Cynulliad Cenedlaethol Cymru

I call Members to order.

Before we begin, I wish to inform the Assembly that the National Health Service (Indemnities) (Wales) Bill was given Royal Assent today, and I do so in accordance with Standing Order 26.75.

The first item on our agenda this afternoon is questions to the Minister for Economy, Transport and North Wales, and the first question is from Angela Burns.

Diolch, Llywydd. Good afternoon, Minister.

Working with Transport for Wales and with local authorities, we are investing in improving rail, bus and community transport services, and in developing our proposals for the metro in the south-west region.

Minister, I am here to make an unashamed pitch, to ask Welsh Government to support the St Clears railway station application to Network Rail to open up a railway station again in St Clears. It was closed in 1964, and there has been a campaign that's been long running for the last decade to try to reopen it. St Clears is a burgeoning town. The absence of that railway station is an absolute gap in the west Wales network. There are lots and lots of modern houses, not just in St Clears, but the villages around, and you either have to go to Carmarthen or Whitland, neither of which, actually, are big enough to deal with some of the issues, like the parking, and so on; Whitland is an absolute nightmare, as you will be more than aware. 

You, as I understand it, have the third phase of the consultation going out. There is a petition in place, and we think that Cardiff, with Ely Mill, has already got quite a lot of stations all around Cardiff. We understand that there is a strong pitch for Carno and for Deeside, but St Clears is already on a mainline route. It would be a very easy win, and it would really help with things like social inclusion, with making that town not just a far distance satellite, but part of the whole Carmarthen and Swansea network, and we really are counting on your support. 

I can assure the Member that I am supportive of the application for St Clears station. It's one of four shortlisted across Wales for further assessment and potential nomination as a priority for UK Government investment. I think that it would assist in the UK Government showing that it is willing to invest more heavily in rail infrastructure in Wales, and, so, the project is being progressed under the south-west metro programme. 

Llywydd, can I say that I sympathise greatly with those communities affected in Janet Finch-Saunders's constituency? Given the extent of the rainfall, disruption on the trunk road network in Conwy was, thankfully, kept to a minimum, with just two closures on the A470. However, Conwy Valley railway line does remain closed, with a replacement bus service operating between Llandudno Junction and Blaenau Ffestiniog.

Thank you, and your sympathy is very, very much appreciated. Recent flood devastation, of course, as you mentioned, has seen the railway seriously damaged, and it is really quite sad when you think that £7.5 million of investment has gone into it only recently. But this line is beleaguered by problems with even the mildest rain. So, when we get a flood situation, it's weeks and weeks before it gets to where people are not having to use bus replacements. But we have also seen too many times the A470 closed to the north of Llanrwst. Only as recently as Saturday, it was extremely difficult to get into Llanrwst at all. So, despite the Welsh Government investing in improvements between Penllwyn and Tan Lan and in Maenan, the road still closes. Traffic is forced off the trunk road onto the maze of the local authority-managed lanes in Maenan. And I know that for me to get to Llanrwst on Saturday, I went right over the top of Eglwysbach and Llanddoged. These roads simply cannot cope with any significant volume of traffic going in both directions.

What action will you take to help create a feasible route for individuals needing to travel up and down the east of the Conwy Valley, during what looks very likely now, going forward, to be repeat incidences of severe flooding?

Can I thank Janet Finch-Saunders for her question, and say that, whilst I am incredibly sympathetic to those communities who were disrupted as a result of the flooding, I'm also sincerely thankful for their patience? And I'd like to extend my thanks also to staff across the entire transport network who have worked so tirelessly since the flooding began to support the travelling public. I'd also like to put on record my thanks to the North Wales Fire and Rescue Service who have worked tirelessly to support people and to support those transport authorities as well. 

Now, the A470 trunk road, as the Member has highlighted, was closed at two locations during the recent storms, including at Llanrwst. It was closed at approximately 0900 hours on Sunday, 9 February and reopened at approximately 0800 the following morning. Now, I think the Member is right that instances of flooding on the trunk road network are likely to become more frequent, given climate change, and that's why the Welsh Government is investing in a road resilience fund, specifically for investment in roads liable to flooding, and I would imagine that the A470 at those two locations would be a prime candidate for investment.

But can I also share the Member's sadness and remorse at what's happened on the Conwy line? I was there just last year visiting the works that were being undertaken by Network Rail. It was a huge endeavour and it is really tragic that, so soon after that work was completed, we've seen further damage caused by storms. 

Questions now from the party spokespeople. Plaid Cymru spokesperson, Helen Mary Jones. 

