National Assembly for Wales

Good morning everybody. I'm Jonathan Oates. I'm the interim deputy director for climate change and fuel poverty. 

Many thanks, and good to have you both here. If I can start then, Minister, obviously we all saw on the news yesterday the huge wildfire on Rhigos mountain—not the only wildfire we've seen in Wales already this year. If anyone doubts that climate change is something that isn't happening, well, actually, we know from flooding, wildfires et cetera that this is the reality and it's impacting on our communities and environment now. In terms of what we're focused on today and the report itself, obviously, there are some positives for Welsh Government there where Wales is leading the way in terms of public engagement and workers and skills, and so on, and it's great to see that praise and acknowledgement. But, overall, this report does raise a number of concerns about our response and actions relating to reducing emissions. I'm sure you've seen the quotes there:

'Tangible progress has been insufficient in many areas that are dependent on Welsh Government policy powers',

saying that the Welsh Government

'is not using its policy powers to full effect. In those sectors where policy is mostly controlled in Wales, the effort is insufficient to achieve the emissions reduction required.'

Can I ask for your response, therefore, Minister, to the report?

Yes. Thank you, Chair. Just let me say something about the wildfires, actually, first. We've had a series of very severe wildfires across Wales, and south Wales in particular, actually. So, I just wanted to say two things, and first of all to just pay tribute to the firefighters and Natural Resources Wales staff who have been absolutely flat out tirelessly working to contain the fires. There will be an investigation as to whether they were spontaneous or whether they were deliberately set. Unfortunately, it looks like some of them, at least, were deliberately set, so we will continue our education campaign. 

And secondly, to say that we will now have to, obviously, replace and replant all of that, as well as what we were trying to do. In particular on the Rhigos, it's particularly heartbreaking because a large number of the hectares that are burnt beyond redemption there were new trees just coming into full growth. So, it's absolutely heartbreaking, I have to say, but I did want to just pay tribute to the staff who have absolutely been phenomenal in their response to try and contain the fires, and have been successful in putting them out. So, I just wanted to start from there.

Yes, just in terms of the report then, I met with the Climate Change Committee when they met here in Wales not long before the publication of the report, so the report is not a particular surprise to us. We had a very full and frank discussion with the Climate Change Committee. I think that we've been very clear about the difficulty of the pathway ahead for Wales. Just in this committee alone there have been lots of evidence sessions where I’m saying that we have met our first carbon budget, we’re on track for our second carbon budget, we’ve complied with the Climate Change Committee’s requests for what the second carbon budget should be, but that we will need to do nearly twice as much in the next 10 years as we’ve done in the last 30. I’ve said that repeatedly. That is not just a casual, throwaway remark, it’s an acknowledgement that we’re off where we need to be. We’re okay 'for now’, but we need to accelerate very significantly over the next seven years to 2030.

We’ve done a number of things to try and accelerate that. Net Zero Wales is one. We’ve only very recently published Net Zero Wales. It has a whole raft of policies and proposals and pledges for action. One of the things this report very much highlights is that we can’t do this alone. Policy alone will not do this. We need implementation on the ground. So, as we always do, we try to get a team Wales approach going with everyone involved in where we’re trying to get to. At the moment it looks to us—. I should say, to start off with, Chair, that we have not interrogated all of the data that goes behind this report. So there are bits of it that we’re a little bit baffled by, and until we get into the data we won’t understand quite how they’ve got to where they are, and I’m sure we’ll come on to bits of that later on. But our current modelling shows that we will outperform carbon budget 2 and get to 44 per cent in this time period, but that we will then very seriously struggle to get to carbon budget 3 unless we put things in train in the next two years that will accelerate progress. So, that’s our modelling, and we’ll have to compare it to the modelling in here to just see what the various bits are.

I hope this committee will play its part in relaying its feelings about this to the UK for the progress report that they are about to do, which we all contribute to, so that we understand the severity of the need for change in order to get to where we want to be. And unfortunately, the committee’s just a little ahead of us because next week I’m going to get our latest emissions data, so that will be the first real time that we have to see whether our projections for the data are actually accurate. Obviously, as soon as we get those and I’ve managed to have a look at them, we’re happy to report back to the committee, and indeed I’ll probably do a statement in the Senedd about it. So we’re in the process of just having a first, hard check, if you like, about where we are with the data.

The other thing to say is that, of course, this has all been affected by the pandemic. The carbon data for the pandemic is extraordinary, as you’d all expect. Transport emissions fall, nobody went anywhere, so the air cleaned up. If that wasn’t an example of what human beings are doing to the planet, I don’t know what is. It was obvious, and more obvious in other parts of the world than here, but here it was obvious, too. But of course, that affects our data. For that year, or year and a half, there’s going to be a blip in the data going forward that we’ll have to have a look at.

We’ve got to get past the idea that we can all sign up to these goals and then baulk at the various things that we need to do to get there. You’ll have heard me saying in the Senedd on a number of occasions that it’s all very well to say we’ve signed up to this, but pretty much everything we put forward has somebody saying they don’t want to do that bit. And that’s not going to work. So we’re all going to have to change, we’re all going to have to do things differently, and that’s every single sector across Wales, not just the Government, because otherwise we can’t do it. I can’t do it on my own. So, I think if this isn’t a wake-up call for everyone, then I don’t know what is, really.

Thank you, Minister. I know Huw is keen to come in.

Thank you very much, Chair. One of the things that might help with that level of holding individual Members to account will be the extension of the TheyWorkForYou website to cover the Senedd as well as the UK Parliament, and people will be able to look at individual voting records on department budgets and how they've carried through on this or not. But what I wanted to ask was—. You mentioned there the challenge about what this committee can do to support overtures to the UK Government. I don't want this to be a session where we just look up the M4, but what are those specific asks, please? Can you lay them out? And do they include, as this committee recently did, an ask for the UK Government to step in and assist, for example, one of the biggest contributors to carbon emissions, which is Tata Steel, in terms of decarbonisation? They told us, in front of us, that the £300,000 contribution is nothing, it's a drop in the ocean compared to what other European governments are giving to decarbonise steel. 

There are a number of things, Huw, but the two big ones are that they could decarbonise the grid—we still have a disproportionate number of gas-fired power stations in Wales, for example, so they could decarbonise the grid in a big way—and the UK Government has not got a great track record for onshore renewables, to be honest, and hasn't been all that helpful with us, if I'm honest.

We're currently having an argument with the UK Government, which will come to the floor of the Senedd shortly, about the current Energy Bill and some issues in it around devolved competence that we're not very happy about. I don't think it's appropriate for me to go into the detail here, but there are a number of areas in which they say they want to decarbonise the grid but, actually, they're not doing any of the things that would allow you to get the fossil-fuelled power out of it. Tata Steel is a very good example, but there are a number of others. We think that there's much more that could be done in carbon capture, in hydrogen roll-out. There are a variety of them, and Jon can give you chapter and verse, if you want, Chair. We don't have the levers to be able to do all of that ourselves, but we do have a supporting role in all of that and we do play it. 

