd, I’m grateful for the opportunity to respond to this debate today. We won’t be supporting the amendments, as I alluded to earlier, on the basis that we will be giving full consideration to the commissioner’s report and deliberating that over the next few weeks, through a consultation programme. I’m grateful for the majority of Members’ comments, and I also wish to place on record this Government’s congratulations to the commissioner and her office.

The proposal is to agree amendment 1. Does any Member object? [Objection.] I will defer voting under this item until voting time.

Voting deferred until voting time.

We’ve now reached voting time. Unless three Members wish for the bell to be rung, I will proceed directly to voting time.