First of all, can I thank you and other Members who've come to me with details of individual providers who may be facing difficulties in meeting the challenges? Hopefully, we've taken a proportionate but sympathetic view and tried to put them in touch with the right people to help them along the way. So, I thank you and others for continuing with that, and also for your support for the registration process. I know this has been quite a challenge, particularly for the domiciliary care sector, because this is entirely new. But, to be honest, exactly as you say, Dai, we should be saying to the workforce, 'We value you, and part of that valuing is professionalisation of what you do, recognising it. Registration is part of that process; it's not the silver bullet, but it's part of it, and then the continuing professional development, then the NVQs, then the process of crossing across from health and social care in that seamless way.' We're having good feedback, I have to say, from both the agencies out there but also from individual front-line workers on it. We took a proportionate approach to it. We didn't set—. We've done it voluntary first, moving to mandatory; we consulted extensively on how we should set the fee, because this is the first time that there would be a fee in the sector, so we think we've set that right and so on.

But you also rightly point out on this issue that it's not simply about saying that we value the workforce and professional development and so on; it's how we value them monetarily in terms of their pay packet, what they take home at the end of the week. Now, we've already started to move on this. So, on the zero-hours issue, we've already said that, through phase 2 of this, what we will be doing is saying that, if you have a three-month contract where you are on regular hours, you have the right to be entitled to a regular contract for that. It seems absolutely common sense, I have to say, to people out there. This is one of the areas that is within our gift as an Assembly and as Welsh Government to effect, so we have taken that through already and I look forward to that being taken forward.

And, by the way, we have from the sector—the sector will say that this is a challenge for them, but they also acknowledge that it's the right challenge to have, because if they value their workforce they want to also say to them, 'You are a full-time employee with us, not casual, not zero hours and so on.' We've also moved, of course, on the issue of call clipping, that old shibboleth where people would be paid only for the time that they were actually there as a domiciliary care worker and not the time they were travelling back and forth. We've dealt with that in the phase 2 regulations as well, and we'll keep on going.

But you are right in saying that underpinning this is the overall issue—bearing in mind what we know is happening with the population by 2036. Studies will tell us that we will have a doubling of the population that is over 85 and a significant increase—over 30 per cent—of those who are over 60, bringing with it the complex care needs that they have. Is there sufficient in the system? One of the things we have done—. There is no magic money tree, but we have here in Wales invested in—I'm looking to my colleague in front of me on the bench, and as I say this I'm reminding him of the importance of it as well, of course—. The fact is that we have actually increased in Wales by 5 per cent in cash terms over the last five years the money going into the social care sector, compared to, I have to say, cuts of around 10 per cent across Offa's Dyke on the other side. It hasn't solved everything but it's helped us to do some of these things and to work in partnership with it.

Some of the market stability things that I alluded to in phase 3 in terms of the stability of the sector will help as well, but going forward, of course, you will note that I have been put in the position of chairing, taking forward the work that the finance Secretary has done with Professor Gerald Holtham on the concept of a social care levy. This will take some time to work through, but I'll be chairing the inter-ministerial group looking at that, looking at the complexities of it, to see whether there is both the public appetite and the political appetite and logistically whether it can deliver an alternative approach to lever additional funding into the system, knowing those huge population challenges that are facing us.

But even with what we've got now, Dai, I think we can do some great things here with the powers we currently have, regardless of what we might do in the future.