My thanks to my fellow committee members, and our Chair and our clerks, and especially those who gave evidence for helping us to bring forward wide-ranging recommendations in respect of our committee's report on inequality during the COVID-19 pandemic.

One thing is crystal clear: the harsh social and economic inequalities that have always been present have sharpened as a result of the pandemic. As such, the committee is equally clear that the responses to the pandemic must focus on those who have been most exposed by this virus and who are at greatest risk of suffering the deepening and entrenching of that inequality: those who are in poverty already, in precarious work on low incomes; those with lower educational attainment and skills, in the worst housing, and overcrowded and poor standard private rented housing; single parents, the vast majority of whom are women; low earners from certain ethnic groups working in that low-paid, precarious employment, exposed to the economic slowdown and the health inequalities affecting men and older people, but with a virus perniciously targeting people from certain black, Asian and minority ethnic groups; the women who, in the majority, have taken on the additional unpaid caring roles for children and older relatives that have arisen through COVID-19; children with low educational attainment, who will have fallen further behind; children with special education needs or additional learning needs, who will be likewise affected by the absence of educational and wider support during the pandemic; disabled people who've seen their world shrink because of necessary COVID measures; carers and older people receiving care at home, or in a residential setting, who have also seen the COVID world closing around them; and migrants, who are most likely to work in those shut-down sectors, and are even more exposed through their restricted access to benefits and other public funds.

These are the same people, collectively and individually—because behind this there are thousands upon thousands of individual human stories—who were already vulnerable to poverty and inequality before, but the harsh winds of coronavirus have shaken violently what defences were previously in place. So, I'm pleased, therefore, that the Government has indeed accepted, or largely accepted, or accepted in principle, the vast majority of our recommendations—so, for example, on equality impact assessments, to comply with our human rights obligations and public sector equality duties; on health and care and coronavirus-related data gathering; on the impact of the Coronavirus Act 2020 on measures affecting social care and mental health duties; on poverty reduction strategies and targets and performance indicators; on school meals and summer holidays; on fair work measures to a values-led recovery, and implementation of the Fair Work Commission's recommendations; on additional funding to advice services on benefits and employment and discrimination, especially for BAME and disabled employees; on a benefits take-up campaign; on exploring automatic entitlement to devolved benefits; on reviewing and rolling out the BAME advisory group's assessment tool; on promoting fair and flexible work to all employers receiving Welsh Government support; maximising the income of unpaid carers through council tax discounts; on reviewing the accessibility and availability of mental health services, especially for men from lower socioeconomic groups; on delivering a sustainable funding model for the violence against women, domestic abuse and sexual violence sector before the end of this Senedd; on data collection for older abuse victims; on updating and reviewing community cohesion and hate crime plans and frameworks; and, I have to say, on lobbying the UK Government for the lifting of 'no recourse to public funds' restrictions; on migrant awareness training for front-line public staff; and on targeting employment support at those who are furthest from the labour market, and so on.

Now, the Government has rejected a couple of our recommendations with reasons, and some are accepted only in principle, as I say. But I welcome the fact that we have a Government that has responded positively to the vast majority of recommendations, and indeed has not waited to act on many of them already. It's clearly committed to tackling the inequalities that have been brought into such sharp relief by this pandemic. If anything positive at all comes out of this personal and human tragedy of COVID-19, in which many have lost their lives and their loved ones, then it must be, surely, the redoubling of our efforts to reduce the inequalities in life that are there by chance of birth and chance of geography. Let's extend our hands further to help people up when the world must seem to them to be always knocking them down. Thank you.