Diolch, Llywydd. The Minister, yesterday, in his statement on transport, set out some very high-level aspirations. He talked about the metro as having a greater focus on connectivity, decarbonisation and integration, and I'm sure that these are aspirations that everybody in this Chamber would support.

However, Llywydd, I remain concerned about some gaps between aspiration and delivery, and if I can take the Minister, first of all, back to some conversations that we had yesterday, the Minister will recall the commitment that he made, with the agreement between Plaid Cymru and the Welsh Government, that the feasibility study into the south-west metro would include the western valleys, including the Amman and the Gwendraeth. Now, in a written response to Dr Dai Lloyd on 20 September last year, the Minister replied that there had been a feasibility study, but that it did not, at that stage, include the western valleys. That was in the written reply. The Minister will recall that, three times yesterday by three different Plaid Cymru spokespeople, he was asked about whether or not that commitment had been met. He did not answer Dai Lloyd, he did not answer me and he did not answer Adam Price. So, I really want to ask the Minister today, has that feasibility study been completed? If it isn't completed, at what stage does he expect it to be completed? Does it or does it not—and let's be really specific—include the Amman and Gwendraeth valleys? And when will the Minister be able to share that feasibility study with Members, accepting, of course, that there may be some delays, because of issues relating to commercial confidentiality? 

Well, I think, as I said yesterday, in response to questions, we have funded the four local authorities, being led in this instance by Swansea City and County Council, who've carried out the initial feasibility study into the metro system. The work now will be taken forward by Transport for Wales. That work will be more expansive and extensive and will consider all parts of the region and how that metro system could be enhanced or furthered, both in terms of its vision and in terms of how we can deliver it. 

I'm grateful to the Minister for his answer. It still doesn't tell me when we will actually know whether it includes the Amman and Gwendraeth valleys, and I invite him to see if he wants to be able to give us a bit more of an idea about that now.

But if I can take him to another commitment that he's made as part of an agreement with our party, he will recall that, in the final budget deal with the Welsh Government, we agreed not to oppose the budget, and one of the conditions of that was £2 million to be allocated to improving electric vehicle charging points across Wales. Now, he will, I'm sure, be aware that, as of October 2019, figures place the majority of south Wales local authorities in the bottom 20 per cent of local authorities UK-wide. For example, one of the lowest ranking was Rhondda Cynon Taf, with just three public charging points for 100,000; Caerphilly, at that stage, only had four; and the Vale of Glamorgan, only five per 100,000 people.

This was a commitment to a substantial investment, and I wonder if the Minister can tell us today what has been done with that investment, and how does he account for the fact that we have such low figures in some of those communities that need it most? I think we would all share the Minister's aspirations to move more and more people on to public transport, but there will be many people who will continue to want or need to use private vehicles and we need to get them into electrical vehicles where we can.

Can I thank Helen Mary Jones for the question regarding electrical charging points? I think the explanation is really rather simple: it's that there's been a market failure to date across much of the UK, including huge swathes of Wales. To address that, the Government—any Government—could do one of two things: (1) wait for the market to respond to increasing demand, and we have seen a significant increase in the number of charging points; or (2) invest. 

Now, if a Government is going to invest, there are further options. One is to just plough the money into existing charging systems and use taxpayers' money to pay for the infrastructure that's required, or use the moneys to incentivise the market. That is precisely what we're doing with the £2 million that was agreed with Plaid Cymru, working alongside the Development Bank of Wales, and the providers of electric charging points, so that we don't just get £2 million-worth of infrastructure points, but that we get many millions more, and, in so doing, drive up the figure quite considerably in terms of how many charging points we have across Wales.

I can understand the Minister's aspirations to make the £2 million go further—that makes a certain amount of sense, but it begs the question about time and about when this is actually going to be delivered. The Minister is right, of course, to highlight the issues of market failure. It's likely that market failure will continue to take place, both in some of our poorer communities and potentially in some of our more isolated rural communities. It's been interesting, of course, to see that Gwynedd has been able to do better than some other local authorities in this regard. So, when does the Minister feel that he will be able to provide this Assembly with a breakdown of exactly how that £2 million has been, or will be, spent? And will he be able to show us where those new charging points have been put, because I would agree with him that we wouldn't want public investment to be put in place to replace private sector investment where the market could deliver?

Well, I can assure the Member that we have committed to developing an electric vehicle charging strategy for Wales. That is a strategy to be published this year. It's scoping out the context for further Welsh Government intervention above and beyond the £2 million in the provision of electric vehicle charging infrastructure. And I can also assure the Member that Transport for Wales's remit letter for the coming year will include commissioning them to support this exercise so that we can roll out, at the fastest possible pace, new improved fast-charging infrastructure for cars.

