The following amendments have been selected: amendments 1 and 2 in the name of Bethan Jenkins.

The next item on our agenda is the debate on renaming the National Assembly. Before I call upon the First Minister to move the motion and open the debate, I would like to make a brief statement.

The Assembly has become a very different place to the one elected in 1999. It now passes laws and agrees taxes, as well as holding the Government to account and providing a focal point for democratic discussions on issues that are important to the people of Wales. It is therefore appropriate for us to give serious consideration to the renaming of the institution.

The Wales Bill currently being considered in Westminster, and possibly as we speak, gives the Assembly the power to change its name. In order to achieve this, a Bill must be submitted in accordance with the arrangements of our legislative process, and two thirds of our Members will be required to support this legislation. Therefore, securing cross-party support for any such proposal is vital.

If the motion is agreed today, the next steps will be to consult soon on what the name should be. There are several possibilities, and many associated terms stemming from that choice. We must also consider how soon the change should be made, and consider how we communicate the change clearly and how it should be symbolised. The name should continue to inspire confidence and pride among the people of Wales.

I will discuss these matters further with my fellow Commissioners at the earliest opportunity, and I will notify the Assembly of the next steps at the outset of the autumn term. For today, I look forward to hearing Members' initial comments on the renaming of our National Assembly.

To propose the motion, I call on the First Minister, Carwyn Jones.

Motion NDM6055 Jane Hutt

To propose that the National Assembly for Wales:

1. Believes that the Assembly should change its name to reflect its constitutional status as a national parliament.

2. Invites the Presiding Officer and Assembly Commission to consider the implications of such a change and how best to give it effect.

Motion moved.

Thank you, Llywydd. There’s nothing that I can add to that, of course, I must say.

You can sit down [Laughter.]

Therefore, may I say that I agree entirely with what you had to say? So, I would just like to add, therefore, that the Government’s view on the amendments is that we don’t oppose them in principle, but, at the moment, of course, we must ensure that the question of what this institution should be called should be an open question. Although the amendments don’t create a situation where we would have to change the name of the Assembly to ‘Senedd’ in both Welsh and English, I think people would expect that to happen if we were to support these amendments this afternoon. Therefore, I have nothing to add. I would just move the motion formally and inform the Assembly of the Government’s stance on the amendments.

I have selected two amendments to the motion. I call on Bethan Jenkins to move amendments 1 and 2, tabled in her name.

Gwelliant 1—Bethan Jenkins

Add as new point at end of motion:

Notes that the Welsh language name ‘Senedd’ has won widespread understanding and support amongst the public.

Gwelliant 2—Bethan Jenkins

Add as new point at end of motion:

Agrees that the Presiding Officer and the Assembly Commission should consider using the name 'Senedd' in English and in Welsh.

Amendments 1 and 2 moved.

Thank you, Llywydd. I’d like to speak to these amendments. I think that I will start the debate here today, but I won’t perhaps push it to a vote, so that we can have a debate on this change of name in the Assembly and then allow the Presiding Officer to consult widely on the situation.

First of all, I’d like to welcome the opportunity to discuss this issue and the open wording of the motion—a motion that gives us an opportunity to carefully consider the name of our democratic national institution. Each and every one of us believes that, as an institution, we should be an exemplar and an inspiration to the nation in terms of our innovative policies and legislation and in our use of our unique national language.

In 1997, we gained devolution on the basis that we would create a new kind of democracy that would reflect the values of Wales, not a forum to follow the practices of our nations without question. During the last decade and a half, you could perhaps argue that we have concentrated too much on our status as an institution rather than on ploughing our own furrow. Over a period of 17 years, we have tried to build an institution that is respected, having separated the legislature from the Executive and renamed ‘Secretaries’ as ‘Ministers’, and then reversed that decision. Politicians in Scotland decided to call the ‘Scottish Executive’ the ‘Scottish Government’ in 2007, and, in 2011, we followed suit. It’s as if our confidence stems from, and depends on emulating others. We seem to have to look over our shoulders for guidance.

Raymond Williams, in 1975, said that the true symbol of a new Wales would be, and I quote,

‘a time of new and active creation: people sure enough of themselves to discard their baggage; knowing the past is past, as shaping history, but with a new confident sense of the present and the future, where the decisive meanings and values will be made.’

So, let us plough our own furrow, let us be self-confident enough to discard our mental baggage and to take this opportunity to be unique by adopting an official, monolingual Welsh name for our Senedd.

