Therefore, we move to item 7, a statement by the leader of the house, 'Action on Disability: The Right to Independent Living', and I call on the leader of the house, Julie James.

The Welsh Government is committed to helping disabled people to fulfil their potential and achieve their ambitions and dreams. This is no easy task, because it requires us to work hard to remove barriers that get in the way of such ambitions. This includes physical obstacles, whether in buildings, towns or countryside, but also includes hurdles and blockages created by organisations and people’s attitudes. Disabled people tell us, time and time again, that these are the barriers that most frustrate them and stop them living the lives they want, more than any limitations of their own bodies.

The 2017-18 national survey for Wales data demonstrates that life satisfaction was generally lower for people with a disability or limiting, long-standing illness than for those without. The mean score for those without a disability is eight out of 10, but only 7.2 for disabled people. Tackling these challenges requires real partnership working. In particular, we know we will make more progress and achieve better results if we work with disabled people, so we understand the issues properly and find solutions that work.

Next week, we will be publishing our framework and action plan entitled 'Action on Disability: The Right to Independent Living'. This document replaces our previous framework for action on independent living, which was published by the Welsh Government in 2013. The new framework has been developed as a result of a great deal of engagement over nearly two years with disabled people and the organisations that represent them. The work has been undertaken in workshops up and down Wales by small groups of people with expertise and experience of a wide range of disabilities, through hundreds of e-mails, letters and phone calls and through conversations in homes, workplaces, schools and communities.

Our new framework sets out how we are fulfilling our obligations under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. It also highlights the role of key legislation, including the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015, and the Welsh Government’s national strategy, 'Prosperity for All'. Underlying the whole framework is the social model of disability, the approach that recognises the need for society to be transformed, removing barriers so that disabled people are able to participate fully.  

The new framework focuses on key issues identified by disabled people, and Welsh Government’s own priorities. Often these are one and the same, for example, the need to help disabled people who are unemployed and want to work to find jobs. Seventy-five thousand disabled people in Wales are either actively seeking work or would like to work. Too often, they are being held back by barriers beyond their control, such as organisational systems and other people’s attitudes, as well as physical and environmental barriers. Just 45 per cent of working-age disabled people in Wales are currently in employment, compared to 80 per cent of those not disabled. This is a shocking disability employment gap of 35 percentage points. To address this, the Welsh Government is working in close partnership with a wide range of stakeholders, disabled people and their representative bodies, to better understand existing barriers to employment and, crucially, the actions needed to deliver real change. Many of the commitments set out in our employability plan are aimed at tackling this disability employment gap. We will work with partners to address the issues, including employer attitudes, job design and working practices. We will publish a target on employment and disability by the end of the year, to underline our commitment to this agenda.

Having focused for a few minutes on employment, let me also acknowledge this is not the only or even the main issue for every disabled person. We know action is needed across a wide front, and the new action plan will reflect this. Whatever the issues being discussed, disabled people have told us that local action is crucial, so our new framework is designed to strongly encourage Welsh public services, employers and organisations at every level to take note of the commitments set out in the framework, and emulate them as far as possible.

When it is published next week, you will see that the structure of the framework is new, with the main document setting out the principles, legal context and commitments that underpin all our work with and for disabled people. This is accompanied by an action plan, which highlights the main actions currently being undertaken or led by Welsh Government. The framework will be available in a variety of accessible versions.

I want to thank everyone who has helped in this process, and especially the steering group who have overseen it, led by Disability Wales. I would also like to thank, in particular, the children and young people who have contributed to the making of the framework. They have helped to ensure that our approach is the right one for all ages, and fit for the future. Supporting people to live their lives in the way that they choose is the right thing to do. I commend this framework to encourage action with and for disabled people across the whole of Wales. Diolch.

Thank you for your statement. You state that the new framework and plan, 'Action on Disability: The Right to Independent Living' replaces the framework for action on independent living. Of course, the framework for action on independent living is specifically named in the Part 2 code of practice for the Social Services and Well-being (Wales) Act 2014. Can you confirm that you will be, therefore, updating your codes and regulations to reflect the change? 

