Tories Urge Pugh to denounce criticism

[Harold Schiffman]

* <http://icwales.icnetwork.co.uk/0100news/newspolitics/tm_objectid=16610374&method=full&siteid=50082&headline=tories-urge-pugh-to-denounce-criticism-name_page.html>Tories
urge Pugh to denounce criticism*




Jan 21 2006

**

Martin Shipton, Western Mail

  Welsh Conservatives yesterday demanded that Culture Minister Alun Pugh
distance himself from 'inflammatory' comments made by his spin doctor about
the Welsh language. The comments came in an article on proposals from the
Welsh Language Board for an independent regulator to monitor the rights of
Welsh-language speakers in the public sector. Mr Pugh's special adviser
Cathy Owens - referred to as an Assembly Government spokeswoman - was
reported to have said that Ministers would not countenance 'Quebec-style'
language laws in Wales, even though the Assembly Government understood the
Welsh Language Board was going through its 'death throes'.

She went on to say, 'It's for elected politicians to agree the way forward
for public policy in Wales. We are talking about a situation where English
speakers have rights too. Turkeys don't vote for Christmas but no one voted
for the Language Board either.' In a joint statement, Tory Assembly group
leader Nick Bourne and the party's Welsh-language spokeswoman Lisa Francis
said, 'These are astonishingly inflammatory comments by a government
spokesperson. 'The Welsh Language Board has a clear responsibility in
relation to the Welsh language. Ill-advised and na•ve comments such as those
from the spokesperson contribute nothing to the legitimate debate about
additional rights for Welsh-language speakers.

'The creation of the Welsh Language Board took the Welsh language out of a
fraught political arena. It is clear from outrageous statements such as
those reported today that the Assembly Government is hell-bent on turning
the language into a political football. 'We will be writing to the Culture
Minister insisting that he denounces the comments made by a government
spokesperson on his behalf. 'The Minister's unelected spokesperson refers to
the 'death throes' of the Welsh Language Board.

'With further comments such as those attributed to the Minister's office,
the Assembly Government could suffer such a fate in the very near future.'
The spokesperson quoted in the Daily Post story was identified as Ms Owens,
who also advises the Cabinet on media relations. In December 2004, the trade
union Prospect received an apology from the Assembly Government following
complaints about Ms Owen's allegedly hectoring manner towards civil service
press officers based in Cardiff Bay.

Ms Owens's comments on the language issue were also criticised by the Welsh
Language Society. Huw Lewis, the chairman of Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg's
Free Communities Group, said, 'The comments were inappropriate and displayed
a fundamental lack of understanding of what we are talking about when we
raise issues relating to Welsh language rights. 'It was also wrong to
suggest that the Welsh language only belongs to today's Welsh speakers when
the basis of the Assembly Government's own language policy document Iaith
Pawb (Everyone's Language) is that the language belongs to all the people of
Wales, both today and in the years to come.'

Both Mr Pugh and Welsh Language Board chair Meri Huws said they would not be
responding to the Welsh Conservatives' statement. In a policy document
published on Thursday, the Welsh Language Board called for 'absolute
linguistic rights' to include:

The right to correspond with public bodies through Welsh;

The right to receive and fill in forms in Welsh;

The right to contribute to a public inquiry or meeting in Welsh, and

The right to receive public telephone services - such as helplines - in
Welsh.

It also said a set of fundamental rights would allow public-sector workers
to speak Welsh in the workplace if they wanted.

On Tuesday Cymdeithas Yr Iaith will be holding a public meeting in the Wales
Millennium Centre at which the group will outline its own proposals for a
new Welsh Language Act conferring new rights on Welsh speakers and extending
certain provisions to the private sector. Cymdeithas is also calling for a
Council for the Welsh Language to be set up with a wide range of community
representatives after the scrapping of the Welsh Language Board next year.



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