I extremely recently met with National Grid. I met with the Crown Estate yesterday with the First Minister and so on. So we play our part in trying to push those sectors in the right direction. But, for example, with National Grid, National Grid needs a complete overhaul of the regulatory framework within which it operates. It has a very excellent new chief executive who wants to do that, but the UK Government has to do that. I don't have the levers to do it myself, although obviously when we instruct National Grid from our point of view we give the instructions that would keep us in line with the pathway. So, there are a number of things, and I'm very happy to set them out for the committee.

Yes, please.  

They're included in Net Zero Wales, in fact, in pretty stark terms. We can do that. But we have a number of levers here that we also—I'm sure the committee will want to get into this right now—try to pull. I would argue, and I'm about to argue I'm sure in front of the committee, and, if any of you saw me being interviewed with Politics Wales, you will have heard me arguing it then as well, that we've very significantly turned the ship of state in the last two or three years, and it's not easy to do. In the formation of this portfolio in the incoming Government, which is not quite halfway through its term at the moment, there's been a significant policy shift in the last two and a half years, and you can see that in our attitude to the roads review, to active travel, to tree planting, to biodiversity recovery. The whole thing is different. 

If I can, Minister, from the comments you've made, do you think the criticisms are unfair from this report? 

No, I don't. I think they're perfectly fair. We had a very good conversation with them. There are nuances that I might argue with. The wastes chapter we are a bit baffled by, to be honest, and I'll happily go back to them. But they are a critical friend. There's plenty of praise in here for us as well, but they're right: we are not going fast enough in agriculture and in transport and there are more things that we could do. I suppose what I would argue though, Chair, is that I think it's a little bit harsh in its perfectly okay criticism, in that I think we've actually shifted in that direction quite substantially over the last two years, and, actually, in conversation with them they certainly acknowledge that, but it's not coming through in the report, and that's a matter for them. But I do think that the ramping up of tree planting, for example, and the restoration of peatland and seagrass has ramped up in the last year in a way that wasn't evident before that. So, I think we've significantly turned. 

Thank you. I'll bring Jenny in. 

I absolutely acknowledge the leadership role you've played in terms of the review of the roads and the courageous decisions you've taken on that. I just wanted to go back to National Grid, because it seems to me they have such a dominant role in how we account for our expenditure on gas and electric. Whilst we still guarantee all these fossil fuel companies a guaranteed price, based on whatever the spot price for gas is, it just seems to me there are no levers or no reasons why they should change. We'll come on to the detail, but what can we do, in light of that fundamental policy decision by the UK Government?

There are three intertwined things there. There's the way that energy is generated for the grid. That's the first one, and that is about getting as much fossil fuels out of it and as much renewables in as humanly possible. I don't think they're going fast enough to do that, for various complicated reasons. Then there's the second one, which is about how the grid anticipates future development, and that requires the regulatory reform that I was talking about, because, at the moment, it's reactive, it requires a contractor to come along and say that they'd like a connection and so on. So, it's really hopeless. They know that, but it needs regulatory reform.

And then the third one is actually the energy pricing structure, which is in the hands of the UK Government. They have decided to peg electricity to the marginal price of gas. Well, that makes no sense for renewables; the way that you build, construct and deliver renewables is entirely different. If you think of a fossil fuel power station, you have capital expenditure to build it—you obviously have revenue expenditure as well, but mostly capex to build it—and then you have revenue expenditure to provide it with the raw material to produce the energy. When you build renewables, you have capital expenditure and some revenue to support it, and then a small amount of revenue to keep it running, but the raw material that it 'burns' to produce energy is free. So, the idea that it's pegged to the marginal price of gas makes no sense for renewables.

How we've been responding to that in Wales—and, actually, this is a community response right across the UK—is more and more people are going to fixed-wire developments that don't connect to the grid. Morriston Hospital, for example, is currently powered entirely by a solar farm that isn't connected to the grid, so they're not paying for electricity in that way,  they're having it provided to them direct from their own expenditure. That is a way to do it, but it's not optimal. It would be far better if the grid was able to support those developments and that the price you then paid for the electricity was commensurate. This is a long conversation we could have about how that works.

Okay. Well, let's come back to it afterwards.

Yes, because, obviously, we are focused today on the report specifically on Wales, and I do want to return to the fact that the report does say that we are not using our full powers to full effect. I think that's the focus I would like us to place. Obviously, Chris Stark said that there's a worrying gap between ambition and delivery in Wales. There's no doubting the ambition and where we all want to get to, I would hope, and I hope you will see us as a critical friend as a committee, because we understand how important it is, but I do want to focus on some of the issues there, just in terms of the Net Zero Wales plan, if I may, specifically. Obviously, the Welsh Government had decided on an approach that was different to the recommendations. Do you think that was right? Are you reviewing that now in line with the report?

Yes, I do think it was right. I hear what the committee is saying, but I think that it's essential to take the people of Wales with us. To just give you an example of that, the balanced pathway tree-planting target is 4,500 trees, off the top of my head. I'll have to look it up if you want me to be—. I think that's right. And our target is 2,500. Actually, the statistics that came out at 09:30, so, hot off the press, are that we've managed to double it in the last year, so it's just gone over 1,200 now, still only half of what we have an ambition for. I hope very much to accelerate it again next time.

But you will know, Chair, that we need to do that in conjunction with our farming community and our landowners. I want to take the people of Wales with us. What we are expecting to see is that, as the successors to Glastir come in and as the sustainable farming schemes come in and we take our farming communities with us, the drive to get 10 per cent land cover of trees in every land community in Wales will be one that we can then achieve. You know as well as I do that if I just said, 'Okay, we're going to plant 4,500 trees some place in Wales every year, suck it up', that would not go down well, and we would probably end up in a full-on battle with our communities. I just don't want to be there.

So, our pathway tries to hit a line between ambition and bringing our communities with us. We like to do that in Wales, we like to act as a community. So, we think we've got the balance right. We'll, of course, review it to see if we need to shift it around. And also, I would say that, as communities shift towards that, and they do shift towards that, then, of course, we can accelerate the pathway. You can see that in waste, for example. 

I know we want to get into specific areas, but one final question in terms of overview from me, please, if I may. In terms of the CCC, they've previously recommended that the Welsh Government should publish a transparent and quantified link between policies and milestones. In the report, it notes that this is overdue from 2022. Can you please explain why this hasn't been delivered and what are the timescales for delivering that?

Yes, so we've got a number of obligations to report, and one of them is under the environment Act later this year. But Jon is the guru on all data and corresponding policies, so let me turn to him for that one, Chair.

