I’ve been reading with interest this morning about some of the allegations that have been surrounding the delivery—or the non-delivery, to be exact—of children’s services within Powys. I find it somewhat disconcerting to hear that you, equally, Minister, have found out for the first time by reading things online or listening to the news, in whichever form that arrives. And it seems very clear to me that what has been missing is leadership, management, focus and finance. And unless you have those four constituent elements working together, then nothing is actually going to improve.

But there’s one thing that really, really worries me, and that is that you are talking about identified potential vulnerable children in every single case that we are talking about, and you’re talking about case reviews where those children will have been identified, ranging from low, to medium, to high risk. And we are being informed via the newsreels today that there is a possibility that some of those cases, or some of the information, possibly, surrounding those cases, has been misrepresented—in other words, tampered with. Now, I find that the most concerning thing of all. So, my question, clearly, is: they’re in a mess, there seems to be no doubt about that, that they are absolutely in a mess and you’ve got staff there who have been trying really, really hard, to do their best; it seems clear that there wasn’t a transparent or open or trusted whistleblowing process in place, because those staff would have been telling somebody, somewhere about their concerns, and it was either suppressed or they were too afraid to state it—and I’ve seen this elsewhere in another authority where I used to be a county councillor. And if you’ve got a culture that doesn’t allow things to come out in the open, then that culture needs close examination. So, my question to you is this: they’ve got 20 days to put their bits of paper together, but it won’t be 20 days that will change the culture, so I ask you, Minister, if you will look at the culture so that it isn’t a culture that’s inward-looking, with, maybe, infighting, and that’s of a secretive nature that actually puts these children at risk.