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

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Aberavon on his excellent and eloquent introductory speech, his skilful management of the discussion of the Welsh language LCO in the Welsh Affairs Committee, and his liaison with Ministers here and with colleagues in the Assembly. It is important to remember that the topic matter and prioritisation of LCOs is determined by the Assembly. This process is testimony to the success of devolution and the provisions of the Government of Wales Act 2006, and we are now seeing that in action. Too often outside, the story of politics is told with one storyline only, that of two opposing factions drawing up battle lines against each other, with exaggerated claims and positions attributed to both sides. Sadly, there are those who are all too ready to see this LCO as a battle between Westminster and Cardiff, between east and west, between urban and rural or between those who are more comfortable speaking Welsh and those more comfortable speaking English. In reality, those involved in the debate and those who gave evidence all engaged in a very rational and constructive process. It was a tremendously challenging situation. The process of managing LCOs was extremely new and we dealt with a potentially controversial subject. I welcome the response of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State to the report from the Welsh Affairs Committee and, in particular, his mention of the significance of reasonableness and proportionality. That is extremely important in ensuring that disproportionate obligations are not placed on any one body. With regard to the inclusion of bodies that receive more than £400,000 in public funds, I am pleased that the Secretary of State accepts our recommendation and has also said, like us, that a body that receives only a one-off grant should not be made subject to the measures. Clearly, a recipient of a one-off grant is not the same as a provider that regularly draws down public funds for a whole range of public services. There is clearly a huge difference. The clarification that shops will not be included is helpful. Let us hope that that puts paid to some of the nonsense that we heard at the beginning, when people were talking about how on earth one would translate ““spaghetti”” into Welsh—if we can even find the English for it. It is welcome that we are excluding training because, with the best will in the world, it is not always easy to find providers for specific types of training in all areas of Wales. Again, there are huge differences between one region and another in the availability of personnel for specific skills. We all know that legislation and enforcement of the law rely very much on the consensus of the majority. That is particularly the case when we are talking about language. We simply cannot force people to use a particular language, so legislation on language has to reflect wider developments. Many colleagues today have mentioned the extremely important element of Welsh-medium education and the huge amount of work that has been achieved, particularly in some of the English-speaking areas such as the old Glamorgans and my own county of Carmarthenshire, in promoting Welsh-medium education. The opportunity to be immersed in the Welsh language for 12 years or more has been a fantastic one for many young people. We should also pay a huge tribute, however, to those teachers who are often working against the odds in some of our English-medium schools, particularly primary school teachers who, in addition to 12 national curriculum subjects, attended top-up training in the ’80s and ’90s to be able to provide Welsh as well. That helped a lot of children to develop an understanding of, and a taste for, further study of the language, and those teachers have done an extremely good ambassador’s job in many areas of Wales. No one should feel guilty or a need to apologise if their preferred language is English. The choice of which language we use as our first language is not ours but our parents’, and it is mostly our parents’ choice as to which school we might end up in. For many people of our generation and older, there were simply not the opportunities to have the very advantageous start of Welsh in school. The written evidence provided by the Wales Council for Voluntary Action, which consulted its entire membership of 2,600 organisations, describes a situation with which many of us are familiar. While there is plenty of enthusiasm and good will among its members to try to develop Welsh in their work, there are often obstacles and considerable confusion about how to achieve that. For example, there is often an assumption that a person who happens to be a Welsh speaker can also be the translator. First, the person already has a job to do and that would be imposing a huge extra role. Moreover, people forget that translation is a very specific skill. Perhaps we ought to be looking at many more ways of upskilling Welsh speakers to become capable of translating. Perhaps we have to go back to some of the old-fashioned types of translation work, with which some of us were familiar in our formal education many years ago. It is an important point that, while we are moving forward with the legislation and with a general consensus of opinion, we still need the skills. We must not forget that. If we look around Wales, sadly some of our permanent written—painted—signs have mistakes. We need to put that right. We need good examples of good Welsh, and we should not see on stations or in hospitals words that are clearly misprints on permanent painted signs. On Llanelli station the other day, I was taken aback to hear an announcement in both Welsh and English that the heart of Wales line goes through a place called ““Bunnier””. After blinking for a few seconds, I realised that they meant Bynia. Obviously, I have written to Arriva Trains Wales pointing out the error. We should avoid that type of thing. No recorded message should include something wrong—in this case a place name, which is unacceptable. While the LCO is a response to the growth in the interest in Welsh over the past 20 years, at the same time it is not enough. We have the will and we have legislation, but we also need to improve the skill base to deal with the issue effectively.