, Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee
Motion under Standing Order 17.42 (vi) and (ix) to resolve to exclude the public from items 4 and 7 of today's meeting
And to deal with these climate pressures in an age of austerity is doubly difficult, so we need to be investing far more in our infrastructure. We don't have the firepower to do it on our own.
, Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee
Motion under Standing Order 17.42 (vi) and (ix) to resolve to exclude the public from items 4 and 7 of today's meeting
And it's a particular problem with the railway, and Network Rail are doing a lot of work on this because, when you think, a lot of our railways are on the coast, hugging the sea. It's very pretty, but very vulnerable to rising sea levels.
, Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee
Motion under Standing Order 17.42 (vi) and (ix) to resolve to exclude the public from items 4 and 7 of today's meeting
Sure. Well, I would say, Senedd Members generally can't have their cake and eat it. They can't expect us to live within a limited budget, to continue to build new roads and to tackle the backlog of maintenance. It doesn't add up. So, when we do announce the…
, Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee
Motion under Standing Order 17.42 (vi) and (ix) to resolve to exclude the public from items 4 and 7 of today's meeting
I had spotted it. [Laughter.]
, Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee
Motion under Standing Order 17.42 (vi) and (ix) to resolve to exclude the public from items 4 and 7 of today's meeting
Well, there's a very significant backlog—over £1 billion worth of backlog. Your predecessor committees have written reports on this, and made the recommendation, in fact, that we should be maintaining existing roads before we build new roads. That's one of…
, Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee
Motion under Standing Order 17.42 (vi) and (ix) to resolve to exclude the public from items 4 and 7 of today's meeting
Yes. This is a bit of a red herring, this one, because most—not most, all—of the schemes that the roads review is looking at are schemes currently in development. The whole criteria was that we're not looking at schemes where shovels are in the ground—they're…
, Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee
Motion under Standing Order 17.42 (vi) and (ix) to resolve to exclude the public from items 4 and 7 of today's meeting
That's where budget constraints come in, because that Sustrans scheme, E-Move, has been successful and we're looking to extend it. We'd like to really ramp it up, but we simply don't have the budget headroom.
, Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee
Motion under Standing Order 17.42 (vi) and (ix) to resolve to exclude the public from items 4 and 7 of today's meeting
Well, we've put in the guidance for the active travel plans that they have to map all schools and, over time, need to identify how people are going to travel to those schools. And all new schools, similarly, have now, as part of their business case, which…
, Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee
Motion under Standing Order 17.42 (vi) and (ix) to resolve to exclude the public from items 4 and 7 of today's meeting
Okay. Well, I'll try to be brief. We're spending less than we had originally thought we would, and that's partly because, as the cross-party report on active travel that Huw led has pointed out, there are some real capacity and capability constraints across…
, Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee
Motion under Standing Order 17.42 (vi) and (ix) to resolve to exclude the public from items 4 and 7 of today's meeting
The difference is, of course, the rest of the bus companies are entirely in private ownership. You know, Cardiff and Newport have a different model, so we've been able to help them with some of the costs. But we are talking with the rest of the industry. The…
, Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee
Motion under Standing Order 17.42 (vi) and (ix) to resolve to exclude the public from items 4 and 7 of today's meeting
I'll ask Peter to come in and add to this, but essentially, yes, we've had to change our target because it simply was not realistic—the original target we had on bus decarbonisation. So, we've now changed it to 50 per cent of the most polluting fleet. We've…
, Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee
Motion under Standing Order 17.42 (vi) and (ix) to resolve to exclude the public from items 4 and 7 of today's meeting
But just to say, I do think scrutiny of TfW is really important, and the committee has a valuable role to play there, to help us, because they are significantly bigger than our civil service parallel team, if you like, so there is an asymmetry there. And…
, Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee
Motion under Standing Order 17.42 (vi) and (ix) to resolve to exclude the public from items 4 and 7 of today's meeting
We're not there yet.
, Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee
Motion under Standing Order 17.42 (vi) and (ix) to resolve to exclude the public from items 4 and 7 of today's meeting
Well, there's a lot of them. We are resourcing them properly and the budget has gone up. The money that Jenny mentioned, that £40 million, went into TfW. Yes, we're asking them to do a lot and we'll be asking them to do more, but they're also being funded.
, Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee
Motion under Standing Order 17.42 (vi) and (ix) to resolve to exclude the public from items 4 and 7 of today's meeting
I think your report highlights that there is a lot going on in the TfW budget and we are committed to simplifying the way that is reported, just as we're committed to moving to a multimodal key performance indicator structure. The journey TfW has been on—…
, Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee
Motion under Standing Order 17.42 (vi) and (ix) to resolve to exclude the public from items 4 and 7 of today's meeting
No.
, Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee
Motion under Standing Order 17.42 (vi) and (ix) to resolve to exclude the public from items 4 and 7 of today's meeting
No. The huge backward step was not fulfilling the promise to electrify the Cardiff and Valleys lines and the south Wales main line to Swansea. That was a broken promise, and we're living with the consequence of that. The new trains that we're launching at the…
, Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee
Motion under Standing Order 17.42 (vi) and (ix) to resolve to exclude the public from items 4 and 7 of today's meeting
It's a helpful contribution to a much larger project. The metro is a circa £1 billion project and they're contributing £50 million. And bear in mind rail infrastructure is not devolved, although most of the metro is on the Cardiff and Valleys lines, which…
, Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee
Motion under Standing Order 17.42 (vi) and (ix) to resolve to exclude the public from items 4 and 7 of today's meeting
I'm really pleased you've raised transport poverty, and I'm pleased that Sustrans are continuing to highlight it, because it is a neglected area of policy debate. I think we're familiar with fuel poverty, where if you spend 10 per cent of your income heating…
, Plenary
Debate on the Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee Report: 'The future of bus and rail in Wales'
Well, Alun Davies challenged me to pass the Blaenau Gwent test earlier, and I can tell him that there's also an Alun Davies test, which is being applied to the congestion charge, because Julie James and I have been having active conversations with Cardiff…
, Plenary
Debate on the Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee Report: 'The future of bus and rail in Wales'
Diolch yn fawr iawn, Dirprwy Lywydd, and thank you to all colleagues for a stimulating debate. I think there is common cause, again, in this Chamber, for improving the reality of public transport and for achieving our shared aspiration of modal shift to…
, Plenary
Topical Questions
Well, I respect Jane Dodds's position, and, as I acknowledged, there are certainly policy tensions. But we take an overall view as a Government that Wales needs an airport. There are a significant number of people still flying from there who otherwise would…
, Plenary
Topical Questions
Well, the £42.6 million rescue and recovery plan that was put in place during the pandemic remains in place, and is designed to help Cardiff Airport to become self-sustainable and profitable in the future. We are now working with the airport to understand the…
, Plenary
Topical Questions
Yes. We're disappointed that Wizz Air have decided to withdraw from Cardiff Airport. Our COVID recovery plan for the airport remains in place, but clearly, the current economic climate is incredibly tough for the aviation sector and this is not helped by the…
, Plenary
Questions to the Minister for Climate Change
Of course, the town of Menai Bridge has never been closed, and what's been very interesting is that the data, rather than the concerns and claims, have shown still a significant level of activity through the Patrwm project using long-range wide area network…
