I want to also thank the outgoing children's commissioner and welcome the new one. Yesterday, of course, marked the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty. The UK Government of course marked that by signalling a return to austerity and that disastrous policy that consigned our country to a lost decade of low growth, underfunded public services and growing inequality. However, under the last Labour UK Government, child poverty was declining. And I'm focusing particularly on child poverty, because it is children coming out of poverty that will see them having better lives, better opportunities, better chances, and better access to those things that will improve their circumstances, like heat, like food and like good clothing. So, I do think that when we talk about difficult decisions and financial policies, we need to think about what those difficult decisions look like for some households—so, reusing dirty nappies, watering down formula milk, and a baby sleeping in a drawer and a seven-year-old in a travel cot because you can't afford a bed. Those are what you call difficult decisions that families are making now in Britain today. They're from a report by the charity Little Village, which runs more than 200 baby banks across the UK. Foodbanks, warm banks and baby banks—the Tories are doing an awful lot of banking in a crisis. And that is put in the context of what we're debating today.

There is an awful lot here that has moved on and a lot that we can celebrate, congratulate and commend, but the challenge for the new commissioner going forward, as the report notes, is to help tackle and respond to that poverty that I've just outlined, and I know that the Welsh Government has put forward policies, like the extended Summer of Fun, which is in that report, free school meals for every primary school pupil—really critical now in this time—and the expanded childcare offer, so that parents can go out to work and earn some money and also have some dignity. And the basic income pilot for young care leavers that was mentioned earlier is a positive move. They are predicated on the belief that everyone benefits when we invest in children and their families, not when we rob young people of a fair start and opportunities.

I do want to focus on children in care and care leavers. I want to particularly focus on the corporate parenting charter, and it's been recommended by the commissioner that we need to move to legislation. I think it's extremely important that every elected Member understands—not here, but at all levels, local authority as well—that they are the corporate parent of the looked-after child, and that it isn't the case that they can offload their commitments by that child being out of county or, in some cases, extremely rare cases, out of the country. What I think we need to focus on is who is feeding—. What is the structure and mechanism for feeding back the particular needs of that young person—the particular needs of that young person who is in residential care? What happens to those reports, if there are any—and I didn't see any when I was a councillor, but things might have moved on—and who is advocating on behalf of that child, because advocacy on behalf of that child is hugely important? And, of course, what we have seen is an increased profitability that's been attached more recently to companies making money out of the destitution of those children, which I find rather appalling, I have to say. And, particularly in Pembrokeshire, we have a fair amount of looked-after places. I'm not suggesting that those particular people are benefiting disproportionately, but we do know that there have been reports where people are benefiting disproportionately in running multiples of spaces for looked-after children. So, that's an area, I think, that needs a particular focus. We're talking about the well-being of the most vulnerable people in our society. Thank you.