The next item is a statement by the Minister for Welsh Language and Lifelong Learning—an update on Welsh language priorities. I call on Eluned Morgan.

Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. May I start by apologising that I have lost my voice? So, I will do my level best to put forward this statement and to give you the update on the steps that we are taking with regard to the Welsh language.

As you will be aware, the Welsh Government’s emphasis has been on making standards that create statutory rights for people in Wales to insist on some services in the Welsh language. This move from the old Welsh language schemes to standards is an important move. By today, over 120 bodies are affected by the standards. There were good reasons for concentrating at the outset on the public sector. Between them, these bodies account for the significant majority of the Welsh Government’s revenue spending, which is £13 billion pounds this year. But I have been struck by several things since becoming responsible for this portfolio.

First, the work to develop the health standards raised a number of difficult questions about Welsh language skills in the workforce and the capacity of bodies to deliver Welsh language services. Secondly, the process for making and imposing the standards is laborious, costly and complex, and the process for investigating breaches is long and overly bureaucratic. But, most importantly, the ambitious aim of Cymraeg 2050 to reach a million Welsh speakers requires an emphatic change of direction. The aim is far-reaching. In order to succeed, we must be clear about how we can better spend our resources and time.

As a result, the Welsh Government is developing a new Bill, in accordance with our commitment in ‘Taking Wales Forward’. This work builds on the proposals we made in the White Paper, ‘Striking the right balance’, and the consultation we held last year. The Bill must reflect our desire to redirect resources in order to ensure growth in the number of people who speak and use the Welsh language, rather than concentrating a significant proportion of the Welsh language budget on making and policing the standards.

Let me be clear: we will not stop enforcing the standards. Bodies must fulfil their statutory duties, but in my view it is always better to use a carrot rather than a stick wherever possible. That's a terrible translation, I know. If somebody can find a better idiom in Welsh, that would help me a great deal. In the field of language, enforcement is unlikely to be effective at bringing about long- term cultural change if we cannot change minds and support bodies to comply. For these reasons, I want to make it clear we will not be introducing more standards for other sectors for the time being. Rather, we will concentrate our resources on developing the new Bill. It is a matter for the First Minister, of course, to confirm the timetable for the Bill in due course.

A central part of our proposals is our intention to create a Welsh language commission. The commission’s main priority will be to promote the Welsh language on the basis of purposeful language planning. We intend that the commission will also be responsible for regulating the standards, but let me emphasise that we will not be rowing back on the standards or on the independence of the regulatory role of the new body. We want the commission to lead significant cultural change. If our aim is to reach a million speakers, it’s obvious that the new commission will need to spend a significant proportion of its time persuading more people to learn Welsh, to use Welsh and to choose Welsh-medium education for their children. There is no hope of reaching the target unless we persuade some of the 80 per cent of the population who don’t speak Welsh to join us on this important journey. We must also ensure there are many more opportunities to use Welsh. We must persuade more leaders in business, in public services and in civic society—whether they are Welsh speakers or not—to work for the Welsh language or in a way that facilitates the use of the Welsh language. The commission will lead and co-ordinate this work across a number of institutions.

We are already laying firm foundations for Cymraeg 2050. We are investing over £2 million extra over two years in the work of Mudiad Meithrin and Cwlwm in order to develop Welsh-medium provision for the early years. Through the Discover Teaching campaign, the Coleg Cymraeg Cenedlaethol is promoting Welsh-medium teaching to students. From September, there will be a new incentive of £5,000 available to attract students to train to teach through the medium of Welsh or bilingually. Our aim is to increase the number of teachers who can teach Welsh and teach subjects through the medium of Welsh.