Conservative spokesperson, Russell George.

Diolch, Llywydd. Minister, under your watch, how many major transport schemes have cost substantially more and taken longer to complete than expected?

Well, I don't think anywhere near as many transport-related projects as the UK Government has been in charge of delivering, particularly on the railways. We only need to look at HS2 as an example of how inflating costs have spiralled out of control, or Crossrail, or any given number of road projects that are being delivered by Highways England. 

I would say to the Member, though, that it is disappointing whenever a road project, or a rail project for that matter, is delivered beyond the time frame that was promised, or delivered over budget. However, there are certain circumstances where projects have been delivered, either under budget or on budget and within the time frame originally envisaged, including that major road project in the Member's own constituency, the Newtown bypass.

Thank you for your answer, Minister. Of course, my question was with regard to transport schemes here in Wales, and this is my job—to scrutinise your performance here in this Parliament. Can I ask, Minister, or make the point that the performance of Welsh Government in delivering major road infrastructure projects has not at all been glowing? And I appreciate that you accept the frustration when that occurs. 

Last week, the auditor general's report into section 2 of the A465 highlighted disruption, delays and overspend of £100 million, compared to the initial estimate in 2014. It was scheduled for completion in 2018 and was then put back to 2019, and it's now scheduled to be completed in 2021. Are you confident that there will be no further delays and cost increases, because the auditor general, sadly, isn't convinced of that, in fact, he's concluded that the final cost remains uncertain?

HS2.

Absolutely. The Member is absolutely right—HS2 is the prime example of projects that can inflate beyond control. 

But, look, the Member is right: he's here to scrutinise me, and the dualling of section 2 of the A465 is an enormously important programme, and I'm obviously very disappointed by the further delay to this particular project. However, I can confirm, Llywydd, that the scheme budget remains as it was in my statement in April of last year. The budget remains the same: no further increase, despite the delay that was announced very recently. It's also worth reflecting on the fact that this particular project is now more than 85 per cent complete, with construction of more than 7.5 miles of retaining walls; something in the order of 1.3 million cu m of material has been excavated, and there has been the laying of 16,000 cu m of concrete; 30,000 trees have been planted and 15 bridges have been constructed. It's a huge endeavour. Whilst I do regret the increase in the overall budget since it was first programmed, and the delay in completing it, there is no doubt whatsoever that this complex but hugely ambitious scheme will be truly transformational for the Heads of the Valleys.

Thank you for your answer, Minister. I think it will be helpful as well for the residents to be able to listen to your own frustrations that the project hasn't been delivered on time. I want to go to a more positive footing here, but, of course, it's not the first and only project that has been mismanaged; I'll detail a couple and come to my final question. A year ago, you were delighted to mark the beginning of the construction phase of the A487 Caernarfon to Bontnewydd bypass scheme and told this Parliament that it would be completed in 2021. Currently, the project overview on the Welsh Government's website says completion date is 2022. And then the construction of the Llandeilo bypass, which was due to commence last year—last month you told the climate change and rural affairs committee that it wasn't included in this next budget, and work hasn't yet commenced.

So, I want to get to a more positive point here: when are lessons going to be learned from these past mistakes? When is it that this Parliament can be informed and people across Wales can be informed of a project that is going to be properly managed, so it's delivered on time and it's delivered in a cost-effective way, as the original estimates listed? What is it, through procurement practices and contractual practices, that needs to change to ensure that that can happen?

I can assure the Member that we already are delivering projects, road-based projects, to budget, and within the schedule that they are published, including, as I said earlier, the Newtown bypass. Two projects were highlighted in the Member's question: one concerns the A487 Caernarfon to Bontnewydd bypass, and the Member will be aware that during excavation of land in this project, important archaeological finds were made, and, of course, that leads to delays. In terms of Llandeilo bypass, the Member, I imagine, will be aware as well of concerns that have been expressed by Sustrans, which must, in my view, be fully addressed.

Of course, cost and time bias is built into projects of this scale. However, lessons are being learned, not just from projects here within Wales, but we also work as closely as we can do with Highways England, because this is not an uncommon problem. The discovery of archaeological finds is something that often you cannot predict—you simply cannot predict. In terms of excavation of earth and finding other remains such as unexploded bombs, or terrains that you could not see, and you could not assess before the work began, that need to be addressed, and that can add time and it can add cost, but we are working with Highways England and with others to learn lessons and to ensure that we bring in projects as close to the budget or, indeed, in the case of the Newtown bypass, at the budget that they were published.

Brexit Party spokesperson, David Rowlands.