Consider the institutions that we, as a Senedd, support and which have monolingual Welsh names, from Chwarae Teg to the Urdd, from Merched y Wawr to the Mudiad Meithrin. If we want to nurture our children as Welsh speakers, then let us nurture our democracy in the same way. Our national anthem unites us as a nation—and that’s perhaps why I am a little hoarse today—with Welsh verse, and, when the crowd sings, the nation is united. It unites people whatever their background or their first language. In discussing our anthem, we should bear in mind that moment when the Welsh football team wore T-shirts with the word ‘diolch’ on them—our national football team, on a global stage, confidently using the Welsh language. Shouldn’t we do likewise?

Before I conclude, I would like to deal with some possible counter-arguments against this suggestion. Some of you may believe that we should retain the name ‘National Assembly’, and I do have some sympathy with that argument. It’s a name that’s used across the world, from Cuba to France, but I would like the Llywydd to consider the word ‘Senedd’ because it is already used widely on the ground. There has been a misleading report in the press, claiming that ‘Senedd’ refers to the Westminster Parliament. As many of you will know, ‘Senedd’ refers to a national legislature, not only to the UK Parliament.

Finally, I know that some have argued that this building’s name is ‘Senedd’ and that we should have another name for our legislature. There is one simple answer to that, of course, and that would be to rename the Senedd ‘Senedd-dy’, if we so choose. But I don’t see that there’s any major problem in having the same name for the building and the institution. I see no particular problem there and I think it’s relatively easy for people to understand that. The word ‘Senedd’ is based in Latin, a language that unites our continent in all its diversity. As we, against the wishes of many in this Senedd, decided to turn our back on the European Union, let us take a step that would strengthen another European union, by renewing and reinforcing an ancient cultural union. Thank you.

I welcome the Government moving the debate this afternoon. I will most probably replicate the First Minister in keeping my comments brief, because I think the Presiding Officer, in her introduction, highlighted the process that was available to this Senedd, or parliament, or Assembly—call it what you will, because there’s going to be a discussion about that.

But, some years ago, I obviously put my name to the renaming of this institution, because I do think what’s important is that people in the community actually understand the function of the legislature vis-à-vis what the Government does. And if I had a pound for every time people had criticised the Assembly for this, the Assembly for that, because, in a lot of people’s minds, they’re still back to that corporate body, where everything was run from the Assembly in the early days, and people still do not make the distinction between what the Government does and what the legislature does on their behalf and in their name.

I do think that any renaming has to be able to be taken on board by the electors who put us here to act on their behalf. And I have no objection, obviously, to the amendments that are put down today, but I do think they need to be considered in the full, because I don’t see why we couldn’t have ‘Senedd’ and ‘parliament’, because, obviously, for people there is a complete understanding of the word ‘parliament’, in the way that UK democracy works, and, over time, I think the word ‘Senedd’ could be readily taken on board. But, for a lot of people, the way this institution has developed—and, in particular, its legislative capacity, its tax-raising capacity, going forward, once the Wales Bill is passed, and, ultimately, the function of Government—

Will you give way?

Yes, I’m happy.

Do you think that if you just put it in Welsh though, you wouldn’t even have the problem of people potentially misunderstanding whether it was the UK Parliament or the Welsh parliament? In Welsh, then, it would be unique in and of itself, or would you disagree with that?

Well, as I’ve said, from my point of view, I haven’t got a problem with it because, obviously, I work in this environment and I fully understand the meaning of the word Senedd in the context that it’s used in the Welsh language, but, obviously, for many people who aren’t familiar with the way the legislature works, the Government works here, and if you take Scotland, for example, the reference is to the Parliament in Scotland, despite, obviously, Scotland having its own language and, obviously, the promotion of that language. And I do think that any renaming needs to have at the heart of its process the ability, obviously, for people to easily understand where responsibility lies and where function lies, and, as the Presiding Officer indicated in her opening remarks, that responsibility will now come to us via the Wales Bill, and that ability for us to rename this. There is a discussion that some Members clearly think that the National Assembly should continue as it is, and I do welcome the opportunity for the discussion and consultation that the Presiding Officer referred to that will happen in the coming months. From our point of view, we have a free vote on this, because, obviously, it’s not a political issue; I don’t see it as a political issue, to be honest with you. It’s for us as Members to try and reflect on our work, reflect on the communication with members who have put us here of the communities and our electorate, and, ultimately, reflect the new dynamics of the legislature, the relationship with the Government, and the relationship with the communities, whether they be in north, mid or south Wales. So, I welcome this initial debate, but, obviously, there’ll be many other debates around this issue.