The role of the Coleg Cymraeg Cenedlaethol in post-16 education is essential in order to ensure that those who have attended Welsh schools keep speaking Welsh. This will help the Welsh language skills of the workforce and meet the needs of employers as well. We are also investing £2.5 million this year in the Work Welsh scheme of the National Centre for Learning Welsh. The demand for courses is exceptional. I also recently launched the Welsh for Business scheme, a scheme that works with businesses to help them to use Welsh. And soon, I intend to launch a helpline to give free assistance to businesses and individuals. I expect the proposed commission will expand this kind of work to new areas. 

In planning for the new commission, I am conscious that the term of the current commissioner ends in March of next year. In order to ensure an appropriate transitional period between the present commissioner and the new regime, I will commence a public appointment procedure for a new commissioner shortly. The person who is appointed will play a key role, building on the work of the present commissioner and laying strong foundations for the new commission. I shall be writing today to the Culture, Welsh Language and Communications Committee inviting them to nominate a Member to be part of the appointment panel.

Finally, I wish to update Members on the Welsh in education strategic plans, the WESPs. Now, I approved 15 plans on 15 March this year, and following that announcement, I spoke personally with the leaders of the other seven authorities in order to set out the improvements I was seeking before I could consider approving their plans. Those discussions have been fruitful in most cases. I have approved one further plan, and I’m hopeful that the remainder are close to being approved.

I recognise that the journey has been frustrating at times, and I wish to thank every local authority for their willingness to work with the Government in order to develop and extend Welsh-medium education in their areas. I look forward to seeing further progress following the high number of applications to the £30 million capital grant programme to extend Welsh-medium education, which was announced earlier this year.  

In February, I appointed Aled Roberts to lead an independent advisory board. The board will be responsible for advising on how best to implement the recommendations of the rapid review of Welsh in education strategic plans published in 2017. And I look forward to receiving the board’s advice on how we can strengthen the planning of Welsh-medium education as the foundation for reaching 1 million Welsh speakers by 2050.

I’m in the same position as you, Minister, in terms of having this cough.

Thank you for your statement. Could I just start with the points on which we agree, perhaps? The process for implementing standards is expensive and bureaucratic, and I would like to—and I’m happy to—support you with any changes in that regard. But another thing that’s expensive, of course, is to ask the commissioner to hold standards investigations on hundreds of institutions within rounds 3 and 4 of the timetable, receiving those reports in 2016-17, and then seeing no steps taken by the Government as a result of that. So, my first question is: how are you going to use the information in those reports in any way that is meaningful? If these reports are essentially binned immediately, and if that happens, well, how much money have you wasted on that process?

Although you’d like to think that those institutions had started to prepare for delivering the new standards, they are likely to see today’s announcement as an excuse to pause that work that they’ve already commenced. So, how will you act now—and I do mean now—in order to encourage them to continue with their proposals?

There is nothing new in your statement to persuade me on the core purpose of the creation of a new commission, I have to say. The responses to the consultation didn’t particularly favour this over other options, and to me it remains entirely unclear as to how independent that new body would be. And this is important, because if it isn’t entirely independent, then you don’t resolve this problem, namely that the organisation making the rules shouldn’t be enforcing them, and the legislator shouldn’t be enforcing legislation. At the moment, there are barriers there: the Government makes the regulations and the commissioner enforces these. If this new commission isn’t entirely independent on Government—. Arm’s length isn’t sufficient here—it is then constitutionally unsound.

As you know, the commissioner has some promotional duties too, and the previous Minister, of course, made it difficult for the commissioner to deliver those statutory duties, but they could be restored. So, essentially, what is the difference between your commission and the commissioner? What precludes you from reforming the commissioner’s office rather than replacing it? Reform would allow a commissioner to lead the cultural change that we agree is required. There is also scope, as we’ve discussed in the past, to enhance the quasi-judicial responsibilities of the commissioner, to ensure that language regulations are not introduced in a discriminatory manner.

