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.