3. Statement by the Minister for International Relations and Welsh Language: International Strategy

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 3:37 pm on 14 January 2020.

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Photo of Baroness Mair Eluned Morgan Baroness Mair Eluned Morgan Labour 3:37, 14 January 2020

Thank you, Mandy. And thank you for the fact that you welcome the statement, but also for underlining the importance of working with the UK Government, because they have massive resources that we need to tap into, and some of what we're trying to do here is to make sure that they are working on our behalf. But for them to work effectively on our behalf we need to make sure that they have the right script—a script that they can work from—and that's what we've been trying to do here: to develop a script that they can work from. And we will be really putting, I hope, a lot more pressure on the department of UK Trade and Investment and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to make sure that they are acting in our interests and on our behalf around the world. But there are other agencies that we need to take into account as well. The BBC World Service, the British Council—those are organisations that could do and do great work for us but where's the opportunity for them to do more, and how can we help them in that endeavour? 

And thank you for, again, bringing up this issue of the opportunities with Commonwealth countries. We have great relationships here in Wales with the diaspora community, in particular some of the ones throughout—India and Bangladesh are very, very well represented and very vocal. And we had somebody from India on the group that was helping us to develop this strategy. So, there are opportunities and we have trade missions and things that go to these countries to make sure that those relationships develop. 

Whether we can explore the option of seeing if we could host some kind of event—. We'll have a look. At the moment, my guess is that anything to do with trade, in terms of the UK Government, they are going to be head down for the next year, and it's going to be very, very difficult, I think, for them to come up for air in any way. So, I think there that it was probably a practical issue. But we now have the centre, the international conference centre, which is a real opportunity, and you'll see that that's also been outlined in this strategy as a place where we can host those kinds of events if they were to come.