Julie James: Yes, absolutely. I think, Llywydd, I will have several opportunities in a moment to talk about broadband roll-out, so I won't indulge myself here. But once we have achieved roll-out, then it's obviously very important that people have the skills and confidence to make the most of the digital technologies. And there are some great examples, actually, in Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney at the...
Julie James: Yes. You make a very good point. There have been a number of surveys recently. Unfortunately, it's always a difficulty in Wales, for the size of the survey, so if you extrapolate it out across Wales, we're not absolutely certain how valid the data is, statistically. But, nevertheless, it draws attention to some of the serious problems we have with digital exclusion. And there is definitely a...
Julie James: I think, Llywydd, you've agreed to combine this with question 3. Digital Communities Wales, and many other actions in our framework and delivery plan, support more people to gain maximum benefit from the life-changing opportunities digital technologies can offer.
Julie James: Well, as I was saying, we have some very innovative projects going on. But just to use some of the stats that we have: 85 per cent of adults in Wales now regularly use the internet, compared to 66 per cent in 2010, and £1 million a year is invested in the dedicated digital inclusion programme, our Digital Communities Wales programme, and we've done that every year since 2015. Since then,...
Julie James: Yes, we've asked Innovation Point to look into exactly how we can best exploit the 5G technologies and, actually, a large number of different pots of money that have come available in a number of different configurations, and Llywydd, yesterday, during my statement, I discussed some of those. I won't reiterate all of them, but we absolutely need to make sure that we are on top of the...
Julie James: Yes, it's been a continuing thorn in our side, actually, and this is the whole issue about whether this is an infrastructure technology or whether it's a luxury product. Unfortunately, the UK Government persist in thinking of it as a luxury product and not an infrastructure, and therefore we have less good powers in the area in terms of what we can do. But I have had extensive conversations,...
Julie James: Yes, absolutely. There's a need for science, technology, engineering and mathematics-related skills right through the spectrum. So, we want to produce the graduates of the future but we also need the technicians and so on. So, we have a number of employability schemes. They're not in my portfolio, but we have a large number of employability schemes and flexible skills programmes, which are...
Julie James: Yes, indeed. The Member, as always, raises a very important point. It's not actually directly in my portfolio. I have an overarching view of equalities that I work with all of the other Ministers and Cabinet Secretaries on. So, it's actually my colleague the Minister for children who actually deals with most of the funds available, but I have very regular meetings with him about the effect on...
Julie James: I think it's a very complex area, and it's not in my portfolio, so, forgive me, I won't have the level of detail necessary to answer it with perhaps the detail that you'd like. It is actually Huw Irranca-Davies, my colleague, who has control of the actual funds, but I have very regular meetings with, as I said, him and a number of voluntary groups in the sector to see what we can do. I am...
Julie James: This is one of the difficulties of having one of the cross-cutting portfolios. So, I'm not going to give you an answer that's satisfactory, simply because I'm not the Minister with the detail of the fund in question, so it's not for me to answer that. But, in general terms, I've had a number of conversations with the Minister around what we're doing to review the fund, what the overarching...
Julie James: I meet with mobile operators on a rolling programme of meeting the various different operators. I haven't had a group meeting with them for quite some time, since we launched the action plan, but I have a sort of series of meetings with them, if you like. We're also in regular correspondence with Ofcom. We've had many more discussions with Ofcom very recently around—it feels slightly like...
Julie James: Yes. A large part of that is actually in the portfolio of my colleague, the Cabinet Secretary, who is also here to hear what you've got to say, but I think I did go through a lot of it yesterday. Just to be clear, one of the big problems we have in terms of giving you concrete things that I've done, is that it's not actually devolved. We have a fundamental disagreement with a Government of...
Julie James: Right, well, I'll reiterate it, because I thought I had answered it very clearly. I have not seen any concrete evidence of why the business case is that they can't share masts, that they need to build their own separate infrastructure, and that that infrastructure is not viable without non-domestic rate relief. So, I have not yet seen that evidence, although we've asked for it many times. We...
Julie James: Yes, indeed. We have the first anti-slavery co-ordinator in Wales, and he's been working very hard on a system, alongside all of our partners, to make sure that we have the multi-agency hubs working together to ensure that, when people do come forward, we're able to swiftly process them, take them to places of safety, and get the prosecutions in place as swiftly as possible. There have not...
Julie James: Yes, indeed, and we make very sure—. We've been running a number of publicity campaigns—the 'Don't be a bystander' one, which was launched last week, for example—highlighting to people what they should look for, both in domestic and sexual violence cases, but also in slavery cases, and putting studies out across network television and so on, so that if people recognise themselves,...
Julie James: Yes, I don't have the statistics to hand, so I'll write to you with the specific statistics. But there aren't enough of them, and that's why we've continued to develop the multi-agency service hubs, in order to bring together the data necessary to make the prosecutions much more likely to happen. There are a large number of reasons for why the prosecutions haven't happened, largely to do with...
Julie James: Yes. Work to implement recommendations from the report is under way across the Government, business, education and academia, and good progress is being made in a number of areas.
Julie James: No, I couldn't agree more with that. This is about parents, not mothers, as we keep saying. I chair the board that implements the report, the women in STEM board, and there've been two meetings so far. At the last meeting we broadened the membership of the board, particularly with a view to bringing in more than academia and public services, and to include a range of other people as well. As...
Julie James: Yes, certainly. There are several domestic abuse services across Mid and West Wales, supporting both male and female victims. The region’s first joint strategy, 'Safer Lives, Healthier Families', will be published by the end of July this year.
Julie James: Yes, absolutely. We run several campaigns, which I've already mentioned, but I'm more than happy to highlight them again. We run the This is Me campaign, which is deliberately done to challenge gender stereotypes of the sort that you're describing, and to highlight gender inequality as a cause and consequence of violence against women, domestic abuse and sexual violence, which I launched in...
