Part of 3. Topical Questions – in the Senedd at 4:01 pm on 15 May 2019.
Thank you very much, Presiding Officer. Deputy Minister, I would counsel very gently that the Government doesn't simply defend the piece of legislation and not consider criticisms that are made of it. The nature of legislation is that it should be reviewed, and the Government has in the past, certainly in my day, accepted reviews of legislation. Post-legislative scrutiny has been a positive part of the legislative process. So, I would hope that the Government would take a more open approach to this. Members will be aware of my own concerns about a piece of legislation—you know, you don't make Wales bilingual in 50 years by declaring that you're going to make Wales bilingual in 50 years; you do it by legislating in different ways to do it, and the Government, of course, has dropped the legislation that might have achieved that. So, I would counsel caution to the Government on this matter. Many of us find declaratory statements given the weight of law to be little more than pious hopes, unless it's actually backed up by real action. Certainly, my concern would be that the Government would review the workings of this piece of legislation that the relevant committee—I think my colleague from Pontypridd mentioned that the sustainability committee could do that, and certainly I think it would be good practice were it to do so. But simply passing legislation and defending it, I think, is a very poor way of operating. We need to look hard: does this achieve the ambitions set for it? Does it achieve the visions set for it? Is it the legislation today that we hoped it would have been when we voted for it? Is it achieving the objectives set for it? And, were we to do that, I'm less confident than the Minister that we would give ourselves 10 out of 10. We might get over the 50 per cent, but, certainly, we need to think much harder about the impact of legislation, and certainly my experience in Government is that this piece of legislation is worshipped more in the theory than the practice.