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.