Thank you very much. Again, I didn’t pay anybody for the compliments, but thank you very much anyway. I’m sure my leader won’t be able to give me a row for something you’ve said. That would be a new thing for me, but, hey, wonders will never cease. What can I say?

With regard to S4C, I mean, you know, we would agree on these benches, of course, that the cuts to S4C should never have happened, and I think that’s probably a cross-party consensus by now. It is our one channel, and others are even arguing now that we should be having more than that one channel. I know that S4C has produced a YouTube channel for young people to see how that would potentially engage with them, taking away potential branding or changing the branding so as to appeal to a new audience. We have to really promote S4C, because I go into schools on a regular basis and those who are studying Welsh through English language-medium schools, and many people, don’t even know about S4C, or have ever watched S4C. That’s actually quite distressing, when I know people have fought so hard to create the channel here in Wales for us to consume and for us to converse about and to encourage people to watch programming through the medium of Welsh.

I’m not a lawyer—shock horror—so if it is in breach of statutory duty I’m sure as a committee we can seek legal advice. When we’re having the inquiry on S4C we can seek legal advice on that because it’s a point that I think we should be looking at, because, of course, it’s not just a moral obligation, it’s how they are looking to deliver their legal requirements within the current statutory framework. So, I think that’s a point we need to be looking at. It may be interesting for other people in the Chamber to know that S4C are already going above their statutory and legal requirements because they’re working in digital, and because they’re working in other fields. There is no obligation for them to be doing that, but they are because, obviously, they want to see the channel progress and they want to be working in different ways in the future.

With regards to the 1 million Welsh speakers, well, yes, we’re doing an inquiry on that at the moment and we need to look at the educational front because that’s where we’re hearing the change needs to happen fastest, but we cannot ignore the importance of S4C in being able to realise those targets, and the educational facility that S4C can offer in that regard. For example, I know that there’re actors and scriptwriters in Wales waiting to be able to go into schools and to tell them about the shows that are on S4C, wanting to promote the channel, and if they have role models going into schools and speaking Welsh to them from those particular television shows then that will, potentially, inspire young people and others to watch the channel in the future.

What we have to ensure as part of our inquiry is to make sure that the UK Government know that any cuts are not acceptable. I mean, I wouldn’t want to see any cuts after the review, but especially before the review we should not tolerate any cuts by the DCMS. I think they have improved somewhat towards their relationship with S4C in regard to this agenda—probably learning from previous mistakes in how they’ve made cuts to S4C—but there’s so much yet to do and I hope that as a committee we can work together to make that a reality.