MIKE HEDGES AM ASKES FOR WELSH GOVERNMENT STATEMENT ON SUPPORT FOR AND TRAINING FOR USE OF BRITISH SIGN LANGUAGE AS THE THIRD LANGUAGE OF WALES

MIKE HEDGES AM ASKES FOR WELSH GOVERNMENT STATEMENT ON SUPPORT FOR AND TRAINING FOR USE OF BRITISH SIGN LANGUAGE AS THE THIRD LANGUAGE OF WALES

Mike Hedges AM asked for a Welsh Government Statement on what support was being given to increasing the use of British Sign language in Wales.

Speaking after the Business Statement at Plenary session of the Assembly, Mike Hedges AM said…. ‘I have a family member who is deaf and I chair the Cross Party Group on Deaf issues so I well aware of the importance of British Sign Language to people in Wales. I am pleased by the Ministers Response and look forward to the statement she has promised to bring back in due course. British Sign language is a widely used language and it is vital that more people become familiar with it and that its use at places such as Drs. Surgeries becomes common practice.’

Mike Hedges  - Secondly, a Government statement on support for British sign language and promoting training in its use and Government support for increasing its use by the deaf and non-deaf communities—as you probably remember, you and I were at a meeting, along with Rebecca Evans, with Deffo!, an organisation in Swansea that represents people in the deaf community who use sign language, and they did raise a number of points about making it—it's the third language of Wales—more accessible and providing more support for it and treating it as a much more serious and important language than it currently is.

Julie James - Yes, thank you for those. It's a very, very important point. I'll do those in reverse, if the Member doesn't mind. On British sign language, we were at a very important meeting, the three of us, and I was very impressed by the strength of feeling there about the lack of opportunity and straight discrimination that some families were facing in their attempts to get proper access to British sign language—for example, in doctors' appointments and so on, and also just general access to education. So, I'm going to be taking that forward with my colleague, the Cabinet Secretary for Education. We are currently looking at a whole series of issues around adult learning, for example, and the Additional Learning Needs and Education Tribunal (Wales) Bill and so on. So, I will certainly be taking that forward. But I will also undertake to bring a statement back in my own portfolio under my equalities hat, saying, across the Government as a whole, what we're doing for BSL and what we can do to improve it. So, I'll certainly be very happy to say that I'll do that.