Culture, Communications, Welsh Language, Sport, and International Relations Committee

Dydd Mercher, 16 Gorffennaf 2025

Dechrau: 09:29
Cyfraniadau: 115
Geiriau a lefarwyd: 12,583

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Dechreuodd y cyfarfod am 09:29.

1. Cyflwyniad, ymddiheuriadau, dirprwyon a datgan buddiannau

Bore da a chroeso i'r cyfarfod heddiw o'r Pwyllgor Diwylliant, Cyfathrebu, y Gymraeg, Chwaraeon a Chysylltiadau Rhyngwladol. Dŷn ni wedi derbyn ymddiheuriadau bore yma gan Mick Antoniw ac mae Mike Hedges yn dirprwyo ar ei ran. Mae croeso mawr i chi, Mike. A oes gan unrhyw Aelodau fuddiannau i'w datgan? Na, dwi ddim yn gweld bod.

09:29Gwylio #Cofnod swyddogol

2. Ymchwiliad Cymraeg i bawb? - Sesiwn dystiolaeth gyda'r Gweinidog

Delyth Jewell

Felly, fe wnawn ni symud yn syth ymlaen at eitem 2, ein hymchwiliad 'Cymraeg i bawb?', ac mae gennym ni sesiwn dystiolaeth weinidogol gydag Ysgrifennydd y Cabinet dros Gyllid a'r Gymraeg, Mark Drakeford. Gwnaf ofyn i'r Ysgrifennydd Cabinet gyflwyno ei hun a'r tystion eraill ar gyfer y record.

09:29Gwylio #

Culture, Communications, Welsh Language, Sport, and International Relations Committee, 16 Gorffennaf 2025 | Open Senedd

Mark Drakeford

Chair, I think that's a pretty good description of what we need, because I think what Gareth is talking about there is a sort of ecosystem where you create a system where you have leaders in the field, respected organisations that people can look to and can rely on, but where, around that, you have a system that supports the development of skills that will be needed for the future that is responsive to where innovation comes from. In this field, it can come from all sorts of organisations—it can be very, very small organisations that will have an innovative idea that they will be developing. I think that is what we are trying to create in Wales. So, we do have specific investments in Canolfan Bedwyr, in Cardiff University, in those very high level and very particular higher education courses. You can do an MSc in Bangor in language technologies. You can do one in Cardiff University in natural language processing and in artificial intelligence. So, at one end of the spectrum, you need to be creating the skills.

I myself believe, it's slightly to one side, but I think it's relevant, that the economic future will be one in which work will move to skills rather than skills will move to work. So, if you create a pool of people who are skilled, then work will gravitate to them. We've seen it in the cyber security industry in south-east Wales, and we need to do the same in this field as well. To do that, you've got to create a conveyor belt, haven't you? You've got to have people coming through the system.

There are a series of things that we invest in as well: the Technocamps scheme in schools, teaching children to code, sparking their interest. For some people, that will be long-term careers that they will take from that. The work we've done in M-SParc in Anglesey with the hackathon that they've been running there. Those are things that are designed to create the pipeline of people who may end up on those very high-level courses that are run in our university. So, that's the way in which we are trying to develop an ecosystem where there are, what they'd be called elsewhere, anchor points. The anchor points are the universities, Canolfan Bedwyr ac yn y blaen. But around that, you've also got this more experimental set of things going on, because this is, by its nature, an experimental area.

Dim cyfieithiad Cymraeg wedi'i gyhoeddi10:17Gwylio #Cofnod swyddogol

Mark Drakeford

Well, Chair, there is a tension here, isn't there? The legislation is data protection legislation and sometimes that is approached in what people who need to use data regard as an over-precautionary way, but the tension is that this is people's data. The news today has been dominated by an example where data ended up being shared that shouldn't have been shared, with all sorts of very highly adverse consequences. The public invest an enormous amount of money in creating this data, and there therefore is a public interest in making sure that the data is used properly for public purposes, of the sort that Canolfan Bedwyr is involved in.

I would like a regime around data that is enabling but doesn't compromise on those very important protections that are there for data. If we choose to share it, we have a right to expect that that sharing would be respected and our data wouldn't just be shared without any controls over it. So, that is the tension. Depending on which bit you're in, you are likely to think that the other half of it is either overdemanding or overprotective. Our job as a Government is to try and help navigate that in a way that has the public interest as our key guide in it all.

There is a particular area where we are concerned to try to do more than block some inhibitions. One of the things we are very lucky in, in the Welsh language, is that we have huge archives of material. The Welsh Government invested a significant sum of money—as I remember, because it was the last time I was the finance Minister—in making the broadcast archive at the national library happen. It has hours and hours and hours of Welsh language material in that archive. I am not sure that using it is as easy as it needs to be for these data sharing purposes.

