Thank you, Angela, and I might begin actually by reinforcing that message. I think probably all of us in this Chamber, and the Welsh Government itself, would fully accept and endorse those sentiments that say that the vast majority of parents in Wales are those who want to bring their children up in a loving environment, and do it with great care, with great attention, with great encouragement, with great support, and showing all those aspects of positive parenting that I'm in danger of turning into the greatest slogan ever here. It means being brought up in an environment where they feel safe and treasured and nurtured, and the vast majority of parents do exactly that. But, I am a parent of three children. They don't come with rule books, unfortunately, because each one is different. It's like some of these devices you buy on the internet; they've all got different cables and different things that wire them up and so on. And we know that sometimes we need support. So, actually, part of this consultation and part of us taking forward this is to do with providing the right support for parents and families. And, by the way, we're not just talking about families where there are great complexities of issues and challenges, but families generally. So, that includes, from the health visitors that first of all arrive with families, through the schools, through the Families First, through the Children First, all of those things, to help parents like myself as much as anybody else. But, absolutely right: the vast majority of parents do a great job, and do it with the best intentions in the world.

The question here is very much to with: we have what we would regard as a Government—and it was certainly in our manifesto and it's been debated for a couple of decades, including by some Members here when they were actually Members of Parliament as well, arguing the case—a taking away of a defence that, at the moment, is only available to parents when they use physical punishment or corporal punishment against their children. You could not advance the same reasonable chastisement defence if you were, for example, to hit somebody who was elderly and had dementia, or somebody who was 25 years of age and had learning difficulties. You cannot advance the same defence, but you can advance the defence, successful or not in its application, against children. So, it's a question of saying, very much supporting the parents, providing the support that is needed, not in a nanny-state way, but in, actually, a good partnership with parents, because we know the direction we want to go, and it's going in this direction, and, secondly, to provide clarity, taking away this defence of reasonable chastisement.

Angela, you asked had we considered any other options. We have, and we've been back and forth in terms of legal counsel, and we've learned from the over 50 examples of other countries of different types of legal jurisdiction where they have done a version of taking this defence away and have clear delineation that an assault is an assault is an assault. We've been able to learn from that. But, we do have our own legal setting within this country and the parameters that we work in, and the very strong, clear advice that we are receiving is that the clearest way to do this is remove the defence of reasonable chastisement and what you are left with is, actually, what is currently there within law, which is an offence of assault.

In the offence of assault, there are certain hurdles you need to pass by. It is not simply, 'I've spotted somebody who was doing something with their children and I think that was assault, that was out of order.' There are evidential tests that, actually, in a court of law, the Crown Prosecution Service would say, 'We think there is evidence here that an assault took place.' Secondly, it needs to be in the public interest. Part of the public interest reasoning behind taking a charge forward—as it currently is, by the way, right across the piste, except in terms of children—would be that not only is it in the public interest, but there is a reasonable chance of success of a prosecution.

I would refer her and other Members to section 9 of the consultation, because, within that, it looks at international evidence, but also the evidence of where this has been used in other countries, including New Zealand, with a slightly different model. Yes, it has led, in the early years, to a rise in reporting; it has led to occasional prosecutions; it's also led to several being cautioned or warned and dismissed, and, of course, then it tails off, because what happens is there is a cultural shift—the same with seat belt laws, the same with many other things—where people accept it is simply not reasonable any more to physically or corporally punish a child, no different from any other member of society.