The data is—. We're adopting an approach to it that's very much forward looking. I'm sure you'd expect us to be working on the next net-zero plan that we need to publish in 2026, so, therefore, our data analysis is focused moving forward, rather than necessarily on carbon budget 2 at this particular point.

The analysis that we did when we published, as the Minister mentioned earlier on, suggested that we would deliver an estimated 44 per cent reduction on our baseline, which exceeded carbon budget 2. Clearly, the world has changed significantly since then. So, we can go through constant processes of trying to estimate where we think we’ll be this year and where we think we’ll be last year, because the data that comes out next week is for 2021. We're always looking in the rear-view mirror. So, our approach is consistent with being one of trying to focus our analysis on where it's most useful, and where it's most useful at this point is trying to understand how we can meet carbon budget 3, because that is a phenomenal challenge—a phenomenal challenge—and that requires fundamental change in every corner of Wales to do it. So, that's where our focus largely is. As I said, we are working on that now. We've only just got through, in the last six months, carbon budget—. Last week, we only got past carbon budget 1, because we published an annex on our consumption emissions. We did a big report at the end of last year. The focus now is very much on the analysis for carbon budget 3, and when we publish the next net-zero Wales plan, our, certainly, ambition is to increase the transparency of our analysis that’s available for scrutiny. This is a hugely, hugely complex and detailed process, and our approaches are maturing all the time, as I would hope you would expect.

So, is that as a result of the challenge from the CCC working in conjunction?

Not necessarily. I mean, we largely agree with what the CCC says on almost all points, but we don't on all. We consulted last year on the UK emissions trading scheme with the other UK nations and, actually, the pathway that we consulted on there was more ambitious than the CCC, because we think, actually, the sector can go a little bit faster than the CCC thinks. As the Minister has said about agriculture, the CCC advice was more about land sparing, rather than land sharing, and doesn't chime with the Welsh Government view of how we transition the land and maintain food production et cetera. So, they're fantastic partners and they do great analysis, but we don't always agree with them, because we think we can do things better.

Thank you. Can I move on to Huw?

Thank you very much. And I wonder, Chair, just picking up on the points you were making, if I could just ask one straightforward question. The challenge already of—. You’re optimistic we'll get to carbon budget 2—we'll struggle—and, though it's achievable, if we really turn things around and accelerate things, to carbon budget 3. So, what's the purpose behind the net-zero challenge group. We've remarked on this committee before that if we're not achieving what we're currently setting out to do, and it will need more acceleration, what's that purpose?

So, what we've asked them to do is a slightly different thing. We've asked them to look at the social and economic paths to it. So, this is the hard carbon budget, if you like. What we've asked them to do is help us get to a just transition, if you want to put it in those terms.

Okay.

And I think there are things that we will be able to accelerate as part of that, and there will be things that we will not be able to accelerate, but what they’ll be able to do is challenge the assumptions around that. So, if they come back and say, 'You aren't going to get to the change in transport use that lowers the carbon budget faster than the one you've already got, and in fact, actually, you're not going to make this one unless you do x', that's very helpful to us. And they're coming at it from a different lens, and it's also very Wales specific, whereas this isn't; this is very UK. Although they help us in Wales, and I don't want to criticise them for that, because, actually, I think they’ve done quite a bit to try and do that, it is nevertheless UK, and Jane Davidson's challenge group is very Wales specific. It has a lot of academics and activists in this field who are very knowledgeable in a Wales context, and that's very important to us.

Okay, it's good to understand that. Can I just turn to woodland creation, but also woodland conservation, because conserving the best of what we've got, including mature and ancient woodlands, is as important in terms of carbon sinks as growing the new national forest and so on and so forth, and making sure that we've got the right tree in the right place and all of that and that we work with farmers? But you, as we anticipated, have come in and said, ‘The challenge is huge. We’re going to have a massive change that we have to do to work with people, including farmers and landowners, to do this.’ So, tell me how do you drive that acceleration that you’ve acknowledged within woodland creation, and is this something that we also need to do on woodland preservation and conservation of the best of what we’ve currently got. How do we get to that carbon budget 3—the contribution of woodland?

Yes, so, there are a number of things that are happening here, as I’ve just said to you. Very welcomingly, we’re now getting the official Office for National Statistics stats showing us that we’ve more than doubled the planting for this year. We’re still not where we’d like to be, but it’s very much the right trajectory for the first time in a long time.

One of the big actions from the deep-dive Lee Waters undertook when we first made this portfolio was to create a new woodland creation offer for farmers and landowners. So, we did that, and I think we’re showing that this is the difference really. But it dropped then, and, actually, because of the whole inflation-cost-of-living scenario, which Members will be very familiar with, we changed the payment rates. So, in May of this year, I announced higher payment rates because we weren’t getting the take-up on the scheme that we’d hoped for, and now we’re hoping that that will accelerate. So, we’ve lifted it in line with actual costs. So, it’s a substantial uplift. The reality is that we’re doing this against the worst budget we’ve ever had, so that’s not helping either. So, we have to bring all of our levers to bear on it.

As part of the agriculture Bill that’s currently going through the Senedd, you may have noticed that we’ve shoehorned some forestry things in there for Natural Resources Wales, which will also help. The way that NRW licenses productive woodlands is changing as a result of that, and we’re developing a timber industrial strategy. We’ve also slightly redone the way we’re doing the national forest. I don’t know if Members have picked up on that yet. There’s been a bit of a debate about the national forest because we want a forest that’s accessible to people, but we also want the ancient woodlands and so on to be part of our national forest—we don’t necessarily want them to all be accessible at all times. And I’d also very much like farmers who come on board with us to plant their 10 per cent and so on to be part of the national forest if they want to be. And so, we’ve slightly rejigged it. So, what we’ve said is, 'As long as you do open farm days twice a year, for example, then that’s access and so you can be part of the national forest.'

And what we’re trying to do is build a brand where people want to be part of it and therefore want to not only plant the trees, but actually manage them in accordance with the best current global practices. We’re having a small debate at the moment—we’ve got some professors coming across from Canada to talk to us and so on about what exactly is the best global practice. That's a moveable feast. But I’m pleased to say that the whole of the Welsh woodland estate is at global standard, and I hope to be—forgive the pun—at the cutting edge of moving the global standard.

So, there are some real subtle and clever interventions there that you're doing, but, going back to your overall approach to the committee today, you will accept that the ratcheting up that you need to do in woodland, as with many other sectors, is significant. So, at what point will we see, going from where you are now with some good process to try and speed this up to seeing that acceleration—?

I would say over the next two years, Huw, because several things will happen over the next two years. So, we've just appointed several people who we call 'woodland liaison officers' to NRW, and their sole purpose is to work with landowners across Wales to persuade them to come on board with the forest and to work with communities so that communities feel attached to the woodlands and not that it's being imposed on them, and all the sort of stuff that we've got going on. 

