Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 7:19 pm on 20 November 2018.
Thank you, Julie, for those remarks, and thank you for the ongoing very positive contribution that you make to the committee. I did give a few examples in the statement of where I think that we have been able to secure some change. You referred to 'Mind over matter', and, as you know, the committee was very disappointed with the Welsh Government's response to 'Mind over matter'. But the task and finish group has now been established. I am a member of it, as a fully participating member but retaining with an observer status, so retaining my ability to criticise and call things out if I'm not happy with things, and I will certainly continue to do that. I think that both Cabinet Secretaries, and hopefully across Government—everyone realises that the committee is absolutely determined to see what I think is a comprehensive route map for change in 'Mind over matter' delivered. We're not going to take our foot off the pedal; we're going to keep drilling down on it, because we don't want to hand this over to another committee in another Assembly. The time to deal with this is now.
Thank you for your comments about the Youth Parliament. I'm really keen that, once they're in post, we establish a strong working relationship with them. I think it will be important to listen to them about how they want to engage with us, rather than us saying, 'Well, we're the children's committee; we'd like to do such and such.' But I hope that, as soon as they are in place, we can start to have those discussions and that they know that we're as keen to work with them as possible.
You referred to the UN envoy report, which was certainly a very sobering report last week, with talk of destitution and people in extreme poverty, which of course has a massive impact on children. I hope that, when we do the work on the rights of the child Measure, that will include some scrutiny of the areas around child poverty, which of course are featured by the UN. But I think it also raises challenges for us as an Assembly, because, although things like universal credit have been visited on us by Westminster, we're going to have to try and pick up the pieces as best we can, and a common theme in the committee has been concern about where poverty and child poverty now sits in the Assembly, because it's not with a particular Minister and that does present challenges with scrutinising it. I hope that, going forward, we can look at that, and also with John Griffiths's committee, because we have to—. So many of these problems that we see, like mental health problems, start with people living in poverty, and we have to tackle them.