Thank you for the update on the current programmes. The decline in the number of teachers going on to teach Welsh or to teach through the medium of Welsh seems to me to be a clear and present danger to the success of Cymraeg 2050. We’re now halfway through this Assembly term, and it’s only now that you are introducing this incentive of £5,000 to help to sort that problem out. So, when will you be in a position to say that it’s had a significant impact? Because I appreciate what you’ve said on capital, but there is a problem here with the number of people who are willing to do this work. I have the same concerns about the education workforce as you had on the health workforce. There is still a problem remaining there and it remains difficult to deal with that, I think.

Finally, as you know, without a commitment from the world of employment, in all sectors, not just the private sector, to create a bilingual working environment, there is another clear and present danger for Cymraeg 2050. So, can you tell us a little more about the Work Welsh programme? What is exceptional about that demand and what is the geographical spread? Also, importantly, how can we assess whether that demand is going to create more confident Welsh speakers who are willing to use their Welsh more often? Specifically, what should you and us consider to be good outcomes in these initiatives in SMEs? Thank you.

Thank you very much, Suzy. I’m glad that we agree that the current system is costly, that it’s overly bureaucratic and that it takes a great deal of time. But I also accept the fact that a great deal of work has already been done on the new plans—the standards that people expected to come in future. We won’t be stopping that work in its entirety, but we’ll be spending this next period of time ensuring that we prioritise developing the Bill, so that we can simplify the process. That’s the idea behind ensuring that we get a new Bill that looks at how to simplify the process. But more than that, much more than that, and far more importantly, what this does is that it considers the fact that we have a policy to reach 1 million Welsh speakers by 2050. If we don’t put the infrastructure in place to ensure that we work towards that target, then it will be more difficult for us to reach the target. What’s happened, at present, is that so much emphasis has been placed on the standards and on policing the standards that we have lost sight, I believe, on promotion and encouragement. And that’s why we want to see this very different emphasis on promotion and encouragement, particularly in terms of trying to encourage people, and learners in particular, to engage with the Welsh language.

I take the point with regard to the fact that we need to get some kind of way within this new commission—that this policing function is independent of the Government. I have been very clear with my officials that we need to get a system that is at arm’s length of Government, so that that policing function can happen at arm’s length of Welsh Government.

With regard to the workforce, I think that you’re entirely correct. What’s interesting with the health standards is that, even though people in general want to see this movement, the problem is a practical one: the population isn't there to promote. But if we do get as many people into the system as we want, then, over time, that system will change, hopefully. But a vital part of that is to get people into the education system to teach through the medium of Welsh. So, that's why this £5,000 is crucial to try to encourage more people into teaching through the medium of Welsh. So, we very much hope that this will change the way that we attract people to teach and train through the medium of Welsh over the coming months.

There was a feast of Welsh last week as competitors at the Urdd Eisteddfod came together to celebrate their Welsh identity—young people from all parts of Wales: learners and first-language speakers. And what united them was confidence—confidence in the Welsh language and confidence in their Welsh identity. I think that confidence is crucial for the future of the Welsh language, and that is why I disagree with the direction of travel suggested by your statement today.

Yes, we need to celebrate, promote, and indeed much of what is mentioned in the statement are things that Plaid Cymru have secured through a budgetary agreement—£2 million for Mudiad Meithrin and the investment in the National Centre for Learning Welsh—but also we must develop the rights of Welsh speakers, to give status and to provide greater confidence. That is an important part of the campaign to create 1 million Welsh speakers. The work has commenced and it needs to be developed, and along with that, we need to invest in campaigns to promote the Welsh language. We need to invest in developing Welsh-medium education, so that all children develop skills in both of our national languages, and we need to invest to support communities where the Welsh language is the language of daily communication. All of those priorities, brought together, will lead to 1 million Welsh speakers. Dropping one element, namely weakening rights in order to fund another element, isn’t an ambitious strategy and it isn’t likely to reach its aims. So, given the success of the Welsh language standards to date, why are you supporting an attempt to weaken, to dilute and to deny the rights of the people of Wales to the Welsh language? Because that is the thrust of your statement today.