We have an issue in Wales because a very large number of our farmers are tenant farmers, and actually the holder of the land can change quite substantially. Lots of people have said to me, 'Oh, so-and-so has bought this land and they're going to cover it in trees,' and so on. Actually, we haven't got too many examples of that. But we do have quite a lot of people who don't really control the fundamentals of their land, so we've got to get schemes in place that allow us to help tenant farmers to come on board with it as well, in the right way. So, it's quite a complicated set of things. And then as the successor—. We're going to bridge Glastir across to the new SFS, so that's Lesley, obviously, not me, but Lesley and I work hand in hand on this. And then once the sustainable farming scheme comes in, then I suspect we will really see the ramping up, because that's the basis of it.

Right, that's interesting.

I know Jenny and Joyce are keen to come in. Thank you, Huw.

We heard compelling evidence last week that we should be taking a landscape approach to planting trees, rather than, 'You must do 10 per cent,' because you then enable farmers to collaborate and encourage them to think about putting shade over watercourses so that we don't have the drought problems that we currently have. So, I just wondered if you had considered amending the policy to have less kickback from the farmers about the 10 per cent.

Yes, we've been discussing with Lesley and her officials for a long time how a collaboration of farms might come together to access the money, where one of them has 40 per cent and the others have less than 10 per cent for exactly that reason, Jenny. So, that's an ongoing discussion at the moment. It hasn't concluded.

We're also looking at—I desperately try not to pre-announce things in this committee—at the moment, as a result of the biodiversity deep-dive process, at a catchment area approach for a number of our SAC rivers, where we would take one of the rivers and literally work from its source all the way to the sea on what should happen all the way along its banks, with every single player in that particular catchment. We're looking for a catchment that has all the players in it, so you want house builders, water companies, farmers, other land owners, the Woodland Trust and National Trust—everyone. We're trying to get one that's got pretty much everybody in it so that we can figure out what would work on a whole catchment area and then see if we can scale it to the others. We're working on that at the moment. That was one of the recommendations of the deep-dive, and I hope that we'll be in a position to say that we're going to go for that shortly—she said, trying desperately not to pre-announce these things. We aren't quite there yet because, as you can see, it's quite a complicated thing to do, but the idea is to run it in advance of the SFS to make sure that we can then make it fit for purpose, because farmers have to make a living as well, so they have to understand how to get the income from the scheme. It's got to do both things at once.

Thank you. Joyce.

I can think of a number of rivers, and you know what I would put forward, but anyway—

Please don't all write to me with your favourite river. [Laughter.]

And I've got quite a lot. But, anyway, coming on to farmers and what we can do, particularly tenant farmers, there are holdings within local government, and some of them have sold them off and some of them have other restrictions. So, I'd be interested to know, and I've asked before, what direction you're giving to local authorities around how they manage their land through their tenants, with really good support. We also hold land—Welsh Government—so we should be, in my opinion, giving the very best example of what good land management looks like so that others can look at it and follow.

I couldn't agree more with that, Joyce. We've got an organisation called Ystadau Cymru, who are run by the land division, who are in my portfolio, to map out all of the places on the public estate in Wales that would be suitable for tree planting, and also everywhere suitable for food production, as part of the new community food strategy that we're working on. We've also got a series of exemplar sites across Wales that we're working on, one of which is right in the middle of your patch now. You know we've just acquired the land in Haverfordwest. We're working on a master plan and I'd like to get you involved in that, with your local capacity, Joyce. So, what we've been doing on those—the most advanced one is a place called Gwynfaen in Rebecca Evans's constituency, near the Loughor estuary in Swansea—are exemplar developments that have some housing, of mixed-use, mixed-tenure housing. They have green infrastructure, tree cover, community food production. What we're trying to do is show what could be done if you take all of the levers into account. So, yes, we've mapped the whole of the Welsh public estate for where it's suitable for tree planting. Obviously, not all land is suitable for tree planting; we don't want it on peat, for example. So, we've mapped that, and we're in the process of rolling out a programme to do that.

And then Rebecca and I have also got a series of agenda items on the next partnership council around best use of community farms and city farms. We've got a couple of city farms in Wales as well, which we think could play a role in some of this, particularly in urban areas, to connect people back to the land and get them to understand what it could look like, but also to use them as exemplars. And then I would also say that we've got a whole series of farmers across Wales who are absolutely on board with this, who are very happy to host open farm days and so on. And if the committee hasn't been to see Stump Up For Trees, might I suggest you go immediately to see them? So, that is a collaboration of farmers who've come together to do exactly what we're talking about. 

Thank you, Minister. If I can return to Huw. 

Yes, it's simply to pick up on that. I want to give you maximum opportunity here to describe, in terms of the agriculture sector, how you're going to take these, again, clever, subtle interventions carrying you along, and accelerate them at a rate of knots—at a rate of knots. Because the contribution of—and this isn't a criticism of farmers; there is big journey to go on here, but—the contribution of agriculture generally and the way we use the land, and this includes things like the way we till the land, the way we protect our soil as a carbon sink and so on, those subtle things, are simply not there. So, again, it's this accelerating curve. You just said about woodland, that we will see significant changes, not least because of the SFS, and the roll-out of the ramifications from the agri Bill and the SFS and so on. Tell us about when we'll see the changes there, and why we will see those changes at a rate of knots. 

So, there's a huge piece of work going on. So, first of all, I don't think—. Farmers are not homogenous in any way. 

No. 

So, I had farmers on my biodiversity deep-dive so radical that it would take your breath away, who were active farmers in Wales doing amazing things already in biodiversity terms. Some of the people who farm in the curlew recovery areas are extraordinary human beings. So, not all farmers are the same, as they say. 

But would we accept, because there's a real challenge—? If what you're saying is that's what 'good' looks like, and we should be doing that in large spatial areas—

Yes, so that's exactly what we're doing. 

—you can see the challenge. 

And we're getting the farmers to speak to each other, actually, because, I think, nobody wants somebody like me to come along and tell you how to run your farm, quite rightly. But they do listen to other farmers, and the Stump Up For Trees project is a really good example of that, where you had a couple of farmers who wanted to do this, and then they've managed to widen it right out by talking to adjacent landowners and really getting a head of steam going, and you can see how that works. 

So, we're doing a couple of things, Huw, around some of that. Some of it is a wider Welsh public thing, and some of it is specific for landowners. We're about to embark on a big behaviour change campaign right across Wales, and a large part of that is, 'What can I do with my various hats on?' So, 'What can I do as an individual? What can I do in my work? What can I do as a parent? What can I do as a—?' All that kind of stuff. So, we're basically asking people to look to see what they can do, in the same way as we did when we started the waste journey, really. And then we'll be working actively with groups of people who have diametrically opposite views, to bring them together to see where we can get.

