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: 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: 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: Certainly.
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: 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: 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: 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. 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: 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. 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: 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: 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: 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...
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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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...
