The next item on our agenda is the motion to approve the official languages scheme for the fifth Assembly and to note the compliance report for the period 2015-2017, and I call on Adam Price to move the motion.

Motion NDM6365 Elin Jones

To propose that the National Assembly for Wales:

1. Approves the Assembly Commission’s Official Languages Scheme, in accordance with paragraph 8(11)(d) of Schedule 2 of the Government of Wales Act 2006, laid before the National Assembly for Wales on 5 July 2017; and

2. Notes the Compliance Report on the Assembly Commission’s Official Languages Scheme for the period 2015-2017, in accordance with paragraph 8(8) of Schedule 2 of the Government of Wales Act 2006, laid before the National Assembly for Wales on 5 July 2017.

Motion moved.

It’s very appropriate for us to have this debate, of course, following the statement that Simon Thomas has just made. It’s true what he says, of course: the Hughes-Parry commission report, I think it was, was the basis for the Act, and that commission, in a way, was the Wolfenden commission for the Welsh language. And the Act didn’t achieve the highest aim we had that was set by that commission in terms of ensuring parity for the Welsh language, but the foundations were laid with regard to what was achieved in the ensuing Acts.

It gives me great pleasure, on behalf of the Assembly Commission, to introduce this official languages scheme for the fifth Assembly and the compliance report for the final months of the fourth Assembly and the first year of the fifth.

First of all, I’ll refer to the compliance report that reports on our work, that crystallises our progress over the period in question and that concludes the fourth Assembly’s official languages scheme. A great deal of work was done during this period to prepare to welcome the new Assembly Members, following the election, of course, and to ensure that the good practice with regard to the provision of bilingual services established during the fourth Assembly continues. Firm foundations were laid to ensure that the Assembly Commission continues to offer excellent bilingual services to Assembly Members, their staff and the people of Wales. It is true to say that the new Assembly Members, I believe, have been struck—some of them—by the institution’s natural bilingualism and the strong commitment by all Commission staff to provide exemplary parliamentary services in both languages.

Of course, it’s not possible for everything or all organisations to achieve their aims 100 per cent all the time, and the report also mentions those occasions when we haven’t succeeded in hitting the mark. While compiling the compliance report, we had an opportunity to ensure that we learned from those occasions and initiate changes to ensure that they don’t recur. Feedback from our—well, I don’t know whether ‘customers’ is the right word, but certainly Assembly Members, their support staff and the people of Wales, which are at the heart of what we’re trying to achieve in this context, helps us to learn and improve.

So, turning to the new official languages scheme, the Assembly Commission is required to table an amended scheme for each Assembly. In preparing this scheme, in accordance with the official languages Act 2012, we’ve looked at best practice with regard to working bilingually across Wales and, indeed, beyond, and we have consulted widely. For the first time, for example, the Culture, Welsh Language and Communications Committee has scrutinised the draft scheme. This was a way of providing further assurance, not just to Members but to the people we represent, that the scheme is robust and meaningful. I’d like to thank the Chair and members of the committee for their willingness to undertake this work in such a thorough and detailed manner.

Those of you who are familiar with the fourth Assembly’s official languages scheme will see some changes in the way that this scheme is structured. The aim in making these changes was to ensure that the scheme remains timely and relevant for the duration of the fifth Assembly. The standard of service that our Members, their support staff, the people of Wales and Commission staff can expect are outlined first in the scheme. Following that, we’ve set our five main themes that will be our focus during the fifth Assembly term. Work on these themes will allow us to become a body that operates fully bilingually, with Welsh and English on an equal footing. That’s the high-level aim that is at the heart of the scheme.

In order for us to achieve this ambition, we must ensure that we provide excellent bilingual services naturally and by default. To do this, we will need to make great strides at times, including reconsidering the way that we consider the way that we set the language requirements of particular posts, as well as using alternative and innovative recruitment methods when we do not succeed in attracting applicants with the language skills required via traditional means.

We’ll also continue with work already begun regarding language skills training for Assembly Members, their support staff and Commission staff, ensuring that we provide flexible and meaningful training to all of those who wish to develop or improve their Welsh language skills.

