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?