In launching the White Paper, your predecessor had hoped that the proposals would bring about consensus, but since then we have seen that consensus destroyed and the unanimous support given to the current Welsh language Measure by the Members of this Parliament in 2011 disappearing, and the threat coming in the wake of a piece of legislation on the Welsh language that, in reality, would take us back to the Wales of the Conservatives in 1993, rather than the confident Wales of 2050 and the 1 million Welsh speakers.

So, I would like to know, therefore, how much support there is among Welsh speakers to these proposals to dilute rights. In the public consultation that was held last year, only 77—so, I'm answering your question to a certain extent here—only 77 of the 504 responses supported the proposal to replace the commissioner with a commission, which is 15 per cent of responses. There is a major question mark, therefore, as to whether there is any real support for these proposals, never mind any justification for the preparation of a Bill.

Your statement announces your intention to appoint a new commissioner, an appointment for seven years under the Welsh language Measure. You have praised the positive impact of standards. I believe that one positive impact emerging from standards is the creation of a Welsh-speaking workforce across sectors and creating Welsh-speaking workplaces. So, it's difficult to understand why you want to lose the momentum by not allowing the new commissioner to continue with that work of placing further standards. Standards on the water companies are on your desk, the housing associations are still awaiting standards, and, indeed, you could pass Orders tomorrow to add important organisations to sets of regulations that have already been approved—organisations such as Qualifications Wales, the Welsh Revenue Authority, the future generations commissioner, Health Education and Improvement Wales, and so on. May I suggest that you confirm your commitment to standards by bringing Orders forward to this Assembly at the earliest possible opportunity?

Maintaining the credibility of the standards and the regime that provides rights for the Welsh language is crucial, and you say that you won’t row back from the standards or the independence of the regulatory role of any new body, but your proposals for a Welsh language commission will mean that the Welsh Government will impose standards; the Welsh Government would appoint the members of the commission; the Welsh Government would set the budget; the Welsh Government would approve the strategic plan; and the Welsh Government would have the power to direct the new organisation. Is that your definition of ‘independent’? It isn’t my definition.

I will conclude with one further comment. In terms of developing the Welsh language in the private sector, this Assembly agreed last year that we should extend language standards to the private sector. Today, you are talking about convincing business leaders to use the Welsh language and that the commission should lead on that. The Welsh Language Board tried to persuade diligently for 15 years. How do you think you will convince large businesses with this carrot that you mentioned, even though the businesses themselves state that they would respond only to enforcement?

Thank you very much, Siân. I was at the Urdd Eisteddfod last week as well, and you’re quite right: there were many children there who had a great deal of confidence. But what concerns me is not the children who are were at the Eisteddfod last week, but the hundreds of thousands who go to Welsh schools who weren’t at the Eisteddfod: those who don’t have the confidence. They’re the ones we have to convince, and that’s why I do think that compelling people to do things isn’t going to benefit us ultimately. We have to convince people that this is the right direction and this is why this change of emphasis is vitally important.

I want to make it clear that we’re not rowing back on the standards; we’re not stepping away from them. The current commissioner and the new commissioner will have plenty of work to ensure, implement and enforce the new health standards. There’s a great deal of work related to those. But, the difference is that we will prioritise promotion and encouragement, and I’m not going to excuse myself or the Welsh Government for that. I’m not going to apologise on our behalf for that.

You’ll be aware that the responses that we’ve had to the White Paper have differed. What happened, actually, was that we differentiated between responses that are part of a campaign and responses that come from individuals, and with regard to those responses from individuals, it was clear that the majority were in favour of moving to a system that would prioritise promotion.

But may I be clear? It’s not the Welsh Government that will be responsible for appointing the person who will be responsible within the commission for policing the standards. I want to make it clear, and it's something that I have made very clear to officials: that person who is responsible for policing the standards has to be entirely independent. So, it’s not the Government that will take part in that appointment of the person who is responsible. Thank you.

