Thank you to the Equality and Social Justice Committee for bringing forward today's report. You may be a little surprised to see me speaking on this item today, but I must say, I had the pleasure of attending two of the committee's meetings on behalf of my good friend and colleague over recent months, and I enjoyed the committee's work, carried out regarding parental employment and childcare—this specific issue. I'm sure the committee enjoyed my attendance there as well, at times. [Laughter.]

But, as we know, childcare and parental employment has been an issue for a number of years and been brought to light, certainly, through the COVID-19 pandemic. As access to affordable and flexible childcare is often cited, as shared already through the report, by many parents as one of the main barriers preventing them from working or progressing further in their careers—and my wife and I certainly have experienced this with our three children, who are under the age of 10—there's the challenge that can take place for working parents.

Before I jump into some of the points that jumped out to me in the report and the committee's work on this, just a thought going through my mind while the report was being presented is I do wonder, sometimes, whether we're missing a trick with multigenerational care. I always remember the story, in my former life, my former job, I had a new boss who came over on secondment from Hyderabad in India, and he couldn't get over the way that we deal with care, childcare, caring for our elderly, compared to some of the cultural ways that his tradition would use. I do wonder sometimes whether we're missing a trick with the grandparent-grandchild relationship that can take place and the support that we provide there across multiple generations. That's an aside, I suppose.

But in terms of the report and the points that jumped out to me, as cited, during the committee's evidence, many parents simply aren't aware of what childcare support is actually available to them, particularly available to new parents, and I experienced this around nine years ago. It's really important, in my view, that Welsh Government do work more closely with local authorities, in particular, and health boards and relevant organisations to improve this awareness and provide further information to parents, so they can use a number of the fantastic options that are out there, and it's crucial that childcare and support are targeted, certainly, at families that need it, and we try and avoid this postcode lottery that can happen from time to time.

Secondly, in terms of the co-operation agreement of the Welsh Government and Plaid Cymru, there's clearly some provision in there to improve and expand the free childcare to two-year-olds, particularly focused on providing strengthened Welsh-medium childcare, and I'd certainly welcome that from this side of the benches. These are items we've been calling for for a long time as well and it's good to see progress in that area.

Finally, I think it's clear from the committee's engagement that all efforts need to be made to encourage people from all backgrounds, as just highlighted by the Chair there, to consider a career in childcare. I know, for example, my wife worked in this area for a short time and it would be good to see a broader mix of people involved in that professional childcare and children being able to see different types of people looking after them over the series of their life, I suppose.

So, to conclude, I'd like to put on record my thanks to the whole of the committee for producing this really important piece of work on childcare and the positive outcomes that it will have. I also thank the organisations and public bodies and all sorts of bodies that provided evidence to help the committee with their recommendations. Diolch yn fawr iawn.