May I join other Members in welcoming this statement today and the focus that it brings to child poverty and reducing child poverty? Could I begin, Cabinet Secretary, by thanking you for the attendance of your staff at a recent meeting in a community centre in Newport East to discuss the future of Communities First and tackling poverty programmes, which was very useful? Two matters that came out of that event, I think, were the importance of that particular centre to empowerment of the local community, and also to the resilience of the local community, and I know these are matters that you are considering very carefully in terms of tackling child poverty and the general way forward. I know that those community centres are delivering on tackling child poverty by working with parents and children in that local area, and I know that’s the case elsewhere. So I’m sure you would want to assure myself and others that you’ll be carefully considering those advantages of community centres in deciding on the way forward with Communities First.

Also, Cabinet Secretary, I wonder if you could say a little bit about community-focused schools, because I also believe they’re very important in terms of working with parents and local communities around child poverty issues and general quality of life for children. I believe that our school buildings are not always utilised as well as they should be. Many of them are still locked away at weekends, during the school holidays and during the evenings. Given that resource is scarce, it doesn’t seem to be a very good use of those existing buildings.

On the early years, I wonder if you might say a little bit about Flying Start, which I think is working well, but perhaps could be widened in terms of those accessing it to work better still. It’s obviously very important to tackling child poverty. I believe it’s very important to early language acquisition, which is crucial for life chances. And obviously, I know you want to drive up the quality of the early years workforce, and perhaps have more university graduate involvement in Flying Start settings would assist with that, and also, perhaps, co-location, which I believe is useful in widening the access to Flying Start—co-location with midwifery services, for example.

Finally, Cabinet Secretary, I wonder if you could say a little bit about ending the defence of reasonable chastisement. There was a very interesting event that Julie Morgan hosted in the Assembly today where we heard very positively of the experience elsewhere, including Ireland, and how positive that is in terms of empowering parents with positive parenting techniques, understanding the children’s rights agenda and bringing those to the fore in terms of tackling children’s issues. If you could say a little bit about the timescale for ending that defence of reasonable chastisement, I think that would be very useful.