Can I thank Plaid Cymru for bringing this important debate this afternoon? We will be supporting all of Plaid's motion.

Rugby is the national game of Wales and unlike England, where much is based on its public school system, it is a sport of the working classes and it is a grass-roots sport in Wales. 

If the BBC is to be a true public service operator, it is incumbent upon the institution to retain certain sporting events for the general population. We should note here that it's taken steps to retain Wimbledon, the boat race, a share with BT of the FA Cup and other institutional gaming events. The BBC licence fee raises £3.7 billion annually, but is supplemented by another £1.2 billion raised from its commercial operations. So, that's a total of £5 billion annually. It is reported that the rights bid for the six nations tournament is around £50 million, or—if I'm not to be wrong, as Diane Abbott might have been, that's just 1 per cent of the BBC's annual revenue. But as of now—. This cost, of course, was shared with ITV. But, as has been pointed out by David Melding, that may not be allowed in the next bid phase.

So, whilst we have to accept that there are many other programmes—and I use that in the broadest sense of the word—the popularity of the six nations is witnessed by the fact that 41 per cent of the UK watches the tournament, and, as Rhun pointed out before, that figure rises to something like 82 per cent in Wales. So, the six nations tournament is one of the most anticipated and watched events in the sporting calendar. Indeed, for Wales, it is probably the most popular event. The loss of the Pro14 championship to pay television undoubtedly impacted on the watched coverage of that competition.

Being exposed to sport through all media, as has been pointed out, is the best way to inspire young people to engage in playing that sport, and, as Dai Lloyd mentioned, we can see that in the fact of the numbers of women now playing rugby because of the exposure on television. So, Dirprwy Lywydd, we call upon this whole institution, led by the Welsh Government, to use every lever available to influence the BBC to retain the six nations tournament for terrestrial television.