Diolch, Llywydd. Could the Minister please provide an update on the foundational economy in Wales?

Yes, absolutely. It's an exciting piece of work that is being led by my colleague Lee Waters. We recently saw the challenge fund unveiled, with a very significant number of bids. As a result of the enthusiasm for that particular fund, we trebled the amount of resource available, and we've been able to fund a huge number of projects right across the length and breadth of Wales.

Thank you for that answer, Minister. Gerald Holtham, giving the Hodge lecture, said he had no idea how the Welsh economy was going to develop over the next decade. He made the point that Wales should look more towards the foundational economy to simply protect living standards. But he maintained that even if the Welsh economy grows to enrich most of the people in Wales, places like Merthyr were never going to match Bridgend, Swansea, Chepstow—and he should, of course, have added Cardiff. Does the Minister think that this analysis is correct?

I'm sure that we could spend the entire afternoon debating this important area of concern. The economic action plan has the dual purpose of driving down inequality within regions and across regions, but also to improve productivity. Our focus on the foundational economy is new, and it has immense energy attached to it because we recognise that we have to ensure that we protect living standards and that we give opportunities to those communities that have felt very distant from areas that have benefited from economic growth in recent times. But, equally, we are committed to developing the highest quality jobs that we possibly can across all parts of Wales. That's what, for example, the Tech Valleys project is aiming to achieve. It's what our interventions across the Valleys taskforce are aiming to achieve. It's what our intervention in projects such as the Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre is aiming to achieve. And if we look at the results of our strategic investments in recent years, we can stand proud. We've got unemployment rates at the lowest ever level—the lowest levels since records began. We see gross value added rising faster than most other parts of the UK, and household earnings as well have been increasing faster than the average in the UK. These are all signs that we have been investing cleverly, smartly and in the right areas.

Well, we were not informed of this decision by the UK Government. However, I have written to the Secretary of State for Transport asking for urgent clarification on their proposals, and my officials have contacted the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency. The Welsh Government are ready to assist where possible, with those that will be affected by this news.

Thank you very much for that response, but we do need to go further than that. We need to ensure that this decision is overturned, because we can’t afford to lose this centre. I’m talking about a centre that is in the constituency of my colleague Siân Gwenllian, but, of course, it’s a centre that serves a vast area of north Wales. In August of last year, following concerns raised with me by Huw Williams from the heavy goods vehicles and buses training service—Huw Williams from Anglesey—I wrote to the DVSA, pointing out to them that they had a lack of capacity in Caernarfon as things stood. We need lorry drivers and we need bus drivers for our economy and our wider society.

What Huw Williams—and I know that this is true of other companies—had found is that they couldn’t get enough slots in the centre in Caernarfon in order to test those people who they were training. That tells me that we need to grow and strengthen the centre, so you can imagine my huge disappointment and the shock of Huw Williams in hearing, unofficially first of all, that the intention now is to close the test centre.

That was confirmed in due time. There was a suggestion that they would seek another site in Caernarfon, having closed the current site. Now, that’s not how things should be done. If the DVSA agree that there is a need for a centre in Caernarfon, then they must find a new site in Caernarfon or in that area now, not after the closure of the centre. Can we have an assurance from the Government that you will do everything you can to urge the Government to change this decision, because we can’t afford to lose that centre?

Can I thank Rhun for his question? Llywydd, I think that it would be helpful if I was to release the letter that I sent to the Secretary of State, because I think that it will show how serious we are in demanding that a Caernarfon site is secured. I appreciate the predicament that haulier trainers are in over this decision, and the impact that it might have on their business, especially those who have invested in good faith and in the belief that a test centre would be retained in the area.

Our understanding is that the Department for Transport is still exploring options for an alternative test centre in or around the Caernarfon area. We have said to the UK Government that we believe that it should be in Caernarfon, and it's also my understanding that the current Caernarfon test site is leased from Gwynedd county council. Our understanding is that they have yet to be formally notified of any date to vacate the site. As I say, we are determined to see the decision reversed and to see a permanent site in Caernarfon.

As you indicate, the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency have been in negotiations for another location in Caernarfon, on the Cibyn industrial estate. Subsequent to that they said a move to Wrexham, 90 miles' drive from Caernarfon, is a contingency, and officials continue to look for alternative sites, as you indicate, in Caernarfon, after not finding what they describe as a suitable location, and that tests should still be booked from the current site until further notice. What assistance, if any, can the Welsh Government provide in not only understanding why the site on Cibyn industrial estate was deemed unsuitable, and whether that can be remedied, but also perhaps on identifying, or helping identify, alternative suitable sites in order to keep the centre in or near Caernarfon?

