I chair the Senedd cross-party group on music and I'm truly grateful for the genuine cross-party support across the Chamber on this vital issue. Last Saturday, I was honoured to participate in the Incorporated Society of Musicians conference where I represented the Senedd to discuss music education across the devolved nations. Indeed, we are renowned internationally as the land of bards and brass bands, choirs and choral societies, a land of song, old and new, diverse and traditional, and strongly rooted in working class and eisteddfodau culture.

Wales is globally respected for the excellence of our national institutions, such as the Welsh National Opera and BBC National Orchestra of Wales. And we are rightly proud of our artists, such as Dame Shirley Bassey, Sir Tom Jones, the Manics, the Stereophonics, Katherine Jenkins, Catrin Finch, Claire Jones and the talented Watkins brothers from Islwyn, and, of course, Sir Bryn Terfel, and our conducting and composing greats who ring out across the global airways—Sir Karl Jenkins and Owain Arwel Hughes CBE, just to mention a few. 

But now, it is time for a warning to us all to guard against complacency. The reality in 2021 in Wales is that children and young people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds are not accessing musical opportunities that were once available to them. Worse, according to our major musical institutions and organisations, poorer pupils are simply not accessing musical opportunities and therefore the requisite skills to participate and progress. This is patently wrong. Music in Wales should be the birthright of all, certainly of our children and young people and certainly not dependent on your family's ability to pay.

Sadly, despite the fiscal protections of the Welsh Government, austerity has hit the poorest the hardest of all. I argue that being deprived of access to an educational pathway is both cultural exclusion and economic exclusion. The silent evaporation of our music teaching services is in itself a quiet dissolution. The engines of instrumental and talent skills building and practice and progression across Wales have mostly dissolved into the night. Despite the Welsh Government's well-considered mitigation, instrumental and vocal access for students is increasingly the right of the well-off. This is the reality. But the reason that Wales punches above its weight in the world of international music-making and the talent pipelines is precisely because of these very services that are no longer strategically in place and are now increasingly left to the market.

Deputy Minister, what makes us Welsh today partly, I argue, is the breadth and depth and diversity of the creative talent that we have in Wales and the contribution that music makes to our home-grown economic base. Its contributions are profound. Music is part of our cultural identity and brand Wales. It makes us strong and vibrant in our diversity and it contributes to our basic well-being and sense of self. In lockdown, the sense of real loss from community choirs and bands led to poorer well-being. And this has been evidenced as contributing to poorer mental health of all age groups across our communities and educational settings.

Deputy Minister, I welcomed the opportunity to commission the 'Land of Song' report from Professor Paul Carr, and the various important and hard-hitting reports from the Culture, Welsh Language and Communications Committee.

So, what are the solutions? Someone once told me that there are no problems, only solutions. And we have the answers, the will, the way and the funding. Deputy Llywydd, I have, at various times, stood in this Chamber and welcomed positively the varied Welsh Government initiatives that have attempted to resolve the situation. Now, today, in the Chamber, I put on the record the sector's real anticipation of a swift publication and then rapid implementation of the new national music service and strategy plan. I welcome the long-called-for strategic collaboration and co-operation between our big, funded arts organisations and the exciting new Donaldson curriculum and areas of expressive arts learning within the plan.

The manifesto promise of the new national music service for Wales attempts to radically resolve the funding model issue and it provides a qualitative and progressive and equitable offer across Wales. I am grateful that the music education stakeholder group has met on a regular basis from January 2021. Minister, as I raised in this Chamber last week, there are important questions that need addressing, namely, when will the strategy plan be published? When will the new service be rolled out? How will the service be funded? And, crucially, please can you reassure me and many others today that this service will be funded appropriately? It is our duty in this place to protect all that we have to lose for future and present generations. And with the impacts of COVID on well-being still being hugely suffered, we must work co-operatively across Government to fund a cross-portfolio agenda, critical to the Wales we want to see: a fairer, greener and healthier Wales, a global music player; a creative Wales fit for the twenty-first century. Thank you. Diolch.