Thank you to the Petitions Committee for introducing this debate. I'd like to thank the petitioners for their efforts in highlighting that we're not doing enough and how we can improve the lives of deaf people, particularly children and young people. 

There are many laws and accepted principles that seem unquestionable now, but would not be in existence without those like Catherine Robins-Talbot and Deffo!, who work hard campaigning for people who have been unheard for years to be given a voice that will not be ignored. Society gets to know about a part of their community that they never knew and policy makers turn from indifference to conviction.

I would urge the Government to accept all the recommendations in the report. I know that resources are limited, but it's a question of priorities and about how far up that list of priorities deaf people are for Welsh Government who are the only people here who can act on this.

It's nearly two years since the first time an MP in Westminster asked the Prime Minister a question using BSL, in an effort to have BSL put on the national curriculum in England. BSL has now been recognised as a language for 16 years. There are over 150,000 users of BSL in the UK—more than 87,000 of whom are deaf. So, the question for me is why BSL is not already on the curriculum in some way in Wales. If the petitioners felt that provision for deaf people in Wales was satisfactory, they wouldn't have gone to the trouble of petitioning the Assembly and proposing solutions.

I note that, in paragraph 20 of the report from the Petitions Committee, the Government say that it's up to local authorities to support families where a child is deaf or hard of hearing. But I do have to question the consistency here of a Government that is constantly stating and implementing their desire to support those who communicate in Welsh, but not those who have no choice but to communicate in BSL. 

Our tradition of being a community and society that sticks together and works through adversity and unfairness makes us proudly Welsh and British, and making sure that our young people have every opportunity to offer their best to Wales and have Wales offer its best to them should be as important a part of what being Welsh is about as any other aspect of a rightly proud Welsh culture.

For what good reason shouldn't it be part of the national curriculum, even at a basic level, so that all our young people know BSL exists and are given a chance to study it as a GCSE language option that realistically will probably offer our society and communities more positives than some other language options? Deafness and a reliance on BSL should not be seen as an additional learning need. BSL speakers don't have a learning difficulty. The only difficulty they face is that too few of the hearing population don't understand the language they speak and that's our fault rather than theirs. They should not be the people who face the negative consequences of a society that effectively chooses not to engage with them, and not supporting the recommendations in full will be nothing short of saying, 'You're on your own. We hope you have rich parents who can afford the extra help you need, because you're getting little or nothing from us.'

We've had legislation pass for inclusive play areas, where children with physical disabilities can play alongside those who don't, and part of the justification for funding those was that it will raise awareness of disability and how little it should matter in modern Welsh life. Surely the same can be achieved for deaf children, if all children were introduced to BSL at school. How many deaf children avoid using play areas because of the difficulties they face when another playful child tries to speak to them? How many more deaf children would get to meet and play with, and have in their circle of friends, hearing people if even very basic BSL were on the national curriculum? Who can imagine what positive outcomes that would have for deaf children in later life?

There are lots of policies and laws built to entrench equal rights for numerous other groups, but we don't seem to have equal rights for deaf people. These young people need us, and we need the talents of these young people that for too long have been unfairly untapped. Wales would benefit and deaf people would benefit if only we opened our eyes to see what they have to say. That's why I support the recommendations of this report and hope that the Government will change their response to recommendation 3 to an unequivocal acceptance and to implement the report's recommendations without delay. Thank you.