Well, voters don't. In the situation regarding Welsh-medium, you answered that a little bit earlier, but I have concerns about capacity. Workforce capacity you've mentioned. To actually be registered you need staff who are qualified. There's clearly a need to get more staff, because in your own paper you say that the report in 2016 said you do not have the childcare capacity in Wales at the moment. Do you believe that you can actually deliver the workforce to meet that capacity, first of all through the English medium, but secondly through the Welsh medium as well? Because there's a clear need to look at it. You talk about 30 by 2020. By the way, 30 is nothing big when you consider the whole of Wales. Do you actually think you've got that workforce capacity set up before this is fully rolled out?
I hope, Chair, you'll appreciate that in our submission to you we've been very open. This is challenging. This is. To get to where we want to go is a huge challenge. Can we do it? Yes we can. And I don't say that glibly. Let me suggest some of the ways why. We have confidence that we can do this if everybody is working together across the sector, across the local authorities. Let me talk broadly about capacity, first of all, including English and Welsh-medium provision for children with complex needs, provision for children with disabilities—all of this. First of all, this is being—. The work that we're doing to increase both capacity in terms of trained staff and qualified staff: we have the 10-year plan that I mentioned, which has already been announced. We're working through it. We're working through it with the sector. So, we're identifying not only broadly at a national level where we need to develop those qualifications, but also at a regional, geographic level as well, and that's being taken forward. We've engaged with the 22 authorities—not just the pilot areas as well on this. So, beyond the pilot areas, we also have intense engagement. As you can see from what I've said before, it's rolling out progressively, but with all 22 authorities we're working with them on their childcare sufficiency assessments to identify where their shortages are.
What have the pilot programmes actually shown you about this, and how are you going to move this forward?
Well, it's precisely that. So, within the pilot areas, we have a greater depth of analysis now of where both the workforce and the physical provisions are. Whether those are maintained or non-maintained or third sector or school facilities or whatever, we've got a much deeper granulation of identifying where that is, and we're working, then, with those authorities, with the capital moneys that we've allocated to this and the workforce development, and with local colleges, to develop the workforce and the physical constraints. But we're also doing that with the other 22, with all the 22 authorities as well, in anticipation of the wider roll-out. They're not being left out of this. And by the way, it's not only the Cardiffs and the Newports; it's all the other ones where there isn't full roll-out. We're engaged with them deeply at the moment with that analysis on their childcare sufficiency assessments, both in terms of workforce, but also physical provision. So, we're doing that already. We are looking as well, as this is rolled out, around the issue of co-location. Now, co-location is a fruitful way to look at future development. It doesn't mean, by the way, that we exclude the third sector or social enterprise approach, or the independent sector, but co-location could be key to the roll-out of this in the right areas where it can be done, because then we avoid any fracture between the education hours and the childcare hours: the physical transportation of children from one location to another. So, we're engaged with the 22 authorities on that: where could that be developed, who would be the providers that would do it and do they have the workforce to scale up to do it? If not, how do they talk to local colleges to do that? So, we're doing that at the moment. I mentioned we've put the £1 million additional funding into the meithrin over the next two years, targeting 40 new Welsh-medium groups by 2021, which pretty much coincides with the full roll-out of this. It's part of the aim of an additional 150 over the next decade of meithrin. So, all of those things, David, give us a confidence that we're going to be in the right place.