The BBC reports today that the Welsh Language Board could investigate the Assembly as a result of its plans to stop translating plenary proceedings from English into Welsh.
The Board argues that this is in breach of the Assembly’s Welsh language scheme, and as such is in breach of the Welsh Language Act.
But interestingly, according to the Chief Executive of the Assembly, the National Assembly is not covered by the Welsh Language Act, which, if true, is ludicrous given that this is the body that will ultimately pass the next Welsh Language law.
One of the biggest issues with this new law that the government is currently pursuing, has been in trying to work out exactly who should be covered by the law, and who should not – in Rhodri Morgan’s words, it’s about making sure that the Wales Millennium Centre is included, but that the local chip shop is not.Actually, it’s about a little more than that. It’s about making sure that the law is sophisticated enough to be able to deal with unknown scenarios – in exaclty the way the 1993 Welsh Language Act was not.
The 1993 Act once covered public utility companies which were subsequently privatised and then suddenly not covered by the Act. The National Assembly for Wales was obviously not in existence in 1993, but the Act apparently failed to ensure that new public bodies, such as this, were included. Neither of these situations was foreseen when that law was passed 16 years ago, but surely there must be a way for the new law to accommodate similar unexpected changes?
Given that it’s taken the government two years (and two Ministers) to get this far, and has as yet, achieved no real consensus, I don’t hold out much hope for the new Welsh Language law doing a better job than its predecessor.
Related posts:
- Government continues to suffer consequences on Welsh Language Measure
- Welsh speakers should have the right to be tried before bilingual juries
- A bi-lingual society?