So, we've done this with the Welsh language; I don't know if the committee's aware of that. So, we got a group of people to come in and bring people with very extreme views on both sides of the language argument—so, you're only Welsh if you're a native-born Welsh speaker; Welsh is useless and should be lost—and put them together in a room. Interesting results have come from that—very interesting, actually, because, of course, what happens is people don't see each other as the enemy anymore, once they've met each other; they actually have a conversation. So, you can see people coming together. 

It's been really interesting. We have experts who are very good at that kind of intervention. So, we're looking to do that in a climate change scenario as well, with people who are very resistant to it and people who think we should have done it five years ago, and trying to sort of get them together as well, with a view to shifting the dial across Wales for where we are. We know that around 80ish per cent of the Welsh public, in all walks of life, know that climate change is real and actively want to do something about it. We don't know too much about the people who aren't in that group. So, we need to get onto that as well. 

Thank you. If I can move, then, to Jenny to take us through the next section.

Yes. I wanted to talk about waste, really, because there's quite a lot in the report to indicate that our progress, which was considerable since 2000 to about 2020—. We've really flatlined in the last three years, and I don't see how, unless we accelerate our progress, we're going to achieve the 70 per cent by 2025, which is only 18 months away.

So, we're a bit baffled by this bit of the report, I must say. We're going to have to do a lot of work on what their underlying data looks like for them to come to this conclusion; this is not the conclusion that we have come to. I mean, I just haven't had the time, I'm afraid—officials just haven't had the time—to go through the underlying data here, but it doesn't look like our data, so we're going to have to do a bit of work to see how they got to where we are. As far as we're concerned, there has continued to be progress in the waste sector. Our municipality is already at 70 per cent in Wales. We're the only country in the UK who maintained our recycling rate right through the pandemic; everybody else's dropped like a stone. So, we can evidence that. I don't know what—. I don't know how the—. We don't understand this data—that's the bottom line. 

Can I just say, though, that there are a series of things that we need to do on top of where we are? The committee's quite clear that we're easily miles ahead of everybody else. So, at the moment, we're in the process of—and the committee might be aware of this—we're about to move to workplace recycling. So, it's been through the Senedd three times now. We're about to introduce the regs, so, presuming that they go through as well, then we will have workplace recycling in place. We don't currently do that. So, it will be compulsory workplace source—I can't say that—source-segregated waste, as it is at home, and we're about to bring in extended producer responsibility and deposit-return schemes. I'm quite happy to go into the row about the deposit-return scheme if you want me to. We might be here for four hours.

I think that will probably be a different session.

But we're definitely pushing ahead with all of that. So, we've done well in the municipal recycling, but we still have a big problem with littering, which is why we want to do some of the other stuff, and we need now to get into business recycling and extended producer responsibility, which is, effectively, stopping people from producing it in the first place, because the cost of dealing with it goes back on to the producer. Our data shows that we're doing pretty well on it, and we've had only—off the top of my head—we've had five councils who have just about met this year's target, but all of them have put a plan in place. I've met individually with each of those councils, and all of them have a plan to get to 70 per cent in the time period. So, we're going to have to interrogate this; I don't know where it came from.

Okay. Well, I think I can recall scrutinising the proposal for businesses to recycle in the fourth Senedd, so is there a particular reason why we didn't roll that out a little bit sooner?

Yes. So, there's been a few kind of goes at this. So, you all remember it was part of the Environment (Wales) Bill, so that was back in 2013, that then ended up in the Bill in 2016, and then we've had two lots of consultations in September 2019, and then, more recently now, we've just done the third draft of the code of practice, and then the regulations are about to come to the Senedd. So, it's been a while.

Okay. Just to go back to domestic waste recycling, some local authorities have been doing doorstep recycling or separation of waste since the beginning. Others, like Cardiff, are still tentatively beginning—

Well, Cardiff has left—. Let me just cut through. So, Cardiff has co-mingled recycling at the moment; they just don't meet their targets with that. We've had a full and frank discussion with Cardiff, who are now moving to blueprint in the next 18 months, otherwise they simply will not get there. So, I've already agreed that with the council.

Good. And there are other reluctant local authorities as well who also need to change. 

So, we've already spoken to all of them; they're all transitioning. Pembrokeshire is the best example. They didn't transition for ages. They transitioned a year and a half ago, and they're now the top one in Wales. So, they've gone from bottom to top in—

And by not acting sooner, these other authorities are losing money—

Yes, absolutely. 

—because the quality of their waste—

That's right. The recyclate—

Can I—?

—is not available for sale.

The recyclate is worth a lot more to Wales and to the local authority if it's separated. And, Chair, I can see you're trying to move us on, but just the last thing is that people really need to realise that the recyclate is worth something and that we're attracting reprocessors to Wales, bringing hundreds and hundreds of jobs with them, because they can get the material. So, yes, other councils need to step up.

Okay. All right. So, you do think we'll meet this target, then?

Yes.

I just wanted to ask, given that you've said about the discrepancy, once you've undertaken that analysis, in terms of why the report is saying one thing and you're thinking another, could you share that with the committee?

Oh, yes, of course. Yes.

Many thanks.

I mean, obviously, if it shows us something that we didn't know, then we'll take steps to redress it. But we are—. I did say right at the beginning that the one bit we're really baffled by is the waste. So, we'll just have to get under the data, and we haven't had it for long enough, Chair, yet, to be able to do that analysis.

Thank you.

I just have one more question—

Yes. And then Joyce.

—which is around how the Welsh Government will enable and encourage water companies and industrial users to reduce emissions from waste water. Obviously, this is a very contentious issue at the moment.

On water, this is one of the ones where the UK Government will have to play a considerable role in this, because we don't control the levers for some of this. So, at the moment, the water companies are going into the price review that will set the prices for 2025 to 2030, so a five-year rolling programme of price reviews. The UK Government takes a different view to us: it takes the view that all investment in water needs to be paid for by the bill payers, and not out of general taxation as an infrastructure investment. I think that's very shortsighted, myself, but it means that there has to be a balance between what can be afforded by the bill payers and what is necessary in the infrastructure investment. Therefore, you don't get optimal infrastructure investment for obvious reasons, because nobody would be able to afford water, which is not what we want.

So, we have put our instruction into that price review, via Ofwat and via Welsh Water and Hafren Dyfrdwy, and I've met with all of them. We're now in the UK's hands for what the price review will look like. So, we're going through that process at the moment, Jenny. There is a much bigger emphasis in this review on infrastructure, waste water clean-up, combined sewage outflows and all of the things that people are very concerned about, but the UK Government is insisting that it has to be paid for inside the water industry itself. And, of course, outside of Wales, most of them are for-profit, so there's a dividend payment on top of that.

Okay. Well, we'll have to come back to this another day.

Joyce.

A very quick question. When you look at waste, of course, we're not just talking about the waste that we've so far talked about, but the re-use, which seems to be lost in this conversation so far this morning—lots of really good projects that we invest in to stop things going to landfill. So, when you do look at these figures, I'm hopeful that that will play a part.

