I'll begin by reiterating the calls of the Chair of the Finance Committee for proper time for Senedd committees to consider and report on the 2023-24 draft budget. I do very much appreciate the impact on the Welsh Government of events beyond its control, such as the timing of the UK Government's autumn budget, and welcome the Minister's engagement with the Finance Committee about this year's timetable. I urge the Minister to do what she can to give the Senedd time to do justice to its scrutiny of the 2023-24 draft budget.

I'd now like to raise some important cross-policy issues that I believe are relevant to all committees and indeed all Members. The first is about understanding the impact of the budget on different groups of people. I welcome the Minister's statement of 5 July on gender budgeting and the contribution of Members from across the Siambr to that debate. I agree with the Minister that gender budgeting provides a valuable lens through which we can view the impact of spending decisions on women and on girls, and I hope that the Welsh Government is able to learn from that experience of other countries and use that learning to accelerate the time it takes to embed gender budgeting here in Wales.

Of course, we as a committee are concerned about the impact of the budget on children and young people. On 8 February, I expressed to Members our concern that this Government did not publish any child rights impact assessments to show how children's rights shaped the 2022-23 draft budget allocation for children and young people. In fact, it didn't mention children's rights once in the entire strategic integrated impact assessment. So, could the Minister confirm whether she's listened to our concerns and perhaps outline that children's rights have shaped Welsh Government decisions about the 2023-24 spending priorities?

The second cross-policy issue that I would like to raise today is the so-called revised baseline. The revised baseline is a set of figures that the Welsh Government uses to compare next year's draft budget with last year's expenditure. I'm sure we're not the only committee that struggles to understand where the revised baseline figures come from. They're not the previous year's draft budget, and they're not the previous year's supplementary budget, either. But let me be clear: I do support the Welsh Government's stated intention to enable more suitable comparisons between financial years, but if committees are struggling to understand how the revised baseline is calculated, that means it isn't clear enough. It needs to be calculated transparently and consistently. Committees need to know where the funding is going up, where it's going down, where it's being cut altogether, who will be affected and why. Given the substantial overlap across committees' remits, the approach to calculating the baseline must be consistent across ministerial portfolios too. And I'd warmly welcome working jointly with other committees to ensure that the Welsh Government retains a sharp focus on these critical cross-policy issues.

I'll now highlight two priorities for the Children, Young People and Education Committee. Our work to date has repeatedly raised concerns about the mental health of children and young people. We're concerned about mental health because of the impact of COVID. We're concerned in the light of the impact of widespread peer-on-peer sexual harassment on mental health—our report that was published this morning. We're concerned about what we've heard during our inquiry on pupil absence about the links between mental health and school attendance, and I have no doubt that concerns will be raised by students and others as we embark on our next inquiry into mental health support in higher education this autumn. I know the Government's commitment to this agenda, and I urge the Government to commit funding to deal with this critically important issue, with families, in schools, in hospitals, in universities, alongside third sector partners and elsewhere.

We've also recently launched our Senedd-long inquiry into the implementation of the additional learning needs reforms and the new Curriculum for Wales. We've heard throughout our work to date about the importance of supporting school staff to implement those reforms effectively. This means giving local authorities enough funding to provide for schools' core budgets. It also means working with local government to encourage them to actually spend this money on schools. On top of that, it will require targeted funding from the education budget to support specific priorities too. We urge the Welsh Government to ensure that these ambitious reforms have the financial backing that they need to succeed. They're too important to the lives of children and young people not to. Diolch.