Paul
Flynn: As I am approaching the halfway point of my
parliamentary career, it might take some time to reflect upon the
changes that have occurred in relation to the Welsh language during my
first 20 years in Parliament. Nearly all the changes have been
beneficial. Very little of the malice and poison of the language debate
throughout most of the past century is present now. We heard an example
of it this morning when the hon. Member for Monmouth had another one of
his junior moments, but I suppose that we should be grateful that he
spared time from his busy duties as a constable to be with us.
Obviously, he cannot be here for a whole day because he is probably on
Primrose hill inspecting whether any unauthorised erections have
appeared. Nevertheless, he speaks with the authentic voice of the
past. Rather
than discuss the intricacies of the LCO, I want to talk about the joy
of the Welsh language and how satisfactory this process has been. I
thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth
for lifting part of the burden of guilt that I carry around with me,
because in my book, “Dragons Led by Poodles”, I made an
unkind remark suggesting that his knowledge of Welsh was similar to the
command of English of my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon
Hull, East (Mr. Prescott). I have regretted that ever since,
owing to my own knowledge of Welsh and the problems that everyone who
has learnt it as a second language
has.
Alun
Michael: My hon. Friend should not feel at all guilty. My
right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull, East is a man of
deep thought and communicates effectively in English, albeit in a
rather personal style. I am not at all offended by the
comparison.
Paul
Flynn: There is a lot to be said for originality in the
interpretation of the orthography of a language and the good that that
may do to aid communication. As my right hon. Friend says, my right
hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull, East is a great
communicator. I
was educated in Cardiff and had the good fortune, unlike the shadow
Secretary of State—I had the great advantage of going to a state
school in a working-class area, but I do not know where she
went—of having a splendid Welsh teacher. That has given me the
lifelong treasure of an interest in and a love of the language. It is
difficult to explain to a non-Welsh speaker why the language is vital,
and we find that those who appreciate it most come from outside.
Tolkien said that he was fascinated by the Welsh word,
“adeiladwyd”, and that it stirred the harp strings of his
deep linguistic identity. He went on to create different languages of
his own. Even someone as unexpected as Boris Johnson, who was a
candidate for a seat in north Wales, learnt some Welsh. He talks with
enthusiasm of Welsh words and rolls words such as “cig
moch” and “sglodion” around with delight. He says
that one can imagine a Roman centurion saying, “Give me my
‘cig
moch’!” Young
children also delight in the language. One of my greatest joys came
when I visited Malpas Court school in my constituency and saw a young
girl aged around 10 proudly reciting a beautiful piece of Welsh verse
with obvious satisfaction and delight. It is a miracle that the
language has survived. There were two
languages spoken in Caerleon in Roman times: intra muros it was Latin
and extra muros it was Welsh. If any of the centurions in Caerleon had
suggested that the language that would survive to this day would be
Welsh, it would have been thought a very curious forecast, but that is
the truth. It goes on
right through the centuries. We had the glories of the middle ages. I
had a Welsh teacher who assured me that there was no such thing as a
book in Welsh that could in any way be described as disreputable. It
was only late in life that I came across the works of Gwerful Mechain
and Dafydd ap Gwilym. I do not know if I am allowed to say the names of
some of their poems, but here we have wonderful, rumbustious,
unembarrassed poems about the joys of physical love and every aspect of
life, expressed with great joie de vivre in the language.
Everyone has
heard the lullaby “Suo Gân” in the Steven
Spielberg film:
“Huna
blentyn yn fy mynwes”.
How can I explain to
people about the language and what it means to have a mother tongue:
the first words you hear when you come into the world, the words in
which you are nurtured, the words with which you first frame sentences,
the language you use to express yourself, to curse in, to make love in
and for the last words on your lips before you die? It is something
that affects everyone at a very deep level of their being. If that is
insulted or demeaned, it is an insult at a very deep level
too.
It is
difficult to get across the importance of the language’s
survival. The shock that went through Wales in 1961 when Saunders Lewis
forecast in his BBC lecture that the language would not survive into
the 21st century started Cymdeithas yr Iaith and the whole
realisation that it would be our generation that lost this treasure.
Things have been very different from that because of that realisation.
