My Lords, I apologise for having misread the grouping of my amendment as scheduled. I will now make a brief comment. I understand that the Minister has referred to it already and to what my attitude is.
In our previous debate on Report on the costs to third parties of Welsh-language publications, which I thought to be excluded from the ceiling on third-party expenditure, I welcomed the helpful comments of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, which were in the same vein as those made in Committee by the noble Lord, Lord Gardiner of Kimble. The failure to be aware of how well used the Welsh language is in campaigning, in documents and in many other ways, has become obvious. It is very different from the time, long ago in the 1960s, when I was a young Transport Minister struggling with officialdom to meet the demand for Welsh forms and licences. As the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, said, the oversight goes back to the 2000 Act. If this short debate does nothing else, it will remind policymakers and draftsmen that the Welsh Language Act 1993 was passed and that there was a sea change in the use of the language.
The noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, indicated that I went too far in seeking to extend the excluded costs beyond the payment to a translator. I understand that argument, but an organisation could publish a modest amount of literature in English and flood the electorate with Welsh material a hundredfold bigger. My main point remains that, on a narrow interpretation of Amendment 25, an organisation might be inhibited from actually producing Welsh material. In my view, you have to produce paper to be able to translate it, and I argued accordingly. I believe that the Minister was then taking a more restricted view. However, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, said that there was not much between us and that we should try to reach a consensus without creating loopholes whereby much more material was produced. I suggested that, in the short time available, the Government might seek the views of the Electoral Commission.
When I returned to west Wales late on Friday afternoon, I was encouraged to receive a telephone call from the noble and learned Lord, Lord Wallace, from Edinburgh, for which I thank him very much. That was indeed a long-distance negotiation. I kept the Welsh Language Commissioner in Cardiff informed. I understand that the Electoral Commission has been consulted following my suggestion and has agreed to the new form of words. The amendment has been drafted by parliamentary counsel, to whom I am grateful.
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I would therefore be very interested in the guidance that the Minister will give regarding the interpretation of this amendment. The words “in consequence of”
can have a wide connotation. If it is a wide connotation we have no fears, but if it is narrow and restricted the problem will remain. For example, I was e-mailed in the past few days by, I believe, a representative of an organisation that had to publish its reports bilingually. The full cost of its recent annual report—design, print and second-class postage—amounted to £9,508. The translation cost was £835—about 9%. It believes that the full cost of the bilingual translation was 50% of the total. It would appear that while 9% would be discounted on a narrow interpretation of this amendment, 41% could not. Therefore, the Minister’s guidance on this amendment is crucial, otherwise organisations will be inhibited from providing Welsh-language material, which is a mischief that we and, I believe, the Government —and certainly the Welsh Language Commissioner—seek to avoid.
The Minister reminded me of the review that will take place on the workings of the Act. If this consensus does not work—I hope that it will—it may be necessary to take a further look at the matter.