I echo everything that Suzy Davies has just said and I welcome this report. I would also, actually, like to commend the Minister for the drive and vision that he brings to his role and the contribution that he’s made to our committee. I don’t suppose I’d be able to say that to many Ministers in this Government, but that’s a genuine compliment that I pay him.

The report of the Welsh language commissioner is set against the background that the Welsh language should be treated no less favourably than the English language in Wales, and a person in Wales should be able to live their lives through the medium of the Welsh language if they choose to do so. It shouldn’t require effort to be able to do that. That’s the background to this report. As the commissioner says, progress has been made, and certainly Wales today is a world away from where it was 50 years ago when I was growing up and at school. But she says that provision of Welsh language services is making no further progress, and for some time performance has reached a plateau. Well, Welsh-speaking people should not have to persevere to use their native language, and that is, I think, the united view of this Assembly.

What is disappointing about the examples that she gives in her report is that that general aim doesn’t seem to be observed throughout the public sector. Jeremy Miles referred to this in part in his speech, but even providing signs to say that a Welsh service is available is inadequate. There are no Iaith Gwaith signs in 71 per cent of Welsh public sector receptions, and the position is even worse in county councils—76 per cent—and even worse again in the health service, where that figures is 78 per cent. I think that this is a matter of respect, actually—that we should be able to accommodate people’s natural desire to speak Welsh—and it’s a sense of personal embarrassment that I feel that I can’t converse adequately in Welsh so that those who would wish to speak to me in Welsh would be able to do that. That’s something that I’m doing my best to correct, and over the period that I’m allowed to remain in this place, I hope that I will be able to reach perfection, at least in that aspect of life if in no other.

So, it’s something that my party welcomes, and we support the Plaid Cymru amendments to this motion this afternoon as well. The use of Welsh should be seen not just as a matter of choice, in the words of the active offer, but as a question of need, because the language is a pedigree of a nation, and once lost, of course, it can never be properly recovered, as we’ve seen from other parts of the United Kingdom, like Cornwall, where the language has been lost.

There is much to be done—that’s the lesson that we draw from this report. Even matters such as access to the Welsh language on the internet, which you’d think would be pretty simple to provide, is very inadequate. Only 24 per cent of English forms, apparently, are available in Welsh, and even in the case of correspondence with Government departments and other public sector organisations, apparently 26 per cent of letters written in Welsh receive no reply at all, which I think is most extraordinary, and in the health service 35 per cent of letters written in Welsh receive no reply at all, which I think is actually disgraceful.

The other thing that I noted with great interest in the report is the commissioner’s opinion that it’s a myth to claim that one must be able to speak Welsh to work in the public sector. She says that there are a significant number of organisations that provide public services for the people of Wales that need to ensure that they include the Welsh language as a factor when they plan their workforce, and must set out in earnest to increase their linguistic capacity to enable to meet the needs of a bilingual society. That’s an aspiration, again, that I wholly endorse. We are occasionally characterised incorrectly as an English party in UKIP, but we wholeheartedly endorse the aspiration that Wales should become a fully bilingual nation. It would be extraordinary for a nationalist party like us not to take that view, and I’m pleased that this is an opportunity for us all across the Chamber to come together in agreement on what must be done.

So, with that, I’ll just say that we endorse the findings of the commissioner’s report, and congratulate her on her work. Despite what Suzy Davies says, there are reservations that we have to admit exist, and we must all do better. Let’s hope that next year we’ll be able to say that we have done better.