Thank you very much, Presiding Officer, and I would like to join members of the committee in congratulating themselves on the work that they’ve carried out over the last few months. [Laughter.] They haven’t sold themselves short this afternoon, and they certainly don’t in the report that they’ve written, which I think Members across the whole Chamber will agree is a real tour de force, looking at all broadcasters and the structures of broadcasting and the structures of accountability. I can see that Members have had a great deal to do, and they’ve produced a report that, in many ways, is a blueprint for the sort of debate that we need to have about broadcasting in this country, as we move forward.

Can I say this? At the heart of much of what we’re going to discuss and debate this afternoon and at other times is that issue of accountability and the issue of scrutiny. I absolutely believe that it’s right and proper—and the points that have been made by Members this afternoon demonstrate absolutely clearly that the current structures and frameworks of accountability, regulation, and scrutiny have failed. Wales has been failed by the existing structures and parliamentary scrutiny, because we have seen—and the report outlines very clearly—a diminution of coverage in Wales. We’ve seen reductions of hours of programming produced in Wales for Wales, and that has been done within a process of public scrutiny and public accountability. So, those structures, if they are to mean anything for this country, need to be reformed, and reformed fundamentally.

Now, many of us have spent time in this place over the past few years looking at how we create and we recreate different structures of inter-institutional accountability across the United Kingdom. Now, I do not and I have not made the case for the devolution of Executive responsibility for broadcasting to Wales. For me, I feel that Executive responsibility is something that should rest properly with Westminster and the United Kingdom Government. However—however—I do not believe that accountability is something that should be centralised, for the reasons we’ve already seen and the reasons we’ve already given. For me, it is important that accountability is something that is delivered and carried out across the democratic institutions of the United Kingdom and done collectively, ensuring that we do have a model of inter-institutional accountability that works for the whole of the United Kingdom, and, particularly here, for the people of Wales.

It is clear that all the issues of citizenship, which are absolutely fundamental to who we are as a country and who we want to be as a nation, are being failed at present. I hear what’s been said, and I’ve seen reports that ‘The Wales Report’ from the BBC is being scrapped—I hope that’s not true. I think the work that has been led by Huw Edwards over the past few years to inform and to establish a platform for debate and discussion about the public policy arena in Wales has been a success and is absolutely fundamental. It is not good enough for our most significant public service broadcaster not to have a serious programme about the politics of Wales run at prime time at some point in the week.

But we need to be careful as well in what we say and what we do. If we are serious about public accountability and public scrutiny being carried out—and I believe that it should be by the Welsh Parliament and not by the Welsh Government; I think it’s important that parliamentarians do this collectively, not Ministers—we need to be very, very clear that we understand the difference between democratic scrutiny and accountability and interference. It is not right that politicians seek to interfere in decisions that are right and properly decisions for editors and managers within any broadcaster, within any public broadcaster, and we, ourselves, need to exercise the discipline of ensuring accountability without crossing the line into interference in editorial decisions, and we need to be very, very clear that we understand that and I hope and I trust that people here do.