Thank you very much for calling me. This is the first debate on the work of the Equality and Social Justice Committee. Our report looked at the impact of the pandemic on personal indebtedness and how the Welsh Government and public services should be responding. At the forefront of everybody's mind today—apart from the fate of our current Prime Minister—is the unprecedented rise in energy prices. That wasn't, however, at the top of everybody's minds when we started consulting stakeholders in August and took oral evidence in September and October. At that point, rent and council tax arrears were and are just as significant as food and fuel bills for households whose income is insufficient to meet all their everyday needs. As widely predicted, all these problems are getting worse, not better.

A year into the pandemic, StepChange captured the fact that one in five households were in financial difficulties, and at least one in 12 households had fallen into debt. The Bevan Foundation report highlighted how at least one in eight households, at that point in May last year, had had to reduce food shopping to pay for heating, or not heating the house properly to keep food on the table. Six months later, further research by YouGov, commissioned by the Bevan Foundation, tracked how the situation has deteriorated in that last half year. The crisis, unfortunately, is likely to unravel further as a result of the cruel cut to universal credit, the end of the furlough payments related to COVID, and the upcoming rise in national insurance contributions.