I'm pleased to have the opportunity to contribute to this debate. Very rarely in my life, I think, have I truly felt alone. I'm very lucky in that respect, and I do hope that most people in this place would have similar experiences, although having many people around you doesn't necessarily mean that you can't also feel lonely and isolated. That is something that we learnt during our inquiry, which was certainly an education for me and, I know, to my fellow Members. What the report that we have does, of course, is remind each and every one of us, whatever our personal experiences may be, that loneliness and isolation are very serious issues that impact on very many people, and constituents of each and every one of us in this Chamber today.

I'm grateful to those who have been contacting us over the past few days before this debate. The British Association of Counselling and Psychotherapists reminds us that 25 per cent of older people can feel lonely and isolated, and that is a huge number, particularly, as we've already heard from the committee Chair, where this has an impact on people's health—it doesn't just make you feel slightly depressed, and that you'd want to have some company, but it can have a serious impact on mental and physical health. Another group that's been in touch is Age Cymru, who talked about the amenities and the resources that have been lost, or are at risk of being lost, because of financial pressures, including public transport, and that there are things that we can do to invest in tackling loneliness and isolation.

But I will just make a few comments very briefly on two specific recommendations. The final one—having a communications background, messaging is something that's very important to me. Recommendation 6 talks about awareness raising and changing attitudes towards loneliness and isolation, and addressing the stigma associated with them. I was reminded of a tweet that I saw—and I have it on the screen in front of me—it was around a month ago, a little under a month ago, from a good friend of mine, She is a well-known individual, Ffion Dafis, the actress and presenter, and what she said in her tweet, and it struck me at the time, is

'Because of the nature of my work, I have free days on occasion when I could be visiting people who are alone but I don't know who or where I should contact.'

And she makes an appeal for information, and I thought, 'Yes, how often have I heard someone say something like that?' Not very often at all, certainly by people from my own generation. There are ways in which we can all, through having awareness of loneliness and the need to tackle it, play our part in addressing that loneliness, by contacting and offering companionship to people. The response to the tweet was very interesting, with many people proposing ways in which Ffion and others could give of their time. There are organisations—chapels, health boards and charities of all sorts—that provide routes for individuals to assist people through their loneliness.

But that brings us to our first recommendation, namely the need to have a strategy in place to address loneliness, because this is the role of Government: to provide guidance and leadership to all of those organisations and individuals who understand the scale of the problem of loneliness in terms of the steps that we could be taking to address it. I'm pleased that the Government has responded positively, accepting or accepting in principle the recommendations made by our committee, but I do think that what I've heard, and what fellow Members have heard, certainly demonstrates that we do have an acute problem in Wales in terms of the scale of loneliness and isolation. My appeal is that the Government should show that leadership as soon as possible by publishing a strategy that will truly make a difference.