Julie James: Simon Thomas makes a number of good points that he's made on a number of occasions to me about the way superfast has worked. I think it's fair to say that the Superfast Cymru scheme has been a hugely successful scheme for those people who've received superfast from it, and they are an enormous number of people across Wales. It's in the nature of the beast that we're not inundated by letters...
Julie James: I think the Member has made a number of points that are well worth considering. As I said, in considering what we're going to do for the successor schemes, we are of course very mindful of the people who have had promises made to them in various circumstances and , for various complex engineering reasons and so on, haven't been able to be met under the first scheme. Angela Burns will be the...
Julie James: I think the remarks made by the Secretary of State are really quite shocking, actually. Quite clearly, marriage equality is not the same thing as being connected to broadband, in any regard. Obviously, being an LGBT+ community member is a protected characteristic and ought to be treated sensitively as such. The whole issue of marriage equality in Northern Ireland is of course not one for this...
Julie James: I have asked officials for advice in relation to a domestic violence offender register. The UK Government is not planning to introduce a stalker and perpetrator register but is looking to improve multi-agency public protection arrangements and domestic violence disclosure scheme arrangements instead.
Julie James: That's a very good question. There is no specific register for stalkers and domestic violence perpetrators in Wales at the moment, as the Member is well aware. The domestic violence disclosure scheme, also known as Clare's law, allows the police to share information about a person's previous violent offending where this may help prevent domestic violence or prevent someone from being...
Julie James: Well, we're doing an enormous amount of work in this area, with Welsh Women's Aid, and I've had a very helpful meeting very recently with Eleri Butler to go through a large number of issues around this agenda. It's very important, of course, as the Member highlights, that we work across the piece in Welsh Government, and we have a number of cross-Government initiatives in this area. We are...
Julie James: Yes, I think Bethan Jenkins makes an excellent series of points there. As I was saying in response to Mark Isherwood, one of the things we've got to look at is just that the trends in somebody's life—. I've been working very closely with all of our Cabinet Secretary colleagues, because this agenda cuts right across the Welsh Government's work, to make sure that we address in that holistic...
Julie James: Well, that's not how I would put it. As I said, we've got the target for 690,000 premises to have been included in the first project. As I said, in response to an earlier question, I'm not yet in a position to be able to say categorically that that target was met. I hope to be able to do that within the next few months. We obviously monitor this very carefully. BT Openreach don't get paid...
Julie James: I don't hold that information in that way, I'm afraid.
Julie James: I share the Member's frustration, as he well knows. I've been doing my tour of Wales and I've heard a lot from members of the public who are very frustrated by the scheduling letters that they get. I don't want to indulge in semantics, because it just irritates people, but obviously we don't promise it. We're talking about scheduled works and there are a number of complex engineering reasons...
Julie James: No, I can't, because until I know what the engineering difficulty or other difficulty was that prevented them from being included, I'm not able to give you a cast iron guarantee that we will be able to overcome those difficulties. I can tell you that they're absolutely the top priority for us—people who've been in that situation—and we're working very hard to make sure that we can...
Julie James: As I said in response to a number of other Members, there are a number of initiatives that are really interesting across Wales. They're all tied up with a number of complex initiatives around data sharing and protocols, but I did visit the multi-agency safeguarding hub in Cardiff central police station very recently, and was very impressed by how the agencies there had come together to...
Julie James: Yes, of course, all the statistics on domestic violence are troubling, and it's a scourge in our society, and we have to have a range of options for preventing this and for tackling both the victims and their perpetrators and their various issues. For the first time in Wales, we've got standards for relevant authorities set on training related to violence against women, domestic abuse and...
Julie James: And I couldn't agree more. What we've done is we've looked to see how we can manage our own decreasing budget in this area—as a result of the austerity policies of the current UK Government—in order to best make use of that. We're doing that by increasing the flexibility of our local service partners to use their grant in more imaginative ways and to collaborate better on a regional...
Julie James: I'm having a series of bilaterals across all colleagues in the Government, which began when I took up this post only a few weeks ago, though it seems a bit longer. That's the purpose of the bilaterals: to make sure that the equality agenda, which clearly touches every part of Welsh Government—both Welsh Government as an employer, Welsh Government as an organisation and Welsh Government as...
Julie James: That's a very important point that the Member makes. As I said, the Cabinet Secretary and I are due to have our bilateral on these issues. I will say—and I'm going to steal my own thunder a little bit here—that next week I'll be launching the This is Me campaign, which is designed entirely to talk about gender stereotyping and treating individuals as individuals. It's a very hard-hitting...
Julie James: So, the very simple answer to that last question is 'yes'. In fact, I've just commissioned a piece of work jointly with my officials in Chwarae Teg to see how we can make sure there is good gender representation—half and half, not 40 per cent—on all public boards sponsored by the Welsh Government in this Assembly term. I'm hoping to be able to report back when they've done that small...
Julie James: We continue to implement our national strategy, which sets out our action to tackle domestic violence. Survivors’ voices are absolutely at the forefront of our work. In recognition of this, a national survivor engagement framework is currently being developed.
Julie James: I very much join Julie Morgan in warmly welcoming the recent appointment of our new national advisers, Yasmin Khan and Nazir Afzal. I really think we've done very well in securing the services of two such excellent people. They are, between them, full-time, not two part-time people, so it's a job share, which I'm very happy about as well. In fact, the previous adviser, Rhian—her contract...
Julie James: Andrew R.T. Davies raises an extremely important point. I have not yet had any extensive discussions on that. I've had a lot of discussions about English for speakers of other languages courses, and making sure that people who come to live here in Wales have access to English as a second language tuition. It is on my agenda to have that conversation. I'm very aware, as well, because I...
