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National Assembly for Wales (Legislative Competence) (Welsh Language)

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention, and I thank him, too, for his contribution to the work of the Committee. I turn now to the findings. For both ourselves and the Assembly Committee, the key criticism of the order that we heard in evidence was about the way in which its scope was defined. The order contained a number of categories setting out which bodies and organisations could be subject to Welsh language duties under future measures. Witnesses told us that the way in which the categories were set out was inconsistent. For example, certain industries were specified in the order, such as telecommunications, railways and gas and electricity companies, but others were not— for example, buses, banks and financial services. In addition, the order included in its scope companies receiving over £200,000 of public money in a year. We never received a convincing explanation of why that figure was chosen. Nor did we receive any analysis of the effect of setting the threshold at that figure rather than a higher or lower sum.