I thank Janet Finch-Saunders for her comments and her broad welcome for what the Bill proposes to do. Can I say at the outset that the Bill is based on the current—it does not change the current legislation in terms of the accountability of the public services ombudsman to the National Assembly, not to the Government? It’s a he. He currently is an independent ombudsman, and appointed for—. I think there are still some several years to go until the end of his appointment. I can’t quite remember when he came into post—something like 2013, I think, or 2014. The Bill makes specific assurances that his appointment is not broken by passing this Bill—so we haven’t interfered with those powers that are in place—and, when we come to appoint a new public services ombudsman, the Bill does not change the current arrangements that ensure that it’s this Assembly that is responsible for that, up to and including appointment through committee. So, I hope that some of the other innovations that we’ve also had in Finance Committee, for example, with pre-appointment hearings and so forth, can be looked at, not only for the ombudsman but for the new auditor general, which is actually the next appointment that will be made by this Assembly.

I welcome the fact that you broadly want to see these powers and believe that the verbal complaints powers and the own initiative, which I think is one of the more innovative powers there, that is used by, as you said, by other ombudsmen throughout the Council of Europe. It’s not unique in that sense, so we need to understand that international comparison. I’m sure that if the ombudsman were here himself, he would talk about the network of ombudsmen that does exist. There are international conferences, and they do come together. In fact, I attended one in Aberystwyth last year to hear from other ombudsman about how their work was done.

On the particular issue around data collection, I think it’s important to recall that the ombudsman makes an annual report to this Assembly, which is scrutinised, I think, by the committee that you sit on, but is available to all Assembly Members. You would expect that annual report, if this Bill were to become law, to include that data, to include the data comparison. There is certainly allowance made in the regulatory impact assessment for some of the costs that might come about that and, of course, you have some initial set-up costs to make sure that you have the infrastructure in place to allow that to happen. But the clear lesson of that—Janet Finch-Saunders’s final point, I think—was how that then informs best practice, and we want to see that reflected in ombudsmen’s annual reports going forward. You’re quite right; in the Bill itself, there’s a specific requirement for the Assembly to do a five-year review of the Bill and its operation, but that does not, in any way, hinder any other review being done by any committee of the Assembly or any external body that might be commissioned to do that.

I think, in terms of the model policy, that is—as you quite rightly said—a voluntary system at the moment. I think that by putting it on a more statutory footing, we’d have a gold standard. I’d hope that, for example, private healthcare providers would then want to be part of the gold standard because that, in turn, would show how they were playing their role in meeting citizens’ needs and meeting the needs of the people of Wales.