In terms of roll-out, how will you ensure that this is better understood by public sector bodies and commissioners? I'll give one example. Last year, I had a haemophiliac constituent, a young man who was offered a job by Flintshire council. The job offer was subsequently withdrawn on the advice of the council's occupational physician, as they termed the person, although the constituent and his family said that that clinician had low or little knowledge of haemophilia, and the constituent and his family had documentation from his own expert clinicians showing he was perfectly able to do the job. However, the council dug in and initially rejected the relevance of the framework for action on independent living in this context, despite my referring to it in correspondence with them.

You refer to 75,000 disabled people actively seeking work, and, clearly, I fully acknowledge that. Almost every disabled person I meet, work with or have as a friend, if they're not in work already—and too few, sadly, are—they want to be. They want a job, they want their own front door, they want their independence. In taking this forward and tackling the barriers beyond their control that you referred to, how will you ensure that you don't replicate or duplicate the parallel work that's already going on, for example, with the Department for Work and Pensions community partner teams recruited from people outside government, outside the civil service, who have personal lived experience of disability, but only initially on a 12-month contract. I hope you might consider joining myself and the cross-party autism group, following recent evidence from them, to urge the UK Government to extend that beyond 12 months so that the work coaches and others can have a better understanding of the barriers that disabled people encounter.

How will you engage, or are you engaging, with Remploy Wales's work and health programme from the UK Government, which, although it's only compulsory for those unemployed for more than two years, has found that over 80 per cent of the people on the programme are disabled people with long-term health conditions who have voluntarily joined that programme because they wish to access work? Equally, how will you support initiatives such as the Wrexham enterprise hub, who have scheduled an autism future employment event on 25 January next year? I'm sure that you would have an interest in that, and would be grateful if you could confirm how you might wish to engage in working with Hafal, who's also involved, and Glyndwr University.

How do you respond to the concern expressed in the Joseph Rowntree Foundation report 'Poverty in Wales 2018' that says, regarding employment, disabled people make up just 5 per cent of the Welsh Government's own workforce, despite comprising 22 per cent of the population, given the wider figures you illustrate, and similarly address the concern they raise that

'In Wales, 39% of disabled people are in poverty compared to 22% of non-disabled people',  again, almost always because of those social model barriers that you referred to in your own statement?

Will you reconsider the Welsh Government's approach to the scrapping of the Welsh independent living grant? There is still widespread concern amongst recipients or former recipients of that grant that the lack of ring fence, the requirement to agree with local authorities what's good for them, or what their needs might be, is a removal of their independence. Look to what happened in Scotland and Northern Ireland, where the Governments there, politically miles apart from myself, did the right thing and established an independent body run by Disability Wales's equivalent organisation there. Now, I'm not going to name them, because you heard me last week and last month repeatedly quote new third sector schemes that learned that they have lost their funding, or will be losing their funding, when they're delivering independent living, early prevention programmes enabling people to have control of their own lives, taking pressure off statutory services who've lost their funding, because, invariably, statutory commissioners have decided they're not the priority they should be, and therefore because of dumb commissioning, dumb budgeting, they're piling millions of avoidable additional costs onto statutory services. You did, last week, comment or respond regarding that, but I would be grateful if you could just slip in a line, so that those people affected by this can, hopefully, hear some further assurances.

Now, it's five and half years—

Are you winding up, please? Wind up, please.

Okay. I was just going to conclude, therefore, by asking you to work with the Assembly Commission to recognise and address barriers to independent living for disabled people identified by, for example, the disabled people seeking to access and attend the Cross-Party Group on Disability, the Cross-Party Group on Neurological Conditions, tomorrow's joint meeting—disability, older people and housing and otherwise, who are finding it—. Well, my staff are finding it next to impossible to get the Commission to provide identified disabled parking spaces for people to remove the barriers to their attending this building, and similar ongoing concerns regarding the ramps outside.