The development Jeremy was talking about, where you get the transcription as you go along, what that depends on is a huge bank behind it of material, so that the artificial intelligence learns from all of that and then gets much better at what it's doing. We need to unlock some of that material that is available and could be used for data sharing, and therefore future developments. That's an area we've been talking about recently. We're looking to try to have some meetings with people who have some stake in those archives to try and get it released more quickly.

Dim cyfieithiad Cymraeg wedi'i gyhoeddi10:24Gwylio #Cofnod swyddogol

Mark Drakeford

I agree with lots of the general points Mike Hedges was making. Where you draw the line in terms of percentages is, I think, something you could debate. The commission suggested 40 per cent as the figure they would use to distinguish those areas where Welsh is spoken every day compared to areas where it's in less use, so I think we could debate the percentage. But the basic proposition that we want to have parts of Wales at least where the language is just used every day in every part of life seems to me to be absolutely one that we want to protect and encourage. Prosiect BRO is part of how we are learning more about the detailed analysis of those communities with a higher density of Welsh speakers.

We're expecting the project to develop a model to identify and to continue to monitor language shift. Because that's what we are talking about here, aren't we? The paradox of Welsh in contemporary times is that it is losing ground in its cadarnleoedd, in the heartlands, while it is gaining ground in parts of Wales where the language is less frequently spoken. The biggest growth in the number of Welsh speakers in the last census was in Canton in Cardiff, and the greatest loss is in Sir Gâr, Carmarthen, where I grew up, where you would hear Welsh spoken all the time. If you went ‘down town’, as my mother would have said—‘Are you going down town today?’—Welsh would be around you all the time. As you passed people in the street, they would be speaking Welsh. If you went into a shop, they would be speaking Welsh. We've lost ground there, there's no doubt at all. That's where the greatest loss in Welsh speaking has happened, in these heartlands. That's partly why we started the commission, to look at those areas too.

Prosiect BRO is absolutely part of that. We're funding it. It is a project that draws on a lot of work that has been done in Scotland and Ireland in this field, and expertise there. It's a combination of Trinity St David here, Jesus College in Oxford and the University of the Highlands and Islands in Scotland. Those are the partners in Prosiect BRO. We have recently provided an additional investment to the project for it to concentrate on Carmarthenshire and the post-industrial south Wales Valleys in that part of Wales, because of concerns at the degree to which Welsh is no longer a community language to the extent that it once was in that part of Wales.

The research team are out in those communities where Welsh continues to be the everyday language—in Gwaen-Cae-Gurwen, in Tregaron, in Llangefni, for example. One of the recommendations of the commission's first report is that we should do a particular piece of work in a community—they propose in north-west Wales—where the language is at risk. It's often in working-class communities. That’s another thing about the Welsh language, isn't it? There's a great comparison with Catalan. Catalan was the language of the aristocracy, and Castilian was the language of working people. In Wales, English is the language of the aristocracy, and Welsh is the language of ordinary people. So we will take that recommendation. We are very close now to identifying that community to do some of the work that Mike has suggested.

Dim cyfieithiad Cymraeg wedi'i gyhoeddi10:35Gwylio #Cofnod swyddogol

Mark Drakeford

Diolch yn fawr i Lee am y cwestiwn. Dwi eisiau rhoi mwy o sylw i ddefnyddio'r Gymraeg yn y gweithle. Achos, fel dwi'n dweud yn aml, mae dau beth—. Mae dau beth, dwy uchelgais, gyda ni fel Llywodraeth. Rŷn ni eisiau creu miliwn o siaradwyr, ond rŷn ni eisiau dyblu'r defnydd o'r Gymraeg hefyd. Ble allwn ni wneud hynny? Wel, mae cyfleoedd naturiol yn dod atom ni yn y gweithle. Dyna pam roeddwn i'n awyddus i wneud mwy yn fewnol. Os ŷn ni'n mynd i ofyn i bobl eraill i'w wneud e, bydd yn rhaid i ni ddangos sut rŷn ni'n ei wneud e fel Llywodraeth. Roedd Jeremy wedi rhoi'r ffigurau i chi am y cynnydd sydd wedi bod yn nifer y bobl yn Llywodraeth Cymru sy'n dysgu Cymraeg ac yn defnyddio'r Gymraeg hefyd. Dyna pam mae posibiliadau technegol yn bwysig i ni, achos mae'n rhoi mwy o gyfleon i bobl ddefnyddio'r Gymraeg sydd gyda nhw.