Like everybody else, I welcome this debate, although I wonder, amongst the public at large, whether they might regard it as a bit of kind of pretentious navel-gazing and they’re not too bothered about what we call ourselves—as far as I can tell, they’re highly critical of what we do in this place. But, several of us, of course, have been Members of Parliament in another place, and I personally welcome the fact that we now have the chance of creating a real parliament there, instead of the one that we’ve had for the last 40 years. But, as and when the Wales Bill passes and tax-raising powers are devolved to this institution, there is, of course, a serious argument for calling ourselves a parliament, because taxation and representation have traditionally gone together in the minds of people who support democracy.

I’m personally rather attracted by the idea of the ‘Senedd’ as a name, and I enjoy being an ‘Aelod o’r Senedd’, and I wonder whether that would make us senators, ultimately, and how that could be regarded amongst the public at large. As Bethan Jenkins pointed out, the origin of this goes back to ancient Rome, and it meant, of course, that if you were an old person, you were regarded as automatically wise, and this is a theory that I’ve grown to approve of—the older I get, the wiser I think I must have become. But I wasn’t impressed by her argument in relation to the Assembly because it’s called that in Cuba and in France. Those are not my role models in either case.

But we welcome, in our party—and we will have a free vote on this as well—a national debate on this topic, and I’m sure that, following the referendum, there will be an equal amount of public interest in our exercise of what we’re going to call ourselves. So, we certainly have no objection to the Presiding Officer and the Assembly Commission considering the implications of this change and, indeed, consulting as widely as possible, and then we’ll come back and debate the issue in a real sense.

I welcome the fact that we’re having an opportunity to discuss this issue. Throughout my political life, I have campaigned for a parliament or a ‘senedd’ for wales, and although we did formulate an Assembly, I think the rationale for calling it an Assembly in the first place was to make it subordinate in some way to what was thought to be the real Parliament in Westminster. It’s true that I, too, served in that Parliament in Westminster, and it’s still true—it happened three times over the last weekend—that people come up to me and always ask me, perhaps as an icebreaker, but they always ask me, whether I miss Westminster, ‘Do you miss Parliament?’, and I have to tell them that I am in a Parliament—I’m still in a Parliament. But this concept that parliament is superior to an assembly is part of the fact that we live in the British isles, and it’s great to think that ‘Assembly’ is used in other nations, but the fact is that we share a joint heritage across the British isles that is a parliamentary heritage. If we want this place to have the same status as the Parliament in Westminster, the Parliament in Scotland and the Assembly in Northern Ireland, then I do think that we should call ourselves a ‘Senedd’ or a ‘Parliament’. Just as the Welsh Government have proceeded to become ‘the Welsh Government’, although I think that the official name is still ‘the Welsh Assembly Government’, according to the legislation, we can start to call ourselves a ‘Senedd’ or a ‘Parliament’ now.

Now, should that be bilingual or monolingual? Well, I’m open-minded on that. Personally, of course, I would be perfectly happy if we called ourselves a ‘Senedd’, as happens with the Dáil in Ireland; it would be quite acceptable for me, as a Welsh speaker, to do that, but I do think that we should consult on the issue, and the proposal from Bethan asks us to consider that. So, I’d be more than happy to support that, but we should consult—we should listen to what all the people have to say about how they wish to refer to this institution. But I do think that we are a Parliament—we have the right to legislate and we will be levying taxes in ensuing years—so, can we call ourselves a name that actually recognises the status of the institution?

What we have here with the National Assembly is, in some way, a bit of a marketing problem. Turnouts for the elections are considerably lower than those for the Westminster version. Politicians in Wales frequently observe that much of the Welsh electorate is often entirely ignorant as to which matters are devolved and which are not. The problem is essentially that the vast majority of people in Wales are not cocooned in a political bubble, as we tend to be here. We need to be careful before we change its name that we are not about to distance people even further from the political body that is supposed to serve them.

Let’s look first at the proposal that the Assembly should begin to call itself a parliament. Well, that’s fine, theoretically, once tax-raising powers take effect, but we haven’t got there yet. The position of UKIP is slightly complicated because many of us have opposed the consent for tax-raising powers without the promised referendum, as my colleague Mark Reckless explained earlier today.

But even casting the taxation issue aside and assuming that the powers were being implemented, would it not make sense to defer the renaming of the Assembly as a parliament until perhaps the beginning of the sixth term in 2021? I would suggest that this would be more cost-effective than doing so in midterm, and we would not be prejudging the outcome of the tax issue.

On to Bethan’s amendment, or amendments, she wants the term ‘Senedd’ to be used exclusively rather than ‘Parliament’, because she says this term is already widely understood and widely supported. Well, here we come back to the political bubble, or at least a cultural bubble. Bethan is from a Welsh-speaking background or a bilingual background, and in her social circle ‘Senedd’ may well be a well-used term. Alas, if I started talking about the ‘Senedd’ in the Wetherspoon’s pub—[Interruption.]

