Diolch yn fawr, Leanne Wood, and thank you for acknowledging the statement, and also, I think, implicit in that was the acknowledgement of the importance of the social model of disability. It's about the actions we have to take to remove the barriers, where we are disabling through policy and practice because we have not taken into account the impact of these barriers.

I'll go first to your—just more clarification on the access to elected office fund. And I'm glad, as I'm sure all of us here in the Senedd—all parties would accept that this is important. Disability Wales were awarded the contract. It is going to be about providing crucial support to enable disabled candidates to access Senedd and local government elections, because they are likely to face greater costs due to their impairments, so the fund will help them in terms of access to meeting those costs. Up until recently, there's been a limiting factor in terms of establishing a fund, because it's been difficult to exempt the additional costs associated with an individual's impairments from the candidates' expenses limit, but we're now addressing that. Legislation is expected to be in place by the end of this year, to facilitate this approach for both Senedd and local government elections.

But it is important that this is taken forward, and there will be an advice service to encourage and support disabled people to seek election, financial support to assist prospective candidates—so, this is all important public information for political parties today—to meet the additional support cost, administration of the fund and management of allocations made available to support disabled candidates, and there will be an evaluation report prepared by December 2022 to inform the development of a longer term scheme, which I'm sure, Leanne, was what you were seeking in terms of the outcomes of that, to increase disabled representation at all levels of representation in Wales. So, the consultation opened on 11 November and will close on 21 January, and I urge everyone to respond to that.

I'm also grateful that you've raised issues about the impact of COVID itself, the lockdown and social restrictions, and restrictions on disabled people's lives. We have engaged with disability and neurodiversity organisations through not just our disability equality forums, but through many other arenas where we have been able to come together and listen and learn from their experience.

Of course, there have been some pluses expressed to working from home, to virtual working. It hasn't meant so many issues around access to transport. But this has also led to loneliness and isolation, and, of course, there are also disabled people who can't work from home in terms of the impact of their employers and expectations. We have to work very closely with the Wales Trades Union Congress to look at their rights as well, because disabled people play a key part in our economic recovery.

In terms of the employment champions, this is a strong message to employers on the importance of inclusive recruitment and retention of disabled employees. They are disabled employment champions and they will be central to our work going forward. We've got a comprehensive package of support for employers, as I said in my statement—an online toolkit, a network of disabled people, employment champions to be launched. But also as part of the COVID-19 employability commitment, we've recruited six disabled people's employment champions. There are much greater collaboration opportunities with business leaders, HR professionals and employer representatives. And the role of those champions, I believe, will be inspirational and aimed to not only dispel misconceptions but also to actually take action to see where employers can have the tools to remove the barriers, by applying the social model of disability in their workplace. But there is a disability pay gap as well as a gender pay gap, as well as a race pay gap, and we have to look at all of those socioeconomic issues as well.