Diolch, Lywydd. Can I pay tribute to Bethan Jenkins for the interest she’s shown in this area over recent years? I’m very pleased that this Assembly has now established a committee with communication specifically within its remit, and I’m very pleased to be serving on it, and look forward to serving with her.

As the motion notes, in the last 10 years the amount of money invested in making programmes for Wales in English has been cut by a quarter, as has the number of hours broadcast. At a time when Wales as a nation has never been more clearly defined, the sources of information for debate and scrutiny about our country are drying up. This is serious.

The director general of the BBC, Tony Hall, has acknowledged that this is an unsustainable situation. Two years ago, in April 2014, I attended his speech at the Pierhead when he conceded that there are some aspects of national life in Wales that are not sufficiently captured by the BBC, including comedy, entertainment and culture. This, he said, inhibited our creative potential and our ability to harness our diverse talents.

Fast forward two years and Tony Hall has done nothing to remedy those deficiencies he identified. On 12 May this year he wrote to the First Minister to let him know how he was getting on, and again he identified deficiencies, that, as he put it, the full diversity of the UK’s cultures and communities are not properly reflected on the BBC—these are big statements for a director general to make—and that funding for English-language content made in Wales has dropped to, quote, ‘unsustainable levels’. But, still, no detail on how this will be remedied. Now, let’s put this into context. Senior BBC executives have form. Six years ago, Joanna Bennett, then director of vision—a title straight out of ‘W1A’—said that the Roath Lock drama village would deliver a

‘creative benefit in terms of the voices we hear, the stories we tell, the pictures we paint’.

Beautifully crafted words—seductive empathy. But, as this week’s valedictory report from the Audience Council Wales shows, six years on, these are hollow words. Six years on, the audience council says, this week, that there is a:

‘Paucity of portrayal of Wales in Network TV and Radio output’, particularly in terms of drama and comedy. Indeed, it says that hardly any regional drama and comedy programmes have been produced in Wales in the last year. Last month, two thirds of the Members of this National Assembly wrote to Lord Hall to call on him to follow through his words with actions. His response? Last week, he dropped the directors of Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland from the corporation’s executive team. A reversal of the decision to give them seats at the top table only in 2008, which was at the time—I quote—designed to

‘bring together the nations and regions of the UK.’

Does he think we’re daft? As the BBC never tire of telling us, Welsh audiences are their most loyal. The Beeb matters to us, but BBC executives are not doing a convincing job of showing that Wales matters to them. They are taking us for granted. The BBC management has so far shown itself tone deaf to the changing shape of the UK. There needs to be a strong Welsh voice on the new BBC board; an independent voice not appointed by the UK Government, as their White Paper suggests, and the House of Commons Welsh Affairs Committee sadly and unwisely endorsed, but, as the IWA’s respected media policy group recommends today, through the normal public appointments process, with the names submitted to the Welsh Government for approval and, I would add, subject to pre-appointment scrutiny by the Assembly’s new Culture, Welsh Language and Communications Committee.

This is, as they have said, an unsustainable situation. As they have said, the BBC matters to Wales disproportionately. They acknowledge that, but words are no longer enough. Diolch.