And finally, will you help—and I'll give one example—Flintshire, because I've got some cases I haven't referred to you previously—how to help them better understand what all this means. I'll give you two very quick examples and I'll finish. One: I had a meeting with the chief officer of Flintshire disability forum centre for independent iiving and officers in the council regarding the inability of wheelchair users to access the coastal path. We were told that they would tell us what size wheelchairs we should tell people to have. I suspect that you might recognise that is a gross breach, not only of the social model, but of the Equality Act 2010 and Welsh legislation.

And finally, in this context, a group of autistic adults and children I've been working with for years have been seeking a round-table meeting with Flintshire at a senior level, multidisciplinary, now for over seven months, over 150 days, to discuss the social, psychological and health barriers they're encountering. Because of procrastination, delay and cancellation, that meeting's still not occurred. But we took it up with the chief executive. He blamed the autistic people, who are suffering heightened anxiety, who are suffering meltdown, who are contacting me telling me of their suicidal thoughts because of the crisis they've been pushed into by a failure of a local authority hosting the integrated autism service, who fails to understand what the communication and social needs of autistic people are, and is, therefore, driving a situation in which its own officers are having to cope with situations that the chief executive then uses as an excuse not to meet the people who have the answers.

That was a very extensive range of issues raised there. I'll do my best to address most of them. In terms of the prosaic issue around updating the regulations and so on, obviously, we'll be looking to make sure that all the regulations that are required to be updated will be updated once the framework is in place, and the consultations are complete. And I'll just take that opportunity to say that we're very anxious that this completely reflects the views of disabled people and their representative organisations. And, as I said in the statement, we've had contact with a lot of individuals as well as representative organisations, and we want to encourage that to happen. We'll be making sure that we do roll it out. If the Member does have anything specific he'd like us to address in terms of roll-out and information, I'm more than happy to discuss that with him. All ideas are welcome, to make sure that it has as wide a dissemination as possible. 

In terms of working with the DWP, we've worked very closely with them. My colleague the Minister for Welsh Language and Lifelong Learning, in her employability plan, has been working extremely hard to make sure that, under the title, 'Working Wales', all of the programmes available come together. The idea is to—forgive the analogy, Deputy Presiding Officer—hide the pipework, so that when people present for help, it's not their issue whether they've presented in the right place or on the right stream, but are actually assisted by everyone who's helping under the title, and that includes across UK Government agencies as well, to get them onto the right course, in the right place, at the right time, and that includes having the disability support.

He identified a number of individual issues that I'm more than happy to meet with him to discuss outside. And if there is anything I can do to ensure that meetings take place, I'm happy to do that alongside my colleague the Cabinet Secretary for public services. If we can assist on that specific issue, I'm more than happy to do it. 

But I think, really, fundamentally, he's agreeing with me that what we're trying to do here is make sure that each individual disabled human being is regarded as unique and a person in their own right, and has the barriers that prevent them from taking part in society removed and that we don't perceive it as something that they need to do in order to access things. So, I'm very happy to discuss with him the issue that he raised around asking people to buy the right-sized wheelchairs, because that very definitely is not the model that I would like to see being rolled out. 

So, when the action plan comes out, the Member will be able to see that we have a large range of issues around that. We'll be incorporating it into our various instructions to local authorities and other public service bodies around the way that they do commissioning and so on, but more importantly we will be looking to them and to ourselves as a Welsh Government—and I'm more than happy to take up the issue with the commissioner as the Member suggests—to be exemplar employers in this regard. I think we should be re-looking at our own targets and being world class in that. At the moment, I'm not happy that our targets are as stretching as they could be and we'll be looking to the public sector in Wales to lead the way to show other employers, in particular in Wales, as the Member is quite right: unless they have really severe life-limiting issues, everyone I meet also wants to work and be as independent as possible. So, we'll be looking to roll that framework out in that regard.

