Can I welcome the statement and the appointment of Aled Roberts to his important new role? I’d like to commend the Minister for his common sense and realistic approach that he brings to this important task, in particular what he’s just said in response to Llyr Gruffydd about tailoring our policy according to the area or region of Wales, and the different needs that we have in order to achieve our objective of 1 million Welsh speakers, depending upon the degree of Welsh language penetration that an area already has.

I’m sure that the Minister has read with some care the response of Rhieni dros Addysg Gymraeg to the WESPs, which I think is an extremely interesting and informative document, and actually quite impressive. There are a number of very important points that are made in there that I think are important to dwell on, in particular, the importance of nursery and reception classes in creating, as the statement says, a demand for Welsh-medium education. The statement doesn’t mention Mudiad Meithrin, for example, who’ve given evidence to the Welsh language committee, and which I think was extremely interesting in itself. It does seem to me, as a strong supporter of the Government’s policy, that this is an absolutely vital element before anything else; the younger that children are introduced to the Welsh language, then, of course, the much more successful this policy is going to be.

I would also like to support what Llyr has just said in relation to measurement of demand. In this document by Rhieni dros Addysg Gymraeg, they refer to the case of Torfaen, where it says—if I can find the paragraph, it’s worth referring to—that some councils have conducted a survey to measure demand recently, for example Torfaen, which shows that over 22 per cent of parents are eager to choose Welsh-medium education, but the county decided not to include this information in the plan, choosing to submit a plan that will stick to the existing provision, which is about 15 per cent. That, I believe, is one of the areas in which we can make some significant advances towards the achievement of our common objective.

The other thing that I would like to say, in the light of recent controversy that has arisen over the school in Llangennech, is how important it is for us to bring parents along with us in this policy. Because if the steamroller approach is adopted and confrontation is created then it’s going to be much more difficult for us to move on from where we are now to where we want to be in 30 years’ time. Because there are significant parts of Wales where there is very little Welsh spoken as a first language and it would be much more difficult to persuade those English-speaking monoglot parents that this is the way that Wales should go in the future. I would like to see a fully bilingual nation within my lifetime, and it is important, therefore, that we carry people with us. I wish that the Minister might say something about this today, because I think we all have to be evangelists for the Welsh language, but if we take too dictatorial an approach—well, if a local authority takes too dictatorial an approach—then it’s going to create resentment, which is actually going to do the opposite of what we need to do in order to make the Government’s policy successful.