Getting to grips with the health issues of our nation has to be a priority. I barely need to say that. We know that obesity and physical inactivity, which helps to create that obesity, is something that we can't afford to ignore at any level. There is a Public Health (Wales) Act 2017 that we now have that demands that a strategy is in place to tackle obesity. I was pleased to play my part, as the health spokesperson for Plaid Cymru at the time, to ensure that that amendment was added to the original draft Bill.

But the challenge now is to ensure that a strategy is put in place that can genuinely change the culture, with new investment and introducing greater urgency in the Government's actions. Without a doubt, ensuring that steps are taken to encourage greater physical activity amongst children and young people has to be, I think, at the heart of that. Indeed, I was very pleased, as a member of the health committee at the time, that there was a consensus reached among the Members that this was an issue that deserved our attention, and this report that we're discussing today is the result of that, of course.

It's a national issue. I'm sorry to say that it is a particularly serious problem in my constituency, where recent research by Public Health Wales showed that 13.5 per cent of children who are four and five years old in Anglesey are obese, as compared to 12 per cent across Wales. Over a quarter of children in Wales are considered to be overweight.

And I was very pleased that the first witness who came before us as a committee as part of this inquiry was Ray Williams, a former physical trainer in the army, who won the Commonwealth Games gold for weightlifting, and who now, through his gym, which is a social enterprise in Holyhead, is trying to change attitudes towards health and fitness. I had a chat with Ray at the beginning of this week, and we both agreed that the report is very useful, but that the Government's response was very disappointing.

We both have no doubt that one of the main things that needs to be done is to use the fact that we have children in school for a large proportion of their lives to drive a change in fitness levels. Personally, I would like to move towards something like an hour of physical activity every day for everyone, through a combination of activities within school hours and outside school hours. The committee received international evidence. Slovenia came to the fore as a nation that realised the health crisis facing them and transformed their attitude towards introducing physical activity into the lives of children and young people, and to do that on a national level. I'll quote from the report:

'The Slovenian Parliament has adopted a National Programme of Sport for 2014-2023 which proposes the following actions: to provide at least 180 min of high quality PE per week to every child, to provide free swimming and cycling lessons as a means of enhancing social competencies, and to ensuring leisure time for sporting activities.'

It goes on to list some of the other steps. And yes, the time that is allocated for physical activity is important, and that's why I, like the Chair of the committee, am so disappointed to see the Government rejecting the committee's recommendation 8 to put that 120 minutes of physical activity, which is already recommended for schools, on a statutory footing. As I've already said, 120 minutes a week isn't ambitious enough in my view, and to reject even guaranteeing that is a major failure on the part of the Government to take this issue seriously enough.

What's happening far too often, I know from experience with my own children and what we heard as a committee, is that the time for physical activity is used for other purposes. The purpose of recommendation 9 is to prevent that from happening, by getting Estyn to give greater priority to physical activity, to monitor and evaluate the physical activity that is being provided. Yes, the Government agrees on that issue of making it a priority, but they note, then, in their response to the committee that they don't of course agree that giving greater priority to physical activity should mean ensuring 120 minutes of activity a week. That, again, is extremely disappointing.

To conclude, another issue I'm disappointed in is that the Government is rejecting recommendation 6 to introduce a programme of investment in schools that isn't part of the twenty-first century schools programme. They say in their response, as we heard from Helen Mary Jones, that it's an issue for local authorities. Of course, local authorities have seen their budgets being cut to the bone, but it's about investment in our children, in our future. The health of our nation won't come for free. Healthy body, healthy mind.