The next item on our agenda is the business statement and announcement, and I call on Jayne Hutt.

Diolch, Lywydd. I’ve no changes to report to this week’s business, and business for the first three weeks of the new term is shown on the business statement and announcement found among the meeting papers available to Members electronically.

This week, once again, in Cardiff council, we’ve seen a councillor resign. We have—[Interruption.]

Well you may well—. [Interruption.] With—

Allow the Member to be heard, please.

With the greatest of respect, I’m raising a very important issue of female politicians in this city being bullied. I’ll declare an interest, because I’m a councillor on that authority. This is the third time that I’ve raised this matter. Yet another female has resigned. There are headlines in today’s paper that she was visited at 9.30 p.m., at night, at home, and lots of other unacceptable things that have gone on. Will you please make a statement that the Welsh Government will finally take forward a survey of all female politicians in Wales and please put a timeline on it?

This is a business statement for the business of this National Assembly for Wales and for the Welsh Government, and I did respond to this question appropriately a few weeks ago.

The business Secretary will know that today I hosted an event in the Pierhead building, close to here, at our Welsh National Assembly, which highlighted the dramatic decline in species and habitats globally. There was recognition, I have to say, in that event of the good steps that the Welsh Government and the National Assembly for Wales have supported, not least with the Environment (Wales) Act 2016, the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015 and so on, but I wonder—. One of the areas that was highlighted was the issue of procurement. Indeed, it’s welcome to see that in the public sector now we’ve embedded the issue of the sustainable sourcing of fish, which is a major issue, not just globally but in the North sea, the Celtic sea and so on. I wonder whether we can find time for a statement to debate sustainable procurement, so that we can look at not only the way the public sector can lead on sustainable food sourcing, but sustainable timber sourcing, which is not just an issue of feeling good about where we’re getting timber from, but actually supporting indigenous communities on the far side of the world that otherwise will find that their habitats, their livelihoods and their communities are being denuded.

I thank Huw Irranca-Davies for that question. I’m glad to hear that you had a very successful event at lunch time. I am very pleased to confirm that sustainable procurement is at the heart of our Wales procurement policy statement, which was published last year in June 2015. I think that if we look at the issue in relation to sustainable risk assessments of all our contracts and frameworks, promoting the use of sustainable MSC-certified food is crucial for that. We do encourage the use of that sustainability risk assessment across the Welsh public sector. Of course, this also applies to our new National Procurement Service food contracts, which are about sourcing sustainable fish, for example. I think this is a question also where the launch of the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015 is also very relevant, and this dovetails into many elements of the Act in terms of sustainable procurement. I’m sure there will be an opportunity to debate or have a Government statement on this in due course.

December the third was the twenty-fifth United Nations International Day of Persons with Disabilities, with the theme being achieving 17 sustainable development goals for the future that we want. In this context, could I call for, ideally, a debate, or at least a statement, on this year’s objectives under the international day, which include assessing the current status of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and laying the foundations for a future of greater inclusion for persons with disabilities in Wales? I know the Welsh Government didn’t include the convention on the face of the Social Services and Well-being (Wales) Act 2014, but it did include it in the Part 2 code of practice. Despite that, there’s clearly an understanding gap, where one local authority, for example, told me that they didn’t believe this applied to the tender process, another said it didn’t apply to employment and another said it didn’t apply to the redesign of services for people with hearing loss and deaf people, despite them saying that their independence was being taken from them. In this context, on this timely twenty-fifth anniversary, I hope you will concur that a debate or at least a statement would be merited.

I thank Mark Isherwood for that question, because it does provide us with an opportunity to remember and reflect on the fact that 3 December was the International Day of Persons with Disabilities. And, of course, this is where, in fact, in responding to the previous question, there is an opportunity in Wales, I believe, in developing our code of practice, for example, for ethical procurement, where we can look particularly at these needs and issues. But I would also say that I’m very proud of the fact that the Welsh Government is very clear in terms of its strategic equality objectives, and, of course, the recent report and debate here in the Chamber highlighted what we are doing to not only assess how we are implementing the status, in terms of responding to the UN objectives for the international day, but also how we are delivering that on a day-to-day basis.

I thank the Minister.