Our regional team in north Wales stand ready to assist DVSA in identifying an alternative site in Caernarfon. So, too, do Business Wales, and I've asked my officials to work with Gwynedd county council in assessing the reasons why DVSA have determined that it may not be a suitable site, the one that they currently have, and to ascertain exactly what it is that they would wish to have in a new alternative site in Caernarfon.

I continue to have discussions with Transport for Wales about current services on the south Wales main line and local lines that are served from it, and I'll also continue to discuss with Network Rail, who own the south Wales main line, about future investments.

Thank you. Of course, increasing services and expanding the network is something I know has been discussed yesterday in the statement on the south Wales regional metro plans, and also a meeting I had with Transport for Wales recently reflected that aim. I've spoken to a lot of people who talk to me about the capacity issues, and I know that you've mentioned Network Rail, but in particular, locally, many people have raised with me that they want to see more frequent stops in places like Pencoed, Baglan, Llandarcy and other similar stations. How are you able to facilitate this, and what decisions have been made regarding loops on the main line for strategic locations? And the second part of the question is: what have you been doing to discuss with Bridgend County Borough Council regarding Pencoed level crossing? We know that the level crossing is affecting the residents in the area, and has hindered progress over the years. It's going to be a barrier to expansion and has already created many traffic problems. So, on those two issues, can you please give me progress?

Yes, of course. An extendability framework is now being established for the south Wales metro. I'm looking at corridors that can be enhanced in the future. Of course, I don't really need to rehearse the figures—11 per cent of track, 11 per cent of stations, 20 per cent of level crossings in Wales on the Wales route, and yet we've only received about 2 per cent of investment from the UK Government. Clearly, if we are to improve speeds and reduce journey times, and improve the regularity of services across not just the south Wales lines and services, but also elsewhere in Wales, then we need to see further investment. 

I have met very recently with the leader of Bridgend council to discuss Pencoed. I was accompanied by the local Member, and we have asked the council to bring forward proposals that we will be able to, in turn, promote to UK Government for investment. I think it's worth saying that the commitment that TfW has to increasing capacity is one part of the jigsaw. In order to increase and improve capacity we also need to see investment in rail lines, the track and the signalling, which then can enable increased capacity on the network at any given time.

The electrification of the Great Western main line has clearly been a major plus and will be a major plus for the Welsh, south Wales, economy.

[Inaudible.]

As Bethan Jenkins—sorry, Bethan Sayed—said before, it works as a part of the metro jigsaw, and I'm going to qualify my question to you by saying I appreciate that you're not superman, and that you can't wave a magic wand and—[Interruption.] And you can't wave a magic wand—[Interruption.] No. And you can't wave a magic wand and make all these happen tomorrow, but, in terms of getting the more disparate, the rural, parts of the metro network going, such as Monmouth, which I've mentioned to you before, what can you do to make sure that those parts of the metro jigsaw are joined up as quickly as possible? I appreciate it can't be tomorrow, but people in my area are thinking that the metro's a great idea in practice, but when is it actually going to extend to a point where it's going to help them in their lives?

Well, we've asked—. As I said in yesterday's debate, we've asked Transport for Wales—we've remitted them in the next financial year—to look at each of the metro projects, including extendibility. That work is extensive, of course, but it is necessary for individuals in the more distant areas of each of the metro areas to appreciate that, in the future, investment will come their way and they will be better connected.

Could I just address my thanks to Network Rail, TfW? Representatives from the Secretary of State's office as well have been part of the meetings that have been organised alongside Pencoed Town Council, myself and Chris Elmore, the MP, in order to make the case and to actually get us to the stage where we have now completed the Welsh transport appraisal guidance first phase study into the level crossing, but also the enhancements that are needed on the Pencoed bridge road crossing as well. But will he accept that, in order to take this forward, not just with the WelTAG 2, but to make the case for the moneys—and I thank the Minister for the meeting he held recently with Huw David of Bridgend and ourselves—we will have to have all players at the table. It will have to be the local authority in terms of highways and urban structure around the railway if we move to closing the crossing, but there will also need to be major investment from the UK Department of Transport as well. And it's good to have had the Secretary of State as an observer in these meetings, but we're rapidly moving to the point where they'll have to look to put their hand in their pocket.

Could I also ask, please, that, in terms of doing this, the criticality of increasing frequency of service from all the way—? Maesteg, Sarn, Tondu, Pontyclun, Pencoed, Llanharan are all reliant on this. But could I ask him: is he going to continue to urge for progress as well on increased frequency on the Maesteg to Cheltenham line as well? Because that, equally—if we can unlock Pencoed, then that can happen as well.   

