Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:05 pm on 8 July 2020.
So, I'm looking for an assurance, really, and it's an equality issue—and I say this as an English-language-first Welshman, because I didn't know a word of Welsh until I was 32, and I remember a Danish person speaking to me in Spain in Welsh, and I thought he was speaking to me in Danish. That's how embarrassing my education was. So, I believe passionately that immersion classes should be freely available for teachers and for pupils. So, my question really is: why was that voted against last week?
Since it's come up, I want to touch on what I'm hearing in this Chamber about the BAME community. I find it quite insulting, really. We have people of many communities in Wales—many of us are not white, many of us are from all parts of this planet, and we make up a wonderful nation called Wales. And I remember Betty Campbell, the first black headteacher in Wales, when she was labelled as a 'BME'; we say 'BAME' nowadays—and she said, 'I ain't no BME. I am Welsh'. And I just want to echo support there for the Minister, actually, in saying that we have many histories here in Wales. I want to get away from this divisiveness, where we have the so-called BAME community. There are many of us who are not white—many of us—and we're not just one community. We never say the 'white community', and we've got to stop this divisive language, and we need to appreciate what we have in Wales, and we should talk about what unites us and all of our histories. Diolch.