Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:30 pm on 18 July 2018.
Can I thank the Member for Llanelli for his comments? We have had several discussions around this piece of legislation. I'm grateful that he remains open-minded about introducing legislation, so I suppose my job over the next few months will be to persuade him that this is the right thing to do. And I understand what he's saying, that he believes, perhaps, that the law—introducing legislation may not be the way forward, but I believe that it is the way forward. We need to ensure that services going forward are underpinned. I mentioned earlier that we have been, obviously, discussing the autism strategy that was introduced in 2008, and I don't want to rehearse what I said earlier, but we are discussing the same issues now that we were discussing 10 years ago. And I believe that the only way that we can actually ensure that we see service improvements is by introducing legislation, by making sure that services are put on a statutory footing so that those services are consistent across Wales and so that we don't have any gaps in those services. You know as well as I do—you've had constituents contacting you, as I have had, who, unfortunately, are unable to access services. We must make sure that those services are available. We must make sure that local health boards and local authorities are actually obliged to deliver these services, and this is what this Bill will actually do.