Rŷn ni'n dibynnu ar y Ganolfan Dysgu Cymraeg Genedlaethol hefyd i wneud gwaith pwysig yn y maes yma. 'Cymraeg Gwaith', y rhaglen maen nhw'n ei rhedeg, mae mwy na 30,000 o bobl nawr wedi bod yn rhan o'r cynllun yna, ac maen nhw newydd greu rhaglen newydd i bobl sy'n gweithio yn y maes iechyd a gofal cymdeithasol. Mae'r cynnig rhagweithiol wedi bod yn y maes yna nawr am bron i ddegawd, ac mae pethau wedi newid yn sylweddol. Pan ŷch chi'n gweld pobl gyda'r bathodyn sy'n dweud 'Siarad Cymraeg', rŷch chi'n fodlon siarad Cymraeg â nhw, achos rŷch chi'n gwybod eu bod nhw'n mynd i ymateb. So, mae mwy o waith yn mynd ymlaen fanna. Mae rhaglen 'Arwain mewn gwlad ddwyieithog', rhaglen rŷn ni'n ei rhedeg. Rŷn ni wedi defnyddio'r rhaglen yn fewnol, ond rŷn ni'n ei defnyddio hi gyda'r awdurdodau lleol, a hefyd pobl yn y sector preifat. Mae'n hybu pobl i greu mwy o gyfleon i ddefnyddio'r Gymraeg yn y gweithle.

Roedd Lee yn gofyn, 'Beth am y dyfodol?' Wel, dydyn ni ddim wedi cyfeirio'r bore yma at y fframwaith cyfeirio cyffredin Ewropeaidd ar gyfer ieithoedd, CEFR. So, roedd hwnnw'n rhan o'r Bil a oedd wedi mynd trwy'r Senedd. I fi, mae hwnna'n mynd—. Wel, mae'r potensial yna i'r CEFR wneud lot mwy yn y dyfodol i ddangos i bobl ifanc bod y ffaith eu bod nhw'n dysgu Cymraeg yn yr ysgol, fod hwnna yn mynd i greu cyfleon iddyn nhw yn y gweithle yn y dyfodol. Ar hyn o bryd, pan fydd pobl yn hysbysebu swydd, yr unig ddewis sydd gyda nhw yw dweud, 'essential' neu 'desirable', onid oes e? Yn y dyfodol, bydd cyflogwyr yn gallu dweud, 'Rŷn ni'n edrych am rywun gyda gallu yn y Gymraeg ar lefel B2 neu B1', neu beth bynnag yw e, a bydd pobl yn yr ysgol yn gallu gweld, 'Wel, mae'r Gymraeg sydd gyda fi, mae honno yn mynd i fod yn ddefnyddiol i fi os ydw i’n mynd i roi i mewn am y swydd yna'. So, am y dyfodol, dwi'n meddwl y bydd y CEFR yn newid sut mae pobl yn meddwl am y Gymraeg yn y gweithle, a gwneud hynny mewn ffordd sy'n mynd i fod yn gefnogol i'r Gymraeg yn yr ysgol a'r Gymraeg y tu fas i'r ysgol hefyd.

10:44Gwylio #Cofnod swyddogol

Culture, Communications, Welsh Language, Sport, and International Relations Committee

1. Cyflwyniad, ymddiheuriadau, dirprwyon a datgan buddiannau

2. Ymchwiliad Cymraeg i bawb? - Sesiwn dystiolaeth gyda'r Gweinidog

Culture, Communications, Welsh Language, Sport, and International Relations Committee

1. Cyflwyniad, ymddiheuriadau, dirprwyon a datgan buddiannau

2. Ymchwiliad Cymraeg i bawb? - Sesiwn dystiolaeth gyda'r Gweinidog

3. Papurau i'w nodi

4. Cynnig o dan Reol Sefydlog Rhif 17.42(ix) i benderfynu gwahardd y cyhoedd o weddill y cyfarfod

Agor y cyfarfod

1. Cyflwyniad, ymddiheuriadau, dirprwyon a datgan buddiannau

2. Ymchwiliad Cymraeg i bawb? - Sesiwn dystiolaeth gyda'r Gweinidog

Agor y cyfarfod

1. Cyflwyniad, ymddiheuriadau, dirprwyon a datgan buddiannau

2. Ymchwiliad Cymraeg i bawb? - Sesiwn dystiolaeth gyda'r Gweinidog

3. Papurau i'w nodi

4. Cynnig o dan Reol Sefydlog Rhif 17.42(ix) i benderfynu gwahardd y cyhoedd o weddill y cyfarfod