First of all, I'd like to thank Lynne Neagle and her committee for this report. Lynne, you are fearless and tough and I have great admiration and total respect for you. I think the children and young people's committee is in very good hands, and if it was up to me I think the children of Wales would be good and safe in your hands too.

I think the 'Mind over matter' report has got to the heart of the issues, they've listened to the voices of the experts, they've listened to practitioners, young people and organisations, and they have made meaty and insightful worthwhile recommendations. I think that they are recommendations that deserve to be listened to.

I thought very hard about how I was going to pitch my contribution to this debate today. Would I reflect the chorus of shock and dismay of the committee and of witnesses with regard to the Government response, or should I talk about the effect that this has on children and young people in my particular constituency—the kids we've tried to rescue, my team and I, in my little office in Tenby with the help of county councils, both Carmarthenshire and Pembrokeshire—or would I talk about the multiple suicides that we've seen in Pembrokeshire over the last few years and the ongoing coroner's questions, or should I just do a forensic analysis of the Welsh Government responses? I've decided I'm not going to do any of that.

'Mind over matter', perinatal mental health, adoption services, children and adolescent mental health, child obesity, attendance and behaviour, adoption, advocacy services for children, placement of kids in care, youth justice, not in employment or education, autism in further education, dyslexia, post 19 with additional learning needs, mental health services: 15 committee reports by three different committees, each and every one of them since I've been an Assembly Member.

What does perinatal mental health have to do with what we're talking about today? Well, let me tell you. Recommendation 10, recommendation 22, recommendation 26, they all point to what David Melding encapsulated so well: that if we do not help at the very, very beginning, if we do not get it right at the very, very beginning, then all we're going to do is spend the rest of our time picking up the pieces. And it's a quarter—a quarter—of our population that is in distress at some point or another. Ninety eight per cent of the children who are not in education officially have got mental health issues of the type that this report talks about. No, they're not psychotic in a way that we can medicalise, but they have all the other issues. They've been badly let down. They have been neglected. They have been abused. They are lost, they're confused, they don't know where to go to, they have emotional and behavioural problems. 

In 11 years—I thought it was 10 years but, Darren Millar, you mentioned 11 years, and we came in at the same time—in 11 years, 15 reports, all of which touch on the fact that we have not got it right. What does it take? Because I say this to you: we have too many children out of education, we've got too many kids unable to cope with twenty-first century life, we've got too many wounded kids in our nation who will grow into adults who will not fulfil their potential, who will not be able to do all the things that those of us in this Chamber are lucky enough to do. How can we develop our maturity as a nation? How can Wales step forward into the twenty-first century when we leave so many people by the wayside? How can we hope to improve people's lifestyles? Because if we don't get them a firm bedrock to build on, how will we, Wales, afford to pick up the pieces in the years to come? 

The Government response, I thought, was off-hand. I thought it was unengaged, Cabinet Secretaries, and in parts I thought it was downright resentful. I felt there was a real whiff of inertia. Welsh Government, you are out of step with Assembly Members of all parties, including Members of Welsh Labour. The kickback to this report has been phenomenal—the children's commissioner, the Samaritans, the NSPCC, the psychologists. If you had any sense, you'd put Lynne Neagle in charge of a task and finish group to drive this kind of report through and make it happen, because my kids, your kids and your grandkids need this. These people up here, they need this change now.