Minister, I'd like to thank you very much for your statement today, and for the courtesy you have extended to both myself and my colleague, Darren Millar, who is unfortunately unable to be with us today, in going through your plans and your rationale behind the consultation. You will be aware that the Welsh Conservatives are a broad church that actually reflects the opinions, concerns and questions posed by a large section of the Welsh population, and there is a diversity of opinion within us, and therefore we will be proceeding along this legislative pathway with a free vote to each and every Member within our party. 

I'm very grateful for that earlier conversation. There are a couple of questions that I feel it would be beneficial for me to ask and to put on the record, and to give you a chance to expand back to me and to other Members of this Chamber, and indeed to the wider public. I think, first of all, I would like to really understand what the Welsh Government will be doing to ensure that this consultation gets out to ordinary people—not the third sector, not the politicians, not the lobby groups, not those of us who have views or may have already made up our minds, but to ordinary parents and ordinary children who aren't part of any sort of grouping or gang, so that we can get their opinions, their thoughts on what they think because, of course, we all know that whatever your view may be, we tend to be very protective about the herd that is our family. And I would like you, in doing that, to make it crystal clear that we all accept that the majority of parents in Wales are good, loving, reasonable individuals, and I really want that message to go out loud and clear. This is not about punishment, coercion or trammelling those individuals. 

I would be very keen if you could give us a little bit more knowledge on how you see this consultation proceeding and explaining to people not just the proposals you've put forward, but what other solutions you looked at and what you discarded. You and I had a conversation about the fact that, by removing the reasonable chastisement, we effectively, in theory, allow everyone to be immediately culpable of a criminal offence. Did you look at other methods where we might be able to go out and help and support those parents who use chastisement inappropriately, wherever you are on that scale. What did your Government take a look at? What have you discarded? Where else did you look, around the world, as to how this might be implemented in a tolerant and proportionate way?

I would be extremely grateful if you would perhaps explain a little bit—finally, Presiding Officer, this is—about the proportionate test, if this legislation were to go ahead. I want to give you one brief example, and I believe you might give me another. I have a teacher, for example, in Pembrokeshire, who took, along with a number of other teachers, a group of kids up to a rugby match. I cannot remember if it was Cardiff or London, but it was one of those cities. And one of the children was a young lad, a bit full of the joys of spring or whatever, and he ran out onto the road. The teacher grabbed him forcibly, dragged him back in. The parents sued that teacher for assault. That teacher has a black mark against his name. To an onlooker, that might have seemed like unfair chastisement. 

Personally, as a parent, I would be ripping my child a verbal shred and being very grateful to the teacher for saving their life, but that's not that teacher's experience. And you know, we've done it, and I'll hold up my hands: I remember my small one, when she was three years old, ran out in front of a concrete lorry coming from Carew quarry. She was grabbed by my friend, because I had a pushchair with my baby in front of me. Katie just let go of my hand and went for it, and she was grabbed by my friend. And I can tell you, I grabbed my child, I burst into tears, I hugged her, and I smacked her bottom, because you just have that enormous conflagration of emotions that sweep through you. So, I'd be interested to know that, in any legislation that is looked at, we are divining the differences between an impulsive moment and a parent who just absolutely loses it on a consistent basis and beats their kid, and I would have to say that I think that the criminal justice system at the moment does have very effective assault and grievous bodily harm capacity to deal with that.

But I think that this is such a delicate area, and I will come back to my original statement: I believe that most parents act from a good base of love, responsibility and a deep, caring perspective on their family, and most parents are very protective of their family, and I do want to make sure that parents do not feel that the Welsh Government, or the Welsh Assembly, is punishing them all for actions they may not have even taken.