UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 348-i

House of COMMONS

MINUTES OF EVIDENCE

TAKEN BEFORE

WELSH AFFAIRS COMMITTEE

THE PROPOSED NATIONAL ASSEMBLY FOR WALES (LEGISLATIVE COMPETENCE) (WELSH LANGUAGE) oRDER 2009

monday 23 MARCH 2009

MR DAVID ROSSER and MR LEIGHTON JENKINS

MS MENNA MACHRETH, MS SIĀN HOWYS, MS SIONED HAF,

MR ALUN OWENS and MR HYWEL JAMES

MR HAMISH MACLEOD

Evidence heard in Public Questions 1 - 107

USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT

Oral Evidence

Taken before the Welsh Affairs Committee

on Monday 23 March 2009

Members present

Dr Hywel Francis, in the Chair

David T.C. Davies

Nia Griffith

Mrs Siān C. James

Mr David Jones

Alun Michael

Hywel Williams

Mark Williams

________________

Memorandum submitted by CBI Wales

Examination of Witnesses

Witnesses: Mr David Rosser, Director, and Mr Leighton Jenkins, Assistant Director Policy, CBI Wales, gave evidence.

Chairman: Croeso, welcome to the Welsh Affairs Committee and this particular session on the Welsh Language Legislative Competence Order. Before I ask you to introduce yourselves, the Committee may wish to make an announcement or declaration about any interests they may or may not have. Given that some of the witnesses later on today represent Urdd Gobaith Cymru, the National Eisteddfod, I wish to make the Committee aware that I am a member of the Gorsedd and have been for the last thirty years. Are there any other members of the Committee who wish to say anything?

Hywel Williams: I am also a member of the Gorsedd y Beirdd patrons. Although it is not an interest, I have been working with the Welsh Language Board before I was elected and continue to have a relationship with them, though it is not a monetary one in any sense.

Q1 Chairman: Can I thank you for your written evidence, which was very helpful in preparing for this session. Can I finally ask you to introduce yourselves?

Mr Rosser: Thank you, Chair: David Rosser, Director, CBI Wales.

Mr Jenkins: Leighton Jenkins, Head of Policy, from the CBI in Wales.

Q2 Chairman: I notice from your evidence that you support the transference of legal responsibility for the Welsh language to the National Assembly. Would you support the wholesale transference of power over all aspects of Welsh language legislation to the Assembly rather than limiting the extent of powers to a list of bodies on which duties can be imposed?

Mr Rosser: We do believe the Welsh Assembly is the correct place to take decisions on the Welsh language. However, we do not agree that the powers should be transferred which go beyond the extent of the 1993 Act, and we certainly believe the current LCO, as it is drafted, goes too far.

Q3 Chairman: Can you explain why you hold that view?

Mr Rosser: We believe that legislation on the private sector to provide bilingual services is not the correct way of promoting increased usage of the Welsh language by consumers in Wales. We believe the facility route that has been pursued so far by many companies, working with the assistance of the Welsh Language Board, has resulted in a wider variety of services provided. All the evidence we have seen suggests that this is a demand-side problem rather than a supply-side problem, and those companies that already provide Welsh language services do not see any meaningful usage of them. We believe that understanding why that is the case and working with the people of Wales to encourage increased take-up is the best route to promoting language at this time.

Alun Michael: Can we ask the witnesses to speak up a bit? The acoustics are dead!

Chairman: The acoustics are not brilliant. It is not your fault. It is to do with the geography of this room.

Q4 Nia Griffith: In the light of your comments, what can you tell us about how you view the list of bodies on which the duties can be imposed, as it is currently drafted, and do you think it is clear which bodies are included and which are excluded, or do you think there could be legal challenges in the future?

Mr Rosser: We do not believe that it is appropriate to include bodies under section H within the draft Order. We are unclear which bodies are intended to be captured by clause E, and that is referring to organisations receiving more than £200,000 of public money. We note the explanation and examples given within the explanatory memorandum, but, as drafted, that clause seems to cover potentially a far wider range of organisations - and, indeed, you have seen evidence from the Heritage Minister in the Welsh Assembly that it is his belief that it should cover a much wider range too. We think there is a great lack of clarity in that clause.

Q5 Nia Griffith: Is there any comment you wish to make about how that clause should be shaped?

Mr Rosser: As I understand it from Members of the Welsh Assembly Government, the intention is to capture organisations that are in regular ongoing receipt of public monies. The example given is the Wales Millennium Centre, which, year in year out, will receive subsidies from the public sector. It does not seem appropriate to us that organisations of that nature should be required to provide services bilingually. When we see comments made that companies in receipt of grants to settlement operations and create jobs in Wales might also be covered, or companies participating in the Assembly's new ProAct scheme for training support might also be covered, that seems far less appropriate to us.

Q6 Alun Michael: There are a lot of bodies that could be regarded as hybrid in the sense that they are part voluntary, part non-statutory, partly private companies or they are perhaps a partnership between different sorts of bodies. Do you think the proposed Legislative Competence Order is sufficiently clear about when it catches and when it does not catch bodies of that sort?

Mr Rosser: No; there are many aspects of the draft Order, as it stands, that are unclear to us. Within the field of telecommunications, for example, the scope of companies, the scope of sectors and the scope of technologies in that field is extremely wide. As drafted, it would cover a whole range of organisations, which we think it could be quite difficult to implement Welsh language requirements and duties on.

Q7 Alun Michael: You also refer in your comments at paragraph 40 to the provision to services that receive public money amounting to £200,000 or more in a financial year. Is simply arguing about the level of finances adequate?

Mr Rosser: I return to what we understand the intention of this clause to be. As explained to me by Members of the Welsh Assembly Government, the intention is to cover those organisations that are year in, year out in receipt of public funding in order to deliver their services. If that is the case, then changing "a year" to "every year", some form of change that recognises that this is meant to refer to organisations in ongoing dependence on the public sector or public funding.

Q8 Alun Michael: There is a big difference as well, is there not, between bodies that receive money to enable them to do a particular piece of work and those that are contracted to provide a service to the Assembly or to other public bodies? Is that something you have explored with your members?

Mr Rosser: I think where the Assembly Government procures services from organisations, if it feels that those services should be provided in a bilingual fashion, then it should make that clear within the procurement exercise, and organisations tendering to provide those services can build the costs of that into their tenders. That would seem to me to be an appropriate way of going about that particular exercise.

Q9 Alun Michael: That would suggest that you do not agree with it being part of the legislative requirements.

Mr Rosser: Agreed; we do not think it is necessary in order to achieve what is -----

Q10 Hywel Williams: Can I ask for your comments on the level of £20,000? Personally, I have never understood why it should not be £200,000 plus one or minus one pound, and what would happen over a period of ten years given a possible rate of inflation when £200,000 might not be a large amount of money, or deflation?

Mr Rosser: Precisely the point about deflation! I have no idea why £200,000 or whether it is the right figure. As I say, if it is intended for organisations in receipt of one-off public sector support, then I do not think it is appropriate. If it is to cover organisations year in, year out in receipt of public funding, I have no idea what the level of money should be.

Q11 Hywel Williams: Can you suggest another way of capturing these companies, for example, in terms of the sorts of services they provide to the public, or do not, as it were? Is there any other way you could define them?

Mr Rosser: It is not clear to me what the Assembly Government is intending when it drafts this particular clause. If it is to cover organisations which it is grant-aiding, one assumes it could put a provision within its grant assistance to cover bilingual services. It strikes me as a simple way of doing things.

Q12 Alun Michael: Just finally on this question of the £200,000 figure, because I think we are all a bit puzzled as to why it should be drawn at that particular point, have you undertaken any work with your members to get a profile of those organisations which are members of the CBI that would be caught by that level of threshold?

Mr Rosser: I think it depends on the definition of 'providing services to the public'. As described, it could, for example, include companies such as Amazon, which, it could be said, is providing a service to the public, or indeed Admiral Car Insurance, both of which have been in receipt of one-off elements of assistance for job-creation and investment within Wales. As it is explained to me by Welsh Assembly Government Ministers, that is not what the intention is, but yet I have companies at the moment, members of mine, who are quite concerned that, as currently drafted, were they to engage in investment in Wales for which they received public assistance, they could potentially come under the scope of this clause.

Q13 Alun Michael: Essentially, as far as the financial threshold is concerned, it is the lack of clarity around what would qualify for having to meet this requirement that is the biggest problem!

