Diolch yn fawr, Deputy Presiding Officer, and in opening today's short debate I'd like to give a minute of my time to both Sioned Williams and Jane Dodds. 

A 'cost-of-living crisis' is another way of saying that increasing numbers of people are being forced into poverty. It's a sign of failure of policy makers and of the way our economy is organised. It is not inevitable, and we can and we should seek to make people's lives easier and tackle poverty. We all know what happens if we don't.

This is a familiar script. We've read it all before. Poverty removes people's agency and, particularly when it's experienced in childhood, causes trauma that scars people for life. And we often talk about the need to judge people on merit. Well, how is that possible when an increasing number of people's life chances are affected from the start by poverty?

Couple this with the incredible cost of picking up the pieces after the trauma that poverty causes and you have to wonder why the UK Conservative Government are doing so little to stop certain organisations actively making things so much worse. One such group is energy suppliers. I'm sure Members will have seen the campaigning I have done and that organisations have done, calling for a ban on the forced installation of prepayment meters, and I'm grateful to the many of you who signed my statement of opinion that I tabled this week, calling for that very ban.

In fact, every single Member of the backbenches from the Welsh Labour Party, every single Member in Plaid Cymru, every single Member in the Welsh Liberal Democrats did sign the motion. But not a single Conservative Member. Presiding Officer, we don't even have one in the Chamber. We have just one online. Not one Tory signed this statement of opinion calling for a ban. And I'm calling for a ban not just because these meters serve to ensure that the poorest in our society pay the most for their energy, but it is because, in front of our very eyes—whether that's your Labour eyes, your Plaid Cymru eyes, your Liberal Democrat eyes or your Tory eyes—a national scandal is taking shape, a scandal that is putting lives at risk. I will briefly set out what is happening.