Again, I thank Gareth for bringing this important debate to the floor of the Senedd today—it's crucially important for children the length and breadth of our country. The crime survey for England and Wales estimated that one in 100 adults—nearly half a million people aged 18 to 74—have experienced physical neglect before the age of 16. To compound this, there were 160,000 offences related to child physical abuse recorded by police in England, Wales and Northern Ireland in 2019-20, and we saw worrying rises, as was outlined earlier, during lockdowns, with the pandemic exacerbating an already worrying problem.

This is just a glimpse into the challenge that we face here in Wales to combat adverse childhood experiences. We have to make it a priority to protect our children and following generations, as we can all see clearly the enormous and devastating effect that trauma, as has been outlined, has on educational performance and life outcomes. Increased adverse childhood experiences are associated with an increase in prevalence of no qualifications and a decreased prevalence of higher education qualifications. When we fail these children in their formative years, we usually set them up to fail for life, something that cannot be allowed to continue. We should be striving to be world leaders in child protection, which in turn would improve our educational outcomes. If we fail, the evidence shows us what can and usually does happen.

The English Department for Education undertook a review into the international evidence on the impact of abuse and neglect on children. The evidence in the review suggested that maltreated children are at greater risk of poor school behaviour, greater risk of being the victims of bullying in school, more likely to have special educational needs, at greater risk of exclusion from school, and more likely to be absent from school. The onus is really now on the Welsh Government to say 'enough is enough' and deal with the root causes of adverse childhood experiences, because if we carry on failing the youngest and most vulnerable, then we fail collectively as a society.

I just want to reaffirm what Gareth said earlier: it's on you, Welsh Minister and Welsh Government, now to reaffirm that commitment to the 70/30 target, because that would be a really good place to start. Thank you.