Mr. Aled Roberts:

That is probably the biggest sticking point at the moment. If you read our manifesto call to all the political parties prior to the Senedd elections, we called for the programme of government to include a timeline for the introduction of new standards. There are two issues here. The government is dependent on us to carry out the research. We have carried out the research into the train companies, health regulators, housing associations, and water, gas and electric companies. We have had a period of three and a half years where no new standards have been introduced. That, in part, was due to some questioning as to what the future of the commission would be as decided upon by the government. There was a White Paper introduced which suggested it would actually remove the office of commissioner and would introduce a commission. During that period of uncertainty, there was little movement as far as the government was concerned.

There was also the ongoing debate between my office and the government regarding the division of the regulatory and promotional duties. That has been clarified now for two years so there was an expectation we would revert to the introduction of language standards. There has not been any movement during that period. We understand there are big practical problems in place because the public health emergency here has meant the call on translation services, on lawyers in particular, has been great and there is a resource issue for the government as to the framing of regulations.

We have now reached agreement with the government that it will proceed with standards for the rail companies. That will include Transport for Wales but will also include Avanti West Coast, which runs the services to Holyhead, and GWR, which runs the service to the south west of Wales from London. They will be subject to the standards. I also have an expectation that we will move on the health regulators but, as I say, there is a political decision that is taken with regard to the introduction of standards. All I can do is the groundwork because it is then a political decision as to whether the standards are actually introduced.

The other issue, which is something the proposed legislation in Ireland does deal with, is the other shortcoming in our legislation, which is that if a new body is created, depending on the actual legislation that founded the body, there are different ways of making it subject to the standards. This has meant there have been new bodies created in the past two to three years which operate in sectors that are currently subject to the standards but the new bodies are not subject to the standards themselves. That includes a body such as Qualifications Wales, which deals with all qualifications, as you would expect, within compulsory education. There is also a new health body called Health Education and Improvement Wales. I was trying to remember what the title to the organisation was in English. It is charged with ensuring the training and recruitment of health and social care practitioners is undertaken. We had an issue where it was not subject to the standards and we were not happy with some of the actions it was taking, to the extent we agreed a Welsh language scheme with the body and I have to say our relationship with it now is very positive. It shows that there is a gap in respect of the extension of standards to bodies that are created by the Welsh Government itself.