Very much so.

Because that is about behaviour change and the messages that can go with that.

Absolutely. Our waste strategy is entirely embedded in our circular economy strategy, which has re-use at the top of the hierarchy, to be absolutely clear.

Good. Thank you.

Thank you. If we can move on to focus, perhaps, on transport now, as you'll be aware, the committee and the CCC have called for an accelerated development of electric vehicle charging infrastructure—something that was discussed only last week in the Senedd, I believe, and, obviously, there was the announcement of an additional £15 million of funding—but how do you respond to the calls here, because, obviously, it does note in terms of the significantly off-track risk—? I'm guessing that, hopefully, you think the announcement would have addressed it, but are there other things that you think that we should be doing or that you're planning on doing in response to the criticisms here?

Exactly, Chair; you almost answered your own question.

Sorry.

We've just made an announcement about accelerating some of the interventions we have. I just want to make the point—I'm not sure the report quite picks it up in this way—that it's not for Governments to put a charging infrastructure in place. We have to facilitate the ability of the private sector to put a charging mechanism in place, which is a slightly different thing. You know, we don't provide petrol stations, but we do allow planning authorities to put petrol stations in place. So, we have to put in place the framework and the investment infrastructure to allow the private sector to step into this, which is where they ought to be. So, I do think the most recent announcements by Lee Waters are moving into that space at some pace.

We could do with a couple of things from the UK Government here, obviously. The grid is a huge issue in parts of Wales for this. So, the amount of private sector investment necessary in parts of mid Wales to put EV charging in place is horrendous, because the network isn't sufficient for it. It isn't just about paid-for infrastructure either, it's about whether people can have domestic supply that allows EV charging; so, if you live in a terraced house, you've clearly got a problem. So, we need to think of some other infrastructure interventions that will allow us to move to clean-source vehicles. But the bit the report doesn't pick up—and I'm afraid this is an ideology—is that we simply cannot replace every vehicle on the planet with an EV. We're doomed if we do that. We absolutely have to come away from cars. So, this is part of our move to get people out of their cars and into active travel and into public transport, ASAP. So, it's a combined whole, if you like.

I think Jenny wants to come in.

We rehearsed quite a lot of this with Lee Waters in the debate last week. But I think one of the things is that, where the grid is non-existent, why are we not encouraging community energy to come forward, with an ability to earn some money for their community?

We do do exactly that, and there are solar-powered charging points springing up all over the place, and we have an enormous amount—. Jon and I would need another hour to go through all of the community energy stuff.

Okay. Could you write to us about the community energy power?

Yes, sure. So, we've got quite a lot of community energy schemes going—as part of the co-operation agreement for Ynni Cymru as well, actually, so that's developing at pace right across Wales. But as I said, ideally, you'd have grid connections for those schemes, and what's happening is that they're closed-loop connections, which is not as good, really.

You've rightly mentioned, in terms of the fact that, if EV is not the solution, and public transport—. Obviously, there are recommendations here as well in terms of reduction in terms of bus fare, following England. I know, with budgetary constraint—. But it is also in terms of calling on the Welsh Government to develop a delivery plan for its car demand reduction target. So, can I ask what plans are in place to be delivering that?

So, there's a whole series of things there. Lee Waters has obviously the prime responsibility for this. The £2 fare in England is a bit of a 'Look over here' thing because they've also slashed well over 75 per cent of their routes. So, you can pay £2 if you can find a bus, which is an interesting way of doing it. I don't think we want to go down that—. We could have gone down that path, but we've taken the view that we want to keep as many routes open as possible, and it hasn't been possible to do both. I'm afraid, Chair—and I absolutely want to get this in—they've also paid for it out of departmental resources. The Department for Transport must have had millions of pounds stuck down the back of its sofa to be able to do this, so there's quite an extraordinary piece of budgeting going on there.

So, we have decided to try and maintain our bus routes as much as possible; it hasn't been possible to maintain them all. We've had good co-operation from the bus operators, and we are moving to a franchising system in Wales, which will allow us to have through-ticketing, as low a fare as possible—we've maintained all the concessionary fares, and so on—and we will move to a different way of delivering public transport, exactly for that reason, so that we have a reliable service that people can depend on. Nobody's going to give their car up if they think the next bus isn't going to come; you absolutely need certainty of public transport in order to do that. Anyone who commutes at the moment will know that standing on the station, being told the next train isn't coming, is not conducive to not bringing your car next time. So, we absolutely have to move to a franchise system, with through-ticketing, that has easy access, has a reasonable level of fares, including the concessionary fare system, which is part of this piece, and we're moving to that. It will take us the next two years to get there.

Thank you. If I can bring in Joyce.

I absolutely agree with what you're saying—there's remarkable budgeting going on; I wish my sofa was as full of money as theirs. But there's a real issue here about small towns and accessibility for people that was in place isn't in place any longer, post COVID. So, when we're looking at this bus service and the desire to remove cars, with, especially, the Clean Air Bill, from town centres, will there be a comprehensive overview of how a town service—wherever that town might be—services the needs of that community, especially in my area where there's a growing elderly population that need it for short-term journeys like going to the GP, going to the local provider, whatever that might be? 

Absolutely, Joyce. So, the way that the franchising system will work is it will be run from Transport for Wales, but it will have local authority input to make sure that the local authorities are able to tell us what the priority routes are for particular cohorts of people and for particular areas. And what will happen then is the franchising system will allow us to put the subsidy into the routes we want. The model we have at the moment is ridiculous; we pour subsidy into private sector operators who then choose which routes they want. It's just the most ridiculous model you can think of. It clearly needs to be regulated. The deregulation model does not work; it clearly hasn't worked anywhere at all. So, what we're doing, effectively, is reregulating it. The only places where there are decent buses are places like London, where regulation always stayed in place. Without the regulation, you get a nonsense free-for-all, which is what we've got. 

So, we will be using the funding we have in a much more rigorous way to do the franchising, which will allow us to specify which routes are required for all of the reasons you've just set out, Joyce, but it will take us two years to get there, because we have to get the bus Bill through the Senedd and we have to get the franchising system in place. 

Thank you. 

Thank you. 

Happy for us—. Did you want to come in, Huw? 

No. My apologies for going out, but it strikes me the irony of it. The reason I had to leave briefly, Chair, was because I was dealing with a local public transport emergency issue. So, it's pertinent to this. You've just described this two years again. It strikes me that, when we were talking before I left about woodland, agriculture and transport, and your talk earlier on about turning the ship of state around, it's a heck of a lot of stuff that's in motion in this two years of this Senedd term. How confident are you—? It seems that the Government is confident of holding its nerve on this—there's been some bold and challenging and controversial decisions to get to us where we are. We've just had £58 million additional announced in active travel. We've had the road building review, as opposed to what some people are saying that it's a stop on all roads et cetera—all of that. These are controversial—20 mph. How confident are you not in holding your nerve, but that this will, once again—and I come back to it—deliver in transport that massive curve of decarbonisation and hitting our decarbonisation of transport plans? How confident are you of doing this? 