Mr Rosser: I do not think the Assembly Government should be looking to impose bilingual requirements on companies in receipt of grant assistance for job-creation in Wales. They tell me that is not their intent, and yet companies reading this draft LCO believe that that could be a consequence. That seems to be a problem.

Q14 Mr Jones: Mr Rosser, you mentioned two very large companies, Amazon and Admiral Insurance, and of course there are a lot of much smaller organisations that receive funding, public money of whatever sort, particularly in North Wales in places like Llandudno, where a lot of hotels and guest houses have been in receipt of grants from what used to be the Wales Tourist Board and now VisitWales. Is it a concern to you that small organisations, which frequently are family-run organisations, could be affected by compliance with Welsh language legislation?

Mr Rosser: As drafted, it seems to me that organisations of that nature could fall within the scope of the Order. To the extent that they are then required to provide bilingual services for which there is little, if any, customer demand, and this is the key part of this, how we get the Welsh population to start using these services more, then it seems to me they will be required to provide services at a cost for no real benefit, either to themselves as businesses or to their customers.

Q15 Mrs James: Just to go on a little bit further with this issue of the impact on the private sector, in your evidence you say matters are unclear and there are implications and you have talked a little bit about it, but have you been involved in any consultation on the terms of the proposed Order with your members?

Mr Rosser: We have discussed attitudes towards the Welsh language and provision of Welsh language services within the CBI with our members on many occasions over many years. Certainly in the time that I have been with the CBI, the business attitude towards the Welsh language, I think, is becoming more positive, and I think there are more services being provided and offered to the people of Wales in many sectors, far beyond the old traditional ex‑nationalised industries. The big concern for businesses currently providing Welsh language services to customers is the very small level of usage by them. Companies are providing and investing on the basis of a commitment to Wales and to their customer base in Wales, but are not seeing any return for that investment. When that is the case, it seems to us that the voluntary route is the appropriate route to proceed further in this area. Pretty much any service you wish to procure now can be procured on a competitive basis. The only monopoly provider in the private sector that I can think of is Welsh Water, which of course is already covered by the Welsh Language Act and produces a Welsh language scheme. In a situation where any service is provided on a competitive basis and customers can choose who to provide them with a service, they can make demands. They can make clear the demand for Welsh language services, should they choose to do so, and we think a voluntary route is by far the best route to go. The evidence we have been given has been discussed with the wide CBI membership in Wales but also of course with companies that are likely to be caught by any order that is passed.

Q16 Mrs James: In part of that consultation, have you studied the experience of private companies in other countries where there are similar language laws?

Mr Rosser: No, we have not.

Q17 Mrs James: Any experience at all of any other countries?

Mr Rosser: No, we have not, and I would caution that any similar international comparison should be made on a like basis. I think the issue here is the proportion of population in Wales that speak Welsh against the size of the population of Wales.

Q18 Hywel Williams: I feel slightly concerned, Mr Rosser, when you refer to tourism and the potential impact on tourism, which is an extremely important business in my constituency, and Mr Jones's as well. Are you aware of companies that have received £200,000 of public money in a financial year which would be impacting in either Mr Jones's constituency or mine, or anywhere else for that matter?

Mr Rosser: I am aware of many companies that have received more than £200,000 in a financial year.

Q19 Hywel Williams: In the tourism sector?

Mr Rosser: In the tourism sector? Well, I can think of one. Bluestone, for example, in Pembrokeshire received far more than that to set up an operation. We have not discussed this particular legislation with Bluestone at all, but clearly they have received more than that amount of money.

Q20 Mr Jones: Most of Wales's business is of course done with England. What cross-border implications, if any, do you foresee with this LCO?

Mr Rosser: From the business communities perspective, the cross-border implications would be around having to set up different systems to deal with this in Wales and outside Wales, so having to invest in systems that are bilingual whilst maintaining systems that are English-only. Again, the extent of the issue really depends on what is meant by "Welsh language services". One of the big problems and concerns that we have is that, after 18 months of asking the Welsh Assembly Government, we have been unable get any clarity around what is meant by provision of Welsh language services and what is meant by treating Welsh and English on the basis of equality. If a duty is provided, one can imagine a very high standard of services and duties being required of companies, or a much lower, more basic level of services with very different cost implications for businesses, but it is entirely unclear to us what it is the Welsh Assembly Government is going to require any individual company to do as a result of any measures which follow from this Order.

Q21 Mr Jones: What sort of information have you sought from them and what has been the response from the Welsh Assembly Government?

Mr Rosser: I am afraid, we have never had a meaningful response from the Welsh Assembly Government on what services they are likely to require a company to do and what they mean by 'bilingual services'. We have raised this with civil servants and with ministers within the Welsh Assembly Government.

Q22 Mr Jones: What impact do you consider that a robust Welsh language policy would have upon businesses from England seeking to establish themselves in Wales?

Mr Rosser: I do not understand what is meant by a 'robust Welsh language policy'. Again, I come back to the fact that we have no visibility whatsoever on what services are likely to be required of the companies. It strikes me that any business will deal with this in a very practical and pragmatic way, so it would look at the duties placed on it, the services it would have to provide and the costs of that, and set those against its estimation of its market in Wales. If the market is such and its business is such that it justifies the cost, it will carry on and do business in Wales. For those smaller companies, or if we have very high costs placed on business, they may well take a decision not to do business in Wales.

Q23 Mr Jones: But it would certainly be a factor, in your opinion, that companies would take into consideration.

Mr Rosser: Well, of course businesses would take, as they would do in entering or operating in any market, a view on the costs of doing business within that market and their likely customer base in that market. That seems perfectly sensible.

Q24 David Davies: Mr Rosser, the supporters of this measure suggest that this will be good for business because promoting the Welsh language will be good for the economy. Can you see any argument for that in the narrowest sense?

Mr Rosser: Well, you would not need legislation!

Q25 David Davies: Do you think it is quite possible that businesses already in Wales, which might be faced with extra costs if they are operating on the margin, might decide to relocate to England?

Mr Rosser: I think it is important not to skate around this issue. I come back again to our complete lack of visibility around the duties the Welsh Assembly Government is likely to place on individual companies. Those companies that are already in Wales with an existing business and market in Wales, if a low level of duty is placed on them, they will probably continue to operate in Wales and just pass on the costs. In a situation where every company has to provide services, there will be an incentive not to pass on the costs. For smaller companies looking to enter Wales as a new market, perhaps unsure about the likelihood of winning business or the length of time it will take them to achieve a return from operating in Wales, it may act as a disincentive.

Q26 Hywel Williams: The Committee does not have any further information than you do about the intentions. Is it not likely that the Welsh Government's intentions will become clear when measures are being proposed rather when the LCO is being proposed? I suppose you would be arguing robustly, when those measures are presented, for the case you are making here today.

Mr Rosser: We will argue robustly at that stage too. We argue now that I think we would like to understand why the policy of compelling the private sector to provide bilingual services, where the evidence base is (a) that there is a real demand out there amongst the people of Wales for these services, and (b) that provision of such services will increase usage of the language within Wales. We see no evidence for either of those.

Q27 Mark Williams: Can I just ask you about the process of dialogue to date with the Welsh Assembly Government. You seem very gloomy in your prognosis that you have not had the discussions you would have liked in terms of the depth and scale of what is intended. I appreciate what Mr Williams has just said, that it is obviously for the Assembly to determine the measures, but are you gloomy? Would you wish for a greater dialogue at this early stage in the deliberation of the Order, notwithstanding the fact that you obviously gave evidence to the Assembly Committee?

Mr Rosser: I am sorry if I gave that impression. We have had extensive dialogue with the Welsh Assembly Government on this issue over a considerable period of time. We just have not received any clarity on what they intend to do.

Q28 Mr Jones: Your submission states that a statutory code must provide a level playing field between companies within affected sectors. You of course favour a voluntary rather than a statutory approach to the issue of the Welsh language services. How do you feel a voluntary approach would provide that level playing field among companies in the same sector?

Mr Rosser: I am sorry if my memorandum was unclear. A level playing field is required once you introduce a legislative system. Currently, you do not have a level playing field, so you have probably six large-scale energy providers in Wales, three of whom provide some Welsh language services and three of whom do not. They compete with each other. The people of Wales are free to make their purchasing decisions based on whichever parameters they think important to them. Sadly, all the evidence is that that is price, not bilingual services. As soon as you introduce legislation, you have to provide a level playing field clearly. The concern we have is that, when we ask the Welsh Assembly Government about implementation, you get some kind of answer round, "Oh, it will be like the public-sector schemes we have currently where every institution negotiates a Welsh language scheme with the Welsh Language Board." That will not work when you start to apply it to commercial markets and companies competing with each other; you have to have a level playing field when legislation is involved. That means that a company such as BT, which competes with Carphone Warehouse, Virgin, Sky and mobile operators, you have to have a level playing field for those companies competing against each other. That is the point we were trying to make, that somehow a notion of "Don't worry, it will all be very flexible" is, we believe, unrealistic.

