It's a pleasure to follow on from the last speaker and also from my Chair of the committee, John Griffiths. I stand simply to support all the points that have been made in terms of the report that we brought forward and the recommendations, because I think the report is actually very balanced. It isn't strident or ideological or fixated on a certain end point. It listened very carefully to the evidence that came in front of us. It very much reflects the cross-party nature of that committee and different political and personal perspectives of those who sat on that committee—I have to say, very different personal and political perspectives of those who sat on the committee. It doesn't, actually, seek wholesale devolution of all benefits, and certainly not in one fell swoop, either. It actually looks for practical ways in which significant but targeted elements of benefits could be devolved, as well as significantly greater administrative devolution of benefits. And why? With the sole purpose of improving the lot of people in Wales.

And, do you know, from a personal perspective, I've said repeatedly in this Chamber, from my brand of socialism, I want to see the benefits system supporting people in Swansea and Southport and Stockport and everywhere else equally, and we have to recognise—and I depart from the committee in a sense, here; my perspective is that, for the last 10 years, we've had a punitive regime. I've seen the evidence of it in my own constituency. For me, that is unarguable. But we couldn't equally say that some future Government in Wales, heaven help us, Mary, and John on the monitor there, would not have a benign approach to the benefits system and social security—a future Government in Wales might do it, but at least we'd have the mechanisms here and closer to the people that we could argue, 'Why are you doing what you're doing?' as opposed to some distant Whitehall Ministers and Whitehall mandarins who say, 'This is the way it's going to be, and you can tinker around the edges but that's your lot.' So, I would argue to the Minister that it's a practical approach that is set out within this, recognising the evidence we consistently heard time after time. People came in front of us as a committee and didn't argue, actually, for wholesale devolution, didn't argue from an ideological base; they were people who were confronted with the hard reality of the people that they try to support, who were in work as well as out of work receiving benefits, and how we could better put a system in place in Wales that would actually be to their good.

In May 2020, the Deputy Minister for Housing and Local Government in front of us here, Hannah, told the committee that, 'Because of the uncertain times of the pandemic, now does not appear to be the best time, both in terms of available resource and availability of evidence, to consider fully long-term changes to social security.' I have some sympathy with that on the pandemic in front of us and the resources, I do; I don't have sympathy with the element that talks about the evidence, because we did a lot of work on that committee that I think would help the Government do whatever they need to finesse the evidence, and actually just go on with it. I don't, by the way, underestimate what we'll get back from the UK Government on this, but we should ask. We should get a position and then put it there, and in the next Senedd come back and put that position again until we get a Government in London that will listen.

The Minister also said that she would revisit this important issue again when the Welsh Government has been able to fully reconsider any changes that have been made to the UK social security system and how the UK Government social security system has been able to meet the challenges in Wales of the global crisis, and had the opportunity to review any evidence for how the crisis has been met by the different models operating for devolved social security arrangements in other devolved nations. I recognise the grass was growing longer and longer as I went through that, and that would be my ask of the Minister in support of the Chair and other members of the committee who came to very clear recommendations and conclusions on this. There are resource constraints at the moment without a doubt, and it wasn't simply COVID, but what the EU withdrawal process has been doing to our civil service, and so on; I get that. But we really need to move ahead with this now, and as I say once again in closing, not for ideological reasons but purely for practical measures that will improve the lot of my constituents and people across Wales, we should be making these decisions closer to home, closer to home in Wales.