Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 5:53 pm on 21 May 2019.
Arfor, okay. Well, thank you very much. It’s very sad, I think there’s an opportunity here for us to take pride and for us to tell our story to the world, and what’s sad is that you have discussed here the problems that we have, and this is the opportunity that we have. There are so many things that we should be proud of, I think, and it’s very sad that, once again, what’s happened is a focus on the negatives.
We have to give something back to the world. I think that’s vital. The rights in this country have expanded astonishingly over the years, and that’s something that we can show the world in terms of what has changed. The standards that we’ve introduced have made a big difference. We have had recent discussions with the regulatory forums, for example, in the health department, to see what we can do now, and that process is moving forward. I do think as well that there is awareness that the Welsh language is a living language in those particular areas in the west, but we have to go further than just safeguarding Welsh in those communities. Our vision is to expand the language and have a million Welsh speakers. You can't do that by just operating in Arfor or Arfon. What's important is that we expand the possibilities and ensure that we have more learners across our country.
And our hope now—and you are right, it's important that we do focus on the economy. Brexit is not going to help in the Welsh-speaking strongholds. That's not going to help at all, and that's one of the reasons why we will be holding a symposium on the economy, looking at the Welsh language, in the autumn in the west.
And I do also think that it's important to emphasise that a lot of posts have already moved from Cardiff. Llandudno—there are many Welsh speakers in our departments in Llandudno, and many of them have moved out to Aberystwyth already. And I do think that we, as a Government, are trying to ensure that we are trying to spread the work of regulating Wales across the country.