My party broadly supports the approach that the Government takes to the promotion of the Welsh language and we strongly support the Cymraeg 2050 proposals. I believe that the Minister for Lifelong Learning and Welsh language’s approach is the right one—it’s a consensual approach, and that is the only way in which we will, I think, be able to succeed in the objective that everybody in this Chamber approves of.

I think that the proposals in the White Paper, by and large, are very sensible. Suzy Davies started by saying that value for money, cutting bureaucracy and improving the balance between promotion and empowerment are very laudable objectives. I certainly support what the Minister said in his speech about introducing real democratic control into the development and imposition of standards. I think it is right that it’s from the Government that those should be initiated rather than from an independent body. I think he hit the nail exactly on the head when he said that what he wanted to achieve was unity across the nation for a consensus to take this forward. This is vitally necessary because we’ve got a long way to go and there are a lot of people who need to be convinced that this is the right thing to be doing. I have no doubt myself that it is. I do want to see ultimately a bilingual nation. It probably won’t be in my lifetime, but nevertheless, I think that this strategy is definitely going to help us to achieve that.

Having said that, we can support the Plaid Cymru amendments, apart from amendment 7, as well as the Conservative amendments, but I don’t think that the wording on the order paper is actually in conflict with what the Minister was arguing for earlier on. I do think that the arguments that have been put forward on this side of the Chamber will flesh those words out, but they won’t actually be on the record in the same way as an amended motion. So, I do think that that is worth while.

The only caveat that I want to introduce into this debate is about the extension of standards to the private sector. This is something that should happen but it’s the time frame that is the key issue here. It is right that big companies like BT, or big utility companies, should be treated, in effect, as the public sector—they can afford it—but we’ve heard debates about the impact of austerity today, and I’m not going to rehearse those, but the business climate is not easy and we must be careful not to impose too early what might be significant costs upon businesses that can’t afford them.

I was rather alarmed, in a way, to hear Sian Gwenllian say that persuasion doesn’t work therefore we must have compulsion. This, I don’t think, is the right attitude. [Interruption.] Yes—