Item 4 on the agenda is this afternoon is a statement by the Minister for International Relations and the Welsh Language—consultation on the national policy on Welsh language transmission in families. And I call on the Minister for International Relations and the Welsh Language, Eluned Morgan. 

Thank you very much, Deputy Presiding Officer. The first words that most of us speak usually come as a result of listening to our families and copying them. By speaking Welsh with their children, parents can create language practices that last a lifetime. The use of language between parents and their children, or the transmission of language, as it’s called, is one of the most important elements of language planning. Work has been done to support the use of Welsh in families for 20 years and more. Now it is time for us to take the next step as part of our journey towards doubling the use of Welsh and reaching 1 million speakers by 2050.

Our draft policy on transmission and use of the Welsh language in families sets out what we propose to do over the next decade. Today I’m asking everyone who wants to see an increase in the use of the Welsh language to contribute to the consultation on this important policy. As is set out in our Cymraeg 2050 strategy, Government can’t control which languages families speak, nor would we wish to do so. But we can do more to help parents to speak more Welsh.

I recognise that the linguistic situation varies from one family to another. In my case, I spoke Welsh with my mother, but English with my father. Welsh is the language I use with my children, and I even made it a condition of marriage that my husband learn Welsh. You need to relax: I'm certainly not suggesting that in this policy.

In our family, the language that we spoke to our children was a very conscious decision, as is the case for some other families, too, I'm sure. But that's definitely not true in all instances. The situation also varies across Wales, and we must be aware of that. Even in areas with higher percentages of Welsh speakers, we need to pay close attention to the language practices within families. Doing so is important in order to sustain Welsh-speaking communities. The 2011 census shows that, even in households where both adults in a couple are Welsh speakers, about 20 per cent of children aged three to four do not speak Welsh. In homes where there are two adults and where one of them is a Welsh speaker, fewer than half of the children aged three to four can speak Welsh.

So, this draft policy focuses on four aims: to inspire children and young people to speak Welsh to their children in the future; reignite the Welsh language skills of those who may not have used Welsh since their school days, or who have lost confidence in their language skills, to speak Welsh with their own children; support and encourage the use of Welsh within families where not everybody speaks Welsh; and to support Welsh-speaking families to speak Welsh with their children.

The actions that we are proposing include: developing new support for families based on the latest thinking in behaviour change; trialling a language use programme based on a successful project from the Basque Country; helping the education workforce to encourage pupils to speak more Welsh in order to create the language transmitters of the future; and creating networks for parents to be able to support each other. This is innovative work, not only for us in the Welsh Government, but also internationally. While I want us to lead the way, we also need to work together. We need to learn from other countries and other sectors, as well as share our findings with them.

We'll be consulting on this policy until 5 May, and we'll publish a final policy later this year. It is vital that we hear a range of voices on the proposals in this draft policy. I am particularly keen to hear the views of parents who lack confidence in their Welsh language skills so we can better understand what would help them. I want to hear from parents who had Welsh-medium education but who no longer use Welsh, or who might not have spoken Welsh socially while they were in school. There are also those parents who can speak Welsh but do not consider that speaking Welsh with their children is an option for them. We need to support all these parents to speak more Welsh with their children.

It's going to take time for us to see the results of this work. I'm talking here about intergenerational behaviour change. But we must also act now to help families speak more Welsh, and that's the aim of this policy. Thank you.

Thank you, Minister. I hope you'll feel better soon. I welcome this, because I think we all understand how crucial this is to the success of the 2050 policy, but I also welcome the recognition that language choice is a very personal issue, particularly within families. I was in the same situation as you, Minister, but I was the non-Welsh speaker. We as a family decided to bring up the children through the medium of Welsh, but there was no condition in terms of speaking Welsh before I got married. But we did that despite the fact that myself and my husband found it almost impossible to speak Welsh to each other, because we started conversing in English. And that's just one example of how complex this aim is in terms of its delivery.