Throughout the fifth Assembly, we will focus on linguistic planning as a lever to help us ensure that our staff have the appropriate skills to provide bilingual services in a proactive manner. This will include revising the bilingual skills strategy, and considering ways of gathering up-to-date information about language skills in the organisation as we go through this term. And, of course, it’s important that we support Assembly Members in their role as elected Members, and it’s great to see the enthusiasm among Members who are learning Welsh. I don’t know whether I should declare an interest here—my brother is one of the language tutors. But I do see, in speaking to Members, that there is genuine enthusiasm being expressed by Assembly Members, and also their support staff and Commission staff, with regard to their experience of the training provision available.

The final theme will be to develop the institution’s bilingual ethos. As I mentioned, we do want to be recognised as a bilingual organisation, where both languages are to be heard naturally. And we’ve received particularly positive feedback from the Welsh Language Commissioner in this context, following the annual conference of the International Association of Language Commissioners on our estate. She noted that visitors from all corners of the earth had enjoyed hearing Welsh as a living language around them during an event held here on the estate, in the Senedd. However, to be a genuinely bilingual organisation, there is more work to be done, and we’ll consider ways of identifying bilingual staff on the estate, building on the success of the lanyards for learners introduced during the fourth Assembly. We’ll also look at how we can use technology to support us in being innovative and in the vanguard of developments in this field at all times.

So, with those opening remarks, I look forward to hearing the comments of my fellow Members.

I call on the Chair of the Culture, Welsh Language and Communications Committee, Bethan Jenkins.

Thank you, Llywydd, and thank you to Adam Price for his opening remarks in this regard. In our meeting on 10 May, the Culture, Welsh Language and Communications Committee considered the draft official languages scheme, as previously mentioned, and we heard oral evidence from Adam Price, the Assembly Commissioner with responsibility for official languages, and from Assembly officials. However, before scrutinising the draft scheme, the committee agreed that it would be helpful to hold a limited public consultation to seek the views of organisations that may have an interest in this area. We received written responses from the Welsh Language Commissioner, Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg, the Law Society of Wales, ‘mentrau iaith’, and National Assembly for Wales trade unions.

After hearing evidence from Adam Price, I wrote to him to summarise the committee’s views on the draft scheme. My letter is available on the Plenary agenda as a supporting paper, as is Adam’s response. Members were broadly content with the draft scheme, and acknowledged the generally excellent support they received to help them carry out their work in both of the Assembly’s official languages. Many of the issues raised in our consultation were addressed during questioning. However, my letter did ask for assurances on a number of points before the Assembly was asked to formally adopt the scheme.

These areas included the accessibility of the Assembly’s website for visually impaired people, and that the Welsh version of the interface was not intelligible in Welsh, as it was phonetically in English. I am pleased to note that there is work under way to address this issue, although I’d be grateful if Adam Price could confirm that the Assembly website will use the new synthetic voices as soon as possible. We also asked whether the Microsoft Translator software could be used to help develop the language skills of users. Again, I am pleased to note that further training is available if needed.

The scheme is somewhat lacking in quantitative targets. Adam Price explained to us that the Assembly Commission is not convinced that quantitative targets are necessarily the best way of becoming a truly bilingual organisation. Adam Price’s response set out further information on some of the more qualitative and regular ways in which the success of the scheme will be monitored. Nevertheless, it would be good to see targets for workplace training in the scheme, according to cymdeithas yr iaith. Would the Commission perhaps be willing to reconsider this, and to give us those kinds of targets?

I believe that we need to consider further whether qualitative and quantitative targets could be set as an incentive for improvement, so that we as an Assembly can scrutinise what’s happening with regard to the languages scheme, and so that the public can also scrutinise what’s happening in the languages scheme. The committee also asked for more information about the new approach to recruitment set out in the draft scheme. The committee was broadly in favour of the new fluency framework, which will mean that in future all new staff will need to demonstrate at least basic linguistic courtesy. This is defined as the ability to recognise, pronounce and use familiar phrases and names and to understand basic text, such as simple e-mails.

