My Lords, I support the amendment of my old friend, the noble and learned Lord, Lord Morris of Aberavon, and also support a parallel point which was advanced by the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Harries of Pentregarth, about Braille.
I accept the arguments forcefully put by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Morris of Aberavon, but one can take the matter slightly further. The issue is whether the translation of certain documents from Welsh into English or English into Welsh should be regarded as relevant expenditure under Clause 26. The next issue is whether the position of the Welsh language is so
different from all the other cases of which one can conceive in this matter as to make it unique; that is also important.
To deal with that, I ask the Committee to indulge me for a few minutes in looking at the Act of Union of 1536; I appreciate that not many of us were around at that time. However, it has cast a long shadow over the land and nation of Wales over many centuries. The opening words of that Act were:
“ALBEIT the Dominion, Principality and Country of Wales justly and righteously is, and ever hath been incorporated, annexed, united and subject to and under the Imperial Crown of this Realm”.
It then goes on to say that there is therefore no Wales and never has been any Wales at all, as a land and nation.
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Parallel with that general declaration, which must be one of the most drastic and impudent in legislation, was an attack upon the Welsh language. Nothing would count in so far as the validity of documents in court was concerned unless they were in the English tongue. There have been many amendments to that; one was the Welsh Courts Act 1942, which dealt with the minor matter of the right of witnesses and parties to speak the Welsh language in a Welsh court. The main Act, referred to by the noble and learned Lord, Lord Morris, was the Welsh Language Act 1967, which brought about the principle, which one cannot overstress, of equal validity. That meant that anything that was done in Welsh was of equal validity as if it had been done in English. That would be the case, for example, for a will, a conveyance, a lease, an instrument of transfer, a deed of settlement or anything of that nature. Where it dealt with an official form, there was a machinery set up to produce such forms with that automatic validity. If the amendment is not conceded, I submit that one would be undermining that principle of equal validity. It is a small, narrow and confined matter, but one of absolute principle.
I have dwelt on these historical background features also for this reason. I regard the noble and learned Lord as a person of considerable reason and good will. Even in this season of good will, however, it may well be that he will be mildly tempted to say, “Ah well, much as we appreciate the position of the Welsh language and admire its situation—one of the oldest living languages in Europe, spoken for at least 1,500 years and probably more—we do not think this necessary, nor that we should do it. We are afraid that a whole Babel of other languages will be brought into consideration at the same time, and there will be people from all parts of the world using different languages in our British community saying, ‘Let us have the same position as the Welsh language’”. If that argument were advanced—and it may be that I do the noble and learned Lord no justice whatever—it would be utterly spurious. The position of the Welsh language is defined in statute by the Acts I have mentioned, those of 1942, 1967 and the Welsh Language Act 1993. That last was brought about by the initiative of our late colleague Lord Roberts of Conwy, a splendid statesman of a man; we miss him very much. Those three Acts put the Welsh language in a wholly unique position.