Q29 Mr Jones: You mentioned telecommunications because that is a very obvious example. What sort of impact in turn would the lack of a level playing field have upon the consumer in Wales in that particular example?

Mr Rosser: Firstly, I imagine that, if legislation did not deliver a level playing field, the Welsh Assembly Government would be open to legal challenge from some of the companies involved. Otherwise, companies may just decide that Wales is not a place in which they do business or offer services. Again, it depends on the extent to which the playing field is not level, and again we come back to the fact that we do not know what individual companies will be required to do under the terms of any measures flowing from this. Any company that believes it is competing on a cost base which is artificially inflated above its competitors' is going to have to take some pretty fundamental decisions about what to do about that.

Q30 Mr Jones: You are here to deliver the corporate view of the CBI. I take it you have taken soundings of your members?

Mr Rosser: We have had extensive discussions with a whole range of companies in this area, and of course particularly those companies that are likely to be covered by any legislation which flows.

Q31 Mr Jones: You are satisfied that the view you are presenting - is that a unanimous view or an overwhelming view of those companies that are likely to be affected?

Mr Rosser: I would say it is a unanimous view that legislation is not welcome. It is not felt to be the right way, the best way of encouraging greater use of Welsh language services in Wales, and it is a unanimous view that there is no return for businesses from the investment they are currently putting into their current Welsh language services. There are clearly different views within different companies about their existing appetite to do things in Welsh, to provide Welsh language services. Some companies choose voluntarily now to offer services and other companies do not. Different companies choose to compete for a customer base on different propositions. There is certainly a unanimous view amongst our members likely to be covered by the legislation that it is not appropriate and it is not necessary, given the level of demand they see in Wales and the fact that they are all competing in competitive markets.

Q32 Hywel Williams: It is the aim of the Welsh Assembly Government to promote the Welsh language consistent with the 1993 Act.

Mr Rosser: Yes.

Q33 Hywel Williams: On your own evidence, the current voluntary arrangements are not producing the level of demand that you think would be sufficient to justify Welsh language provision. You said earlier that on the demand/supply model there is not sufficient demand.

Mr Rosser: The reason I am frowning is I am not sure it is the role of companies in Wales operating a voluntary system to produce a level of demand, I am afraid.

Q34 Hywel Williams: It is a legitimate aspiration of the Government, their proper aspiration, to promote and enable the use of the Welsh language, is it not?

Mr Rosser: We accept that, and we would be very happy to work with, and we have offered to work with, the Welsh Assembly Government on the Welsh language -----

Q35 Hywel Williams: My problem with your standpoint, you see, is that you are applying the supply-and-demand model to language-planning, which is a much broader field and is not always susceptible to supply and demand models. It has taken about a century for the current level of Welsh language to be reached and it might take a bit longer than -----

Mr Rosser: I am sorry, the public sector has been offering Welsh language services by law now since the 1993 Welsh Language Act. The level of demand for services in the public sector is pretty pitiful too, frankly, so that has not created the demand either. Passing a law to require another couple of dozen companies to provide services which are already provided by companies and not used, I do not see where the evidence base is that that will suddenly result in a whole lot more people using the language. What the Welsh Assembly should be doing is promoting services that are already providing, advertising them, working with companies to do that, encouraging companies to provide more services, not cutting the grant to companies to help them provide Welsh language services, which is what it is doing from 1 April, and it should be doing some research to find out why it is that the 20% of people in Wales who claim to be able to use the Welsh language decide not to when it comes to interacting in their official life and interacting with business. There is something there I do not understand.

Q36 Hywel Williams: The peculiarity, I think from your standpoint, is that you are saying that the volunteer approach does not work at present and -----

Mr Rosser: I did not say that.

Q37 Hywel Williams: However, you are advocating it.

Mr Rosser: I did not say that. I did not say it did not work. I am not quite sure what you mean by 'work'.

Q38 Hywel Williams: Using your own measure of the demand for Welsh language services, you say that it is pitifully low.

Mr Rosser: It depends what you mean by 'work'. When I say it is working, I have seen more services being provided by private companies in Welsh. Year on year I see more being provided, and the Welsh Language Board has had several hundred companies sign up to its voluntary scheme, so, if what you are looking for is more companies to provide more services for the people of Wales to use, I think the voluntary approach is working. There is certainly further to go and we are happy to work with the Welsh Assembly Government and the Welsh Language Board to go further. If what you mean by 'working' is more people using the services, I am not sure that is the responsibility of business, frankly.

Q39 David Davies: Mr Rosser, can you tell us if you have had any idea what sort of sanctions might be applied to companies which fail to comply with the LCO if it is brought in?

Mr Rosser: None whatsoever, I am afraid. I think it would be a very sad day when the Welsh language is something that people are prosecuted over. At the moment I think what we have increasingly is most people are supportive and most businesses are supportive. They may use it to differing extents, but there is very little antipathy towards the Welsh language.

Q40 David Davies: As an individual, I chose to learn the Welsh language. If somebody had forced me, I would have reacted very badly to that. Can you see a parallel with the way businesses look at it as well, that, if they are forced into doing things, they may rather resent it?

Mr Rosser: I think we all resent doing things that we do not want to do. When business is effectively forced to do something for which there is no return and of which there is no obvious need, I am afraid all too often I talk to companies that already invest in providing Welsh language services which have exceptionally low demand, less than 1% of calls and way less than 1% of correspondence. If you look at the statistics for people contacting the police forces in Wales, we are talking about 1%, 2% or 3% within the Welsh language. This is not about requiring more organisations to provide more services that are not used; it is about trying to find out why the services are not used, and encouraging people to use them, and giving them the confidence to use those services that are provided. As usage goes up, we believe that more companies will then see that this is something the customers want and will react to that.

Q41 Mark Williams: You have been very clear in your opposition to any notion of compulsion. Can you say more about how you envisage the actions to increase the provision of services in Welsh by private companies? You say in your memorandum that the Assembly Government should use its significant resources to create the business case for using Welsh. If you are not prepared to counter going down this particular route, what measures would you like to see the Assembly taking to support the language?

Mr Rosser: This seems to me, from people I talk to, a peculiarity, that people who use Welsh in their social life have a reluctance to do so when interacting with official matters, including local business. I do not understand why that is the case. I think it would be useful to have some research done to understand why that is. Certainly there is a role for a good-quality voluntary accreditation scheme so that businesses that choose to provide Welsh language services can have them assessed and can have them promoted, and there is a role for the Welsh Assembly Government in helping companies to provide more Welsh language services. It seems astonishing that, at a time when they are proposing legislation to promote the Welsh language, they are cutting the grant to companies to help them provide bilingual signage, for example. It seems quite odd!

Q42 Mark Williams: As a general question, why do you feel the Assembly Government has taken this route? Is it not a response to the fact that the language is growing and the dynamics are moving in a very positive way for the language? That might not necessarily be seen in the usage figures you have alluded to, but there will come a point in time when that will be replicated in usage. If you look at figures for the Welsh language provision in primary schools, for example, it is growing massively. The measure being sought is not simply short-term, it is longer-term giving the Assembly the freedom and the latitude to pursue a longer-term policy as well.

Mr Rosser: If, as you say, as we all hope, myself included, that Welsh language usage is going to increase, why do we need to legislate for it?

Q43 Mrs James: I want to go back to the comment you made, which seemed a very sweeping comment to me, about reluctance from Welsh speakers who use the language socially to use the language officially. It is very difficult on occasions and has been very difficult in the past to use the language officially. I come back to my original question to you: if you have not done some consultation exercise with your members, has this really been coming up? Have you any figures to back this up? It seems to me that it is a quite sweeping comment.

Mr Rosser: I am sorry, what do you mean by 'consultations'?

Q44 Mrs James: I did ask you if you had had some form of consultation. You talked about speaking to people and people telling you things, they are anecdotal things, but you do not seem to be able to back it up with any paperwork or documentation or figures, and this comment is just a comment too far for me. It seems that you have made this comment about people using the language officially and socially. It seems quite sweeping.

