Thank you very much, Chair. I'm very pleased today to be able to publish our national policy on Welsh language transmission and use within families. I said back in February, when publishing the draft version of the policy, that it's important that we understand that the language we use at home affects how comfortable our children feel using that language later in life.

Our aim with this work is to support and encourage those with Welsh language skills who perhaps haven’t used them lately to speak more Welsh with their children—in other words, to transmit the language to the next generation. The policy focuses on how we can influence this. Of course, the language we use with our children—indeed, all language behaviour—is the result of many different factors. Changing our behaviour isn't easy, particularly when patterns have been established.

As the data and research show, there are homes in all parts of Wales where parents can speak Welsh, but for many reasons—lack of confidence, habit, a feeling that their Welsh is, somehow, not good enough—don't use the language with their own children. Therefore, we have to do everything we possibly can to help them to do so.

Back in February, I emphasized that I wanted to hear from families as part of the consultation on this policy—this work is being done for families, after all. As part of the consultation and our research into the transmission of the Welsh language, we've heard from families where parents have lost confidence in the use of the language. We've also heard opinions and experiences from parents who are the only adult in the home who is able to speak Welsh. Some of the people we've spoken to have been through the Welsh-medium education system themselves but they have been raised in English-medium households. We've heard, we've listened and we've fed all of these views into this work.

One parent—I'll call him Steve—spoke Welsh but explained that his partner didn't. Steve's partner felt that there was something missing from her life because she didn’t speak Welsh. Neither she nor Steve wanted their child to miss out. We've also heard from Lucy. Lucy can speak Welsh, and, in looking back at her time at school, she remembers that she only started using the Welsh she had in her teenage years. She's now an adult and a mother, and has a different perspective on her Welsh language ability. She was eager to use the language with her child from the very beginning. Each of these different perspectives, and many others, has enriched the development of this policy.

Of course we need to help parents to begin their own journeys with the language by offering opportunities to them to learn Welsh, and that's why we are already supporting that through the work of the National Centre for Learning Welsh, Mudiad Meithrin and other partners. But the focus of this policy is to influence homes where people can already speak Welsh in order to help them to use the language with their children. This will contribute to increasing the number of Welsh speakers and, all-importantly, double the daily use of Welsh, Cymraeg 2050's two main targets.

One single thing won't make more people transmit the Welsh language. This policy presents a series of actions that we will put in place over the next decade in order to create a virtuous circle of parents using Welsh with their children, and those children likewise speaking Welsh with their own children.

We want to build on the foundation of work undertaken in Wales over many years; we don't want to reinvent the wheel. We now need to push the boundaries and experiment with new ways of working, by taking risks from time to time, being prepared to fail, but also learning from those failures, and doing so without pointing the blame at anyone. Only by doing this can we understand the impact of our work and improve it.

We want to create an environment of collaboration between individuals and organisations where everyone has an opportunity to share. After all, nobody has a monopoly on good ideas. We won't see all the results of our work overnight. What we're trying to achieve is intergenerational—that's the whole point. But the work of ensuring that there are future generations of Welsh speakers in the family begins today. Thank you.