However, there is little information in the draft scheme about how this would work in practice. I note from Adam’s response that a working group is to be established to ensure that the proposed system is fit for this purpose. While I don’t think it’s a reason to reject the scheme today, I must admit that I find it a little odd that the Assembly is being asked to approve a scheme where one of the key innovations proposed may turn out not to be fit for purpose ultimately. Perhaps Adam Price and the Commission may wish to reflect on that. Also, Adam Price, in his evidence, confirmed that the new recruitment approach would only apply voluntarily to existing staff, and being able to speak Welsh would not be a key part of decisions about staff promotion or advancement. However, in his written response to the committee, Adam has said that staff applying for vacant or new posts would need to, and I quote, demonstrate the language skills level associated with that post.’

That is, of course, a rather different approach, and I’d be grateful if Adam could clarify the reason for the difference between the approach outlined in his oral evidence and that in the written response.

The committee also expressed concerns that the requirement for all new staff to demonstrate basic linguistic courtesy may have an impact on the recruitment of staff from under-represented groups, particularly BME staff. Adam Price provided the committee with an equality impact assessment that had been prepared to help mitigate some of those concerns.

The Deputy Presiding Officer (Ann Jones) took the Chair.

It’s somewhat disappointing that the committee was asked not to publish this assessment for administrative reasons. This means that other members of the Assembly and the wider public are unable to judge whether the mitigation measures it outlines are sufficient. It’s important that this is published as soon as possible. And an addition that I would like to mention is that we often ask the Welsh Government to publish these things, and I think it’s important that the Assembly does show the same willingness to publish in this regard. The committee agreed to respect this particular request, but the equality impact assessment is an important part of deciding whether mitigation measures in this area are sufficient and it is important that it is published as soon as possible. Despite all that I’ve said and the questions I’ve asked, I would still wish for this scheme to pass, and I am very grateful to Adam Price and the team for working on this particular programme. We hope that we will be able to scrutinise it again in future. Thank you very much.

May I thank Adam for bringing this new scheme to us before the summer recess? I would also like to extend my thanks to the Commission staff, who have worked so hard to implement the predecessor scheme and to prepare the new one. I’d like to start with the annual compliance report, if I may. There isn’t a huge amount in there on compliance complaints, and therefore I assume that there weren’t too many complaints regarding compliance, and those that were received were dealt with swiftly. This is good news, but, as with the rest of the report, as Bethan has said, I think it would have been more powerful if we could have seen performance against targets and had an idea of the costs of implementation too.

I do accept of course that the new scheme does take the issue of targets and structures forward, and I would hope to see reference to these in future annual compliance reports. But I raise it here because it is a bit of a missed opportunity in my view, because our living experience as Members is that we have seen significant improvements in our ability to work bilingually and in the development of the bilingual ethos within the Assembly as an institution. But this report could have told us how many Commission staff members have improved their own skills, to what levels those skills have been taken and in what areas, how research on the language choices of Members has made support for our committee and Plenary work more effective in terms of time and cost, even, how bilingual communication with the public has sparked any difference in the way in which the public engages with the Assembly—just so that we can see in a tangible way just how these improvements are being made. It is a means of assessing the effectiveness of our scheme and of achieving our aims—more than a simple compliance report.

I think that we have taken major steps as an organisation, as you’ve said, Adam, taking the fear and doubt out of working in a bilingual environment, whatever your skill levels are and whatever your linguistic choice and the linguistic choice of your fellow workers. I offer hearty congratulations to Commission staff for the success of the predecessor scheme, but I do hope that the next compliance report can give us some figures as well as the positive narrative. We ask this of Government, as Bethan said, and we should expect the same from the Assembly itself.

The Commission has three aims. The first is to offer excellent bilingual parliamentary support to Members, and I think that’s being achieved—understanding our language choices, improvements in machine translation, and a more tailored approach to Welsh language learning. We have buddies now to help us, if we choose to become more bilingual. We have access to a central translation budget to help us to use both languages without it being inconvenient for us or draining our office budgets, we have a swifter turnaround in terms of a bilingual record of proceedings and also bilingual material.

But the word is ‘support’, not ‘direct’, and, in my view, whilst Members should consider how we can actively contribute to the bilingual ethos of the institution, it’s a matter for the organisation to encourage us and to enable us, but not to direct us as to how to do that.

