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.