I will deal with the amendments in summing up, if I may, but I will start by moving the motion and reflecting on how we could help our small businesses to access the benefits of bilingualism, by looking at points 2 and 5. We are now three years into the Government’s strategy and the Government says that it’s on track to meet its early years education target by 2021. But it is very quiet on all the other targets.

Regarding the issue of working with adults in work today, the work undertaken by the National Centre for Learning Welsh has primarily focused on the public sector. The previous commissioner had some success in changing the culture and provision of larger private businesses, and that’s a point that deserves recognition, but her reach did not extend to smaller companies. Mentrau iaith are very different in terms of their skills, finance, experience and ambition, but it’s not easy to quantify their success in creating more opportunities for people to use and develop their Welsh language skills in the workplace as well as in the community.

I’m not convinced that everything, or anything perhaps, that the Welsh Government has funded or supported has made any significant or long-lasting progress in terms of persuading our smaller businesses of the advantages of bilingualism. There is research to support the claim that a bilingual offer and a bilingual workplace are beneficial, but how is that being shared with our chambers of commerce, the Federation of Small Businesses, the CBI and other membership organisations, for example—organisations that are not full of Government appointees or first-language Welsh speakers?

Small business managers have goodwill towards the Welsh language, but they need incentives to act regarding its usage. That could be demand among staff or customers, it could be direct funding, it could be legislative measures, but we need to be very careful there, as the motion suggests, or it could change the voice of advocacy. I have to say that the first-language-Welsh establishment voice is not necessarily a voice that will persuade smaller companies to listen to the arguments in favour of welcoming bilingualism—'I'm sure it will be a good idea, but for other people'—unless they can see the benefits that are of value to them.

Business, in my opinion, needs to talk directly to business. That’s why we want to see language champions from within the business world: co-production, transition, learners who know how difficult it is to make progress with the language, and those who understand the bottom line too. Perhaps we will have a more bilingual population 20 years from now, but we have to think about the workforce and the customers of today too. Your 14 officers will have an uphill struggle, Minister, unless they are on the inside, and it is a shame that you have disregarded that by removing this part of the motion. Apparently, in deleting points 3 and 4, you’re not prepared to be scrutinised on your progress either. It doesn’t matter how many business officers you have or how many community organisations you support if the use of Welsh isn’t expanding in the workplace, or if we don’t persuade businesses of its potential as a USP. But, given your amendment, you obviously don’t want us to ask you questions about that at all.

Finally, I turn to the purpose of point 6. We often pass laws in this place that create rights and duties without any remedy for non-compliance. Unusually, we didn’t do that with the creation of the Welsh Language Commissioner; we gave the office powers of investigation, enforcement when standards are not used and rights are breached. But there is no such solution if the rights of a non-Welsh speaker are breached. If Welsh language standards are applied disproportionately so that those actions exclude someone who does not speak Welsh from having an opportunity, that person can only resort to the courts. We’ve all heard complaints when some public sector job adverts, for example, don’t require a certain level of Welsh when they should. And of course everyone can go to the commissioner in that situation. But the potential is there in the other direction as well, and so I ask Members to think about how we could treat both situations fairly in terms of a remedy when both languages should be treated on the basis of equality. Our proposal doesn’t undermine the rights of Welsh speakers, and if you want to say that this is not an issue for the commissioner, fine, but please say what your idea is as regards creating equal remedies in terms of unconscious discrimination.

The reasons I raise this argument is this: the workplace can be the perfect place to develop and use Welsh language skills. Look at Members in this Chamber who have never used Welsh before, particularly in the workplace. And look at the Assembly staff. I would like to see employers think a little bit more about opportunities for dedicated and committed learners as well as fluent speakers when they consider job advertisements, for example, because if we lose the faith of our learners, we will lose the Welsh language.