The scheme is relevant to the Assembly and its focus is, entirely appropriately, on how the institution itself engages with the people of Wales and promotes the Assembly itself—the second of the strategic objectives of the Commission. The requirements on Commission staff are clearly noted in part 2 of the scheme, which makes it easier for anyone engaging with the Assembly to understand what they should expect as a right. It’s encouraging, therefore, that the new scheme focuses on skills, recruitment and language. I’m pleased that there has been progress on language acquisition that is relevant to specific posts, and that that will be celebrated in performance management reviews.

The third objective of the Commission is to use resources wisely. This doesn’t simply mean money, of course, but human capital, too, and I’d like the next report to summarise the progress made in terms of the bilingual skills strategy of the Assembly and how identifying bilingual staff has changed engagement with the public and parliamentary support. We have much to be proud of, it’s going well, and it would be great to see more people in the Assembly wearing these lanyards in the future. Thank you.

Thank you. I call on Adam Price to reply to the debate.

Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. I am very grateful to the two Members for their comments this afternoon. Just to respond first of all to Bethan Jenkins’s comments as Chair of the committee, I’ll cover as much as I can, but if I do forget anything, I will write to you.

With regard to the equality impact assessment, I think that we did say in the letter that we would be content for the committee to decide whether to publish the assessment or not, and I accept that there is an important principle in terms of that. There were reasons perhaps why we didn’t want to publish at that particular point in time, but I wouldn’t oppose that, and I understand why the Chair did raise that issue.

With regard to synthetic voices, I think that perhaps we are going into a technical field that I’m not certain I have a full grasp of, but I do understand that there work has gone on, on a joint basis, between the Welsh Government and the RNIB with regard to providing this software to users. And I think perhaps what is important is that users, of course, know about the availability of this technology as they then try to read about the Assembly’s work. But I will write to the Chair, if I may, with regard to that issue.

There was a question on the introduction of a basic level of linguistic courtesy, and if there is any ambiguity with regard to that, I’m sure that that’s my fault. What I was trying to emphasise in the committee is that there’s no expectation that any present job holder will meet this particular requirement in their current post. If they were to decide to apply for a new post, for a vacant position or as a promotion, they would then be subject to that particular level of linguistic courtesy. So, if you stay in the current post, then you don’t have to meet that requirement, but if you do apply for a new job, it will affect that particular situation.

With regard to the qualitative and quantitative targets, then it’s an interesting debate, isn’t it? Because it’s a philosophical debate, almost. How do you lead to success? Some believe very strongly in the power of quantitative targets. Our opinion, looking at the scheme, was that setting aims and objectives that correspond to the themes that we’ve set out was more important with regard to the scheme, because some of the aims are more descriptive in terms of their origin. So, it would be difficult, with regard to them, to translate that into a specific target. What is the significance of being naturally bilingual with regard to a percentage who are able to speak Welsh?

But I do think that, in the context of what Suzy Davies mentioned with regard to the annual report, there is room to strike a balance between the narrative and figures. And I think that what I would like to do is now to take away the comments that we’ve heard and to consider, in the context of monitoring the scheme, what assessment can be made against those high-level aims in the scheme and how that is then translated into quantitative targets so that we, on an annual basis, as an Assembly and externally, can assess progress against those ambitious targets and aims that we’ve set. So, if I may, I will take those comments away and will consider and reflect upon them. Of course, monitoring is going to be vitally important, and I would welcome the continuation of the committee’s role in this regard, and there are a number of other committees, of course, that have scrutinised different elements of the language schemes in previous Assemblies, and I would welcome that to the same extent.

So, with those few general comments, then, we welcome the general support for the scheme and we look forward to collaborating with the committee and with you as Assembly Members to ensure that this exciting and ambitious aim that has been set out in the scheme will be achieved.

To conclude, I would like to thank very much my predecessor in the fourth Assembly, Rhodri Glyn Thomas, for his work in laying these firm foundations that we will build upon as we move forward. I would also like to thank my fellow Member Dai Lloyd for his work as Commissioner with responsibility for official languages, before I inherited the role following the summer recess last year. May I also thank the staff, the Commission staff, for the excellent and tireless work that they do to ensure that we achieve this aim that this organisation is naturally a bilingual one and inspires people—inspires other organisations to show what’s possible now in the modern Wales?

Thank you very much. The proposal is to agree the motion. Does any Member object? No. Therefore, the motion is agreed in accordance with Standing Order 12.36.

Motion agreed in accordance with Standing Order 12.36.