Diolch, Dirprwy Lywydd, and thank you very much to Jack for bringing forward the debate and giving me the opportunity to speak about water safety and drowning prevention.

Dirprwy Lywydd, I'd just like to start, as you'd expect me to, by offering my deepest sympathies to Mark Allen's family and to anyone else in Wales who has been affected by drowning incidents, because they are, as Vikki Howells said, absolutely devastating, and they devastate not only the families but the communities around those families as well. We really need to be very aware of that. I also want to thank the campaigners who have contributed their time and provided valuable comments to inform the report and for their continued awareness raising, which I think is particularly brave in the circumstances of the tragedy of losing a son, a friend, and a member of your community.

I also want to thank all the members of the Petitions Committee for the production of the 'Mark Allen’s Law: Water safety and drowning prevention' report because it's a very good report indeed and I'm very pleased to be able to accept the recommendations therein.

As the report highlights, there are still too many water-related instances occurring in Wales. The recommendations in the report will enhance Wales's drowning prevention strategy, which was published in December 2020 by Water Safety Wales.

I just want to talk a little bit about that, because various contributions today are absolutely right: we do need to pull the various sectors together here, because this is about water safety, of course, but it is also about encouraging people to use our great outdoors in the right way and in the right circumstances. It's a well-known fact that I'm a very, very keen cold-water wild-water swimmer, and I'm very, very happy to extol the virtues of that kind of swimming. I only wish I'd had the chance to do it while I've had this cold, because I feel sure it would have helped me throw it off, which might seem counterintuitive to people, but actually there are real benefits that it brings to you if you can get into the water. I just extol it. I'm not quite as enthusiastic as the dawn people in Penarth, who go out to greet each day with a dip in the sea, but I'm very fond, nevertheless, of those kinds of activities.

But all the more the reason to make sure that the tragedy that brought about the report today doesn't happen, and there are a number of things that we can do there. We can do the things that the report sets out in terms of education and awareness, we can do the things about the signage, we can do the things about throw lines, but we can't do those everywhere. As Huw has said, there will be areas in Wales that are just not suitable for that. So, what we also need to do is raise awareness of where it is safe to go wild swimming, and why it can be a real problem, particularly on a hot day, to dive into cold water. And again, counterintuitively, it's worse on a hot day to do it than it is on a cold day, because of the extreme change in body temperature.

And also, it isn't about being able to swim. Of course I would absolutely love for everyone in Wales to be able to swim, just for the sheer joy of it, but also for, obviously, the life-saving possibilities. We're a coastal nation, a nation very fond of its water, so of course our people should be able to take the full opportunities that offers. But many of the people who, unfortunately, do drown in water swim very well. That's not the issue. The issue is that they are either caught in an extreme temperature differential that shocks the body, or they're caught in a current, or they're caught in other circumstances, incidents with other craft on the water, and so on. That happens. These are the incidents that we need to have a really good look at.

We must do this in a way that encourages the right kind of wild or outdoor swimming in the right place. So, I would say, for example, that wild swimming for me is very much a community activity. I wouldn't dream of going on my own to do that. I know some people do, but I would discourage that. Getting together with a group of like-minded people, who know the water that they're in and who are prepared to help if you get into difficulties, is a really big part of this. It's part of the community and part of the joy of it, but it's also part of the safety of it. If you're with somebody else, then that person can get help to you as fast as possible. So, I would very much encourage doing it as a community activity.

We do need to have that awareness and we do need to make sure that people understand that the signs are not there just to randomly spoil your fun—they're there for good reason to explain to you what the water conditions are, what the things you can't see under the water might look like, and what the current situation actually is. I would also encourage people, where there are lifeguards, to make sure that they do what the lifeguards ask them to do. We do see quite often people just ignoring the signs and so on, not really understanding the strength and power that water can have when not treated with respect. So, we do need to increase awareness of water safety throughout Wales, and we do need to help people get better informed and to be able to judge the dangers of their surroundings for themselves in the right way.

I'm really happy, Jack, to have accepted the recommendations. I'm happy to have taken responsibility in my portfolio for doing this. It suits my attitude towards it as well. I think you're right: it does need somebody to take a look at it right across the breadth of things that we do. So, I'm very happy to have agreed, and we only agree in principle because we're already doing something in that space that's very similar. So, it's not that we don't agree. We agree with all of them.

I'm really happy to work with outdoor activities and particularly with AdventureSmart Wales in order to get the expertise from right across the sector. My officials are already actioning the recommendations and liaising with Water Safety Wales on next steps, and I look forward to taking this forward together. And again, my sympathies to the family. Diolch.