, Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee
Draft Environmental Protection (Single-use Plastic) Bill - evidence session with the Minister for Climate Change
Certainly, Joyce. So, I'm going to start this explanation and then I'm going to hand over to one of my officials to give you a much more detailed one. Basically, we've used the European Commission's 'Life Cycle Inventories of Single Use Plastic Products and…
, Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee
Draft Environmental Protection (Single-use Plastic) Bill - evidence session with the Minister for Climate Change
I think they're right to be concerned, if we're honest. This is a very complicated area and there are lots of different opinions about what constitutes 'oxo-degradable' and so on. So, there's a lot of research going on; there's no settled scientific…
, Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee
Draft Environmental Protection (Single-use Plastic) Bill - evidence session with the Minister for Climate Change
Yes. Polystyrene is a form of plastic anyway, so—.
, Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee
Draft Environmental Protection (Single-use Plastic) Bill - evidence session with the Minister for Climate Change
No. This is about plastics, this Bill, at the moment. I'll be interested in what the committee has to say about that, because the whole point about this is that we're attempting to prohibit both the littering and the environmental damage of single-use plastic…
, Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee
Draft Environmental Protection (Single-use Plastic) Bill - evidence session with the Minister for Climate Change
We will have the ability to add things to the list of banned items that's in the Bill. To some extent, Janet, we're in the hands of your committee about how easy that is, because what procedure we use to add them in will be very much part of the…
, Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee
Draft Environmental Protection (Single-use Plastic) Bill - evidence session with the Minister for Climate Change
Yes, I agree, Janet. I'm really committed to getting wet wipes onto this list. One of the really good things about the way that this legislation is framed is that it gives us the opportunity to add further products in the future. And I thought it was a very…
, Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee
Draft Environmental Protection (Single-use Plastic) Bill - evidence session with the Minister for Climate Change
On that point, actually, just to say that we have been widely helping people access the research that shows a very different outcome from the widely accepted one. I had a very good meeting with WRAP earlier this week, in which we were discussing that, for…
, Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee
Draft Environmental Protection (Single-use Plastic) Bill - evidence session with the Minister for Climate Change
Yes, I know what you mean. Thanks very much, Delyth. We've included it because there was overwhelming support for the inclusion in the consultation, and a lot of respondents wanted us to include many more products as well. So, on that basis, as a result of…
, Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee
Draft Environmental Protection (Single-use Plastic) Bill - evidence session with the Minister for Climate Change
Thank you.
, Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee
Draft Environmental Protection (Single-use Plastic) Bill - evidence session with the Minister for Climate Change
So, we've been signalling our policy intent about single-use products for quite a long time. I think you'd have had to have been living in a bit of a cave in Wales not to understand that this was coming. So, we're not intending to give a grace period for…
, Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee
Draft Environmental Protection (Single-use Plastic) Bill - evidence session with the Minister for Climate Change
Go on, Nick.
, Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee
Draft Environmental Protection (Single-use Plastic) Bill - evidence session with the Minister for Climate Change
Diolch, Gadeirydd. It's very nice to be with you this morning. So, we think the practical effect of the definitions that we've used is exactly the same, but the drafting isn't identical as we've sought to clarify the text or to remove wording we considered…
, Local Government and Housing Committee
Ministerial scrutiny session - Minister for Climate Change
Apologies. Thank you, John. Bye.
, Local Government and Housing Committee
Ministerial scrutiny session - Minister for Climate Change
Thank you very much, and apologies for the coughing.
, Local Government and Housing Committee
Ministerial scrutiny session - Minister for Climate Change
As you know, John, we've been running the optimised retrofit programme for quite a considerable time now. And one of the things that we've always wanted to do is to make sure that the learning coming out of the ORP, as we call it, is picked up when we spread…
, Local Government and Housing Committee
Ministerial scrutiny session - Minister for Climate Change
Sorry about the coughing. [Laughter.]
, Local Government and Housing Committee
Ministerial scrutiny session - Minister for Climate Change
Certainly. So, we commissioned work around improving the board's terms of reference and its governance, responding to the changing operating environment for RSLs since the establishment in 2016. So, again, Jayne, this was a board that was established with the…
, Local Government and Housing Committee
Ministerial scrutiny session - Minister for Climate Change
Yes, thanks, Jayne. We're absolutely committed to continually improving the way that regulation operates to achieve the outcomes of protecting tenants and investment in social housing, but, more importantly, really, to achieve an overall better outcome for…
, Local Government and Housing Committee
Ministerial scrutiny session - Minister for Climate Change
Well, we will do a proper 'lessons learned' once we’ve actually got it implemented, but I’m tempted to be a bit irreverent here, Sam, and say, ‘Don’t try and do a fundamental rejig of the entire housing market in an Act of the Senedd.' I think if we were…
, Local Government and Housing Committee
Ministerial scrutiny session - Minister for Climate Change
Okay, so—. Well, it’s interesting to know how the calibration works. So, I’ve asked for Rent Smart Wales’s data to be interrogated a little bit more, Sam, so we can understand rather better what the disparity between the two—. I've met with Propertymark, and…
, Local Government and Housing Committee
Ministerial scrutiny session - Minister for Climate Change
I’m not sure where you’re getting that figure from, Sam, because that’s not the figure that we have. I’ve just asked for a review of the figures we’ve got from Rent Smart Wales, but the figures I currently have are, between January and August this year, 3,233…
, Local Government and Housing Committee
Ministerial scrutiny session - Minister for Climate Change
I'm going to ask Emma to come back to you on that, Sam, if you don't mind, because I'm afraid I can't remember the answer to it, I'll be absolutely honest. So, Emma.
, Local Government and Housing Committee
Ministerial scrutiny session - Minister for Climate Change
Thanks, Sam. So, we developed the proposal, as we always do, in collaboration with the sector, and the consultation that you're quoting one of the responses to allows stakeholders the opportunity to give us their views on the current proposals, and obviously…
, Local Government and Housing Committee
Ministerial scrutiny session - Minister for Climate Change
Certainly. It's very much an important part of the co-operation agreement and part of the programme for government. In January 2021, we consulted on the building safety White Paper, which set out our proposals for comprehensive reform of the legislation that…
, Local Government and Housing Committee
Ministerial scrutiny session - Minister for Climate Change
We've always taken a slightly different view of this than the English Government, as it is for this purpose. We've always maintained that the people who created this issue should be the people who are responsible for rectifying it. Leaseholders in Wales…
