Can I just say how delighted I am to be in this Chamber today to see this piece of legislation brought forward? As Siân Gwenllian has said, it has been a long time coming, but that is no reason not to welcome it very warmly today. I'd like to associate myself with everything the Deputy Minister has said about her predecessors, but I also feel that I need to say that I can think of no more fit person on her benches to be the Member in charge of this piece of legislation today and I hugely, hugely look forward to working with her as the legislation is brought forward.

I very much welcome—as I know do the groups and organisations, some of which the Deputy Minister has referred to—the fact that this will be a simple Bill, that it will be a simple question of repeal. I have, of course, heard what other Members have said about there being many issues that we need to do to support children and ensure that they're not abused, but this piece of legislation is not the place for that. A simple repeal is very much what's required, and I'm delighted to be able to support that today as, as Siân Gwenllian says, all of my fellow Plaid Cymru Members will be doing. 

I won't, Deputy Presiding Officer, reiterate the discussion points that have already been raised, but I do want to refer to something that the Deputy Minister has already mentioned about the way that children and young people feel when they are physically punished. We know that the best research now shows that little ones are upset and confused, because mummy and daddy tell them all the time big people must not hit little people—'Do not hit your little brother, that's not kind'. And if, then, in the next breath, daddy is smacking you for having hit your little brother, that's a very, very confusing thing if you're four or five years old. We know that the reaction of older children if they are physically punished, if they are hit—because that's what we're talking about—is that they feel humiliated and powerless, and that there is a direct link then between that and those children then going on to behave worse. That's the link that Members have mentioned—between physical punishment, between adults hitting children, and those children then going on to commit acts of anti-social behaviour. 

I know and I really understand the concerns that other Members have raised here, and I believe those concerns are absolutely genuine. And I hope that, through the passage of the Bill, we will all be able—particularly the committee members, but we will all be able to look again at the best, most current evidence, and be reassured that nowhere where this legislation has been introduced have we had hundreds and hundreds of perfectly good parents being criminalised. What, of course, this legislation will do is to make it very clear to families what is and isn't acceptable. Certainly, from my constituency postbag, there are a lot of people who very warmly welcome that. 

I just want to ask a couple of specific questions. Vikki Howells has already raised the point about children and young people being consulted in the process. I would like to put to the Deputy Minister that it's very important that that includes younger children, and not only teenagers. There are some excellent projects that I know the Deputy Minister is aware of, like the Little Voices project based in Swansea University, where really small children, six and seven-year-olds, have been able to have a voice in policy, and in terms of what they think is going to work for them—I think not so much in terms of the legislation, because they're not going to care about that, but about how they feel that they learn best, we can usefully listen to them. 

Again, in terms of who will get access to parenting services, I hear what's been said about the need for additional resources, and I of course would associate myself with what Vikki Howells has said about the importance of reaching out to what we call hard-to-reach communities. I sometimes think it's a question of communities where we just haven't tried hard enough, to be honest. But I would also want us to be very careful that we don't give the impression that problematic parenting is something that only happens amongst people who are economically poor. As a middle-class single mother myself, there were times when I would desperately, for example, would have liked to have my mum next door, and she wasn't there. So, I think we have to make sure in this debate that we're not giving any impression that we think people living in those communities are any more likely to behave inappropriately to their children than middle-class parents. I think we also mustn't be under any impression that middle-class parents don't need help either.

So, I'd like the Deputy Minister to give some consideration as to how we can—. I would argue that those middle-class parents struggling behind closed doors are potentially one of the hardest-to-reach groups in this discussion, because there may be a question of humiliation in terms of saying, 'I can't manage'. So, perhaps to give some consideration—and I hear what the Deputy Minister has said about health visiting services, maternity services for very young parents, but also whether there are things that we can do through schools to raise awareness and give access to more middle-class families, who might find it more difficult to access perhaps more traditional routes. 

And, finally, in relation to the timescales, I appreciate what the Deputy Minister has said about the need for things to bed in. I would argue that the very fact that we've been having these debates in this place over a number of years has contributed to the shift that the Deputy Minister has already referred to in public opinion. People know what we've been talking about. We now know that 80 per cent of parents of young children in Wales don't believe that physical punishment is acceptable, and they don't want to use it.

So, I think we've been talking about this for quite a long time. It's good to see Christine Chapman here today. I wonder if I can ask the Deputy Minister to keep that two-year implementation period under review. I think that children in Wales have been waiting a very long time to receive the equal protection that most of us here feel that they deserve. I appreciate what the Deputy Minister says about needing to be clear that everybody understands about a change in the law, but I just think that two years, once the law is passed, seems like a very, very long time to me. So, I'd ask the Deputy Minister to keep that under review, if she'd be so kind.