Yes. I mean, we—. Well, what choice do we have, really? If we don't do this now—. This is our last chance, isn't it? This is the quote that everybody uses: we're the first generation to know the damage we're making and the last one to do something about it. Of course we have to do it now, Huw, and of course it's a huge amount of stuff, but it's why this whole portfolio was put together, which was to drive this kind of change in a way that holds our nerve. This is what I came into politics to do, let's be clear. I've been a climate change campaigner my entire life. So, this is it, this is the moment, and it is the moment, because the people of the world are waking up to it, aren't they? So, if we can't get this change through now, when are we going to get it through? This is it. This is our chance. So, we have to get people to understand how to do this. 

I'm sorry for the politics of this, but we also need a Government that actually understands that it needs to invest in this stuff for the future, and we certainly don't have that at the moment. So, what we've done is we've done the best we can do with the limited budget we have to shift the priorities of the Government so that they're going in this direction. So, on roads, for example, the idiocy, frankly, of building fast new roads all over Wales when we can't maintain the roads we've got is—. The example I used, I think, in a meeting I was in with you, Huw, was that it's like having a house that's falling down and deciding to build an extension. It's just nonsense, isn't it? You need to fix the roof. So, we have to change the way that we look at these things. Investment in road maintenance is still investment—it's still infrastructure investment—and it means that people have not got all kinds of nonsense going on on the current road network that we have. 

Thank you. I'm keen to move on, sorry, to— 

That's fine.

You know, it's got to be done, let's put it like that. 

Thank you. If I can bring Jenny in now, we'll move on to buildings. 

Okay. Thank you. Obviously, the climate change report is pretty critical about the lack of a comprehensive buildings policy. I had a look at the report, 'A Smarter Energy Future for Wales', that the predecessor committee wrote over seven years ago, and one of them was to urgently revise the building regs to ensure that all new houses are built to near-zero energy standards. I know you have aspirations, but we haven't yet actually closed off this loophole, have we?

Well, we've just changed the building regs—off the top of my head, last November—to 35 per cent additional insulation standards, and then there’s a five-year automatic pathway to the next upgrade. It's technology—

So you think we have closed off that loophole, then?

Well, we're in the process of—. So, we've done the first set, Part L of the building regs, last—I'll probably have to write to you, Chair, with that, but I think it was last November. Off the top of my head, last November it came into force. And it's on an inexorable path now to the next change.

What we have to do is make sure that we can build houses to the spec that we want. It's technology neutral. So, I'm often asked why don't I say that solar panels should go onto the roofs of all houses? Well, the answer is because not all houses would have proper use out of them. We're encouraging community energy networks there, so when you build a new housing estate, you put solar panels on the roofs of the houses that would be most beneficial to have them, but you share the energy around the estate. We've got several examples of that around Wales. And we haven't said that you should put air source or ground source heat pumps in, or anything else. We've just said, 'You should get to this level of insulation and energy efficiency'. It's technology neutral. 

We're also—. Vaughan Gething's department is also working very hard on making sure that we can get a supply chain in Wales that can produce the technology necessary. There are real issues with solar panels. Most of them come from China, so we're working with Swansea University to develop a source of solar panels that can be manufactured here, which would make a big difference to the overarching carbon footprint for that, and a lot of the net-zero stuff that we're doing is about trying to get onshore supply chains so that we don't have that kind of global carbon footprint. The net-zero plans are quite specific about some of that.

We also report on our global emissions, for example. We don't have to do that. We can just do it onshore. But what's the point of being clean in Wales if we've done it by deforesting half of Africa?

Absolutely. Okay, so Lord Deben's pretty tough on the role of current house builders dumping on the people who buy their houses, and he's calling for a fund from any house builder who builds more than 100 houses to compensate those people for having to retrofit their inadequately built houses. Is that something that Wales could in any way do, or does it require the UK Government?

We would need the UK Government to do that, Jenny, because what would happen if we did it in Wales and not in England is obvious—they just won't build them here. We actually need the volume house builders to build here. I will say on behalf of a few of them—not all of them, a few of the volume house builders—that they have changed their strategy from when I started as housing Minister to now. If you look at a couple of them, they have completely changed what they're building, and I'm going to give myself a small amount of credit for having gone at them from day one about building the slums of the future, and several of them have come on board with that.

The other issue, Chair—sorry to test your patience at the moment—is that we are working very hard, and we have made some strides towards this, to make sure that when we change planning and building regs, they have to be implemented in a short amount of time. You'll know that we have houses still being built all over Wales to a spec from 20 years ago, because they started the planning consent—. So we've made some strides towards being able to accelerate that process, because that is one of the most frustrating pieces of all, and we've been successful in persuading some of the volume house builders to move to the new spec in advance of being forced to.

Are local authorities aware that a couple of the big six have changed?

Yes.

Because that ought to inform the way they approach the planning applications. Okay, that's useful information. 

So, all public buildings are due to be net-zero carbon by 2030, but many local authorities, including Cardiff, seem to be blissfully unaware of this just-round-the-corner target. You have to remind them that, when they're closing a prominent public building for one reason—because the electrics need fixing—they should use it as an opportunity to decarbonise the place as well. This is rocket science.

They all have decarbonisation plans. If you've got specifics, Jenny, I'm more than happy to discuss them with you. But each local authority has been asked to come up with a decarbonisation strategy. It's a standing item on the partnership council. We have a whole series of measures in place on the public estate, including local authorities. We're actually working with health, as well. There are big issues in some of the health estate here, so we're working with health to make sure that we have a decarbonisation plan for tertiary hospitals and all the rest of it. Jon, do you want to add anything to any of this?

We've been supporting local government for a good number of years, offering zero-interest loans to replace their street lighting, to upgrade their buildings. We have the refit programme that guaranteed savings et cetera, et cetera, and that continues. That was always intended to be a stimulus to organisations to understand, actually, that there are actually really rational economic reasons for making your buildings more energy efficient.

The slight challenge that we're now facing is that, ultimately, a lot of buildings now need to move to low-carbon heating systems, so it's diminishing returns on energy efficiency and therefore you've just to replace your heating system. Local government have provided £20 million a year in grant funding for some low-carbon heat schemes. We've been working with the energy service for the last two years to build a pipeline. So, grants are going to be issued, I think, before the summer holidays—I think; I should probably not claim that—before the summer holidays to enable low-carbon heating systems to come into place.