Thank you for the statement on this important issue on action on disability and the right to independent living. It’s an important topic, but with all due respect, the statement itself doesn't enlighten us a great deal. What we have is a statement telling us that there’s an announcement to be made. Next week, the Government will publish its new framework and action plan—that’s what this statement tells us, basically. Now, I have no idea what the content of that framework will be, I have no idea what the response of disabled people will be to it, or the response of the charities and groups representing disabled people. So, my first question is: wouldn't it have been better to have made the statement after you'd published the new framework, so that we'd have something to consider, something to discuss, something to respond to, and something that we could weigh up?

In the absence of anything for the opposition parties to scrutinise, I'm going to ask you about something that is important to disabled people but isn't contained within the statement, namely the Welsh independent living grant. Mark Isherwood has already mentioned this. I want to approach it from a slightly different angle. As you know, it's a policy of your party to retain this grant and not to allow disabled people to be supported from general budgets within councils. Your conference very wisely adopted that policy. So, can I ask you this? In the absence of anything of substance in your statement today, can I ask a second question—and my final question—namely: when will the Welsh Government under the leadership of the Labour Party adopt the Labour Party’s policy and announce that the independent living grant will remain and won't be disappearing by 2020?

I recognise Siân Gwenllian's first point. The timing is always a problem. I very much, though, wanted to highlight the launch, give it as much publicity as possible and encourage as much response as possible. I will, Deputy Presiding Officer, once we've got the consultation responses in, be coming back to the Chamber to give another statement to make sure that people can scrutinise the substance of it as well. I think that's a fair point. It's always very difficult to know whether it's better to go afterwards or beforehand, but I very much wanted to emphasise (a) the role of disabled people and their representatives across Wales have had in putting together the framework on which we're about to consult, and then the opportunity for further consultation. We absolutely want to get this to be as good as it possibly can be for the disabled people themselves. So, I take her point. I think it's a point well made, but it was a judgment call really to highlight the framework before we launch it to make sure that Members are aware and expecting it, and then I absolutely undertake to come back with the substance of it once we've had the consultation. I think that's a fair point. 

In terms of the independent living grant, my colleague the Minister behind me has just very kindly passed me a note that tells me—as I explained to Siân Gwenllian when I was answering questions on my own portfolio, last week I think that was, I have an overview across the piece for Welsh Government and an influencing role with colleagues, but quite a lot of the detail of this is actually in different portfolios. So, that particular grant is actually in my colleague Minister's portfolio. But I'm told that the transition is proceeding well—we're very closely monitoring it. They're independently carrying out an evaluation of people's experience—we're doing it under the social model, so, 'What matters to me'. We've had this conversation between us quite a lot. It's very much around making sure that what we go forward with matters, works and is what people actually want. Our experience with people who transition is that it's been very good indeed, in answer to your question, but I do take your original point and I will undertake to come back with the substance.

Can I first of all welcome the Welsh Government's statement? I'm sure no-one would disagree with the Welsh Government's commitment to help disabled people to fulfil their potential and achieve their ambitions and dreams—everybody should be able to do that. I agree that this is no easy task, because it requires us to work hard to remove barriers that get in the way of such ambitions.

As the Cabinet Secretary said, there are 75,000 disabled people in Wales who are actively seeking work or would like to work. That's almost 2,000 per constituency. Can I declare an interest? My sister, who is one of your constituents, is actually one of them.

Does the Cabinet Secretary agree that unless we have quotas or a financial incentive, then employers and personnel departments will not change their attitudes? We're going to have to either incentivise them or do something to them. It's pointless saying, 'We want you to employ more disabled people'—we've said that for decades, and they haven't. So, I think we need to do something much more active than we have.

Can I just talk about transport? We have a series of simple actions that could make life easier for those with disabilities to travel, such as public transport announcing stops and the removal of pavement clutter to help those with sight loss; public transport showing the next stop to help those with hearing loss; wheelchair access to public transport; road crossovers; and more than one wheelchair user being able to use a bus at any one time. These are not asking a lot, but they would make huge differences to the lives of a lot of people who suffer with disabilities.