Mr Rosser: Members of my own family act in precisely that way! We have gone to a number of companies and asked them about the level of usage of the current Welsh language services. The BBC did a survey last year and a question was put down to ask about usage of calls to the four police forces in Wales. We are talking about 1% or 2% interaction with these organisations in the Welsh language, and you very rarely see anything higher than that. There seems little point to us in doing a widespread survey of our own membership in Wales when the great majority will not be covered by -----

Q45 Mrs James: Maybe there are companies that are going to be covered by it!

Mr Rosser: As I say, I would encourage you to talk to some of the ex-nationalised utilities and ask them about it.

Q46 Mrs James: Mr Rosser, I do, and I set up the Welsh language helpline in Wales, so I do have quite a lot of experience in this.

Mr Rosser: Good, and I imagine you are getting the same answers that we get then, that the level of usage is very, very low.

Q47 Mrs James: Yes, but you have to build it up and find ways of working with it.

Mr Rosser: I agree.

Q48 Mrs James: I am not going to get into a public -----

Mr Rosser: I agree. We actually agree with you.

Q49 Hywel Williams: Can we turn to 20.2, the competence over the freedom to use the Welsh language, which is another very contentious issue of course. In what circumstances do you envisage that this matter would apply to private companies?

Mr Rosser: I imagine the way it is drafted it would apply to all private companies. I have to say, we have no, or it strikes us as a matter of common sense; it is clearly not appropriate to stop people using Welsh in the workplace.

Q50 Hywel Williams: There have been some fairly high-profile cases where that has happened.

Mr Rosser: Well, I am not sure what the number is. There is certainly one very high-profile one recently, and I am sure there would have been others, but I am not sure what the evidence is that this is a wide-scale problem that requires legislation to deal with it. The last high-profile case was Thomas Cook, which was clearly wrong. The company came out afterwards and admitted it had been wrong and changed its policies, and common sense prevailed.

Q51 Hywel Williams: After a great deal of arguments, dissention and very negative discussions about language, whether to use it or not, surely, if it were clear to companies that they were not allowed to ban their workers from speaking Welsh to customers or to each other in the Thomas Cook case or historically many other cases, including the infamous Brewer Spinks case in the early sixties, if it was clear to them that that was the case, surely it would avoid a great deal of unnecessary controversy around the Welsh language, which I am sure we all agree is undesirable?

Mr Rosser: We have no problem with the freedom of people to speak Welsh to each other in the workplace; it seems entirely sensible to us. However, our concern is when you start to look at the suggested exemptions to this and one starts to talk about health and safety legislation, which has quite a legal underpinning to it. If I am running a team of six people in Wales, and three of them speak Welsh and three of them do not, I need to be able to hold team meetings in English. That just strikes me as an issue of common sense. Equally, if three people speak Welsh to each other about the business, they should be able to speak to each other in Welsh. That equally strikes me as a matter of common sense. There is a great deal of concern in this whole legislative process that we run a danger of creating a law of cause célčbre cases if we are not careful. This surely must be an area where common sense is allowed to break out! I do not quite know how you legislate for common sense and, as I said, we have no problem with the right of people at the workplace to speak Welsh to each other, but there has to be business common sense.

Chairman: Can I thank you for your evidence today. We thank you for your written evidence. If you feel that in the light of today's session you would like to add anything or in subsequent sessions you wish to add anything, we would be very pleased to receive a supplementary memorandum.

Witnesses: Ms Menna Machreth, Chair of Cymdeithas yr laith Gymraeg, Ms Siān Howys, Policy Officer, Ms Sioned Haf, Campaigns Officer, Mr Alun Owens, Urdd Gobaith Cymru, and Mr Hywel James, Parents for Welsh Medium Education, Mudiadau Dathlu'r Gymraeg, gave evidence.

Q52 Chairman: (Through an interpreter) Can I firstly thank you for your written evidence; it was of great assistance to us in preparing for today's session. Can you introduce yourselves?

Ms Howys: (Through an interpreter) Siān Howys, Welsh Language Society.

Ms Machreth: (Through an interpreter) Menna Machreth, Chair of the Welsh Language Society.

Ms Haf: (Through an interpreter) I am Campaigns Officer.

Mr Owens: (Through an interpreter) Alun Owens from Urdd Gobaith Cymru on behalf of Celebrating Our Language.

Mr James: (Through an interpreter) Hywel James, representing Parents for Welsh medium Education, again part of Celebrating Our Language.

Q53 Chairman: Can I begin by asking quite a simple question. The purpose or objective of this Order, as far as we see, on behalf of the Welsh Assembly Government, is that the Assembly believes that the purpose is to create a wholly bilingual Wales. Do you think, in your opinion, that will succeed, that the Order will succeed in doing that?

Ms Howys: (Through an interpreter) It is the intention of the Welsh Assembly Government, and we are wholly supportive of the objectives, to establish a status for the Welsh language to establish rights to use the Welsh language and to establish a language commissioner, namely the promise included in the One Wales document. We are wholly supportive of that and we do not want to see anything being taken out of the Order, but our argument on behalf of the Welsh Language Society is that there are a number of other things we would have liked to see included in the Order.

Q54 Mark Williams: The 1993 Welsh Language Act on many counts is failing to provide the protection that you would like to see. In what way is the regulatory framework not encouraging or supporting the language now in the way that some of us would wish?

Ms Machreth: (Through an interpreter) We believe the contents of the 1993 Welsh Language Act concentrate on the public sector, and the public sector has reduced quite a lot since the 1993 Act and our lives are being dominated by the private sector, so it is time for people to have rights to use the Welsh language within the private sector as well, and 90% of us shop in supermarkets, for example, on a weekly basis and I think that the supermarkets are an example of something that has been left out of the Order. If the creation of a new language measure is policy for the Welsh Assembly Government after the last election in Wales and if they are serious about enabling people to live through the medium of Welsh, then there is a need for powers of Welsh language to be transferred to Cardiff, including powers for the private sector. This, hopefully, will raise people's confidence to use the Welsh language.

Mr James: (Through an interpreter) If I can come in, I represent a sector where there is a huge growth in pupils who go to Welsh medium education, most of whom come from non-Welsh speaking homes, and the parents we represent are non-Welsh speaking parents. This legislation provides the powers in Cardiff, and everybody would accept it is reasonable that that is the place where it should be. The 1993 Act is limited in terms of what it permits the Assembly to do, not only in terms of the public bodies but also in terms of its powers, the powers to appoint people to the Welsh Language Board, to decide if there is disagreement relating to the Welsh Language Scheme and the interpretation of that by a public body. There have been major differences since 1993 in terms of definition of 'public bodies'. We have had legislation like the Human Rights Act, which defines what exactly a public body is. We can also see utilities like gas moving into the private sector and we think it is important that, as public funding is used, this legislation should come into that.

Q55 Mr Davies: (Through an interpreter) Why do you think more people are going to use services if you were to have this LCO in place in the private sector?

Ms Haf: (Through an interpreter) This is an interesting point raised by the CBI -----

Mr Davies: Do you agree -----

Q56 Chairman: (Through an interpreter) Can you please slow down? One person has to speak at a time; the transcriber is having difficulty. One person at a time! You will have to say who is going to speak. Who was speaking then?

Ms Machreth: (Through an interpreter) The evidence we have been gleaning suggests and shows how incomplete the provision is currently. People do not know where the services are. It is so fragmented and we have that document here which is full of evidence as to how difficult it is for people to know exactly where their rights are and, when they do try to use the Welsh language, it is very difficult to do so, so we want to present this evidence that we have gathered to you as examples of the problems that people have in trying to use Welsh language day-to-day.

Q57 Mr Davies: (Through an interpreter) I know of farmers who do not speak Welsh at all, who have used the helplines during the foot and mouth epidemic because they knew that it was possible to get straight through to somebody, to speak to somebody straightaway and they did use the Welsh language helplines and they were not even Welsh speakers, so I do not understand how you can say that people who speak the language do not know anything about the helplines that are available in the Welsh language!

