Thank you very much, Deputy Presiding Officer. I also add my thanks to Llyr and to Plaid Cymru for finding the time to hold a discussion on this issue this afternoon. The Government will be supporting all of the amendments this afternoon, not because we think these slow down the progress that we are making, but because we want to emphasise where there is agreement around the Chamber this afternoon. I think that there is a great deal more agreement than the debate has perhaps reflected up till now. I will try to emphasise, in the time that I have, where that agreement lies.

Sian Gwenllian and Suzy Davies have emphasised the importance of education in the new strategy we will be launching next year. I agree with you that education is vitally important to reach the target of a million Welsh speakers. Sian Gwenllian has asked whether I would intervene if there were to be schemes that came before us that were insufficient. The answer is that I would intervene. I have made that entirely clear in the Chamber, and Kirsty Williams will be making that clear with the local authorities when they meet tomorrow. We are serious when we talk about creating a million Welsh speakers over the coming years, and we are serious about how we are going to achieve that. And when I say that we’re serious, I do listen to Hefin David’s words, and I listen to what he said about the culture that we’re working within. It’s very important to acknowledge that it’s not the Wales that we would all want to see, but Wales as it is today that we’re working with. That involves moving from where we are at present, with a kind of speed and progress that we want to make, and the speed that we can achieve, accepting where we are today.

There is no disagreement in this Chamber about Sioned Davies’s report. There’s no disagreement that we do have to move from a situation where Welsh as a second language is not succeeding to create Welsh speakers. And we have to move to a continuum of teaching Welsh from the early years to the end of the school period.

We have to move from where we are to where we want to be. The debate that we are having, I think, is how we achieve that, not, perhaps the timetable, because we all know—and to answer Llyr’s question in his opening speech—that we will be moving towards a new curriculum in 2021, and we will be moving towards looking at the kinds of qualifications that we have at that time to see what kind of qualifications we will need for the future. So, we will be considering those issues in 2021.

So, what do we do from today and until 2021? I think that we have to develop the workforce to enable us to ensure that we can expand the provision of teaching of the Welsh language for it to happen in more depth than it has in the past. We have to ensure that we have the resources in the workforce and in schools in order to achieve that. We have to change the curriculum and change the way that we have been teaching. We are changing the curriculum, and I do think that the letter that we have all received from Qualifications Wales does assist us with that, because it shows that we are changing, and changing next year, how Welsh is going to be taught.

All of us—. I do appreciate Hefin’s words, and I had the same kind of options and choices that faced Neil Hamilton. I left school with no Welsh—I wasn’t able to sing ‘Hen Wlad fy Nhadau’. No child, I hope, will face that kind of situation after the changes that we want to see coming into force. So, we have moved on this, and we are making progress. We are going to ensure that there are realistic targets. We could debate now what is realistic and what is unrealistic. I accept that, and I do look forward to that debate. But I do want to be entirely clear that Welsh as a second language will not be a part of the new curriculum. There will be a continuum of Welsh teaching in the new curriculum. Before we move towards that new regime, I do hope that the children of Wales won’t be failed over the interim period, because we are going to emphasise speaking and using the Welsh language, not just learning from books, but speaking Welsh, using the Welsh language, feeling confident to use the Welsh language, having opportunities for people to improve their Welsh to ensure that people and children leaving school feel that they are able to use the Welsh language. We are going to be doing that from next year onwards.

The name, perhaps, won’t please everyone at all times, but I would ask those who are concerned about these things to look at the content and to look at the curriculum. When we do that, I think that there will be more agreement than some might think.

So, I do hope this afternoon—. I am very pleased that we have had the opportunity to debate and consider this issue, and I do hope that we will have an opportunity to do that very soon again. But, please, let no-one leave this debate thinking that there isn’t a commitment by this Government to change the way that the Welsh language is being taught in English-medium schools in Wales. There’s no way that we are going to let the children of Wales leave school unable to speak Welsh.