In spite of the trenchant criticisms that have come from Siân Gwenllian, which I fully understand, today, I think it's important to recognise that there is widespread agreement around this Chamber about the direction of policy in which the Government is going. Although the style of the new Minister is perhaps somewhat different from the rumbustious style of her predecessor, I think she is being equally effective in a rather different way.

I think it's vitally important, if we are to marry the confidence that Siân Gwenllian was talking about amongst the naturally Welsh speaking population—if I can put it that way—with those who we have to bring with us on this journey to achieve the goals that we all set in the Cymraeg 2050 programme, as we extend the success of this programme beyond the redoubts of Welsh speaking in the west into areas that are predominantly English speaking, I think it's vital that the carrot rather than the stick approach should be emphasised, and so I very much welcome the direction of travel of the Government. 

There isn't, of course, a great deal of substance in this particular statement, but I don't say that as a criticism; I think it's fair enough that the Minister should want to make a report on how she sees things going a few months after she has achieved office. I think it's very important that we should take a practical approach to the achievement of this objective. It's no good setting ourselves objectives that can't be reached, and it's no good setting up frictions, which are going to slow down the rate of progress that we all want to see. So, I don't blame Plaid Cymru at all for what they say, or even organisations like Cymdeithas yr Iaith for being frustrated at the pace of change. It's important that they should have their voice and they should keep up this criticism in order to make sure that they apply a stick to the Government, which is offering the carrot. So, it's important that we all have our voices, I think, listened to in a different way because we all want to achieve the same objective.

I do support the proposals to change to the commission from the commissioner, for reasons that the Minister herself has set out, and I do think it's important that the policing functions of the programme should be undertaken by those who are at an arm's length from Government. It's important that the Government should be the persuader, I think, and not the policeman of the system. That's the best way, I think, in which we will achieve that objective. We saw in the unfortunate confrontations, for example, in Llangennech last year, how problems of that kind can actually make it more difficult to achieve our objective, I think, in areas that are perhaps not quite so confident about the need to make progress in the directions that we all want to see. So, we want to try to calm passions and to achieve the maximum degree of consensus for the achievement of these goals.

There's one practical question I would like to ask the Minister. I very much approve of the incentivisation of teachers to teach through the medium of Welsh, to learn to teach through the medium of Welsh et cetera, but one thing we must ensure is that parents, in particular, don't think that this might be achieved at the expense of getting the best teachers for specific schools to teach their children. So, I wonder what the Minister can tell us about the way in which fears of that kind—unfounded as they may be—may be allayed.

Secondly, something that is not in the statement, but was in the Cymraeg 2050 programme. That set out ways in which targets could be achieved and, in particular, the aim of transforming Welsh language digital landscapes, with particular focus on landscape technology. Could the Minister provide us with an update on how the Welsh Government has taken proactive steps towards achieving this endeavour?

With that, I'll just say that I'm pleased with the way that the Government is developing this policy, and I do think that the practical approach, which her predecessor brought to this, which is now being extended by the current Minister, is the best way to achieve our common objective.

Thank you very much, Neil. I think I'd like to make it clear that this shift of emphasis is so important if we are to reach that target. So, what we've done hitherto is to focus attention on the rights of Welsh speakers, and that's fine—that's good, and it's come a long way. We've really changed the environment, particularly in local government and in some universities. I understand it's been successful, but this shift of emphasis, if we want to get to the 1 million speakers, means that we have to start focusing on those 80 per cent who don't speak Welsh. Otherwise, we'll never get there—we'll never get there. So, we have to shift that emphasis.

We can't do everything. We only have a limited budget, and that's why it is important, I think, that there's an understanding that that's why we're doing this. There is no slowdown in terms of the momentum, in fact. What we're doing is to do it in different ways. So, for example, we've got this new Cymraeg Byd Busnes. We are giving support, and we've appointed 10 new people to go around Wales, to go into small and medium-sized businesses to say, 'Why don't you offer some services through the medium of Welsh? Why don't you make sure that your customers are aware that you have Welsh speakers?' It's that kind of practical help that, actually, people are looking for—a knowledge of who is able to speak Welsh.