Ms Haf: (Through an interpreter) I would like to come in on this point. In terms of the evidence that the Welsh Language Society has collected, I would like to give you one example which reflects the reason why, as you say, there might be a minority of people using the Welsh language services. This crystallises the low quality of the services that are available through the medium of Welsh in Wales at the moment. This is an example of a lady who went into a local post office to renew her passport: "I went to my local post office to ask for a Welsh language form last year and I was told it would have to be ordered. I went back a week later and there was none available. I was asked to call back in another week, which I did, but it was not available, so it was suggested I should visit the Passport Office website, which I did, filled in a form, and they were supposed to send me the Welsh form. I waited a fortnight, but nothing arrived. I phoned the Passport Office's Welsh language line and I had to leave my number and wait for somebody to call me back. I had that telephone call back some hours later and explained that I wanted them to send me the Welsh form. A week later I received an English form through the post. I phoned her back once again and, even though I pressed the button for Welsh language services, a girl answered me in English. I explained patiently and completely courteously that I wanted to hold my conversation in Welsh, and the answer was, with half a laugh, 'I don't speak Welsh, but I can help you.' It was disgraceful, and after I asked if she could put me through to somebody who could speak Welsh, she said, 'No, you will have to phone back. Better luck next time!'" This is not an exception, this is the norm with the services in Welsh language in Wales.

Mr Owens: (Through an interpreter) On behalf of Celebrating Our Language, we are here representing 17 different organisations where people have decided that they want to join an organisation because it does offer services through the medium of Welsh: the Urdd, the Eisteddfod, Merched y Wawr, Mentrau Iaith Cymru, Ffermydd Ifanc, and clearly there are tens of thousands of people who have decided to join organisations because they offer services through the medium of Welsh, which shows the demand is there. If you walk down the high street in any town and look for the service, the service which is provided is so inconsistent, and people are under the impression that it is going to take so much more time, so much more trouble, and people feel second-best really, asking for these services. That then causes them not to use the services. We believe that people feel like second-class citizens in our own country!

Q58 Mark Williams: Returning to the original question and the inadequacies post the 1993 legislation, we have heard a lot about the voluntary arrangements that are in place. How dissatisfied are you with some of those voluntary practices? I do not mean the principle, I mean the practicalities of it. My colleague has handed me some of the banks, HSBC, Principality Building Society, and BT, and the lack of ease with which you can just click on a mouse, it is not there.

Ms Machreth: (Through an interpreter) I will give you an example first. If I ask the Orange phone company to have my bill in Welsh, they say they do not need to, that there is no obligation on them to provide anything to me in Welsh, so that is an example where there is no obligation for them to do it. They just do not feel they have any responsibility to do it, so I am not going to get my bills in Welsh.

Q59 Hywel Williams: (Through an interpreter) This is a question, if possible, to Siān. We heard a little earlier about the model of demand and supply, and that demand is currently very low. Would you agree that, where it is clear the service is available in Welsh, for example a county council, a Welsh Language Society officer or recording company SAIN or the BBC perhaps, where it is clear that provision is available, people tend to choose whichever language they want to speak, Welsh or English?

Ms Howys: (Through an interpreter) Yes, I would agree with that. The principle, I would say, that is important in terms of language-planning is to equalise the use of Welsh language, that it is something natural for people to use and available on an equal basis. I have worked for a period of time as a social worker in Gwynedd Council and, because of its council policy to make it wholly clear that you can receive your services through the medium of Welsh as well as you can in English, and we have plenty of social workers who do provide services through the medium of Welsh, it is just as easy for you to receive those services and therefore people use the language that is natural to them. The principle of it being something normal and it being easily available is there and it is not fragmented. You do not have to be concerned as to whether it is available in only that small part of the service perhaps and not in another part of the service, so you do not then have to worry that you are opting in because it is available. Therefore, the example that we have in our evidence, we have over a hundred people who have contacted us just in the last five days since we called for evidence, and the examples we have cut right across the public sector where there are language schemes already, as well as in the private sector, which just shows to me that we have to move forward with the 1993 Language Act. So much time has elapsed. At the end of the day, it is natural that the Welsh Assembly Government wants to legislate in this field, which is something that all states and all regional governments in Europe have addressed and have legislated on where they try to permit the right of people to have, in those countries, the use of their language.

Q60 Mark Williams: How does the proposed LCO compare to legislation in other countries where there are language laws? In your submission you talked about the experience of Catalonia. Would you say a little bit more about how this compares with their experiences?

Ms Howys: (Through an Interpreter) We have been on trips over to the Basque Country and some members have had experiences in Catalonia. We believe that the language legislation they have there is stronger than what you have before you here today because that legislation is based on a clear statement that people have the right to use the Catalan language and the Basque language. In the Basque Country, for example, where they have a similar ratio of speakers to us here in Wales, they have just put forward a piece of legislation relating to the rights of consumers, so it does go out into the private sector. They have moved on from the Act of the Basque language, which used to concentrate on the rights of citizens to use the Basque language with government departments, to legislate in the private sector. It does not cover all the private sector. It sets out conditions in terms of the sizes of companies, for example, and their location, and indeed I would not commend that model to you, but what it does do is state clearly the right to use those languages. As we see it, the legislation in those countries has made a big difference in terms of people's confidence and expectations. If you look at the Basque Country, what has made the difference there has been that creating this right to use the Basque language with government departments means that you have to have staff who speak Basque and Spanish and so there is a programme of teaching the Basque language to those staff. It creates a cycle, if you want to go back to this issue of demand, where it is stated clearly that it is available to you as part of creating this demand.

Q61 Chairman: (Through an Interpreter) Would anybody else like to contribute at that point?

Mr Owens: (Through an Interpreter) Can I just say, in terms of celebrating our language, that our organisations have come together. We came together in 2007, a year and a half ago, as a result of the One Wales document and we strongly believe, as Siān said, that official status is required for the Welsh language and that rights are wholly important so that people know they have the right to use the language. At the moment they do not have that confidence. That then will safeguard the language as a community language, and I am sure we will come back to this later but we strongly believe in establishing a language commissioner, which obviously comes as a part of this as well, because people are so unsure about the rights they currently have.

Q62 David Davies: (Through an Interpreter) English is not an official language, is it?

Mr Owens: (Through an Interpreter) No, it is not, so we are treating the two languages equally. If you are talking about the right to use the Welsh language then there are implications as a result of that. There will be a right for people to use English as well. The situation in Wales is that clearly Welsh is a minority language which has faced threat over the years frequently and by the state on occasion. I think it is important that it should receive that status and that people know they have the right to use it. People do not have that confidence at the moment and that is why we see a demand for the service, which has not been as it should be on occasion because people have not got the confidence.

Q63 David Davies: (Through an Interpreter) Would you agree that there are no obligations at the moment to use English, so it is possible to say that we treat both languages in the same way at the moment?

Mr Owens: (Through an Interpreter) It is possible but we believe that people should have the right to receive services and the right to be able to live the majority of their lives through the medium of Welsh if they wish to do so.

Chairman: (Through an Interpreter) I think we had better move on from there now. Mr David Jones, please.

Q64 Mr Jones: (Through an Interpreter) Thank you, Chairman. I have a question for the Welsh Language Society. How would you change the list of bodies included in Matter 20.1 of the Act?

Ms Machreth: (Through an Interpreter) We think this list is far too limited. We think that the list in this Order either needs to be longer and more comprehensive to encompass all providers of services, goods and facilities to the public or provide a wider wording and place duties to provide bilingual services on the people who provide goods, services and facilities to the public. For example, if the Assembly in the future wanted to add an additional category they would have to come back and go through this process of having another Order, so it is better to transfer the powers now and let the Assembly decide what kind of measure they want.

Q65 Mrs James: (Through an Interpreter) The CBI Wales suggested that we should change the term "providing services to the public" to the term "functions of a public nature". What do you think about that?

Mr James: (Through an Interpreter) That second definition of "functions of a public nature" is something which lawyers would love to deal with. What we like about this draft is that there is clarity in terms of defining private companies, that it does depend on the public money they receive. We are not insisting in this draft that companies which do not provide public funding should have to conform with this LCO. It is clear that it depends on this link with the public funding that they receive. I believe that that can be extended in the long term, but I think it should be a step-by-step approach to make sure that there is support, and I think there is support in Wales generally to what has been recommended here.

Q66 Hywel Williams: (Through an Interpreter) Let us turn now to the issue of goodwill and the possible impact of enforcing the provision of Welsh language services on goodwill. Over a number of years of this not being enforced what is your opinion on the goodwill issue?

Mr Owens: (Through an Interpreter) We feel that, yes, goodwill is important, but also important, as we have said, is the fundamental expectation of having a foundation of services, particularly in public, for services or telecommunications, because ultimately it is only a small number of people in Wales that are being touched by this LCO in public services which do receive £200,000 of public funds, and even then all it does is provide the right to legislate on this and then you have to get before the Assembly before it is ultimately decided. We believe that we have a right to receive those basic services. I still think that some businesses will see the competitive advantages to offering more services in Welsh than some other people who offer just the basic services. The more use people see made of these services and the more they are available the more advantages people will see in offering better ones.

