Thank you. 

So, here we have the passing of a Bill that didn't have an in-depth costing for public services from the start, and that doesn't give us complete confidence in how the Bill’s consequences will be communicated to parents and children, and one that doesn't give us, a devolved Parliament, any control over how its enforcement will be applied by two reserved institutions—the Crown Prosecution Service and the police.

I say again that there must be a commitment from the Government to continually place this at the forefront of parents and the public's minds. Despite the Deputy Minister’s clear commitment to have a long awareness campaign, if we are going to use the example of New Zealand as a reason to introduce the Bill, we should also heed the warning signs coming from that country.

As I mentioned last week, 13 years after their smacking ban, a survey found that almost 40 per cent of mothers would still smack their child, and 70 per cent would not report a parent if they witnessed a parent smacking their child on the backside or the hand. So, this may not even have as much of an impact as you had intended. Furthermore, there has been a decline in discipline in New Zealand, with 15 per cent of parents with young children saying they were aware of a family that had been negatively affected by the law, and 17 per cent said it had made them less confident as a parent. We cannot allow this to be repeated in Wales.

Deputy Presiding Officer, I agree entirely with the Finance Committee's concerns. And as I said during the passage of the Childcare Funding (Wales) Bill last year, this Parliament's concerns should not be continually dismissed by the Welsh Government, and we would take no more.

Deputy Minister, as I said last week, it is your duty to take the Welsh public along with you, rather than to create an atmosphere of hostility and resistance. I don't think this has been achieved yet, but I also do know you have enough votes for the Bill to pass. As I said to the former Deputy Minister for Children and Social Services last year, it is also for you to convince your own constituents that this was the right course of action to take and that you have listened to scrutiny. I don't believe that to be the case.