You talk of families with Welsh language skills who don't perhaps have the confidence, motivation or aspiration to speak Welsh at home. So, what have you discovered already as to why families such as this don't wish to transmit the language? Why don't they wish to do that? Why is there no incentive for them to do that? Because I have had a quick look at the consultation document, but it's not clear to me—or rather, I don't accept that loss of confidence can be the only reason for the failure in transmission at the moment.

What have you learnt from the success or failure of the Twf programme, for example? Because it strikes me as being quite strange to prepare that programme without knowing the answers to my first question. And the reason for that is, I do accept that there have been social changes that have taken place, that people have been learning Welsh in schools over the past 20 years, and it's those people who are now in a position to have children and make this choice as to which language they speak at home. So, there is something of a disconnect between what's been provided already in schools and what young parents are willing to do now.

Having said that, I do understand the principles underpinning the recommendations in the document, and I do note the decisions of children themselves on the language, especially older children who have been brought up speaking Welsh, but then choose to speak more English when they become teenagers and so on. So, I would like to know what's the current offer to them? How do children at that age fit into the experiences of those in the Basque Country, for example? Because you do mention the Basque Country in the document, but I haven't heard many relevant details in terms of how that relates to older young people, if you like.

And, just to conclude: funding. How much is this going to cost? Who do you think is going to be responsible for implementing any programme that emerges from this consultation? And for how long will that continue? Thank you.

The Llywydd took the Chair.

Thank you very much, and you are right, what we're not trying to do here is to control behaviour within the family. We do understand that we're in a sensitive area here. So, what we're trying to do is to motivate, to help people to make their own decisions, and ensure the resources and the evaluation in terms of what works is available to them, and that we help in that area. There is a lot of research that has been done in this area, but what's important now is that we share that work and we do more nudge theory with these people. We know, to a certain extent, certain things that do work, but is there more that we can do?

And that's why it's vital—. You mentioned that it's difficult to change a language once you've set up that habit, and that is true, I think. And that's why it's so important that we start before children are born. That's why we collaborate before that with midwives. And that way of working has taken us quite a long way already, but evidently there is a cohort that we haven't reached yet, and it's important that we look at that.

So, why are people not transmitters? Well, that's what we're trying to find out here. You've mentioned that a lack of confidence is a part of that, and maybe particularly if they haven't been brought up through the medium of Welsh, but they've learned the language at school. It's interesting, maybe they don't have the vocabulary for very young children. Do they know how to sing to the children when they're very small and so forth? That's the kind of thing we have to ensure that we provide.

Another thing, from the research we've seen, is that, often, there isn't a conscious decision about which language to speak. One of the things we're trying to do is to have people to think about this. What's interesting in the research is that they do talk about which school their child goes to, so if they're sending them to a Welsh school, but they don't have a discussion about which language they speak at home.

And you are right, work has been done in this area over the years. There was Twf, and then that has become Cymraeg for Kids. One of the things that we've done in planning this new policy is evaluate Cymraeg for Kids to see what works, and that has fed into this programme. What we're hoping to do here is place a greater focus on the fact that what we want to see is the transmission of the language within families, and that that is established within the family rather than something that's school based. So, the focus is very consciously on families.

In terms of the time this is going to take, we think maybe a decade would be the timeframe for this. In terms of the funding, Cymraeg for Kids received £750,000 this year. What we'd expect, as a result of this consultation, is bids for more funding in this area. So, we'll have to see what comes back and what projects that are not funded now will be funded in the future.

