I well remember when this building was opened, the national poet for Wales, Gwyneth Lewis, gave a reading where she described this Chamber as the cockpit of the nation—the place where we come together to discuss things of importance. And listening to this debate and reading this report, it's clear there's a cross-party consensus that the current system is inadequate. To be fair to the Welsh Government, the last time a report like this was written, they responded and there have been significant improvements in the quality of specialised treatment for young people with mental health disorders, and the same type of response is merited now for the central call of this report to treat the earlier stages of the development of mental health problems.

I'm not on the committee, but I've read the report in detail, I've read the children's commissioner's response, I've sat through multiple presentations from different groups, I deal with these issues on an almost weekly basis in my surgery and I've discussed it with my local health board—a health board, it must said, that has a waiting list of two and a half years to see CAMHS. Parents come to see me on a regular basis in a desperate state—a desperate state—and they have to wait for two and a half years to get a diagnosis. And when they get the diagnosis, their expectations are overly inflated, because the system has very little to offer them. There's despair on the part of GPs—this we've heard already. There's despair on the part of teachers. I was speaking late last night to a teacher from my constituency who told me, 'You don't always know where to look for help for these children, you just want something to be done.' The missing middle the report so effectively pointed out, where therapeutic or lower level support can help, is really the focus we should have on this report. I should commend this report. It's the best report of a committee I have read in my time in the Assembly and I pay tribute to all its members and particularly to its Chair.

But I should say it's a very tough report. It's very well crafted, it has SMART targets, the recommendations are specific, they are measurable, they are attainable, they are relevant, and they have time limits to them. It's no wonder the Government has struggled to respond to that in its formal response, which I too found bitterly disappointing. I understand the anger of the members of the committee and, looking at the faces of my friends and colleagues the Cabinet Secretaries, I too can tell that they are not happy with the position that they find themselves in. I think we need address this to the Welsh Government and not make poorly judged comments, if I may say to Darren Millar, to personalise this. 

I think the machine of Government is struggling to respond to this crisis we have with young people. This is a problem that has increased in intensity and volume over recent years and I think the system is struggling to know how to respond to it. The merit of this report is that it is evidence based from practitioners and from the third sector to give us a practical route-map, and I think it would be prudent for us to return in the autumn, perhaps with an individual Member's debate or another committee debate, to give Ministers a chance to reflect over the summer on the strength of feeling and on the evidence. 

I've lived the issues presented in this report. I hesitate about discussing personal matters in this Chamber, but I've reflected that we are elected here not just to represent our constituents, but because of our personal experiences too. When I first experienced the system when my son was seven years old, I was told, 'Come back when he's throwing himself against the wall', and sure enough, six years later, after a month of very expensive hospital treatment, we did get effective support. It was support from the third sector, from Action for Children, which we found to be superb, and from family therapy through CAHMS, which is also highly effective. This is the sort of support that we would have benefited from six years earlier, which would have prevented enormous family strain and distress, not just to my son, but to all of us. Its impact is profound and far reaching, and that's the type of intervention this report recommends—the smaller type of measures, the earlier interventions that can help before it gets to crisis.

There is a quote in here from young people in Abergele, where they say

'You have to have a crisis first', before the system will respond. The children's commissioner, in her very pointed response, describes the Government's response as a missed opportunity and she says there should be no wrong door. She says there hasn't been joint working within the Government, and I'd ask my colleagues on the front bench to reflect on that and come back to us in the autumn. Diolch.