Silence is never golden, as other Government colleagues have found out this week. It gives rise to suspicion, and I suspect that failure to guide councils to consistency on what constitutes assessment and what constitutes meeting needs has meant confusion about what those statutory requirements actually mean. How can you be sure that councils are acting lawfully if carers don't know the legal basis of the various conversations they're having with local authorities. So, please don't tell this Chamber that you don't know what it is that you would be counting to produce these figures. The social services and well-being Act was flagship legislation and it should be capable of post-legislative scrutiny. 

I was already worried that the rights that you referred to in your amendment may be proving meaningless, despite their being agreed by the last Assembly. Arguably, any statutory right is meaningless unless there is a corresponding statutory remedy, which, of course, doesn't exist here, but it's definitely meaningless if you deny the legislature holding you to account on it.

Your ministerial advisory body, which we welcome, had better really have its bottom-kicking boots on to get you to catch up with making this legislation effective and I urge Members to support amendment 5 to make sure that we can scrutinise how hard they're kicking. You can also be expecting us to watch how well the health and social care plans unroll. I mean, obviously, there's a lot of goodwill towards these, but their success must be measured on more than joining up innovative services or improved status and responsibility for intermediate and social care professionals, happier patients or even care receivers. They have to improve the lives of that 11 per cent of the population that we're talking about today as well. If the health of our carers does not improve, especially their mental health, if our young carers aren't getting more time in school, if our young adult carers are dropping out of further education, training or apprenticeships because of their caring responsibilities, if businesses don't get anything meaningful from the new employers for carers hub, which we're looking forward to hearing more about, and if we are still talking about gaps in respite at the end of this Assembly term, then the parliamentary review will have failed.

I'm disappointed but not surprised that Welsh Conservative plans for a young adult carers future grant has gone down less well with the parties here than with the young adult carers themselves and with the Carers Trust, which speaks for carers of all ages. But despite your disconnect with this policy, I think you—I'm sure you will, actually, join me in congratulating Lucy Prentice and all at Carers Trust Carmarthenshire Crossroads Care for their campaign to reform carers allowance. I wish her every success in taking that argument to the UK Government and I will be supporting her in her aim. 

However, we don't support amendment 2 on this, because there is no guarantee that the devolution of powers would result in the reform as claimed, and I would rather use the powers that we have now to achieve the same result, allowing young adult carers to prepare for and invest in their own futures at the same time as keeping their families together.

Looking quickly at the other amendments, I don't really see how Plaid's amendment 3 makes much sense. We don't really support exploitation or abuse of flexible working options anymore than you do, but surely you can see that flexible working may actually help young adult carers who cannot commit to regular hours.

Amendment 4—nothing we can disagree with there. Amendment 6 we would've supported, as we do support the campaign for an ID card, if you hadn't muddied the picture with a transport reference, because our own future grant goes hand-in-hand with our own transport green card, which empowers all young people under 25 to expand their horizons.

We support amendment 8, but I'm a bit wary of amendment 9. It may just be the way it's phrased, but I think it's too much to ask children as young as eight to take responsibility for direct medication or treatment of another. Your further detail may give us a bit of reassurance on this, but we cannot support the wording, I'm sorry.

Finally, I just want to offer my own thanks to those members of the community who care for carers—who may meet their needs, assessed or not. We will all have examples in our regions or in our constituencies, but I have a special affection for Louise Barham, who has set up the Memory Lane Cafe in Pyle. As you probably realise, it's a chance for people with dementia to get out and socialise, maybe share some activities, but its greatest value, I think, is that it gives their carers that chance too to spend time with others facing the same dilemmas, the same guilt, the same grief, and to take heart from the fellowship of each other. Government strategies will never replace human kindness, but we must absolutely make sure that nothing gets in its way. Thank you.