It's unbelievable. I was with a couple of people recently, they'd known each other for four years and they had no idea that each other spoke Welsh. It was only when I started speaking to them independently that they understood. So, it's that kind of understanding and visibility for the Welsh language, which is not about forcing people. It's about making sure that we are changing the atmosphere and the way that people respond.

Cymraeg Gwaith is another thing, and there's a new helpline, so that we won't see the situation where we have these dreadful translations from English into Welsh. There's no reason why that should happen in the future because there will be support for that.

This £5,000 incentive I'm hoping will be for new teachers, not taking people from the English sector into Welsh. The idea is to encourage new teachers, and we could certainly do with that.

And, on the digital side, we are hoping that the Coleg Cymraeg Cenedlaethol is doing a lot of work on making sure that in FE, for example—. For the first time, the further education system is now being brought into the system. What we were seeing was a drop-off. People would come out of Welsh schools and they would lose their Welsh the moment they went into further education colleges. So, we are now changing that system, giving far more support to the further education system. It's happened in the universities already, and we are now moving into further education. So, I hope that that and the digital frameworks that are happening in the colleges and the universities will also be a part of that as well.   

I welcome the Minister's statement. We need to use the Welsh language in the workplace, socially and within the family. When I visit Caernarfon, the Welsh language is the natural language of conversation in shops, pubs and on the street. As the Minister knows, I had some difficulty last year in getting a bank to accept a letter through the medium of Welsh. Does the Minister agree that we need more communities such as Caernarfon? How can we deliver that? We need more university courses provided through the medium of Welsh. What is being done to deliver that?  

Thank you very much, Mike. Your Welsh is improving by the minute. I'm very pleased that you've emphasised the importance of using the language. That's what you see in communities such as Caernarfon, of course, and it would be great to see more communities like Caernarfon. The way to ensure this, of course, is to increase the number of Welsh speakers, and the easiest way to do that, of course, is by increasing the number who go to Welsh-medium schools. That's why we are emphasising this increase that we want to see in Welsh-medium schools, and that's why these strategic plans are so important. We have seen a difference in the stance of local government towards an increase in the number of schools that they are willing to invest in with regard to the Welsh language and Welsh-medium education.     

You're entirely correct: things have already changed in universities. There are far more courses that you can take through the medium of Welsh because we have invested in the Coleg Cymraeg Cenedlaethol. That's the role of the Coleg Cymraeg Cenedlaethol, namely to ensure that there are more courses available. But, as I've already said, we'll now be moving forward to see whether we can do the same thing with regard to further education.  

Minister, what can you say today about areas such as Newport East where the Welsh language is relatively weak? What steps will the Government take in order to deal with these issues, particularly in Newport East and similar areas across Wales, in order to support the Welsh language and to strengthen it for the future?

Thank you very much, John. I know that your support for the Welsh language is very enthusiastic, and I know that there is a group in Newport that is campaigning to ensure that there are more opportunities for children in particular to have access to Welsh-medium education. I have visited the excellent school in your constituency in Newport, where so many people from a deprived area receive an excellent education through the medium of Welsh. That demand is there and it's coming from society. Newport is one of those areas where we are waiting to see whether local government will be willing to move a little bit further ahead with regard to their aims and their ways of providing Welsh medium education. So, we're waiting for more ideas from local government in Newport.

But I do think that what's important is that people understand now that this strategy means that we are not waiting for the demand to come from the population, but that we're leading the demand, and that's the major difference that we'll be seeing in future. So, I do also think that it's important that we do give a helping hand to people, such as in the world of business, in the shops. Where we are aware that people do speak Welsh, it's important that we know who they are and that there is an opportunity then for people to use the Welsh language when they leave school.

Thank you.