The Welsh Conservatives welcome the Government's draft children's right scheme 2021, and we will be supporting today's motion before us. However, there is always a caveat to these things, isn't there? While we welcome the children's rights scheme, we have real concerns that the Welsh Government's actions do not improve the rights of Welsh children.

It has been 10 years since this Parliament introduced the children's rights Measure, which

'places a duty on Welsh Government Ministers to have due regard to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child', yet Welsh Ministers continue to disregard that duty whenever it suits them.

Each year, the Welsh Government publish a budget but totally fail in their duty to conduct a thorough children's rights impact assessment. CRIAs are vital tools in ensuring all Government policies adhere to the UNCRC. By failing to conduct rights impact assessments on public spending, we are left with little to no clarity on how budgetary decisions are impacting Welsh children. This has led to condemnation by both the children's commissioner and the Senedd's children's committee. In the report of the United Kingdom's children's commissioners to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, it was noted that, and I quote:

'The Welsh government has cut budget lines where a detailed CRIA would have identified the child rights impact, for example, uniform grants and funding for disadvantaged learners. While these were later overturned, it is concerning that these situations occur.'

Who knows what would have happened if the children's commissioner had not been there to stand up for Welsh children. These decisions would not have been reversed, that's for certain. It's not just the failure to conduct CRIAs that is concerning; many of us feel that Welsh Government CRIAs aren't worth the paper they're written on. Far too often, integrated impact assessments are passed off as children's rights impact assessments—an approach that is wholly inadequate and does not reflect the true impact of decisions upon the rights of Welsh children.