On the independent living grant, I belong to that large number of people, including in our party, who are disappointed that it ended. What I will ask is—. I don't think it's going to be coming back, so I'm not going to ask whether you'll bring it back, because I think the answer is going to be 'no', but can I ask that the Cabinet Secretary, whichever one it happens to be, asks that local authorities report their spending in that area? So, although it's not a specific grant, it'll get reported back how much each local authority spends on it, and that'll be reported in such a way that it becomes available to all of us. So, if our local authority is spending less than they did previously, I think many of us would want to take it up with them. 

The Minister's hearing very clearly, I think, the message, and I think that that last point there was very well made. Yes, absolutely, in terms of the public transport points, I also think they were very well made, Mike Hedges. We've had many discussions between us about various bus services in your constituency that cross into mine, and I couldn't agree more around the announcements, the visual aids and accessibility. I've had several helpful conversations with my colleague the Cabinet Secretary for Economy and Transport along those lines. We will be looking to make sure that the framework takes those into account.

In terms of the active encouragement to employers, I had the great privilege to speak at the Disability Confident conference in his own constituency a couple of weeks ago. That was exactly that—we were talking around what we could do to incentivise employers. The UK Government's target of 1 million people across the UK is about 55,000 for Wales. We want to work very closely with them to get that up to the 70,000 that he identified, ensuring that Welsh money and UK Government money dovetail together to give people the best incentive, and that will be looking to see what incentivises employers, in terms of changing their attitudes. Often, it is attitudinal—it's not really a physical barrier. The conference highlighted that with a number of issues that employers there were very surprised to find were easily available and inexpensive.

I am looking as well at a scheme that many disability charities and our own Disability Wales people have asked me to look into, which is a sort of scores-on-the-doors system that shows accessibility for particular businesses. There's no reason that we couldn't extend that to employers as well.

I'm very grateful to you, leader of the house, for your response to Siân Gwenllian's question, because I was about to raise the same point, that it is a bit difficult to have a sensible discussion about a framework that one hasn't yet read, but I also take your point that you wish to highlight the fact that the consultation has begun, and I very much welcome your commitment to, at the end of the consultation, bringing your proposals back to this Chamber, so that we can discuss them in some detail.

I have one particular question in this context. I very much welcome what you said about reinforcing the Assembly and the Welsh Government's commitment to the social model of disability, which is incredibly important. Your statement refers to the UN convention and refers to other legislation. Would you agree with me, leader of the house—and it refers, in a sense, to some of the points that Mike Hedges has made—that there must be some legal redress for disabled people in Wales when their rights under the new framework are not met? Would you agree with me—and I think everybody in this Chamber would probably agree—that the Equality Act 2010 is not proving a very effective mechanism for disabled people to use when they feel as individuals that their rights are not being met? So, will you agree to give, in the context of the discussions around the new framework, further consideration to the matter we debated last week when we considered the potential of embedding into Welsh law the UN convention, which might then give disabled people rights under Welsh law to seek redress if their needs under the framework were not being met, either by service providers or potentially also by employers? 

Yes. Helen Mary Jones makes a lot of very good points there, and as I said in our debate on her legislative proposal, I'm very keen to see how the framework legislation currently fits together, what incorporating the convention directly may or may not do to that, and to work out a system that gives people the maximum benefit of all of that legislation in terms of their rights, and their ability to actually get the services and access that they want. So, I'm very much looking forward to our discussion about that. 

I'm very keen, Deputy Presiding Officer, to make sure that instead of layering things on top of each other, we actually make them into a seamless whole, so that people have an open and transparent, easily accessible and usable system that actually does make their lives better, which is what we're after here, and particularly emphasises to those people currently putting barriers in the way that that's not an acceptable mode of behaviour here in Wales.   

