3. Will the Minister confirm whether adding the ability to speak Welsh as a desirable skill on job specifications for vacancies in the Welsh Government has increased the number of Welsh speakers within the organisation? OAQ54342

The Welsh Government has specified Welsh language skills in job advertisements for a number of years and I can confirm that there has been a small increase in the number of staff who speak Welsh since the Welsh language standards became applicable. 

Thank you for that answer, Minister. A current Government job vacancy lists Welsh language merely as 'desirable' but then goes on to say that the postholder should be able to read some work-related material with the support of a dictionary, hold some work-related conversations and prepare some work-related materials all in Welsh. To me, that sounds like someone who can't speak Welsh would be not deemed suitable. Even vacancies that don't have Welsh language as a 'desirable' still say that the Government welcomes applications from people who are bilingual. Surely the inference is therefore that those who can only speak English are less welcome to apply. In this time of increased joblessness in Wales under your Government, don't you agree with me that unless Welsh language skills are essential for a particular job, we should not do anything that discourages English-only speakers from applying to work here so that we can have an as large as possible pool of applicants from which to choose the best person for the job?

I think it's important that we recognise that we do have an ambition to create a million speakers in Wales and that actually part of that means that we also have to be a part of that transformation project that's going on. At the moment, the number of Welsh speakers in the Welsh Government is around 22 per cent, which is reflective of the demographic population, but there has been an increase since 2015. 

What is clear is that we, as a Welsh Government, have a responsibility to provide a bilingual service for the public and, in order to do that, we need to have the staff who are able to provide that. At the same time, of course, we don't want the inability to speak Welsh to be a barrier to people to apply to work in the Welsh Government. And, obviously, what we can do and what we do do is to give comprehensive support to people to enable them to undertake Welsh lessons once they've been appointed. I visited Nant Gwrtheyrn last week. There were people from the Welsh Government, from the Welsh Assembly, taking part in those lessons. So, there are ample opportunities for people who come into the organisation to learn Welsh. 

The Deputy Presiding Officer (Ann Jones) took the Chair.

Thank you. I’m sure you would agree that, in accordance with the spirit of the million Welsh speakers strategy, we need to move away from this old-fashioned, simplistic system of noting linguistic requirements to posts where the Welsh language is either essential or desirable, moving to a more meaningful system that notes the skills level required from one to five, and making courtesy level a requirement for all jobs. The Assembly Commission has seen some success in doing this, but I do have to say that the Welsh Government is dragging its feet, despite a working group of senior officials recommending back in March 2017 that the Welsh Government ought to move in the same direction. This working group also suggested that the Welsh Government should be a truly bilingual institution and should work towards adopting Welsh and English as official languages on an administrative level by 2036, but in confirming that you as a Government taking action at last during the culture committee meeting held prior to the summer recess, I see that your target will be 2050, rather than 2036 as was originally recommended. Can you explain why? Thank you.

Well, what I can say is that detailed language planning is now ongoing within Welsh Government, and the Permanent Secretary will announce the future steps and what the plan is to attain the target in 2050, and what our responsibilities will be within Welsh Government in order to attain the target. This is a question for the Permanent Secretary, and I would assume that the answer is that if you want to progress, it makes sense to progress when you know that more children will be coming out of the Welsh schools. So, this is a long-term strategy, and, therefore, it will be easier to recruit people as we move forward, because education in Wales and the number of people coming out of the schools will be greater, and it will be easier to get people to apply for those jobs with the necessary language skills.