Ms Meri Huws:

I believe the Senator has covered the entire spectrum in those questions. He raised the question of influencing or offering advice to Welsh Ministers on legislation. The relevant section is section 4 of our measure which has proved very useful in the past two to two and a half years. It is a statutory requirement for Welsh Ministers to pay due regard to any statutory advice we offer to them and to which they have to respond. Of course, the words "due regard" can mean many things to many people, but at least they are included in the legislation which we have used extensively in past years. We choose when we use it, but we have used it in dealing with social welfare legislation, including specifically a piece of social care legislation which has now received royal assent, when we used it to ensure the language was seen as a key requirement. It had not been referred to in the legislation or in the discussion on the floor of the committee when it was said: "Of course it will be there." However, we argued that unless it was on the face of the legislation, it would not be there and succeeded in giving advice and offering amendments to the legislation.

We are in a similar and very interesting position on a new planning Bill for Wales which seeks to address a host of technical and policy issues. We have offered statutory written advice, but we are also going to the scrutiny committee in two weeks time to offer it again. It is the case that our advice has to be given "due regard". It is a very useful tool in terms of our influence. We have also used it at Westminster, but its key use has been in terms of legislation in Wales. As I said, we target it and it is a case of ensuring the Welsh language is referred to, where appropriate, on the face of Welsh legislation. Section 4 has been very useful within our legislation.

On the various sectors involved, the Senator asked about the transition from schemes to standards. It is going to be a long journey, about that there is no question. The first 26 organisations will be drawn into the standards sphere next year. We have just commenced the statutory process of bringing in the next 120 and have already identified the next 250. Therefore, by the end of my period as commissioner, I expect to see in the region of 600 to 800 organisations included. What is interesting is that, by that time, we will have extended outside the public sector into the voluntary sector. As we increasingly see services being delivered by the voluntary sector and the third sector through the subcontracting out of health services, social welfare services and other services in Wales, it is very important that the standards are imposed on these sectors also.

By the end of my period as commissioner, which lasts seven years and I am nearly three years into that, I expect we will have started to address, through statutory processes, the business or private sectors that have been named in the legislation. In the first instance, energy companies have been named, water is already in so that means energy, telecommunications and those service delivery sectors within the private sector.

Members asked about carrots and sticks. The committee will notice that I have not mentioned the retail sector and it has not been named in the legislation. Banking has also not been named in our legislation. Our approach is slightly different in those sectors. It is a combination of strong carrots in regard to talking to organisations about the economic and marketing advantages of delivering services in a bilingual country. We have done a fair bit of research in that area which shows that service users or customers are attracted to services that are delivered bilingually.

Alongside a strong incentive there is an element of name and shame. Fairly recently, in Wales, service delivery in Welsh by very large international supermarkets was not as strong as one would have expected. We intervened at the highest level with their chief executives. We indicated to them not the error of their ways but the opportunities being missed and we have had a very positive response.

In terms of the public sector, and increasingly the third sector and over time in the business sector, we will have statutory powers. I was asked what those statutory powers are and the financial ombudsman was mentioned. As commissioner, I will have capacity to impose financial sanctions for non-compliance, a route I hope I will not have to follow too often. I hope the tactic of name and shame and claims of a lack of regard for the public will bear greater influence. There is the possibility of financial sanctions which, I admit, are not huge but they do exist. We are moving towards a very different environment.

Quotas were mentioned. Within language schemes in Wales we have not used quotas in the way that Members spoke about in regard to State bodies. The requirement, which is embedded in most language schemes, is a skills audit and having a very formalised procedure to identify which posts require which level of language capacity. Rather than identifying a number it is a case of looking at the entire workforce and identifying what skills, where and to what intensity. Over time where such analysis is done well that has become standard practice. There are some good examples in Wales. I mentioned to the committee, on our visit, the work that the North Wales Police force has undertaken. All members of the North Wales Police force now require a certain level of language capacity. This varies according to the role but the requirement is integrated across the institution rather than being a quota. The fear about quotas, in many respects, is that they will be in the wrong places at the wrong time. Having an integrated assessment of language requirement across an organisation per post is the ideal. Where that initiative has been done well in Wales it has proved to be very beneficial. The scheme is not perfect and I do not admit that it is perfect. We challenge organisations, on a regular basis, as to how they have made decisions about certain posts.

That has been formalised over time.

I am not sure whether I omitted to answer any of the questions raised.