Thank you for the statement on the framework for independent living, which very much, of course, is one of my key political priorities and experience. I'm glad to contribute to this statement as a trustee of Vale People First, having seen the transformation of the lives of people with learning disabilities over the past 40 years, since the inquiry into Ely hospital led to a pioneering strategy for the closure of long-stay hospitals to community living. As a former south Glamorgan county councillor, I chaired Nimrod to see the transformation of the resettlement from Ely hospital. Featured recently in the Senedd was an exhibition of the first Cardiff University social services home, established in Cathays.

One of the first actions I took as health and social services Minister was to fund and accelerate the closure of long-stay hospitals in Wales. I think Dai Lloyd, David Melding and others in the Chamber meant that there was very much cross-party support for that. But I was also the Minister in 2013 receiving a petition, and that's where the Petitions Committee came into play. A petitioner from Disability Wales was calling for a framework for action for independent living. What was key was that we set up a strategic cross-Welsh Government panel led by a senior civil servant. We secured commitment across the Government to fulfil the social model of disability, and it's interesting that you've actually got two Ministers here behind you who were all key to actually delivering your framework, because unless you can break down the silos and get that cross-Government action, you won't have a framework for independent living.

I also, like Helen Mary, want to know how you see this as a way of delivering the social model of disability, which, actually, we embraced in the first session of this Assembly. How can you drive that cross-Government policy to embed the framework in policy and legislation? And do you welcome the role of organisations like Vale People First being replicated across Wales, which leads on the rights and empowerment of people with learning disabilities?  

Yes. Starting with that last matter first, I very much welcome them, and one of the reasons I wanted to bring this statement forward was to encourage groups like Vale People First to come forward with anything that they think we've left out, or we can enhance, or we could add to the framework when it comes out. Of course, we have already extensively consulted—we wanted to have it as good as it could be before we went out to consultation, so it won't be a surprise to organisations. Nevertheless, we want them to comment back to us and I very much welcome the comments back of all of the elected Members who have much experience on this matter. Jane Hutt, you're very much one of those, in terms of what you think the framework could add or how it could fit together. And as I said in response to Helen Mary Jones, I'm very keen to make sure that we have a transparent and open pathway for all of the elements of somebody's life that need to come together here, so that it's very clear to employers, members of civic society, businesses, and people themselves what this framework requires of them and what they need to do to comply with it, and, you know, what the carrots and sticks associated with compliance or otherwise are. I've worked very closely with a range of Ministers, who are actually behind me at the moment, but other Ministers as well, and we've mentioned today public services—public transport, for example—to make sure that we that we have a cross-Government framework, following in your footsteps, I must say, to make sure that this isn't siloed, that it does take into account action right across.

If I could just, Deputy Presiding Officer, make one point here—. So, for example, the Equality Act 2010—there's an issue about whether we incorporate the UN convention or we bring bits of it into force straight away or we change the wording slightly to make it mesh better together. I want to have a proper conversation to ensure that what we get out of that is really fit for purpose into the future, rather than just doing it piecemeal. I'm very interested in that conversation going forward and I very much hope that the framework, when you see it, and the action plan in particular that goes with it, sets out that as a pathway. 

Finally, Caroline Jones. 

Diolch, Dirprwy Lywydd. Thank you for your statement, leader of the house. I welcome your Government's updated framework for action on independent living. Independent living is something we all take for granted, but for a person with disabilities there are so many barriers that make independent living almost impossible for many. My neighbour, for example, travels 15 minutes in his wheelchair to catch a bus so that he can meet his friends and live as independently as he wishes. But very often there is insufficient room on the bus to take him, so he waits in all weathers for another bus to come along; he waits hopefully that this will happen. So, this desperately needs addressing.

The previous framework, although far from perfect, was widely welcomed, as it outlined the actions needed to remove many of the barriers facing disabled people in Wales. Unfortunately, it has failed to make major improvements in many areas, as highlighted.

