I support this motion to agree the Assembly's dignity and respect policy. It is an important contribution to providing greater clarity on a number of aspects of important issues, that is what the expectations of the National Assembly for Wales are of anyone who is involved with the institution, what constitutes inappropriate behaviour, what you should do if you want to make a complaint about a particular case, and what the procedures are, and also, of course, how complainants, witnesses and those who are complained against are safeguarded within these processes. It’s all an important contribution, in my view, to an important issue for us as an institution. But I also think that we need to strike a note of caution here. This policy is one small step on a far longer journey, and nobody should think that one policy document like this one can be sufficient, and that the Assembly can simply move on. There is a broader process at play here, and as the Chair of the standards committee mentioned, that committee is currently doing much of that work as we speak.

Now, the evidence that we as a standards committee have gathered has been sobering, and has made us realise just how much work there is to be done in this area. We saw this week, of course, reports about the frightening figures from Cardiff University, which stated a very different story to the perception that many people have about the extent of this terrible issue of abuse and harassment. It’s raised the curtain on a problem that is far more common than many of us had imagined, and we need to recognise, in my view, that Cardiff University has been proactive in providing this online platform in order to record cases of harassment and abuse. 

This was highlighted in our evidence as a standards committee, and I certainly believe that it is something that we should be considering as a possible option for us here in the Assembly, to develop such as a medium, because, like the dignity and respect policy before us today, it would possibly be one other approach of tackling this problem, because the more opportunities there are to raise and to record these issues, then the more likely it is that victims and witnesses will come forward. And in light of that, of course, it is more likely that they, in turn, will be given the support that they need, and then, of course, in light of that, it is more likely that we will be able to tackle this problem and to create a real culture of dignity and respect, not just on paper in policy form, not just within the Assembly as an institution, but, of course, across broader society too.