I'm glad also of the opportunity to speak on this motion today, which I supported and which Plaid Cymru will be supporting, and I would like to thank Jenny Rathbone for bringing this debate to the Senedd. As she said, it's extremely timely.

A person's social networks can have a significant impact on their health, both physical and mental, and studies have shown that a person's social relationships are as important a factor as obesity, smoking or excessive alcohol consumption when it comes to predicting mortality rates. It's a factor in recovery from illness, and where there's a lack of social support, where there is social deprivation and isolation, there is a direct correlation with poor health outcomes, damaging behaviours and mental health problems. Indeed, many studies point to healthy and positive social relationships are actually more important for people's health than factors such as smoking or obesity on mortality. Evidence on quitting smoking, for example, shows that the biggest motivator is a positive life event, and having a positive support network, ensuring a relationally healthy environment, is thus more successful as a public policy tool than using shame or coercion.

Although multifaceted and complex, it is undeniable that our well-being as a society is inextricably linked to social cohesion and interaction, and the 'Together Through Tough Times' report makes clear how the strength of communities, their resources and resilience creates these positive impacts for mental health. And I have seen in my own region how those local community hubs, communal spaces and groups, have helped enrich and empower, fostering empathy and co-operation, forging connections and building confidence, and I'm sure that we can all think of examples in our communities. I'm thinking of the tremendous work of local area co-ordinators, those voluntary organisations—large and small—and community groups who do so much to provide social opportunities of all kinds. And as you mentioned, Huw Irranca-Davies, that variety is key, and the Mind Cymru report points out many different types of people in different types of circumstances need different kinds of access and opportunities and facilities that can help them address mental health problems, and many of the issues that can cause or exacerbate them.

It also crucially underlines the barriers, which we heard about from Jenny, that can prevent different groups from being able to benefit from being part of social networks, and I'm sure we're all also acutely aware that the cost-of-living crisis and the pressures on public finances are bearing down on the structures that help support social capital and safeguard community assets. Just as we would naturally object to hospital closures, any threat to libraries, community halls, art centres and sporting facilities should be similarly resisted. One of my first campaigns that I fought in my community was against cuts that threatened the future of my local community arts centre in Pontardawe, because I knew that the groups that use that space were set to lose a lot more than somewhere to see the pantomime or a concert. Men's Sheds should be seen as crucial a facility as men's health clinics; coffee mornings as important as any formal advice centres.

There can be no doubt that poverty and economic neglect, as well as deliberate ideology, have increased the threats to such beneficial social activity. The importance of co-operation and of our shared humanity is also lost when individualism is politically elevated over shared values, and certain groups are denigrated and scapegoated. Government must thus show that it values people, shares their concerns—