The proportion of disabled people living in poverty in Wales has risen by over 40 per cent in recent years. Around two fifths of Wales’s disabled people now live in income poverty. Whilst some of this increase can be attributed to the ill-conceived welfare reform policies of the UK Government, according to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, this is not the main cause for the increasing poverty in Wales. They point to the growing employment gap between disabled and non-disabled people.

The Cabinet Secretary called the poverty statistics a national disgrace, and unless we take positive action to address the barriers it will be a matter of national shame. I look forward to reading the specific actions your Government will take to address some of these barriers, leader of the house, however I would be grateful if you would outline the actions you are taking to address the impact of the UK Government’s welfare reforms.

I welcome the news that the roll-out of universal credit has been delayed once again. Hopefully, the UK Government will rethink this scheme. It may have been introduced with the best intentions but it has left many people destitute. Leader of the house, will you be making representations to the UK Government to ensure that universal credit is not rolled out in Wales until it can be guaranteed that disabled people will not be worse off?

Leader of the house, barrier-free transport has a key role to play in providing not only independence but a route out of poverty and the examples that I have highlighted of disabled people being refused taxis or charged extra because they require an accessible vehicle. So, what can the Welsh Government do to ensure that local authorities stamp out this immoral and illegal practice? 

Finally, leader of the house, the Equality and Human Rights Commission highlighted the chronic shortage of accessible housing in Wales, calling it Wales's hidden crisis. So, can you outline the actions you are taking to increase the availability of accessible housing in Wales?

Thank you once again for your statement, and I look forward to scrutinising the details of the updated framework and action plan.

Thank you very much, Caroline Jones, for those remarks. I'll try and cover off all of them. I've had conversations with various colleagues—the Minister for housing in the last instance, for example, my colleague the Cabinet Secretary for Economy and Transport, and my colleague the Cabinet Secretary for Local Government and Public Services—around some of the issues that you raise. Some of them are within our control, others not so much. We'd very much welcome, for example, the ability to regulate some of the bus services, which would allow us to specify specific spaces for wheelchair users in particular, but actually other issues that Mike Hedges also highlighted around visual and aural aids to assist somebody to be independent. I don't know ifthe Member or any of the other Assembly Members present have been with one of our many disability charities and been put in the same position as a person with sensory deprivation and then walked through a familiar place; then you soon get a very good idea of some of the physical barriers. But there are also, as the Member points out, a large number of attitudinal and organisational barriers. So, the plan will also be addressing misconceptions around what people can and can't do and also some unintended consequences.

And if I could finish, Dirprwy Lywydd, with this example that was given to me by one of the young people that I was talking to at the conference that I attended with Leonard Cheshire and Delsion, a Disability Confident employer conference. A local employer had been extremely encouraging and had said a lot of the right things about wanting to employ people with disabilities and particular impairments and so on, but at the same time had increased the flexibility requirements of all of their entry-grade jobs, so that in order to be employed there, you now had to be able to do all of the tasks across every entry grade. And that meant that people with specifically good ability in one area, but who perhaps couldn't do everything, would not be able to access that, and the employer had to have that pointed out to them before they realised that that would have that effect. It wasn't intended, and in fact they hadn't even seen that it was happening. Once pointed out, however, they embraced the idea and were very happy to look again to see whether that, what seemed to them, standard employment practice was actually having an unintended consequence. And that's the kind of conversation we are looking to have across Wales to make sure that, when people look at their HR strategies and their specific job descriptions and so on, they actually think about it from the point of view of somebody who might have a disability, if they've just put something in that job description that would effectively bar a person who would do that job extremely well and be a real benefit to their company.

So, I think that anecdote from that young person and the actually quite happy outcome where the employer recognised the issue demonstrate perfectly why the framework is needed and why we need to disseminate it as widely as possible. I'd be very grateful, Deputy Presiding Officer, if Assembly Members could use all of their networks to make sure that we get as many responses as possible to our consultation. Diolch. 

Diolch.