Moving on to the committee's findings, we made 37 recommendations, and I obviously don't have time to cover all of them today, so I'll be focusing on recommendation 1, and then those looking at the commission's membership, the commission's strategic duties, and the regulation-making powers. Our first recommendation is that the Senedd approves the general principles of the Bill. This is in line with the evidence we heard from stakeholders, who broadly supported the Bill and the need for legislation. Our subsequent 36 recommendations seek to strengthen and improve the Bill.

We explored in detail the composition of the commission, as set out in Schedule 1 to the Bill. We heard clear evidence that there was a need to ensure the commission reflects the diversity of Wales as a whole, and more specifically, the breadth of provision and research within the post-16 sector. Whilst the Minister told us that the public appointments process would seek to ensure that appointments were drawn from the widest pool of people, we know that this can be difficult to actually achieve in practice. The composition of the board is so critical, and this is why we want to see part of the Bill strengthened in making recommendation 6. This calls for amendments to place a requirement on Welsh Ministers to have regard to ensuring that the commission represents the breadth and provision within the sector, and the broader diversity of Wales. We also made recommendations in relation to the learner and worker associate members. The Bill provides for at least two worker and at least one learner representative. Whilst this sets the minimum, and not the maximum level, we think that the Bill should be more ambitious.

The work of the commission will drive change across the sector, and it's imperative that the learner and worker voice is heard and shapes decision making at the highest level of the commission. In recommendation 7, we call for an increase in the learner and worker representation. The Government should provide a clear steer on ensuring the learner and worker voice is at the heart of the commission. Better representation will lead to improved decision making. Our evidence that we gathered did not see this being a conflict of interest.

At the moment, the learner and worker representatives have associate status with no voting rights. We believe that they should be full members with voting rights, as set out in recommendation 8. During our evidence gathering, we heard how, across the sector, student representatives currently sit on governing bodies with full voting rights. At the very least, the commission should be matching current good practice, if not in fact going further. We believe giving learner and worker representatives voting rights helps to do this.

One of the big changes to the Bill we're debating today, in comparison to the draft Bill, has been the introduction of the strategic duties in Part 1. These were broadly welcomed by stakeholders, but we heard different views on how these could be expanded and improved upon. We were convinced by some of this evidence, which led to us making recommendation 10, through to 19, on the strategic duties. I'll now highlight a couple of those recommendations in more detail.

In relation the the strategic duty on promoting tertiary education through the Welsh medium, we felt the Bill could be bolder and more in line with the Welsh Government's 2050 ambition of 1 million Welsh speakers. The post-16 sector will play an essential role in supporting delivery of that goal. We want to see the commission play a role in generating demand and not just meeting reasonable demand. The sector is already starting from a low baseline of Welsh-medium provision, and with increases in Welsh-medium education in the compulsory pre-16 sector, we need to ensure that there's enough capacity to help learners continue education in the language of their choice. We therefore make recommendation 15, calling for amendments to strengthen the duty on the commission to promote Welsh-medium tertiary education.

The Minister has emphasised to us the importance of ensuring the sector is learner focused, and with this in mind, I welcome today the Minister's commitment for amendments to bring that forward to promote the learner voice. Recommendation 18 calls for this strategic duty to be added to the Bill. This will be in line with the policy intentions of the Bill and will be a clear demonstration of the importance of the learner within the sector.

Moving on to the regulation-making powers in the Bill, the Bill has over 40 of these and much of the detail of how the Bill will operate in practice will be in the regulations. Broadly, we think this is appropriate and will enable changes to be made in the future, where necessary. But we were disappointed that we will not see any draft regulations until after our scrutiny work has finished. Considering the time that it's taken for the development of the Bill, we think certain key regulations should have been published in draft form as part of Stage 1 scrutiny. We list those in recommendation 36. If the Minister is unable to provide draft regulations before the end of the amending stages, we would at least ask for the further information on the Government's current thinking on the likely content of the regulations. This will help inform the tabling of amendments for Members and improve scrutiny of the Bill. I note that this is an issue that the Legislation, Justice and Constitution Committee also picked up in their report.

As I said, I don't have time to cover all our recommendations—I'll give you a flavour of the other areas we cover. We call for amendments on strengthening the independence of the commission, funding powers and duties, sixth forms, learner protection plans, information sharing and powers in relation to higher corporation. Our report's quite detailed and lengthy; it goes into lots of detail in this area. I would encourage all Members across the Senedd to read the report ahead of the amending stages.

In closing, Deputy Llywydd, this is an important and significant Bill that will hopefully help strengthen and empower the post-16 education sector. I look forward to moving to the amending stages and following up on the implementation of the Bill in the coming Senedd term. Diolch.