, Plenary
Questions to the Minister for Climate Change
'Future Wales' identifies 10 pre-assessed areas for wind energy developments of national significance. There are currently 10 developments of national significance in progress within or partly within the pre-assessed areas. Eight are at the pre-application…
, Plenary
Questions to the Minister for Climate Change
Yes, thank you, Mike Hedges. As Mike Hedges will know, we've got a very good overflow scheme, which is a natural solution in his constituency, I think it is, at the top, which benefits my constituency. And that's a very good example of catchment area…
, Plenary
Questions to the Minister for Climate Change
Well, I think there are a couple of misconceptions there. The first is confusing England for Wales, which is a very common problem on the benches opposite. The UK Government has legislated to set targets for water companies in England to reduce sewage…
, Plenary
Questions to the Minister for Climate Change
Investment, legislative drivers and a robust regulatory framework has led to 42 per cent of our inland waters achieving good ecological status. We are committed to improving water quality but we cannot do this alone. We need to take an integrated catchment…
, Plenary
Statement by the Minister for Climate Change: The Homelessness Action Plan
Thank you, Jenny Rathbone, for those excellent points. And the answer is a really complicated one because, as I said, it really depends on the person that you're talking about, because every individual has a different and complex set of needs. The further…
, Plenary
Statement by the Minister for Climate Change: The Homelessness Action Plan
Well, Laura Anne Jones, you started really well and then you went rather downhill. So, we have not failed to tackle homelessness. Wales has a very proud record of tackling homelessness, and in the pandemic, we have done considerably better than our neighbours…
, Plenary
Statement by the Minister for Climate Change: The Homelessness Action Plan
Yes, thank you very much, Mike. I completely agree that house building is fundamental to this, of course, and social house building. One of the reasons we have the ambitious 20,000 target for homes for social rent is exactly because of that. We absolutely…
, Plenary
Statement by the Minister for Climate Change: The Homelessness Action Plan
Yes, it's a thread, isn't it, that runs through the action plan. So, in the preamble, we talk—. The action plan isn't my action plan; it's the homelessness action group's plan presented to us, but we're very happy to accept it and I think it's an excellent…
, Plenary
Statement by the Minister for Climate Change: The Homelessness Action Plan
Diolch, John. I very much welcome the committee's engagement on this, and I look forward to discussing both the public audit report with you, and, indeed, the future commissioner has recently done a housing report as well, which I know the committee is aware…
, Plenary
Statement by the Minister for Climate Change: The Homelessness Action Plan
Diolch, Mabon. I completely agree with the basic premise of your contribution. Rough-sleeping is the scourge, the visible and most appalling form of homelessness, but there are many other sorts of homelessness, and if the pandemic has shown us anything, it's…
, Plenary
Statement by the Minister for Climate Change: The Homelessness Action Plan
Well, as usual, Janet Finch-Saunders has read out a series of ill-thought-out statistics, many of which I've actually set out in my own statement, and made—well, I don't know quite what she was doing. She's calling for me to take action immediately—I am today…
, Plenary
Statement by the Minister for Climate Change: The Homelessness Action Plan
Diolch, Dirprwy Lywydd. Today, I am launching the Welsh Government’s ending homelessness action plan. This is a plan that takes forward our 2019 strategy for ending homelessness and the recommendations of the expert homelessness action group. It sets the…
, Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government's Net Zero Wales Plan
Pleasure.
, Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government's Net Zero Wales Plan
So, yes, Joyce. The plan sets out our action over carbon budget 2, and obviously we have to track and drive the implementation. I touched on a little bit of the delivery monitoring. We've got legislation, so we've got statutory duties to do it. We've got…
, Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government's Net Zero Wales Plan
That's the same question the other way round, Janet, so I think you'll have to wait until the budget comes out for that.
, Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government's Net Zero Wales Plan
Thanks, Janet. So, the net-zero delivery plan describes how Wales will take action to meet the targets and the financial budget process, and we'll then consider the funding applications. You'll have further details when we publish the draft budget on 20…
, Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government's Net Zero Wales Plan
No, because TAN 15 still exists—the current one still exists—and, of course, the Welsh Government still has the power to call things in if they think they're egregious breaches of the policy.
, Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government's Net Zero Wales Plan
Okay, so it doesn't do that, just to be clear. The present TAN stays in place, so TAN 15 already has quite a large amount of protections from building on flood plains. What the new TAN was doing was introducing the maps that show the effect of climate change…
, Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government's Net Zero Wales Plan
The net-zero plan is about carbon reduction; that's what it's about. So, it's not about the nature emergency, but we know that the heating of the planet is causing much of the nature emergency, so if we can't control the temperature, we're going to get the…
, Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government's Net Zero Wales Plan
It's a little bit more complicated than that. It's because there's a whole series of incremental things that we need to do—so, fuel switching, possibly carbon capture, energy suppression. The best way of decarbonising the energy grid is to use less energy…
, Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government's Net Zero Wales Plan
No sector is easy to decarbonise, and it depends: I always want to say, as I was taught at law school, 'Credit can be given for writing "it depends" in the margin of your paper.' So, you know, it depends how the technology is changing, who owns the primary…
, Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government's Net Zero Wales Plan
So, just to say that we are working very hard on a deforestation policy, Jenny, across the piece. I think probably, Chair, it's worth having a session on that all by itself; it's quite a complicated set of things.
, Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government's Net Zero Wales Plan
There's a big difference between an overarching policy directive and individual targets. So, our overarching policy directive is to get our carbon footprint down. There's a big difference between that and saying, 'We will do that by, I don't know, 1 GW of…
, Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government's Net Zero Wales Plan
So, Jenny, one of the things we've just been talking about is the quite elaborate set of ministerial meetings that we have, and the purpose of those is, obviously, to put some pressure on all of the Governments, from the others on us where we're not doing…
, Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee
Scrutiny of the Welsh Government's Net Zero Wales Plan
Chair, I don't know the answer to that. I'm just going to check if one of my officials does. I haven't got anybody from marine with me, so we may have to write to you. But just to check whether one of the officials wants to come in.
