Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer, and thank you for your statement, Minister. I'd also like to thank the advisory group for their work so far. I'd also like to congratulate those involved in delivering the improvements in transition services and other positive steps that you've updated us on today, Minister.

In an ideal world, no child would have to go into the care system—I think that's a given, isn't it? But part of the reason we're justifiably keen to prevent children needing to go into care is because successive Governments have not got care provision right. Your statement relates to reducing the number of children going into care, suggesting that children and young people are being taken into care when alternatives may be available. You've given an example of how alternatives are being considered, but the prospect of children going into care when there's another choice is deeply concerning and I'd like you to clarify the extent of the problem and quantify it. How big a worry is this? How are you going to ensure that aiming to reduce the number of children in care doesn't have the consequence of down-prioritising improving the care system itself and discourage Government from making the care system better for those who really do need it and for whom there is no choice but to put them in care?

If fewer children and young people are in care, will that result in more funds being spent on each child still in care or will that result in a reduction in the amount of funding allocated to care provision? What conversations have you had with the Cabinet Secretary for Finance about directing the savings created by taking fewer children into care to those who have to be in care? Are you going to be looking at the threshold for placing children into care that's being used by the statutory agencies? If so, do you think that current threshold is too low, do you think it's about right—where do you think that threshold is right now? Is that the right threshold to have? I'd like to be reassured that, firstly, you won't be taking the money out of the care system in order to fund extra focus on preventing children needing the care system and, further, can you confirm that spending on the care system will increase in line with both need and inflation?

Not long ago, I also asked you a question about the adoption system. You didn't answer it. So, as part of the efforts to prevent children having to stay in the care system longer than is necessary, I'll ask it again: do you believe, as I do, that there's no reason why children shouldn't be adopted by parents of a different ethnicity from themselves? And what have you done to assess whether, and if so ensure that, adoption agencies and social workers are neither formally nor informally acting to discourage mixed-race adoptions? There are many ethnically mixed families in the UK, and that's to be celebrated as we enjoy a diverse society. We rightly also don't treat gay couples differently from other couples in the adoption process. So, do you agree with me that racial diversity in families is a good thing, as it is in our wider society, and that ethnic differences shouldn't be a factor in placing children for adoption? If you're serious about keeping as many children as possible out of the care system, or keeping their time in it to a minimum, I'm sure you'll agree, but I would like to hear you say it.

Finally, in this week of National Safeguarding Week, we've had many, many stories in the press and elsewhere over the last few years about grooming gangs and adults grooming children for sexual exploitation, so I would like the Minister to take this opportunity to actually give us an update on the measures that you're taking and the measures that social services are taking to safeguard children and to prevent groomers having—to prevent individual groomers and grooming gangs having—access to children in care, because one of the most vulnerable groups of children to these grooming gangs is obviously children in care. The state has a massive duty to make sure that those groomers don't have access to those children, so I would really, really like to know what you're actually doing to stop that. Thank you.