Thank you, Llywydd. I’m pleased to support the motion as drafted, of course, and to reject the amendments, despite some of the explanations that we’ve heard. May I also start by noting my gratitude at the decision of Powys council to keep the Welsh language stream in Brecon High School, and also by drawing the Assembly’s attention to why that decision was taken? Three reasons were given for overturning the intention to close the Welsh language stream there. The third reason was this: to support the vision of the Welsh Government to create a million Welsh speakers by the year 2050. So, for me, this is the first time that we have seen a county council decision overturned or changed because of that target. I welcome that and I just want to expand on what is implicit in that now, particularly in education.

If you bear in mind that, of all the Welsh speakers over the age of 65 at the moment, eight in 10 of them learnt Welsh at home, and, of all the Welsh speakers up to the age of 15, two of 10 of them learnt Welsh at home, then you will see the shift that’s happened over the generations. Yes, we have retained the language in an incredible way in the modern world, but we have done that by seeing the language transfer from where it was the language of the home, the farm, the chapel, work, and so on, to a situation where the language is largely dependent on education.

That’s not entirely a bad thing, because there are benefits, as it happens—specific, educational benefits—to bilingualism, and it doesn’t matter which two languages that entails. There are additional benefits to being trilingual, of course, but there is strong international evidence that being bilingual enhances skills in maths, in understanding, in interpretation, analytical skills. It’s positive that we do have, and are moving towards, a bilingual education system. But it also poses a number of questions on how we’re going to get there.

So, may I first of all ask the Minister in responding to the debate to tell us where the WESPs are now and the work of Aled Roberts in reviewing those, in order to ensure that they are fit for purpose in terms of this new target of a million Welsh speakers? In that context, I’d like to share with the Assembly some of the things that will need to happen in order to reach that target by 2050.A little over 100,000 pupils receive their education through the medium of Welsh at the moment. To reach a million, there is quite some way to go. It’s achievable over 30 years, but there is quite some way to go. For example, if we are to reach a million, then 77.5 per cent of children in Wales will have to have Welsh-medium education by the year 2040. That’s why Plaid Cymru argued in our last manifesto for the last Assembly elections that every child needs to receive Welsh-medium education at least in primary school, so the foundations of bilingualism are laid for all children in Wales, and that there would be more options available following that, depending on the area where you live.

There needs to be determination in certain areas of Wales. For example, if you dig into those figures, you need to increase the figure from 10 per cent of seven-year-olds in Torfaen to 62 per cent; from 5.6 per cent in Flintshire at the moment to 46.5 per cent. The point of these figures is not to criticise those areas that are falling behind—we hope that they will improve—but to show that we can set meaningful targets by council area, by region, even by school. Then you can measure the outcomes. That’s why I’m disappointed that the Government is rejecting this part of the motion that sets out the need for targets and tries to tell a story again. Yes, tell us the story in your amendment, by all means, but we need targets so that we can measure whether this million is achievable, and whether we can do that over 5 years, 10 years or 15 years. These are the kind of figures that we need to do that.

I’ve mentioned the number of children and young people in Welsh-medium education, but we also have to think about the teaching profession. It’s true to say that, traditionally, farming and education were the two Welsh speaking workforces in Wales. It’s slipped back in both areas to a certain extent, but it’s still true to say that one in three teachers in Wales is able to speak Welsh. They don’t necessarily teach through the medium of Welsh, but they are able to speak Welsh. So, you have those skills in place. However, the number of Welsh students training to be teachers has fallen to its lowest level for almost a decade and we need to train an additional 3,000 teachers for the primary sector and 2,600 for the secondary sector just to get on track with the million Welsh speaker programme. These are the targets, and this is how we’re going to measure whether the Government is on the right track or not.