I use ‘Senedd’ all the time in my social life.

Okay, well, maybe it’s not even that, but that perhaps emphasises my point. If I started talking about the Senedd in the Wetherspoon’s pub in Canton, few people would know what I was on about.

Would the Member give way?

Yes, sure.

I’m trying to be helpful, perhaps save you from yourself. I was struck by my own Facebook page, which is not within a cultural bubble, and I posed the question of people’s views on this. There was scepticism, like you say, that we should be discussing this at this time, but the consensus was to use the bilingual term ‘Senedd’ as it was inclusive and already in use. So, though not scientific, I didn’t take that as a reflection of any cultural bubble but a common sense feeling this was an already ingrained and embedded term.

Okay, thanks, Lee; can I carry on? Right, the cultural bubble. The point is we are in a political bubble—I’m in it myself now as well—but we have to remain in some contact with the real world out there. [Interruption.] Okay, thank you. In the Wetherspoon’s pub in Canton, few people would know what I was talking about if I started talking about the ‘Senedd’, and I can tell you that from experience.

Bethan has mentioned the Urdd, Chwarae Teg and Merched y Wawr. Yes, but the problem is most people outside the Welsh-speaking colony of Pontcanna—most people in Cardiff—don’t know what these things are. On that basis, I fear that we need to kick this term ‘Senedd’ into the long grass. By all means use it informally as the Welsh translation, but please not as the principal name of this political institution. Otherwise, we are further distancing the Assembly from the majority of the people of Wales. Thank you.

I now call on the First Minister to reply to the debate.

I was, basically, going to say very little, but after that, I feel I should respond. On the timing issue, I’ve spent, now, 17 years in this place and people always say it’s never the right time for something. The reality is that the Welsh Assembly Government was established as a name and concept before it existed in law. When the legislature and the Executive were formally separated, so it existed. The name ‘Welsh Government’ is now fully in use, yet, it doesn’t actually exist in law, it’s still the ‘Welsh Assembly Government’, but we dropped the name ‘Assembly’ after 2011, and people have accepted that as normal.

I’m open to what the institution should call itself. For me, ‘National Assembly’ has never really worked; people don’t understand it in what I can describe as the common-law world. Yes, it is in use in other countries; in France, it is the ‘Assemblée Nationale’, I know that. But for us, I think it’s important that we have an institution that people understand. People do understand what a Parliament is; I’m not saying that that should be the only option on the table, but they understand what it means.

I listened carefully to what Gareth Bennett said; I can assure him I live in a street in Bridgend, my kids go to a local school and I shop locally—I don’t live in a bubble. I spend my time in a town where I grew up, with people I grew up with, and, certainly, I spend my time in the local community. I do object to the suggestion that Welsh people living in Cardiff are a colony—a colony. If somebody stood up in this Chamber and described people in Ceredigion or in Gwynedd, who are English speakers, as a ‘colony’, there would be uproar and I ask him to reflect on that fact. It makes it sound as if people in Wales who speak a certain language don’t belong in our capital city, and that is a wholly wrong remark and something that he needs to reflect on. I’m not sure that he meant it that way, but it will be highly offensive to a number of people. It’s not just him who has the right to live in our capital city; all Welsh people and people from around the world have a right to come here, to be welcomed here and to contribute to our economy.

He also makes the point that tax-raising powers are not being devolved; they have been devolved. Business rates are devolved; they are a tax. Landfill disposals tax and land transaction tax are in the pipeline and being taken through the Assembly; they are already devolved. There was never a suggestion that there would be a referendum before they were devolved. So, the devolution of partial income tax varying powers is a natural development in that way.

He makes the point again about timing. For me, I think it’s important that people get used to a new name, if that is the conclusion of the Assembly, well before the next election, so that people know the name of the institution they’re actually voting Members into. So, apart from that note of discord that we heard from the last speaker, I don’t think anybody else in the Chamber argued against this motion, but, of course, there will be a fuller debate as to what the name should actually be in the months to come.

Thank you, First Minister. In moving the amendments, Bethan Jenkins mentioned the fact that she didn’t want to proceed to a vote this afternoon. Could I just confirm that that’s correct in relation to both amendments?

Yes, it’s fine.

And I will agree to that, if there is no objection to not proceeding with those two amendments. There is no objection.

Amendments 1 and 2 withdrawn in accordance with Standing Order 12.27.

So I will move on to ask whether there is any objection to the motion. If there is no objection to the motion, then it is accepted.

Motion agreed in accordance with Standing Order 12.36.