I thank John Griffiths for those important points. He's right; families across Wales face this coming autumn and winter with a real sense of trepidation. We've been in a sort of phoney war, haven't we, on this, really, because people are yet to see the real impact of the increasing bills that began on 1 April this year. During the long summer months, people are in some ways able to make adjustments—you don't have to heat the house, you don't have to turn the light on in the early evening—but they see October coming and they know that that way of coping will no longer be available to them. John Griffiths is absolutely right about the sense of foreboding that that creates for so many families.

The benefits system ought to take the heavy lifting of all this. That's what it was designed to do. That is why James Griffiths, the Member of Parliament for Llanelli, designed the social security system in the way that he did, so that no family should be fearful of destitution here in the United Kingdom. But with £1,200 taken out of the budgets of families just as these bills begin to rise, the holes in the safety net become ever greater. Thousands of people in Wales now rely on the discretionary assistance fund to see them through the five-week waiting period, the five weeks before you get any help out of the UK system. Thankfully, our discretionary assistance fund allows families to draw down some help to get them through that very difficult period.

While I don't agree with all the points that the leader of Plaid Cymru made earlier about the dismemberment of a UK benefits system—because in the end, it has the potential to be a great engine for redistribution in the hands of the right Government—I do agree, and have said so previously, with the conclusions of the committee in the last Senedd term that John Griffiths chaired, that devolution of the administration of social security would make a real difference here in Wales. Of course we would have a different sanctioning regime if it was in the hands of this Senedd; of course we would have a different approach to deductions from people's bare-bone benefits for debts that they owe elsewhere. The case for devolution of administration of welfare has become even stronger since his committee first investigated it and made those recommendations. I'm very pleased indeed to associate myself strongly with those proposals.