I couldn't disagree with any of the points raised by the Member, and I'll assure him that I will champion those services and those infrastructure projects in and around his constituency with DfT, with Transport for Wales colleagues, and with my colleagues within Government. It's absolutely vital, as the Member said, that we have a united-team approach to these projects, and that is what we are seeking to deliver for the Maesteg area.

The Welsh Government's priorities are set out in the economic action plan. We are currently working with a wide range of partners in the region on the emerging regional economic framework, as well as supporting the Swansea bay city deal.

Thank you, Minister. Our past reliance on a handful of large employers has left the economy of South Wales West vulnerable. The closure of the Port Talbot steelworks would be devastating for the region, and we face huge challenges in diversifying. But we can also seize the opportunities, if we can think ahead. The biggest challenge we face as a nation is decarbonisation, which also offers us great opportunities. Electric arc furnaces can be used to recycle the tonnes of cars that will be scrapped as a result of electrification. New fuel sources must be found for heavy goods transportation, and there have been promising developments in ammonia fuel cells and conversion of carbon dioxide to methanol. But, in order to capitalise on the opportunities, we have to invest in research and development. Minister, will your Government commit to invest in alternative fuels R&D and work with higher education to ensure Wales leads the way? After all, Swansea was the birthplace of the hydrogen fuel cell. Thank you.

Can I thank Caroline Jones for her question? I can assure her that we already are investing heavily in R&D, that we're working with higher education institutions in the region. Swansea University have taken a lead in many respects in regard to industrial energy solutions, and we are absolutely determined to chase after every penny that is on offer through the UK Government's industrial energy transformation fund and the clean steel fund. They amount to something in the region of £500 million of investment over several years, but I'm afraid to say that that investment pales into almost insignificance next to the Netherlands' £5 billion annual investment that is being made in decarbonisation.

Decarbonisation offers an enormous opportunity for businesses in Wales, for research and development organisations, for higher education institutions, and I'm keen to make sure that, within south Wales, the industrial cluster that has been established is used as a pathway to draw down as much UK industrial strategy funding as possible, but also to access Welsh Government funding. Okay, our bags of money may be smaller than the UK Government's, but, nonetheless, we are able to make strategic investments that assist businesses in decarbonising, and I could identify a number in the Member's region, such as Keytree, where they were able to access £0.5 million and create 38 highly skilled jobs in a software hub within the region. Approximately 33 per cent of our calls to action money has gone to projects relating directly to decarbonisation programmes and, as a result of that, we have seen an employment rate in mid and south-west Wales that has increased by 7.1 per cent between 2011 and 2019. But our determination is to build on that by investing in those industries of tomorrow, and, clearly, decarbonisation is at the very heart of the industries of the future. 

Minister, the Swansea bay city deal, of course, is founded on the commercialisation of innovation, not least in decarbonising energy sources west of my region, but I'm pleased with progress within my region. I've raised the prospects about the national steel innovation centre with you before, so I am pleased to hear that Neath Port Talbot's projects for that and tackling climate change have now been signed off by the joint board—any new jobs are going to be welcome, although there are more factors than just that. But I do remain nervous about delays within the system that we've seen from both Governments interrogating previous projects. Can you tell me what you've learned from those processes in testing the viability of projects brought before you already that help you speed up the process of deciding when money can be released?

I think it's fair to say that the key lesson that we've learned from recent history in regard to the deal and the projects contained within it is that Governments need to be more heavily involved in assisting the development of projects to ensure that they can reach the point of approval sooner. There are hugely ambitious projects contained within the deal. We wish to see the deal become a great success, but we have to be thorough in our interrogation of each and every project contained within it. That doesn't necessarily just need to be challenging in a critical way; as I say, I think we can assist more proactively in ensuring that those projects can reach conclusions—positive conclusions—sooner. 

Further to Suzy Davies's question about the national steel innovation centre and the Swansea bay technology centre at the Baglan energy park, can I just push you further on that point about funding and can you outline exactly when the Welsh Government is likely to make a decision on this important funding bid? Furthermore, do you also recognise that current broadband provision at the Baglan energy park is less than optimal, with many businesses complaining about connectivity locally? Therefore, what action is the Welsh Government taking to remedy that situation, mindful of the potential development of this key city deal project at that very location?

Can I thank Dai Lloyd for his questions? The issue relating to broadband provision at Baglan I will ask my colleague Lee Waters to respond to in writing. If there are issues there, then clearly we need to address them.FootnoteLink 

In terms of the other projects contained in the deal, we will approve them as soon as we are entirely satisfied that they deliver against their intentions and that the due diligence does indeed stack up. 

