Diolch, Presiding Officer. Amendment 12 has been re-tabled from Stage 2. It is imperative that Ministers are under an obligation to deliver the childcare offer free from potential barriers. During Stage 1, the Children, Young People and Education Committee was made aware of concerns by a number of organisations about moving children between sites that provide the offer and sites that provide early years education. Both Estyn and the Welsh Local Government Association have realised that it is important to investigate the transportation of children, with some partnership working being undertaken in parts of Wales. Yet Estyn have admitted that they were not observing the movement of children from one site to another, and the Minister's evidence at Stage 1 clearly showed a patchy picture of transport for children across Wales. Either parents were organising their own handovers or some childcare providers were simply finding ways to link up with different settings.

The Minister himself also noted that there should be a focus in future on increasing co-location and collaboration in maintained and non-maintained settings. At Stage 2, he confirmed this position by maintaining that he wanted to increase significantly the proportion of childcare delivered in co-located premises, yet refused the amendment on the basis that placing a duty on Welsh Ministers was not necessary to tackle the issue. It is welcome that the Minister has confirmed additional research questions on the evaluation of year 2 of the pilot schemes to further examine the matter, as well as promised to consider transportation with the evaluation of national roll-out of the offer. However, we believe that this does not go far enough, especially due to the recommendation outlined in the first year's evaluation—specifically, the evaluation of year 1 recommends that further consideration needs to be given to the alignment between the provision of childcare and the delivery of foundation phase nurseries. This could include transport to and from settings. It is further recommended that closer working relationships may be required between foundation phase nurseries and childcare providers who are delivering the offer.

As such, it is important that Welsh Ministers are under a duty to oversee these recommendations so as to prevent further barriers for parents to access the childcare offer. Therefore, we ask the Assembly to support this motion.