I had no intention of speaking in this debate until I heard the beginning of it, and my Welsh is nowhere near good enough to write a speech in Welsh from the start in 10 minutes or a quarter of an hour, so I hope people will accept that. 

Where are we with the Welsh language? Can I talk about some positives? When Members have visited English-medium primary schools, you must have been impressed by the amount of incidental Welsh that is used there, and not just 'Bore da, prynhawn da' and general greetings, but the amount of general incidental Welsh, and the amount of Welsh on the walls. And I'm sure not one of those children's parents put them down as Welsh speaking, yet every day, those children speak Welsh in school. And I think that's one of the problems with the self-assessment, or in many cases, the parental assessment, of the ability to speak Welsh: it gives you numbers and people will use them to beat the Government around the head or congratulate it—although I think beating it around the head is probably the more popular view—but I think that we do need to get to the bottom of where we are with the Welsh language.

The growth in Welsh-medium schools across Wales—and I can talk about Swansea East. When my stepdaughter went to school, there was only Ysgol Gyfun Gŵyr. Now, in secondary schools, there is Ysgol Gyfun Gymraeg Bryn Tawe, but also we used to have Ysgol Gynradd Gymraeg Lôn Las, the only Welsh-medium primary school. Now, and I'm just concentrating on Swansea East, we've got Ysgol Gymraeg y Cwm as well as Lôn Las, and then you've got Ysgol Gynradd Gymraeg Tan-y-lan, where my grandson goes, then you've got Ysgol Gynradd Gymraeg Tirdeunaw, where members of my family work. So, there has been a huge growth in the provision of Welsh-medium education. I'm sure somebody's going to say later on that, if you create Welsh-medium schools, parents will send their children to them. And I'm sure somebody else is going to say that we need more Welsh-medium schools. I don't disagree with any of that. I think we need to have a strategy very much on what level of Welsh-medium schools we think each area should have, rather than having a bottom-up approach by the local authority. Having this, 'We think Swansea should have...' and I can only talk about Swansea East, we could probably do with at least one more Welsh-medium primary school, though there are difficulties in finding somewhere. We're a highly built-up area, as anybody else who represents the area will be aware. So, there's not a lot of land anywhere near where people live.

Can I just talk about some of the problems? If I talk about Bro Cymru, the big Welsh-speaking heartland, which used to stretch from most of Ynys Môn right the way down to Cwmllynfell, it's become more patchy. I haven't seen the full results from this census, but at a quick guess, it will have become even more patchy. Amongst many arguments I had with the previous First Minister, I said, 'You need 80 per cent of the population speaking Welsh in an area for that language to be the language of the area', because if you've got 80 per cent speaking there, if you meet somebody, you've got a four in five chance of the person you're speaking to speaking in Welsh—it's worth trying. When you get down to 50 per cent, it's a one in two chance, and it's probably not worth trying. When I visit Caernarfon—I'm sure that other people know Caernarfon better then me; I'm sure that  Heledd Fychan from Ynys Môn knows it far better than I do—it is the language of the street. If you go into a pub, they expect you to order beer in Welsh. If you order food, they expect you to order food in Welsh. And when you go into shops, they expect you to purchase items in Welsh. I come from Morriston where about one in five of the population speaks Welsh, but there's a lack of expectation. Some people do speak Welsh when they go into shops, et cetera, on a bit of a hit-or-miss basis, but most people don't bother. I could say that it's maybe the general politeness of Welsh speakers, but as my wife and daughter are both Welsh speakers, I wouldn't put it down to that.

I speak Welsh every day, but I choose who I speak it to. I'm glad Delyth has come into the room now, because she's one of the few people here I speak Welsh to, and if I write to Delyth, I always write to her in Welsh. But I'm confident that she's not going to make fun of me if I do so, and I think that that is one of the problems we have with those of us who are ddim yn hyderus yn Gymraeg, and certainly ddim yn hyderus yn y Siambr.

Finally, we really need to know how often people are speaking Welsh. I know people who can speak Welsh, but never do, and I think we need to find out how many people speak it daily or weekly. I think we need that in the census, and perhaps we might get a more accurate result, but perhaps more importantly a more meaningful result.