What I was going to talk about is the university sector. We've got two outstanding universities in the Swansea bay city region and the ability to use them in order to grow major new industries and to build on some of those that are coming out of it. You have a choice, really, with economic policy, to prioritise low-wage areas to try and bring branch factories in, but actually developing within your own area, building up, the skills of your own people, who aren't going to be footloose and fancy-free, as Dawn Bowden has discovered with some of those companies that have come into her area, then you've got a chance of keeping them; they're going to grow in your area. What is the Welsh Government doing to work with universities to get more success out of some of these things coming out? I know 'technium' has a bad reputation, but that's because the Welsh Government used it to brand—they gave the name to every branch factory they opened in Wales. The idea of techniums, of spinning out of universities and developing skills and making their way into high-quality and high-value companies, is something that can work, has started to work in Swansea, but what more can be done? 

I'm sure many lessons were learned from techniums, and we were able to apply several of those lessons in the development of the enterprise hubs, which are proving to be incredibly successful across Wales—six enterprise hubs that are boosting prospects for young entrepreneurs and leading to many, many new start-ups flourishing sooner than they would do if they were to survive in their own existence. Now, we've provided—. I think the Member is absolutely right that higher education has a critical role in ensuring our long-term prosperity. Further education skills offer incredibly important technical tools, and higher education offers the strategic tools in which to have the best possible fighting chance in a competitive world. And so we have been investing heavily in higher education institutions and research and development. For example, we provided £3 million to the Higher Education Funding Council for Wales just last year, and a further £5 million this year to develop degree-level apprenticeships, which will make a significant contribution, I believe, to the development of high-level skills that our economy needs. 

Now, so far, work has gone ahead in relation to digital and engineering and also in advanced manufacturing, and I await the results of those pilot schemes with keen interest. It's worth saying as well, Llywydd, that European structural funds have helped universities play a really important role in helping to meet the higher level skills needs of Welsh industry over many, many years, with in excess of £70 million of EU funds having been utilised during the 2014 to 2020 period.  

Well, we're stimulating the north Wales economy in many ways. We continue to invest in people, places, business and infrastructure, as outlined in the economic action plan. My role as a Minister for north Wales also ensures the region has a strong voice in Government and in Cabinet. 

Thank you for that answer, Minister. Leaving the EU means that we can open new free ports that can actually offer the tax and duty benefits traditionally associated with such ports. Under the EU, state-aid rules prevented new free ports offering such benefits, effectively making them free in name only. The Westminster Government seems keen to establish a number of new free ports in the UK now that we've left the EU. Do you agree with me that a free port in north Wales could bring much-needed economic and employment regeneration to the area, and will you call on the UK Government to ensure that at least one of the new free ports is in north Wales?  

Well, we remain open-minded about free ports, but let me just be absolutely clear, in answering the Member, what free ports, in our view, should not be. They should not be a means of lowering employment or health or environmental standards—absolutely not. Nor they should be used in a way that displaces activity away from existing ports and enterprise zones. Now, the Member is very well aware that Holyhead port, that Deeside industrial zone, that many, many centres of activity in north Wales, could be threatened by the establishment of a free port zone if it was not carried out in the correct manner. And so, whilst we remain open-minded, I would have to say to the Member that they should not be embraced as an idea without first of all approaching them very, very sceptically.  

One issue that continues to be raised with me by businesses in Aberconwy is the skills shortage. This is a Wales-wide problem, with 92 per cent of senior business leaders reporting difficulties in hiring workers with the required skills. So, to stimulate skill growth, I have previously called for the creation of an institute of technology in north Wales. Despite the UK Government having already committed to setting up 12 institutes of technology across England, a Welsh Government spokesperson stated the following to the North Wales Weekly News: there is capacity within the existing further education estate to provide excellent learning in subjects such as engineering and digital close to people's homes in the north. So, therefore, given the apparent opposition to the creation of an institute, I would be grateful if you could explain where this referenced 'capacity' is and what action are you taking to build on that. Thank you.

Can I thank the Member for her question? This primarily relates to responsibilities in the hands of the education Minister, because it concerns further education institutions, of course. However, on the general point of skills, I'd say a number of things. One, that skills shortages will become more acute in certain areas as a result of our exit from the EU; that's certainly what businesses are telling me. Secondly, that Grŵp Llandrillo Menai do an incredible job as one of our most important providers of skills in Wales in meeting the needs of the local economy. And thirdly, specifically with regard to the idea of the creation of an institute of technology, I would welcome consideration of the creation of an institute of technology for north Wales. I believe that this is an issue that has already been discussed. If proposals are bought to Government, then we would seek to support the development of a business case.