In my time in Parliament, I have had the great joy of seeing for the
first time that generation fulfilling the promise of Welsh politicians
for over 150 years to bring devolution to Wales. All failed until this
generation, and now we have our own parliament on the land of our own
country.
I recall in
1953 carrying a Labour party banner through Cardiff that called for a
Senedd i Gymru. It did not call for half a parliament or LCOs for the
people. It called for a parliament, so we are not quite there yet, but
progress has been made and extraordinary decisions taken. There was the
fourth channel and the decision that Lord Roberts of Conwy bravely took
forward on education, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Aberavon
rightly alluded, and there was the Welsh Language Act 1993 itself. We
no longer discuss these matters in the antagonistic mood that once
dominated Wales.
István
SzĂ(c)chenyi asked “Where is the nation?” Where do we
look to find the Hungarian nation, in his case, or the Catalan nation?
He said:
“The
nation lives in her
language.” Languages
represent the humour, wit and passion of generations echoing down the
centuries and all of them are unique in their own way. We have the
great luck to possess the inheritance of a glorious ancient language
with a wonderful literature that lives, full of virility, variety and
enthusiasm. We should celebrate that and I am grateful to be here today
with this LCO, which has been agreed in a very statesmanlike and
reasonable way by all parties, to pay our tribute and make our
contribution to the wonderful work of the
language. 3.24
pm Mr.
David Jones: This important debate has attracted
much interest throughout Wales, as is evidenced by the welcome presence
in the Public Gallery of representatives of the Welsh press and
broadcast media.
What a
wonderful contribution that was from the hon. Member for Newport, West.
He enunciated what we are talking about today. We are talking about a
living language, not about what R. S. Thomas described as the product
of “an
impotent people, sick with inbreeding, worrying the carcase of an old
song.” Welsh
is a living language that, I am proud to say, the Conservative party
has done much to advance over the past few years. My noble Friend Lord
Roberts of Conwy has probably done more for the Welsh language over the
past few decades than any other living person. I refer to him
frequently as the greatest living Welshman, much to his
embarrassment.
It is a
tribute to the work of the Welsh Affairs Committee that we have got
where we are today. I remember graphically the early days of the LCO
process, when members of the Select Committee were being bombarded by
e-mails from all quarters suggesting that we were about to delay the
process of the draft order. It is a tribute to the Chairman of that
Committee that we were not diverted by noises off but did the work that
we were delegated to do with great seriousness and a good result. The
recommendations of the Select Committee were sound and sensible, and I
am delighted that the Secretary of State has paid close attention to
them. I
also pay tribute to the Secretary of State himself for listening so
carefully to what the Select Committee had to say, for consulting
further, and for coming up with what appear to be sensible proposals to
address the issues identified by the Committee. I remain of the view
that it would have been even more satisfactory if this Grand Committee
had had the opportunity to consider the proposals that the Secretary of
State intends to put forward. Nevertheless, I again pay tribute to him
for giving all Welsh Members the opportunity to debate the findings of
the Select Committee in this Grand
Committee. The
hon. Member for Aberavon referred to the well-known and increasingly
used Welsh adage “heb waith, dim iaith”—without
work, there is no language. I think that it is vital that, when
considering the proposal, we have close regard to the likely economic
impact of any order on Wales, particularly at what is clearly a fragile
time for the country. If the Welsh language is to be
developed—as we all want it to be—it is essential that
that is not to the disbenefit of the Welsh economy. The Welsh language
should be something that is used unselfconsciously and as a matter of
choice. It should not be something that is politicised or thrust down
people’s throats. I am glad to say that that is the message
coming through the Select Committee’s report which, again,
appears to have been accepted by the Secretary of State.
I would like
to consider several aspects of the Secretary of State’s report.
