Thank you very much, Llywydd, and I’m pleased to contribute to this important debate on this wonderful document, ‘The Big Picture: the Committee’s Initial Views on Broadcasting in Wales’. As our wise, firm, and mature Chair, Bethan, has already mentioned, we are starting the journey here, because—. The background to this, naturally, is the portrayal of Wales on our networks, such as the BBC and ITV and so forth. And of course, the background is that we don’t believe that there is much portrayal of Wales at all—there is room for considerable improvement. People always tell you on the doorstep, given that we have been on a few doorsteps recently—they complain about the lack of coverage for Wales generally. Wales is always ignored. I heard that just last week. Of course, part of that is related to the lack of coverage specific to Wales on the BBC and so on, but also the fact that our print media and newspapers are so appallingly weak here in Wales, too. There’s virtually nobody left still reading the ‘Western Mail’ and so on.

Now, in terms of—. As we are noting this report in the motion this afternoon, I will adhere to it and focus on recommendations 1, 2 and 3. Bethan has already referred to the need to spend more money here in terms of the BBC. We all visited the BBC studios just over the road here, and it was wonderful to see all the money spent on ‘Casualty’ and ‘Doctor Who’, but it’s not always clear from those programmes that they reflect Welsh life in any way whatsoever. I’ve made this point before: I’m not asking for bilingual daleks, but perhaps, from time to time, those programmes should actually reveal the fact that they’re made here in Wales. Every hospital in Wales has bilingual signs, for example; the hospital in ‘Casualty’ should perhaps reflect the nation where it’s produced. That’s an important point because we are losing money, as Suzy has just said, in terms of the portrayal of Wales through the medium of English, perhaps because it is spent here. We need more emphasis on portraying Wales in English-medium productions, and I will return to that point if time permits.

Essentially, we need more emphasis on the portrayal of Wales or there will be outcomes to that. We have seen the result of that in the Brexit referendum last year, in that virtually none of our people realised that Wales benefited from its membership of the European Union. A smarter, truer portrayal of what happens here in Wales would have made it clear that the best idea would be to vote to remain in Europe. Most of our people were following the print media and mass media emerging from London. And of course, as the Chair’s already said, more people listen to Radio 1 and Radio 2 in Wales then unfortunately listen to Radio Cymru and Radio Wales. It would be an idea if Radio 1 and Radio 2, in their news slots, mentioned Wales from time to time. A slot would be nice, rather than ignoring us outright. That is a challenge for the BBC there. The last time the junior doctors were on strike—and they were on strike a few times last year—people who don’t habitually listen to our media here in Wales, such as some of our junior doctors in Morriston Hospital, thought that they were on strike too. But, of course, we are in a different country here, and our junior doctors weren’t on strike. That is why we need to provide accurate information or people will misunderstand the situation.

We celebrate the existence of S4C, naturally. We support their intention to develop into a multiplatform broadcaster. It does reflect Wales through the medium of Welsh. That’s why it’s important that we have some sort of platform that reflects Wales through the medium of English too. That is still deficient.

In terms of time, I will conclude with the intentions of the BBC in scrapping ‘The Wales Report’. How is that going to improve the portrayal of Wales, what happens in this place, our politics and the issues that we discuss, and when people say, ‘Well, we don’t know who’s in the Senedd. Are you a Member of the Assembly? We simply don’t know’? What’s the reaction? Scrapping ‘The Wales Report’. That is disgraceful. They need to revisit that decision. People out there are complaining that they don’t know what we do. And what happens? We’re scrapping the one programme that actually tells people what we do here.

So, support the motion. Thank you.