Commissioner for Older People (Wales) Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. 7:"Page 12, line 16, at end insert—" ““(   )   as to the desirability of the Commissioner speaking Welsh.”” The noble Lord said: I propose the amendment in the spirit of the Welsh Language Act. Although it is not covered entirely in that Act, I am sure that a requirement that the commissioner should be able to speak Welsh is very desirable. I have a letter from the North Gwynedd community health council, which states that it is absolutely essential that the person should be bilingual and Welsh-speaking to be able to fulfil the post. Is this not all a matter of relationship? You must relate to the people who you are supposed to represent. Indeed, I have some suggestions here, one from Llandrindod Wells Town Council, that the commissioner might usefully and appropriately be drawn from the age group to which his or her work belongs—someone who has been there, done that and perhaps knows more about it than someone who, like some of us here, has not yet reached that age. Also the person should be able to relate to older people. When we think of the people that that person would be likely to be asked to help, many of them would be people suffering from strokes or Alzheimer’s and whose first language was Welsh. As they had reached that state of frailty, the Welsh language might be the first language that they would use. So it is essential that the commissioner should be able to relate to them in the Welsh language and I hope that the Minister will respond favourably to that suggestion. The commissioner should be able to represent all people of all types in the whole of Wales. In passing, although there is no amendment relating to this, it has been suggested that the office might not be in Cardiff, but elsewhere—possibly an office of substance in the north of Wales, with which I would heartily concur. I beg to move.