A number of matters of concern remain, and as he has been kind enough
to say that the deliberations of this Committee will also inform his
decision on the final form of the order. I hope that he will take into
account what I have to say, and that his colleague, the Under-Secretary
of State, will respond to points made in his concluding
remarks. The
Secretary of State has quite rightly excluded shops from the ambit of
the proposed LCO. As the hon. Member for Caernarfon pointed out, small
retail businesses are the backbone of the Welsh economy. Nothing should
be done to make it more difficult for individuals to set themselves up
in the retail
business. The
Secretary of State said that there were two exceptions to the
exclusion, one of which was ticket sales and timetables for bus and
railway services. However, the more significant issue is post office
counter services. That matter was raised by the hon. Member for
Carmarthen, West and South Pembrokeshire. I took it up in an
intervention on the Secretary of State, and it troubles me
greatly. Last
year, some 2,500 post offices were closed throughout the UK. Small
sub-post offices are finding it increasingly difficult to operate. In
my constituency, and probably in the whole of north Wales, there was
only one survivor of the post office closure programme: the post office
at Cerrigydrudion. A huge rally of the people of
Cerrigydrudion persuaded the Post Office authorities that it would be
stupid to close that office, which is operated by a pair of monoglot
English speakers, as are many other post offices throughout Wales. If
any barrier were put in the way of such people opening post offices in
Wales, we might find that post offices such as that in Cerrigydrudion,
which are rightly valued by their communities, would shut, not because
of any closure programme but quite simply because it would prove
impossible to find any individuals to run them. That is an extreme
problem with the Secretary of State’s proposals. I know that he
has not decided on the final form of the LCO, so I entreat him to take
account of that concern, which is clearly shared by his colleague the
hon. Member for Carmarthen, West and South
Pembrokeshire.
Mr.
Hain: I am listening carefully to what the hon. Gentleman
is saying and I will certainly reflect on it. I think that he will find
that, because postal services were included in the 1993 Act, there is
no fundamental difference here. Nevertheless, I am sure that the
Assembly will want to bear in mind what the hon. Gentleman has said
when it enacts the measures, and I am sure that consultations,
especially those on proportionality and reasonableness, would be taken
into account when sub-post offices were affected. Importantly, I am
also advised that, by order, local post offices were included in 1996,
so the situation is not new, but I agree with the hon. Gentleman that
it needs to be handled lightly rather than
heavy-handedly. Mr.
David Jones: I am grateful to the Secretary
of State for that contribution and I understand what he says. The
difficulty is that if we impose a proportionality and reasonableness
test, small sub-postmasters will have to apply to
some appeals committee for exclusion from the provisions of
whatever measure may be brought through before they can open
up their business.
That would be farcical, and now is the time, with the drafting of the
LCO, to take that concern into account, because I seriously
believe—I am not being alarmist—that if the legislation
is applied heavy-handedly, it could result in many small communities
losing their sub-post
offices.
Mr.
Roger Williams: The hon. Gentleman makes a reasonable
point, but I certainly would argue that it should be addressed in the
Measure rather than in the LCO. The Assembly needs to take account of
whether a particular business should make an application to be
disapplied, or whether it should be the other way round. A member of
the public would say that they expected the legislation to be adhered
to by that particular business, and the business could then appeal
against that
submission. Mr.
David Jones: That is a fair point. Again, I
must commend the Secretary of State in that the introduction of a
proportionality and reasonableness test is probably the finest thing
that has happened to the draft LCO, as it introduces an element of
common sense on a statutory basis. Nevertheless, in response to the
hon. Member for Brecon and Radnorshire, the procedure will be very
complicated if every time someone wants a derogation from the
legislation, he or she will have to make an application to some appeals
tribunal. That is not how the economy runs in the real world. Common
sense is certainly called for. Proportionality and reasonableness
represent the introduction of common sense, but we should go one stage
further and exempt sub-post offices from the
legislation. The
other point that I wish to make was raised by the right hon.
Member for Torfaen. He referred to telecommunications, and I must
confess that I have continuing concerns about the inclusion of
telecommunications in the legislation. I hope that the Secretary of
State will give close attention to the reason for my concerns, because
this could be a problem. We live in a world where people are less
inclined to be loyal, not only to political parties, but to suppliers
of goods and services. For example, consumers routinely go on websites
such as uSwitch and decide to switch their suppliers of
telecommunications, gas, electricity or whatever. I would be extremely
concerned if Welsh consumers clicked on one of those sites to discover
that because a particular supplier had not got a Welsh language scheme
in place and had found it too burdensome to adopt such a scheme, they
were immediately disadvantaged because that supplier had not entered
the
market. We
must be careful not to put barriers in the way of commerce. It is vital
that Welsh consumers have access to all suppliers of services without
any impediment in the form of Welsh language legislation with which
suppliers are, for whatever reason, unwilling to
comply.
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