2. What efforts is the Commission undertaking to promote political education? (OAQ51233)

The Assembly has delivered educational activities for hundreds of thousands of children and young people on the estate, in schools, colleges and out-of-school settings across Wales. Since its establishment in 2000, the team has delivered activities for primary and secondary school pupils and college students, aligning its services with the curriculum needs.

Commissioner—sorry, Llywydd—a healthy democracy means engaged and informed citizens and I’ve been raising the issue of political and democratic education in schools for some time, but we’ve also got a democratic information deficit amongst adults. In both 2016 and 2017, major surveys have suggested that just over a third of Welsh voters do not know that health is a devolved issue, believing instead that the Welsh NHS is run by the Conservative Government in Westminster.

For education, the percentage of respondents not knowing that education is devolved is even higher again. All available evidence suggests that an information deficit that is as unusually high as it is in Wales can affect the outcome of elections and referenda—it’s serious stuff. Will the Assembly Commission work either with the Welsh Government or on its own to take steps to improve political education, information and awareness in Wales, and do you accept that what’s happened to date is inadequate?

Well, the surveys that you’ve alluded to are disappointing in the level of knowledge that the people of Wales have as to where responsibility lies for decision making on devolved areas and non-devolved areas of competence. We know that, as an Assembly, coverage of our work here is limited in how it gets to the people of Wales through traditional media and press sources. That’s why the Commission established the digital taskforce that provided us with recommendations on how we can improve the communication directly with the people of Wales, especially through new media sources. So, the Commission will be looking at how we put those recommendations from the digital taskforce into action.

But it is the responsibility of all of us here, as AMs, or MPs elsewhere, to be clear with our own constituents where the responsibility lies for devolved and non-devolved areas of work when we do our constituency work, but also when we do the electioneering that appears on the horizon every now and again.

A visit to the Senedd can also be a valuable part of political education, yet a visit from a deaf constituent of mine a few weeks ago showed me that we still must strive to improve the experience of visiting here for those who are deaf. Unfortunately, although all efforts were made to get a British Sign Language interpreter here, nobody was available. I was grateful to staff in the Commission for helping with showing my constituent around, but whilst my constituent was watching First Minister’s questions, they discovered that there were no subtitles available on the screens in the public gallery. Can we arrange for subtitles to be displayed in the public gallery to ensure that we continue to lead the way in an accessible legislature?

I’m very sorry to hear of your constituent’s experience here. We want what we do here to be available and accessible to everybody in Wales. I’ll need to look into the issue that you’ve raised, but what we can do and should do on this we will strive to do as a Commission.

Llywydd, just one specific point I want to mention on that. The education starts here with young people coming in and schools coming in and the Commission does a fantastic job of encouraging schools to come to the Assembly to look at it. I had a school visit this morning from Awel y Môr; they brought 90 pupils—two busloads—and I had to book two slots for it. Because they’d booked two one-hour slots, they were informed that they couldn’t actually get support, because the booking for support is a two-hour slot, not two one-hour slots. Will you have a look at this so that we can support schools to come here, even if it’s only for one-hour slots, to get an understanding of what we’re doing here, and get the news for citizenship?

Yes, I’ll definitely look into that. I think it’s wonderful that 90 young people from your constituency wanted to come here to see democracy in action. And I don’t want anything that we do, in the rules that we have, to make that more difficult for young people, from all over Wales, to come and access our work here.