Thank you very much for the statement. I agree entirely with what you say, namely that language transmission is one of the most important elements of language planning. In March 2017, myself and Plaid Cymru published this, which is 'Reaching the Million, which was commissioned by Iaith, the language planning centre, one of the main policy and independent language planning agencies in Wales. The intention of this document was to outline some of the main strategic priorities that need to be adopted in order to increase the number of Welsh speakers to 1 million by 2050. There was quite a bit in this document on language transmission and that particular element of the work, because we did feel it was so very important. We did state in this document that:

'So that a more sustainable future can be ensured for the Welsh language' we need to set

'an initial national target' and what we were suggesting was

'to ensure that 35% of 3-4 year olds speak Welsh as a consequence of language transfer within families and socialisation in the community. In terms of numbers, this could mean ensuring that more than 25,000 children, annually, are raised to speak Welsh by the time they are 3-4 years of age. This would also require significant efforts to substantially increase both the number and percentage socialised to speak Welsh in households with only one adult Welsh speaker and also in those households where there are no adult Welsh speakers.'

So, I would like to know: will your new policy set a similar target, and do you agree with the target of 35 per cent that I've just mentioned? Our document is still a living document, and it's still very relevant. It did go on to propose a number of steps that could be taken in terms of delivering this. I have no time to go into that in detail this afternoon, unfortunately.

You do also state in your statement that this work or this draft policy is ground-breaking. But with all due respect, you contradict yourself because you also say, and I quote:

'Work has been done to support the use of Welsh in families for 20 years and more.'

Yes. As Suzy mentioned, there's been the Twf programme. I'm highly aware of the entirely innovative work that that project did, and it was a Welsh Government programme. For once, I will praise the Government to the rafters for bringing this programme forward. It did encourage parents to speak Welsh to their babies and young children, and their target audiences were families of mixed language where only one parent was a Welsh speaker. I remember seeing Twf in operation when my own children were younger, with midwives working with families where one of the parents was a non-Welsh speaker. So, this is something akin to déjà vu in reading this statement today. Would you agree with me that bringing the Twf programme to an end was a huge mistake? I know that Cymraeg i Blant has replaced it, but the budget for the programme was £200,000 less than the budget for the Twf programme, and in my view, making all of those changes was a retrograde step in terms of language planning.

Finally, I would like to understand what this new policy’s relationship will be with the siarter iaith framework within the new curriculum, because this is another innovative approach that encourages children in schools the length and breadth of the country to speak Welsh outside the classroom. Therefore, clearly, those children could go on to being parents that transmit the Welsh language to their own children. For me, the continuation of the siarter iaith is crucial. There has been great delay with the evaluation work and as I understand it, the guidance for implementing the siarter within the new curriculum won't be published until the summer term, whilst there is guidance on all of the other areas of the curriculum already published. For me, this is a signal that perhaps this is not a priority for Government and in a way, it contradicts what you are trying to deliver.

To conclude, I am very pleased that you will be giving specific attention to this particular issue, because as I've explained, I do think it's crucially important if we are to reach the 1 million Welsh speakers.

Thank you very much, Siân. Can I say I would have a great interest in seeing a copy of that report, and seeing how that can be interwoven or what we can learn from that? I think that setting targets is important but difficult, so we have to do that in the right context, but certainly in terms of reaching 1 million Welsh speakers, transmission is vital in terms of what our expectations are. So, that target is there already. What we need to do is ensure that there is a way to implement that to ensure that we do reach that target.

I do think that there is a difference between what was happening previously with Twf and that progressed to Cymraeg i Blant. Twf was only available in some areas and one of the things that is important is that this is spread across the country. But it’s important that we also acknowledge that it’s going to be different from one area to the next.

The other thing that’s different with this, and you are right, the siarter iaith—. We’re not just talking about language transmission now, but having the children who are in school now and who come from non-Welsh speaking households—how can they be parents who speak Welsh and how can they be transmitters of the language? And you are right, we have to see how the siarter iaith can be interwoven with that, and that will be something I will be feeding back on to see how that can work. But you’ll see from what we've published today that trying to have children who are in school today to be transmitters or to be transformed, and ensuring that they do share the Welsh language with their children is a vital part of the strategy

I wasn't aware of the timing issue with the guidance, but I will go back and do some more research on the timing.

Thank you, Minister.