Q67 Hywel Williams: (Through an Interpreter) Just to follow on from that, the situation as far as I can see it at the moment is that if the company does provide a service that is an additional pot to that then that is a disadvantage, and if the company does not provide it then there is no cost to it and it is beneficial to them. That is how the system is at the moment as far as I see it. It kind of punishes the people who provide the services.

Mr Owens: (Through an Interpreter) I think the argument the CBI had was about a level playing field. There is a lot to be said for that. I think that is the only way of doing it, really.

Ms Howys: (Through an Interpreter) Unfortunately, the voluntary approach does not work particularly well because as a society we have on different occasions run campaigns regarding expanding the use of the Welsh language in different sectors, for example, with the supermarkets or specifically the telephone companies where we have gathered a lot of names on a petition or we have been able to show that there is a public demand for it at the moment. Only in the last month we have collected a petition together for the mobile phone companies and we have had an awful lot of names on the petition. We were calling for that service and we have corresponded with the phone companies and the response is clear. The response is, and you can receive these responses on paper from companies like Orange, et cetera, "If we don't have to do it we won't be doing it. We won't be providing a service voluntarily", so it is only up to a point that doing things voluntarily can work. Also, it does not state this base line. It is not clear to the public. If it is just a matter of it being voluntary it is not clear what you can expect. Perhaps there may be some signs in this branch of the shop but no signs in all places, for example, stating a standard across Wales.

Q68 Hywel Williams: (Through an Interpreter) Is there a danger that this could lead to a reduction in the services available as companies level down?

Ms Howys: (Through an Interpreter) No, we do not believe that. We do not think there is any evidence showing that. We think that the companies which do provide some bilingualism will continue to do so. They have done that because of good business sense, to create an image of bilingualism and to attract people to their services. We think that that is true. We think there is something about creating jobs and more employment in Wales which is based in Wales if there is an expectation to provide bilingual services.

Q69 David Davies: (Through an Interpreter) We have spoken a little about this but can I ask something else? If it were possible to provide that companies were going to leave Wales because of additional costs, would you, as the Welsh Language Society, continue to support this measure?

Mr James: (Through an Interpreter) Can I answer this on behalf of Parents for Welsh Medium Education? You, sir, mentioned earlier about a telephone number that people could use to go through to the Welsh language line. That means that it is possible to create employment. If you cannot transfer your services outside of Wales and those services are being forced if they have to be held in Wales to use the Welsh language service then there is an argument for creating jobs through that. We have seen too many jobs in Wales being moved out. I am not aware of any single situation where a company or a public authority has provided services through the medium of Welsh and have decided to withdraw that. There was a lot of scaremongering in the previous evidence. As we see in the field of education, there is major support there. We have had a situation in Cardiff where almost one in five children now receive Welsh medium education. This LCO and any other legislation is going to raise people's confidence, it is going to raise the status of the Welsh language and we will carry on the work that we can see going on in our schools.

Q70 Chairman: (Through an Interpreter) Sioned Haf is keen to come in here.

Ms Haf: (Through an Interpreter) To come back to that point, we have undertaken a survey and asked this specific question to private companies. We did that in February of this year. We sent a very simple question out to the companies to ask, "Would you withdraw your service in Wales if there were measures following the Legislative Competence Order calling on you to provide a bilingual English/Welsh medium service in Wales"?. Not one of them came back to us and said, "We are leaving Wales".

Q71 David Davies: (Through an Interpreter) With all due respect, I know that there are a lot of yes's and no's going on and there are a lot of different ways of saying yes and no in Welsh, but would you be prepared to support this measure if it were possible to prove that companies would leave Wales? I know you do not accept this but it is a hypothetical question. If it were possible to prove this would you still support this measure as a matter of principle? Yes, no, however many ways there are to say yes or no?

Ms Howys: (Through an Interpreter) No, we do not accept the premise of the question because we do not accept that you should have to choose between languages in the establishing of a business. Language goes with everything else. It is a medium of communication so it is an integral part of how we do business together. As you say, it is a hypothetical question anyway.

Mr Owens: (Through an Interpreter) The truth of the matter, particularly in this LCO, is that there is no mention whatsoever of any internal administration. No companies have to arrange meetings through the medium of Welsh or anything like that as part of the LCO. The only thing the LCO talks about is the service that it offers, so if any company wants to be part of the market in Wales, if they are in Wales or in England or in America or wherever, all it means is that they have to offer the service if they want to get into the market. If anything, it is going to create more jobs, because even if they are in Seattle or wherever, if the website has to be translated into Welsh then clearly it is going to lead, if anything, to more jobs because it is not going to affect the running of the business at all, just the service it offers in the country.

Q72 David Davies: (Through an Interpreter) If there is a demand in the private sector for a service, will that create jobs which are profitable for the company? If there is no demand then will you be creating jobs? Yes, you would be but those jobs are going to cost the company money and they are going to look at this and perhaps decide to go to England instead to put their headquarters.

Mr Owens: (Through an Interpreter) If they want to do their business in England they can be in Wales and do their administration in whatever language they wish. All they have to do is provide the service in Welsh if they want to sell in Wales and if they want to get into the market, so it does not affect the company externally, internationally or anything like that. All it means is that if people want to make use of the market in Wales they have to offer an element of the service in Welsh if they are one of the 1% of companies which are affected.

Q73 David Davies: (Through an Interpreter) Let us go back to the first question. If it were possible to prove that companies were going to leave, would you still support this measure?

Mr Owens: (Through an Interpreter) I take it that the LCO transfers powers to Cardiff and then there needs to be a discussion in the Senedd in Cardiff, and I think if there is any possibility that it would mean losing jobs then that would be an important part of the discussion that would happen in the Senedd.

Chairman: (Through an Interpreter) One moment, please. We are now starting to discuss the measure and we do not have the right to do that. I understand where the question is coming from. I am very sorry; we now have to stop for a second because there is a vote.

The Committee suspended from 5.38 pm to 5.48 pm for a division in the House

Chairman: (Through an Interpreter ) The next question is the final question and it is from Mr David Davies.

Q74 David Davies: (Through an Interpreter) When we started today we made statements of interest and I think it is very important that members who have come here say how much public funding they receive from the Assembly or from the Senedd, if I can ask them please?

Ms Howys: (Through an Interpreter) We receive no money.

Mr Owens: (Through an Interpreter) I cannot speak on behalf of all the other organisations, the 17 of us, but I think the Urdd has a turnover of some £7 million a year. I think we have perhaps £500,000 from the Assembly, so perhaps 14%, something like that.

Mr James: (Through an Interpreter) I think it has just had a grant for one person who is employed by them but no more than that, just the one person they employ. If you want to ask me personally through my company, I have legal aid work but that would be under the £200,000 threshold.

Q75 Chairman: (Through an Interpreter) Can I then ask a question to close? It is a historical question in a way. Back in the 1980s the Welsh Language Society were keen to use a famous slogan, "Without a language you have no work". I felt that in your evidence today you were very keen to show that you are not keen to destroy any posts or jobs. Can you explain, not in a historical manner but perhaps more broadly, the fact that you have realised and anticipated what questions were going to come up about the destruction or the loss of jobs? Can you say anything to confirm that you have been doing some research into this question?

Ms Howys: (Through an Interpreter) Yes, we have taken this issue seriously. That is why we undertook the survey with companies to ask them if they would be leaving Wales or not as a result of language legislation and you have heard Sioned already saying that the response from those companies was that they would not be withdrawing from Wales, and we feel that is important. We have also looked to two other countries in Europe that have introduced language legislation. We have already talked about Catalonia and the Basque Country which are very successful areas economically and there is no evidence of companies withdrawing from those areas. We have emphasised the importance of the fact that, as we see it, work would be created in Wales, and, as Hywel talked about, we tie into the numbers of children who now receive Welsh medium education. We believe that those children will grow up and take the language with them to their workplace. What is needed is more opportunity for them to use that language in their workplace. In terms of us as an organisation, for a number of decades now we have understood that if the Welsh language is going to survive it has to have a strong economic base. It is a community language and therefore this is not just about individuals' rights as Welsh speakers. On the contrary, we want this legislation for everyone in Wales so that everyone in Wales can have access to the Welsh language because historically the Welsh language has been opposed. David Davies talked about there being no official status to the English language. There is de facto status. There have been acts which have refused people the right to speak Welsh, and we want to change that situation and we want to change it on all fronts - as a social language, as a community language and as a language for individuals.

