Liz Saville Roberts

Diolch yn fawr iawn, Cadeirydd. I congratulate the hon. Member for Bury North (Mr Frith), who spoke excellently, and there have been many excellent speeches today. I will speak briefly, but I want to raise some specific points. First, I thank Valerie Dunmore, who is the chair of the Society of Women Writers and Journalists, which was established in 1894. She came to see me specifically to raise these issues, and this gives us an idea of what is at stake. Turning to the creative industries in Wales, we have heard how much the creative industries contribute in other areas, and in Wales itself, the figure was £1.5 billion. There are over 3,500 creative businesses in Wales; that number is increasing and the freelance workforce is growing. These industries all play an important part in preserving and spreading the Welsh language and culture. Film, drama, literature and music all sustain and produce a unique Welsh way of life, through the medium of both Welsh and English. In February this year, newspapers and news organisations across Wales devoted their leading articles to this issue, warning that what is threatening their industry could have potentially catastrophic consequences for Welsh journalism. Creative groups in Wales, such as Teledwyr Annibynnol Cymru, say that they do not support an opt-out process. Instead, they suggest that any new regime should require creators to opt in, meaning that web crawlers cannot simply scrape content unless permitted to do so. I wanted to bring the Wales-specific issues to the fore because the risk is that we always assume that the Welsh language works in the same context as that of the English language. It does not. We look at English creators as being vulnerable, but Welsh creators are even more so. I urge the Minister to respond by stating what impact assessment has been carried out in relation to the creative industries in Wales, and specifically the Welsh language, given its vulnerabilities.