When a Government tries to implement a policy, there are different methods that can be used in that cause. These can sometimes be divided into two basic elements, namely the carrot and the stick. I think that the Minister has been quite consistent in advocating the carrot rather than the stick in furthering the campaign of boosting the use of the Welsh language, and I am encouraged, after reading the 'Cymraeg 2050' report, that that appears to still be her basic approach.

I think the encouragement of groups and organisations to grow the use of Welsh is a far better measure than methods of compulsion, so I would generally endorse the methods that the Minister is pursuing, as outlined in this year's 'Cymraeg 2050' report, by supporting the various initiatives that are documented. The view of the Abolish the Welsh Assembly Party is that, generally, we support these positive measures to encourage the growth of Welsh. Sometimes, making something compulsory does not really work. We did have the Welsh Government taking a decision a few years ago to make the teaching of Welsh in schools compulsory up to the age of 16. That decision has proved to be contentious and I wonder if it has actually worked in increasing to any meaningful level the usage of Welsh, by which I mean increasing the number of people in Wales who use Welsh on a daily basis.

My own observation, based on the experience of various relatives and relatives of friends who have gone through the school system in recent years is that we still have a sizeable section of young people who are fairly indifferent to the Welsh language and also fairly ignorant of it, despite having theoretically studied it up to the age of 16. So, in a sense, little has changed since I was at school 30 years ago. Having seen the stated figures, I'm not sure that the proportion of young people who significantly use Welsh has increased as a result of forcing more people to take it at school for three extra years. Can I refer to the lack of increase in the uptake of A-level Welsh at school, which is documented in the report? There has been no significant lasting increase in the numbers of school students taking A-level Welsh, so this, in itself, does indicate that, to a large extent, the policy of compelling school pupils to take Welsh up to the age of 16 has failed. I think that promoting parents' evenings to encourage more uptake of A-level Welsh is a good idea. We could take the same approach with GCSE Welsh in my view, but that is perhaps a discussion for another day. My main contention is that learning Welsh can be a very positive experience, but it has to be done with the consent and active input of the learner. The learner must want to learn, so the main thing is to encourage more young people to take up the subject as far as possible. Parents' evenings are fine, but, even there, we must ensure that the young students themselves are also involved in discussions on what A-levels they take.

There are related problems to the A-level uptake issue, such as the shortfall in primary school teachers and the bigger shortfall in secondary school teachers—issues that have already been raised today by earlier speakers. There is a conversion scheme, which is outlined in the report, the difficulty being that many primary school teachers may not want to convert to secondary school and also you already have a shortfall in primary school teachers, anyway. So, there are difficulties in moving forward towards the very good aspiration of improving the usage of the Welsh language. I do, though, commend the Minister for her overall approach.