Q76 Mr Jones: (Through an Interpreter) Can I ask each of you how much experience you have personally of business in the private sector?

Mr James: (Through an Interpreter) I will answer the question. I have a solicitors' company of my own and I employ, between two offices, 20 people. I represent, as part of my business, a number of private companies as well, a number of businesses which are proud to have their businesses in Wales. Some of them do provide Welsh medium services; others do not. To go back to this importance of concentrating on the fact that there is growth in the language and that depends on economic growth, within Parents for Welsh Medium Education we see the importance of having status for the Welsh language but also new schemes which are now coming through in terms of location of education in the Welsh medium sector. It is important that we create people who are trained to be nursery assistants, for example, or to be secretaries in offices, that there are people who have children and other people who can see the importance of the Welsh language.

Q77 Mr Jones: (Through an Interpreter) Mr Owens?

Mr Owens: I work for the Urdd movement, which is a charity, but I have run different camps in Glan Llyn and Cardiff and we are expected to make a financial surplus to run all the other activities in other areas. We have a turnover of £1 million in Llanllyn and I think £600,000 in Cardiff. We are expected to make £100,000 surplus for running the organisation and I must say that we have to run it as a business to all intents and purposes, and without a shadow of a doubt the fact that there is a Welsh medium atmosphere at the camp is one of the things that really sells the camp and we have people from all parts of the world visit us; we had lots of Irish people staying with us at the weekend. Without a doubt, the fact that there is a Welsh medium atmosphere there and people can hear the Welsh language in the centre and the camp really does count for something with the people who come to stay with us. It is seen as an advantage.

Q78 Mr Jones: (Through an Interpreter) What about Welsh Language Society officers? Sioned?

Ms Haf: (Through an Interpreter) We have been part of the Welsh Language Society, we have been in touch with a number of companies in the private sector, we have had meetings with some business managers in Wales and personally I have worked in the private sector as well for three years.

Q79 Mr Jones: (Through an Interpreter) Menna?

Ms Machreth: (Through an Interpreter) I am a student so I have not started in the world of work yet but I have worked for private companies in part-time posts in the past.

Ms Howys: (Through an Interpreter) I work in the public sector as a social worker but I have not worked in the private sector.

Q80 Chairman: (Through an Interpreter) Thank you all very much for your evidence. It has been very clear and we welcome the way in which you have discussed and dealt with the experience. If you feel that you have not had fair play here - I think everybody has had fair play today - we would welcome any additional evidence if you wish to submit it. Thank you very much.

Ms Haf: (Through an Interpreter) I have got something to hand over to the Committee at the end. Can we leave some information with you?

Chairman: (Through an Interpreter) Yes, of course. Thank you.

Witness: Mr Hamish MacLeod, Chairman, The Mobile Broadband Group, gave evidence.

Q81 Chairman: Could I ask you for the record to introduce yourself, please?

Mr MacLeod: Good afternoon. I am Hamish MacLeod and I chair The Mobile Broadband Group.

Q82 Chairman: Can I apologise to you for the delay but I hope that you appreciated the circumstances and that you heard the evidence and found it worthwhile.

Mr MacLeod: Yes, thank you very much.

Q83 Chairman: Could I begin by asking you about your group? Thank you for the written evidence. It was very helpful in preparing this session, quite clear, and we note that you oppose the inclusion of telecommunications in the proposed Legislative Competence Order. Do you see a need for any form of legislation at all on the Welsh language?

Mr MacLeod: The reason we expressed our answer the way we did was that we felt it was up to the other sectors that were identified to speak for themselves, but basically our position is that we do not support legislation on the private sector for the provision of Welsh language services.

Q84 Chairman: In your submission you say that voluntary encouragement would be much more beneficial for the language. What evidence do you have to confirm that?

Mr MacLeod: It seems to me the strategy so far has been about promoting in practical and proportionate ways methods by which the private sector can be encouraged to facilitate the use of Welsh language in the workplace. I have read the Welsh Language Board's strategy for the private sector, which talks about awards and assistance with training and such measures, which seem to me perfectly reasonable and as far as we can see are bearing fruit in that interest in and support for the Welsh language over the last few years has been rising.

Q85 Hywel Williams: Mobile operators are generally international companies, so what has been their experience with language law in other countries? We heard evidence earlier on from the Welsh Language Society, amongst others, so what has been the experience elsewhere?

Mr MacLeod: I cannot pretend to be an expert on the comparative experiences internationally but I have been looking into this matter around Europe. Switzerland is an example that springs to mind. My understanding is that what is done in a bilingual context there is done voluntarily. In Ireland there are no requirements on private businesses to do things bilingually and, as I understand it, not an awful lot is done. In Belgium there is a lot of legislation about the provision of bilingual services into the French region. What seems to be unusual about this particular legislation though, perhaps even unique, is that it picks out certain business segments within the private sector for legislation and we are not quite clear on what basis those lines were drawn.

Q86 Hywel Williams: There are other legislatures which do this. For example, in Catalonia last year there was an agreement signed between the Generalitat and the manufacturers, Nokia, Motorola, et cetera, and also a number of other companies, such as Vodafone, Orange, Erski(?) and others which would provide software, many with predictive text dictionaries, building help lines, et cetera in Catalan to be implemented by December 2008. I have just been told that. In that particular situation it appears that there is a statutory agreement between the government and a wide range of mobile operators and the people who produce the hardware. Do you know anything at all about that and have you come to any conclusions from looking at it?

Mr MacLeod: I have asked for the information on Spain, I am looking into it. I have not yet received it, so I can perhaps follow up with a note.

Q87 Hywel Williams: I am sure the Committee would be grateful. I do not know if you have any information about the situation in Ireland, for example, where Vodafone provides a good deal of their services through the medium of Irish and in fact their adverts for those services were nominated as being one of the best last year. There seems to be another situation there.

Mr MacLeod: Yes, but my understanding is that it is not required by legislative measures.

Hywel Williams: I could go on but I accept what you say. Thank you.

Q88 Mr Jones: To what extent has the group been involved in consultation on the terms of the proposed Order?

Mr MacLeod: I have to confess we have come to the subject really quite late. I think it was late February when I was alerted to the issue by my members, so just in time to meet the deadline of 4 March to prepare written submissions. I do not know the answer to that question on how much outreach there has been. Although we have come late it is interesting to note that we are one of the few industries that is potentially affected by this legislation and has prepared written submissions. I do not quite understand why that is the case.

Q89 Mr Jones: What is your understanding of the sorts of additional services that companies operating in the telecommunications sector might be required to provide as a consequence of this Order or any measure that might flow from it?

Mr MacLeod: Let me deal first with the networks themselves. I have tried to set out in my evidence what potentially treating English and Welsh on the basis of equality would involve for us in terms of how we would provide customer services, how we would provide international phone services and retail services in terms of the phones we sell in stores, so quite a complex range. I acknowledge there is a second stage to this process which is all about the measures, but I thought it was only fair to the Committee that I set out the full panoply of possibilities. That is the point of pre-legislative scrutiny, to get all the issues onto the table and thrash them around. I may have to refer to the actual document to look at the phrase. As far as other services which relate to any of those services are concerned, that in our sector is potentially very wide indeed, and I was surprised to hear the previous evidence that only 1% of companies would be affected. For example, as everybody probably realises now, phones are not just about making telephone calls any more. They are about providing lots of content services, lots of search, et cetera, so if those companies fall into the bracket of providing services that relate to those services they will be caught by the legislation and that is very many companies, I would suggest. Obviously, we distribute mobile telephony through our own branded stores but we also use lots of independent dealerships to sell telephony services. It is not just Carphone Warehouse and Phones4U; it is lots of little booths on high streets selling international phone cards and top-ups and SIMs and all these things. They potentially will be covered. As you may know, two-thirds of the market is pre-pay subscriptions and they have to top up their phones periodically and we have a very extensive network of petrol stations and newsagents and what-have-you which can provide that service, so are they covered? These are things which I am very glad to have the opportunity to air.

Q90 Mr Jones: Could I refer you to paragraphs 21 and 22 of your submission to the Committee? You have drawn attention to the fact that section 35 of the Government of Wales Act uses the words "both appropriate in the circumstances and reasonably practicable".

