Thanks to the committee Chairman for bringing today's debate and also to the people who took part in the inquiry, including the homeless people who took the time to recount their personal experiences to us, which, as Bethan Sayed mentioned, was very illuminating—probably the most illuminating part of the inquiry.

One factor that became clear to me during this interaction was this intimate relationship for many homeless people—of course, not all homeless people—between their homelessness, alcohol and substance misuse, and mental health issues. Although, of course, we can’t characterise these issues as being interrelated for all homeless people, there is a high incidence of these common themes, and that did emerge during the visits—in my case, to the Salvation Army hostel in Bute Street, just down the road from here.

Somebody, during the inquiry, characterised the relationship between these issues as a bit like peeling away layers of an onion, where you peel away the homelessness and you discover, oh yes, there's substance and alcohol misuse. But then you can peel that away and you discover that what's behind that, in many cases, is mental health issues, often caused by adverse childhood experiences. So, these are complex issues that we're dealing with, and it's sometimes difficult to find viable solutions to such complex problems.

Looking at the practicalities that arose from the inquiry, there are certain barriers to rough-sleepers in finding temporary or even emergency accommodation. For instance, the Huggard centre told us that some individuals will find themselves excluded from emergency provision for anti-social behaviour, because this includes substance misuse. So, clearly, if people are misusing substances, it's an addiction, it's going to be something that they're not going to be able to stop instantly, so it's rather difficult when they can't be housed, even under emergency provisions, because that behaviour will be defined as being anti-social behaviour. So, this is one of the practical difficulties that we face. These sorts of things create a barrier to those who are seeking refuge from homelessness.

Given the complex nature of these issues, there's a very clear concern that access to mental health or substance misuse services is of paramount importance. Left untreated, and with long waiting times for some specialist support services, there is a very real danger that some rough-sleepers will find it impossible to break the cycle that leads to life on the streets. So, we do have to look very closely at provision of mental health services.

The committee report did call on the Welsh Government to ensure that the responsibility for implementing the actions was shared, as the committee Chair mentioned in his contribution, between the housing Minister and the health Secretary. We're awaiting what the Government Minister has to say about that today, because the issues of rough-sleeping, together with substance and alcohol misuse and mental health issues, are so interlinked that we do need to have cross-governmental working as the only way in which we can realistically tackle the problem.

We also did call on the Government to publish quarterly reports on the rough-sleeping action plan. We felt that this would ensure transparency and enhance accountability. Unfortunately, the Government didn't agree with us on this specific point and felt that quarterly reports would be overly bureaucratic. Of course, there is a question of resources also. I know that the Welsh Government have committed funding towards their aim of eradicating rough-sleeping, but there's a need for human resources in addition to financial support. For instance, when we visited the Salvation Army hostel, concerns were raised by the staff that there simply weren't enough trained people able to deal with the complex substance misuse and mental health issues faced by the people coming to them who sleep rough. So, we do have to address this shortage if we are serious about dealing with this issue. Diolch yn fawr.