I'm very pleased to take part in this debate on behalf of my party, Plaid Cymru, but also as co-chair of the cross-party group on children and the cross-party group on looked-after children, roles that I'm very proud and grateful to share with David Melding. I'd like to thank the Chair and the committee for what is an excellent report, with very powerful recommendations and very well evidenced recommendations. I also echo the gratitude that's already been expressed to all those who participated in giving evidence, particularly children and young people themselves.

Those of us who were Members of this Senedd in 2011, as the Chair of this committee was, when the rights of children and young persons Measure was passed, will remember that the process was by no means straightforward and that there was resistance from within some parts of the Welsh Government at that time, because they felt that placing the convention on a legal footing was constraining to the Government. Those more progressive voices prevailed, and I'd like to put on record again my thanks to all those who helped us in civil society, many of whom went on to give evidence, and particularly to the academics at Swansea University.

When we passed the legislation, it felt like a really exciting development on a route that had been part of our Senedd's pathway right from the beginning, when one of the first things that we had to deal with was the terrible Waterhouse report into child abuse. Right from the beginning, we have debated these issues, and passing the legislation felt like an important step forward. In that context, in some ways, this report makes disappointing reading, because while absolutely there has been progress, there is clearly so much more to do.

I want to give my personal support and Plaid Cymru's support to all the recommendations. There's no time, of course, in this debate to refer to them all. I want to begin by highlighting those that relate to child rights impact assessments. We need to transform the culture so that all those involved in producing these assessments see them as what they are intended to be, which is a resource to help Government improve practice and not a further burden. Knowing the pressures on our public services, it is understandable if that's how these impact assessments are sometimes perceived, but that is not the intention. This is a tool to help us all do better by children, and we need a shift so that people understand that. It doesn't work to include child rights impact assessments under broader equality assessments. They're not there to do the same things. So, I very much hope that the Government will accept all that the committee's had to say with regard to child rights impact assessments.

I particularly want to give our support to recommendation 3. It's really important that Welsh Ministers, right at the top, understand the implications of the Measure for them and for their work, and understand what 'due regard' is intended to mean. It is always a risk in any institution that we lose institutional memory, that we forget why we needed this legislation in the first place, that we forget how much it matters. This recommendation goes a long way to addressing that, and I hope that whoever forms the next Welsh Government will embrace that with enthusiasm.

The recommendations about redress are also very important. I won't attempt to go through them one by one, but I've long believed that rights in themselves lack value unless those rights can be enforced. In the end, there is little point, Llywydd, in having a law if nobody gets into trouble if the law is broken. That's what laws are for, otherwise we can achieve policy objectives with budgets, with policy documents. But if it's a law, there has to be a way for somebody who feels that that law has been broken—and in this case, particularly for children—to be able to say, 'No, my rights were not addressed, my rights were not respected, and this is what I want done about it'. That is a particularly important part of this report, and the evidence was very clear to me.