Mr MacLeod: Yes.

Q91 Mr Jones: You have just outlined what are your concerns, for example, as to the potential impact upon small businesses. Do you feel that the inclusion of those words or words similar to those in the LCO might assist small businesses which might otherwise be adversely impacted by this legislation?

Mr MacLeod: I have to confess I am not 100% confident of the legal construction as to how this would work.

Q92 David Davies: Nor are we.

Mr MacLeod: Where it puts the treatment of the Welsh language on the basis of equality, whether this is conferring that sort of flexibility on the Government to do other than provide services on the basis of equality, I do not know. It is not clear to me.

Q93 Mr Jones: The point I am making is, would the inclusion of words such as those give any additional comfort?

Mr MacLeod: I think it is something that the Committee should look at, certainly.

Q94 Hywel Williams: That comes from the 1993 Welsh Language Act where the Welsh language needs to be treated on the basis of equality "where it is reasonably practicable and appropriate in the circumstances", which is the current legislative context.

Mr MacLeod: Okay, and you would see that that would definitely apply in those circumstances too?

Q95 Hywel Williams: I think, to quote Dan Lewis, I do not think anybody would want to be unreasonable or impracticable in the provision of Welsh language services.

Mr MacLeod: We need to be sure that the construction provides for that.

Q96 Mrs James: If "telecommunication services" were removed from the scope of the LCO as a separate category would any of your member companies still be covered by the LCO because they fall into other categories?

Mr MacLeod: I do not think so. That has not been brought to my attention. One measure that was discussed fairly extensively earlier on was, "Are you in receipt of £200,000 of public funds?". As you will see from our evidence, we have not come to a policy view on that particular measure and as far as I know it does not apply. I have to say though that I do question whether that measure is necessary because if you are free to give organisations money you have a lot of negotiating power, so I feel it would be more appropriate to negotiate that on a case-by-case basis.

Q97 Mark Williams: Would you indicate what level of demand for Welsh language services there is within the telecommunications sector? We have heard a lot about demand from the other two positions earlier on. What is your perception of demand?

Mr MacLeod: Honestly, it is quite small, I have to say. The tenor of our evidence, I hope, conveys the fact that none of this is impossible. It presents us with lots of practical difficulties but it is about making choices, about how our limited resource is allocated in ways that benefit Welsh consumers most, and I have to say that this is not our current perception. The top three are low costs, good coverage and a wide variety of handsets.

Q98 Mark Williams: Have any of your group done any work on that specifically? I appreciate the thrust of what you are saying.

Mr MacLeod: I suppose there are two, possibly three, sources. They survey their customers on what their hotspots are in a fairly open way and this is not one that comes up. They monitor the calls coming into their help desk. We receive hundreds of millions of calls a year and this is not something that appears on the radar as something that is severely lacking in the provision of our services.

Q99 Hywel Williams: In terms of your members generally, if they provide something does that then provoke a demand usually? Do they first look if there is a demand and then provide it or do they speculatively provide content and then that promotes demand?

Mr MacLeod: There is certainly some truth to that. Who, before mobile phones were even invented, knew there was any demand for them? What we are trying to say here is that 20% of the population is a very significant proportion of the population. They are very capable of expressing their preferences through the choices they make and we see the very heavy-handed supply side of regulation as a poor substitute for that sort of process. Again, our understanding is that support for the Welsh language is rising. The numbers of children being taught in the Welsh language are rising, so this will flow through into demand. If there comes a time when low cost and big coverage are not the preferences and in fact a lack of the Welsh language provision is the sticking point, then we think that private companies would respond to that.

Q100 Hywel Williams: I appreciate that your members, quite rightly, have to take commercial decisions but would you concede that in the government there has been a certain social policy to promote bilingualism as per the Act which might not be valued and ruled by those commercial considerations but might in fact want to plan for language, given that the average age that children get a mobile phone now is eight, apparently, and between the ages of five and 15 there are 40.8 per cent of children in Wales who speak Welsh, whereas in my age group, alas, it is 15.6 per cent? It might be the case that the Welsh Assembly, as this is a permanent transfer of power, might be looking to a situation later on where they might need to pass measures because of the emerging generation. That is a possibility, is it not?

Mr MacLeod: In the future, but I would say that it is just as likely that the market will get there first and that would be the best use of Wales's resources and the private companies' resources.

Q101 Hywel Williams: The point I am making is that this is a permanent transfer of power into the foreseeable future and if we were in a situation where the Assembly needed to take further powers they would have to go through this process again, apparently, and that might be something of a distraction.

Mr MacLeod: I see that, but to me this measure smacks of, "There should be evidence that there has been significant market failure to provide what the population needs", and I really do not think we are at that point yet. You also asked me about the transfer of powers. In our evidence we suggest that it would be very difficult to ring-fence the impact within the Welsh market. We are a regulated industry. We have a national regulator which sets all sorts of what it calls general conditions in the way we provide our services and there is definitely potential for the regulatory authority to be impacted upon by the requirements that may exist in Wales.

Hywel Williams: I have just a brief request, therefore. I did mention the situation in Catalonia. Could you possibly provide is with some supplementary evidence as to how technically that is done in Catalonia? I know in your submission you point to a number of difficulties in providing it within Wales in the context of the UK or even international markets. If you could tell us how it is done in Catalonia we would all be very interested indeed.

Q102 Alun Michael: I just want to tease out the juxtaposition of the regulation of the industry which you referred to. Ofcom also regulates broadcasting where there are a lot of language requirements on broadcasters. Have you as an organisation had any discussion with Ofcom about the interface between the proposed LCO and the general industry regulation?

Mr MacLeod: No, I have not had any formal discussions with Ofcom on this topic and I understand they do not have a formal position, but we have written to BERR, one of their sponsoring departments, to draw their attention to our evidence and the potential impacts that we see this having.

Q103 Alun Michael: Yes, but the Department for Business is not the regulator.

Mr MacLeod: It is not the regulator, but it is the sponsoring organisation. Perhaps we should be having formal discussions with Ofcom about this.

Alun Michael: Point obviously taken.

Q104 Mrs James: Do you consider that those companies which already have an operational base in Wales would be at an advantage in the provision of new Welsh language services?

Mr MacLeod: That is an interesting question. Would you be a bit more specific? Would Google be at an advantage if it was in Wales? I do not know.

Q105 Mrs James: They would have Welsh speakers as part of their staff. They might not have a formal language policy and they might not be Welsh speakers; they might be people who are Welsh learners. They may well already have had lots of correspondence on this and be aware of the needs of language.

Mr MacLeod: I am not sure that I am particularly well enough informed to give you a direct answer to that but if you would not mind I will address a tangential problem. Not all mobile operators have customer service helplines within Wales. T-Mobile have one in Merthyr Tydfil, but, obviously, if there were Welsh language obligations, for example, to answer the telephone in Welsh, the businesses that have customer service centres in Darlington and Glasgow and these places would presumably have to recruit somebody who spoke Welsh. We certainly have questions in our mind arising as to would this then require us to exercise positive discrimination employment practices rather than concentrating on what we normally do on the technical requirements of operating a customer help desk for mobile telephony and would we have to employ people just because they spoke Welsh? Those are practical problems.

Q106 Mrs James: But they are communications companies and in this day and age when mobile communication is so easy one could imagine you having a section that would be dealing with Welsh language issues which would not necessarily have to be based in the same place as your other support services.

Mr MacLeod: Yes, of course, I agree with that, but it would be employing people, and the number of people who speak Welsh in Darlington or wherever who would even be prepared to move to somewhere like that from Wales might be very limited, so it would present us with practical problems.

Q107 Hywel Williams: There are moves within industry for large competitors to co-operate on certain matters. There has been a deal between Vodafone and one of their competitors recently about developing the software so that there are industry standards. Do you foresee any possibility that, should your sector come in under a future measure, operators would be able to co-operate and provide this sort of service on a more cost effective basis?

Mr MacLeod: Just today O2 and Vodafone did announce just such an agreement to do network sharing so that the roll-out could be done more cost effectively and more quickly, so there is a precedent for such groups, although I have to say they are fraught with difficulties around prospective Chinese walls and such like. They are not without their complications but they are feasible.

Chairman: Thank you very much for your patience as well as your evidence this afternoon. I think that we have pretty well covered everything. We look forward to the additional evidence you will provide us with but if there is anything else, in the light of what you have heard today, that you wish to respond to then we would be very pleased to hear from you. Thank you very much.