I thank the Cabinet Secretary for his response, and I’m sure that he shares my horror at many of the findings found in this report. Indeed, Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Prisons has concluded that not a single establishment inspected in Wales and England last year is safe to hold children and young people. Rates of self-harm have doubled since 2011, 46 per cent of boys feel unsafe at their establishment, assault rates were 18.9 per 100 children, compared with 9.7 in 2011. There has been a decline in the conditions in which children are detained, and levels of violence are high—both assaults on staff and on other young people.

We’ve gone beyond the crisis point, I think. I acknowledge, as the Cabinet Secretary said, that this is not due to Welsh Government policy, but Welsh children are being put in danger and are being failed by the current regime. The Cabinet Secretary for Communities and Children is responsible for children and young people’s rights. Article 19 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child says that Governments must do all they can to ensure that children are protected from all forms of violence, abuse, neglect and bad treatment by their parents or anyone else who looks after them. Article 37 reads: children must not suffer cruel or degrading treatment or punishment. When arrested, detained or imprisoned, children must be treated with respect and care.

Given this crisis, Cabinet Secretary, will you agree that, as an immediate step, you will demand access from the Ministry of Justice to the prisons estate for Welsh Government to inspect the plight of Welsh children for itself? And, secondly, will you seek the swift devolution of youth justice to this country so that Welsh children are not further failed by the current broken penal system?