Cabinet is not anti-Welsh, says deputy leader

A deputy leader in a council has denied the cabinet is "anti-Welsh" after saying some parents "couldn't give a toss" if their children go to a Welsh-language school in a town in south-west Wales.

Paul Miller, deputy leader of Pembrokeshire council, and the cabinet voted on 28 April to ask the Director of Education to find out the demand for Welsh-language schools - a move which seven councillors voted to send back for reconsideration.

It comes as the Welsh government passed a major new bill to boost the number of pupils studying in Welsh.

Huw Murphy, leader of the Independent group, said Mr Miller's comments had left him "frustrated and upset."

Every year council cabinets discusses how it is going to expand Welsh-medium education.

At one of these meetings on 28 April, Pembrokeshire council's cabinet backed an amendment by Mr Miller to ask the Department of Education to find out whether parents are sending their children to schools because they teach in Welsh or if they like other aspects of the school such as teaching quality.

The amendment was "called in" on Wednesday, after opposition councillors reacted angrily to Mr Miller's comments.

During a fiery meeting, Mr Millar accused Mr Murphy of "making something out of nothing" and said he should be "deeply ashamed" of the call in request.

"I don't accept for a second that we should do anything to discourage anyone from making the choice that they want to make, be that a Welsh-medium education or an English-medium education," Mr Millar told the BBC subsequently.

He said that parity between the two languages was "absolute".

Councillors voted to send the decision back to the cabinet, which can decide to either stick with the original amendment or change their decision.

At the end of the meeting, Mr Murphy called on Jon Harvey, council leader, to appoint a Welsh speaker to the cabinet as there are currently no fluent Welsh speakers in the cabinet.

In a letter to council leader Jon Harvey, seen by BBC Wales, Welsh language commissioner Efa Gruffudd Jones expressed concern.

She said any subsequent action would likely go "against Welsh government policy" and potentially harm Pembrokeshire's WESP (Welsh in Education Strategic Plan) targets and "convey negative messages to parents who are considering Welsh-medium education for their children".

She also questioned why the amendment focused on choices about Welsh language education and not parents who choose English language education.

The commissioner also said there is "duty on local authorities to encourage the demand for Welsh-medium education".

She pointed to the establishment of Ysgol Caer Elen in Haverfordwest as a success and said: "It's clear there is a demand for Welsh-medium education in Pembrokeshire".

Mr Millar said he considered her letter a "pretty extraordinary political intervention in a democratically elected body by the commissioner".

He said the local authority had facilitated growth in the Welsh language "extremely successfully", and was committed to ensuring that parents in Pembrokeshire had the choice they "deserved".

"But if you're saying we should be building Welsh-medium schools where there might be absolutely no demand for them what[so]ever, I would say that that's crackers, isn't it?," he said.

"Surely we should understand where there is demand for Welsh-medium education and where there isn't and we should work hard to invest to make sure we're meeting the demand in the places where it exists," he added.

When challenged over the use of the phrase "couldn't give a toss" in the cabinet meeting, Mr Millar said he was "repeating the language that was used to me".

"Uncomfortable or not, there was a group of mums in my constituency who said that to me," he said.

He said the parents had told him they were not interested in Ysgol Caer Elen being a Welsh-medium school, but only in the fact that it was a good school with good facilities and free transport.

"There is a need to understand who is choosing to access those schools for the medium - so because it's a Welsh-medium school - and who is choosing those schools because it is the only available alternative perhaps to the catchment school that is not performing in the way that it should be, or does not have the facilities that the parents feel it should," he said.

"I think this has been blown up out of all proportion," he said, adding that suggestions he was anti-Welsh "could not be further from the truth".