Julie James: Our priority in Aberavon, as in the rest of Wales, is to ensure that people gain maximum benefit from the life-changing opportunities that digital technologies can offer, thereby securing improved economic, learning and health outcomes across all our communities.
Julie James: I think the Member makes an extremely important point. We are very aware of the problems of closing community facilities, and so on. As a result, we've been working with Digital Communities Wales to support organisations that specifically work with excluded groups to engage with specific sets of clients. I'm sure the Member is very well aware of the Get NPT Online partnership, for example,...
Julie James: Yes. We are determined to do all we can to make Wales hostile to slavery. We are working with our multi-agency partners to raise awareness of slavery, providing multi-agency training, supporting victims and assisting in bringing perpetrators of this heinous crime to justice.
Julie James: Well, we're the first and only country in the UK to appoint an anti-slavery co-ordinator, and we've established the Wales anti-slavery leadership group to provide strategic leadership and guidance on how we tackle slavery in Wales. The Member will be very well aware that slavery is a very complex ground to investigate and prosecute, which is why we've worked with our partners to develop a...
Julie James: Yes. As I said earlier, I'm very delighted that Yasmin Khan and Nazir Afzal have been appointed as the national advisers, and I'm very much looking forward to working with them. They bring an enormous amount of experience and they'll be advising Ministers and working with victims, survivors and other stakeholders to improve our services and to report on our progress.
Julie James: I very much join Jane Hutt in acknowledging the history, impact and value of the sector in Wales and, indeed, her own long history in this sector. I'm very grateful for organisations such as Welsh Women’s Aid and all the others who've made a stand to eradicate this sort of abuse in our society. They absolutely offer vital support to victims and survivors. I'm very pleased to say that I'm...
Julie James: Yes. Under the Superfast Cymru project we've provided access to fast fibre broadband to 27,206 premises in Caerphilly. At the last time of data checking, the average download speed for premises deployed under Superfast Cymru is 64.4 Mbps in Caerphilly.
Julie James: Absolutely. It's not mentioned because it's just a fundamental part of the infrastructure. I'm a member of the Valleys taskforce board. We're working very closely together. A very large part of the economic plan for 'Our Valleys, Our Future' is based on that sort of infrastructure development, and I think it's actually part of where we're going with this, and it's just becoming part of the...
Julie James: Diolch, Llywydd. Thank you so much to Siân Gwenllian for bringing forward this extremely important debate. I am absolutely delighted to be here to witness it. I'm going to start by saying that I was, myself, elected off an all-women shortlist—something my party battled for for years, and many of the women who battled for it are here with us in the Chamber. It's something that I was...
Julie James: Certainly.
Julie James: Absolutely. That's very much a part of the fair work agenda, and Chwarae Teg are running a programme at the moment that gives accreditation to employers who have a fair work ethos, and that's very much a part of that ethos: making sure that you have no discrimination against anybody who takes parental leave—obviously, it is mostly women who do, but no discrimination against people who take...
Julie James: Diolch, Llywydd. There is one change to this week's business: later this afternoon, the Cabinet Secretary for Education will make an oral statement on securing the right to a suitable education for all children. Business for the next three weeks is shown on the business statement and announcement found amongst the meeting papers, which are available to Members electronically.
Julie James: We will be publishing waiting times in general, and that will be fit for a statement. I suggest that if the Member has particular constituency issues that he wants to raise, with individual cases, that he raises them directly with the Cabinet Secretary. It's clearly not appropriate for a Government statement to address individual constituency matters. So, I suggest he takes the correct route...
Julie James: There is indeed an existing consultation about the location of the major trauma unit, and I am going to take this opportunity to encourage everybody to participate in that consultation, so that we hear the widest possible range of views. The Cabinet Secretary, I am sure, has heard the speech made—sorry, the question asked—by Dai Lloyd just now, and he will, I'm sure, be making a statement...
Julie James: Well, thank you to Dawn Bowden for highlighting that very important point. I'll be very keen to speak with her again myself afterwards, and I'd also like to highlight the Live Fear Free helpline for anybody who is experiencing this kind of problem in their accommodation. The Minister is indicating to me that she'd be very happy to write to Members to clarify what the situation is in Wales and...
Julie James: I'm very happy to endorse that last sentiment, of course, and I myself am very fond of walking the Pembrokeshire coast path, so I can totally get behind that. In terms of the other two statements that she called for, the Cabinet Secretary for health has indicated to me that he's due to give a written statement very shortly on the vaginal mesh issues that she raised. In terms of Audley...
Julie James: The Member raises a very important point. We do have—unfortunately, because it is always as a response to redundancy—a very good way of dealing with those sorts of issues. The Cabinet Secretary, I know, will be engaged in that matter. I think the best course would be for the Member to ask the Cabinet Secretary for an indication of exactly what is happening in this regard, so that he...
Julie James: Well, thank you for those two very important points. The Office for National Statistics is now deep in preparation for the 2021 census of population in England and Wales. They've undertaken significant work on the proposed content for the 2021 census, and, in early 2017, undertook a large-scale test, which included parts of north Powys. It'll be mainly online for the first time, and we've...
Julie James: The Member raises a very important point, but he does have the opportunity to raise that point in questions to the Minister. The Minister I think walked in as he was making his point, and I'm sure will be able to answer the questions in formal Assembly questions for him.
Julie James: On the first one, obviously PGI status is something we're all very proud of, and I'm very proud of our Welsh products that get it. It will be very much part of the case put forward by the devolved Governments that such status should be protected, and that, obviously, our market share should be protected accordingly. And it's one of our great concerns in the ongoing negotiations that such...