The challenge, the rational challenge, that all public bodies face at the moment is the same as the commercial operators', which is, if you are going to deliver the cheapest heating system that you can possibly implement, right now, it's a gas-fired combined heat and power system, because you burn the gas on site, so you don't pay all the transmission costs that you pay on your electricity, because, in your electricity bill, only about a third of it is actually the electricity; the other two thirds are transmission and balancing costs et cetera. So, you burn it on site and then you use the electricity and take off the heat and heat the system. That's a rational thing to do, and, for a number of years, that was quite a low-carbon thing to do, actually, compared to the old coal-fired boilers that people had.

So, we're now trying to move people on to low-carbon heat systems. Currently, with all the market distortions that are on electricity bills that you will know all about, compared to gas, that's prohibitive, and the technologies are not widely deployed. Therefore, there are cost-prohibitive elements there, which is why the grant funding is going in place to try and stimulate that market with local government.

Okay, but nowhere has the failure to act in a timely fashion been so clearly seen as in our swimming pools. Next to none of them are based on renewable energy. If you compare that with Bristol, which has had a strategy for decarbonising its swimming pools—. You know, I'm about to go—

Actually, Jenny, that's not true right across Wales. So, we have a loan system that allows various organisations across Wales to apply for it on the basis that the loan is calibrated for the saving that they get once the energy is in place. I know, for example, that the national pool in Swansea is currently with the energy service to put solar panels on its roof, and then the money will be repayable to the Welsh Government for recycling back into—

Invest-to-save.

—once it's over. So, that programme has been in place for quite some time. Aberystwyth University—I just opened a solar farm there that's been funded like that and so on. So, it's—. But you're right that not everyone does it.

We need to move on. Okay. So, what role will these local area energy plans play, which are due to be completed by April next year?

Yes, so, that's exactly what we're doing with that. The local energy plan will do a number of things. It will help us in a conversation with the grid. It will help us understand what the worst-first solutions will look like, because we'll understand from the mapping that's being done what we're looking at. It will help us put a future plan in place, is the short answer to that, Jenny, and we've been working on that for quite some time. We're also going to harness some of that with Ynni Cymru, as part of the co-operation agreement, so that we have a hub, if you like, to drive a lot of that forward. So, it's the base planning tool for a lot of the other things that we do in the energy sector.

Thank you.

And finally, and not least, when are we likely to get a new Warm Homes programme? Yesterday, you issued a compilation of all the recommendations.

I believe I'm in negotiation at the moment with Plenary to see if I can do an oral statement next week, Jenny.

Okay. Thank you very much.

Thank you. We're in our final five minutes now, so can I bring Joyce in, please?

Cross-cutting issues and governance: so, there was a suggestion by the Climate Change Committee that you should establish a Welsh climate assembly to address the cross-cutting issues. What are your thoughts on that?

So, we've had a few climate assemblies. I attended the one in Blaenau Gwent, and Eluned did one down in Pembrokeshire last Easter, off the top of my head. They can be a really useful thing to do. They are very cost intensive, it has to be said, because, in order to enable people to participate properly in them, you have to put quite a lot of resource in to make sure that all of the briefings are in place and so on. They're well worth doing, I'm not against them at all, but they're only one of the things that we need to do to get this behaviour change model in place. We certainly will be doing more of them in the future. The feedback coming out of the assemblies we've had has been very positive, and there's definitely been a lot of good work. But I think—. Well, it's one of the things we'll have to look to do going forward, for sure.

One of the other suggestions, of course, is, when we're moving to a net-zero skills action plan, encouraging cross-departmental work in this area—and one of the suggestions is the Minister for Economy—on developing a plan, but there are lots of issues we've talked about this morning where it's very clear we’d have to have that cross-departmental working, which you’ve assured us happens anyway. So, what are your thoughts on what they’ve said, and how close do you work with some of the big game changers—and we've talked about housing, so, construction particularly—in the new skills that will have to be on the table?

So, we have a whole series of mechanisms inside the Welsh Government to make sure that all departments feed in to the plans. We couldn't have done the net-zero plan without all of the departments feeding in, for example. And part of the point of having my portfolio is it brings an enormous number of the levers together in one management arrangement anyway, but, obviously, I work very closely with, well, actually, most Ministers, once you have a look at it, but the most closely we work with are Lesley and Vaughan. So, the net-zero skills plan was a joint production, for example, for that. And then we have a whole series of ministerial liaison groups and panels and so on and ministerial advisory groups—there are loads of them, Joyce—where various partner organisations come and meet with various Ministers, usually on a quarterly basis, so that we can push out various actions and get feedback in from things we're doing.

And then on the local authority front, of course, there's the partnership council. So, Rebecca chairs the partnership council, but I attend it on a very regular basis. There’s a standing item there on decarbonisation and so on.

So, we have quite a comprehensive, I'd say, set of arrangements in place to make sure that we've got input upwards and input downloads from all of these things. We also work very closely with the public services boards on some of this. So, we had a discussion in Cabinet only this week, I think it was, about the PSBs coming on board with the community food strategy and with a number of other things. So, there's a wealth, I'd say, of that kind of liaison group going on.

So, we've also got another partner, and time is going to defeat us—

Yes, we've only got one minute.

—so, we're going to have to have something back in writing—about those areas that are reserved, where we haven’t got any powers. So, that relies on the inter-ministerial, inter-official working. How, in your opinion, effective is that? How is it operating? Is it operating?

So, I’d say that's very mixed, and partly depends on who the Minister is at UK level. So, some Ministers are diligent about it, and I might not agree with the Minister about what they're saying, but they're diligent about doing it. So, Michael Gove is very diligent about attending the inter-ministerial groups and so on. As I say, we don't necessarily agree, but he is very diligent. Other Ministers hardly ever come. So, Lesley and I are currently refusing to go to the next environmental IMG because we've been told in advance that the Secretary of State is not available. So, I'm afraid there's absolutely no point in going to an inter-ministerial group if the UK Government has decided it's not available. That's just nonsense. So, it's mixed, is the answer to that. There are some really good examples. So, the way that the UK Emissions Trading Scheme has worked, with the four nations coming together in an equal partnership, has been excellent—we've been able to push some really ambitious goals there; the officials have done excellent work behind the scenes to get that to happen. There are other really good examples of that sort, but then the current nonsense with the DRS is a very good example of things that really just don't work at all.

Thank you. I'm afraid time's run away with us today. Can I thank you, Minister, and your official for being with us, especially since the report is just hot off the press? As you've mentioned numerous times, there is further analysis needed for you to understand et cetera, and thank you for your commitment to share that with the committee. Obviously, there have been huge concerns after its publication, so it's something that I'm sure the committee will want to keep to have—to ensure that there's dialogue, because, as you've said, we need to ensure action. It is a Wales-wide responsibility, but, obviously, knowing that Welsh Government is doing everything possible in its powers is our role as a committee to challenge, and as a Senedd, and one that we will continue to do to ensure that we reach those targets and what we need for the future generations. 

We will be sending a transcript for you to confirm that it's accurate, but may I thank you once again? Diolch yn fawr iawn.

Much appreciated. Diolch.