Minister, metro mayors Steve Rotheram and Andy Burnham are looking into using their budgets to drive the growth of industry in their areas. We need the flexibility in north Wales to be part of this drive and bring projects like the Heathrow logistics hubs and a second Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre to Alyn and Deeside. Minister, when will the Welsh Government publish regional budgets that will give us the money, flexibility and power to secure such projects and to enable us to work collaboratively and directly with the north west of England? And finally, Minister, do you agree with me that devolving power and money to north Wales will start to address the north-south divide, so often felt by my constituents in Alyn and Deeside?

Can I thank Jack Sargeant for his questions and say that, whether real or perceived, the north-south divide is an issue that I'm determined to get to grips with? In terms of the relationship we have with the north west of England, can I put on record how impressed I've been by both metro mayor Steve Rotheram and metro mayor Andy Burnham in recent years? Their engagement with Welsh Government has been quite astonishing. The determination that they both have in improving prospects for their citizens is to be hugely admired, and I wish them the best of luck in this year's set of elections.

In terms of the investment that will be made through regional indicative budgets, I can assure the Member that I'll be making a statement on or around 10 March of this year concerning regional indicative budgets, and I think it's absolutely right that we have transparency of funding and investment. That will, in turn, help to address the real or perceived north-south divide.

In the meantime, I can also assure the Member that we are pressing ahead with £1 billion of transport investment in north Wales. We've already established the Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre, and we're now looking at establishing the Advanced Manufacturing Research Institute mark two in Deeside. We're pressing ahead with the Wrexham gateway project. We're going to be improving every single station in north Wales. And as a result of our endeavours in recent years, the unemployment rate in north Wales is at a record low, and lower than both the Welsh and UK average.

The Welsh Government is helping to increase economic prosperity across Wales through the economic action plan. In 2020, we'll deliver inclusive growth through a focus on regional economic development and we'll encourage a sense of national movement behind a fairer, more responsible economy, fit for future generations.

I wonder if I could ask the Minister what role he thinks the further education sector plays in developing the skills that can underpin our growth in economic prosperity for all, particularly in some of the more disadvantaged communities. We don't have an university in our immediate patch within Ogmore and Bridgend, but we have a fantastic FE college—it happens to be double excellent rated by Estyn, award winning, inclusive, and happens to be the Times Educational Supplement 2019 college of the year—in Bridgend. I recently went along to see the incredible work being done by four young women students in the Nemesis Inferno F1 model competition. They've won the UK heats of this—they've outcompeted every other team, not only in engineering, but also in enterprise, which is part of it as well—and they go on now to the European competitions. It's a combination of a collaboration between Pencoed Comprehensive, between the FE college in Bridgend, but also a range of partners and sponsors from industry as well. Isn't this a real exhibition of the contribution that FE and good sixth-form education, working with partners, makes to growing our economic productivity?

Can I thank Huw Irranca-Davies for his question? The FE institutions that we're fortunate to have in Wales are outstanding in terms of how they respond to employer needs and how they bring life chances to so many young people, and that includes Bridgend College. I've seen first hand how Bridgend College have increased their engagement and participation in skills competitions. Through engagement with the Inspiring Skills Excellence in Wales project, the college have been able to second to the project an individual, and that's been enormously important to learners. I think it's also worth saying that the college has traditionally had incredibly strong links with major employers, including Ford and Sony, but it's also been highly responsive to SMEs and micro-sized businesses as well.

Finally, question 8, Gareth Bennett.

Yes, of course. Transport for Wales is assisting the Welsh Government in reviewing how bus services could be improved in the future to ensure that communities across Wales benefit from a modern, integrated public transport service.

Thank you. As the Minister will be well aware, the congestion charge for Cardiff is being consulted on; the council are pushing that forward as a proposal. I know that the Minister has been in consultation with them, which is good. Now, there is a major problem with the lack of public confidence in the public transport system in and around Cardiff, particularly since we haven't had a bus station in Cardiff for five years. Could you offer any reassurance that bus service provision in Cardiff itself, and into Cardiff, will improve?

As a result of a series of reforms and measures, I can offer that assurance, first and foremost. Although we've have had 10 years of austerity, we've been able to maintain the bus services support grant of £25 million since 2013. If austerity is truly coming to an end, then clearly there will be opportunities to increase the amount of funding allocated to support bus services across Wales, including in and around Cardiff.

Secondly, we're bringing forward to this Chamber proposals to legislate for the re-introduction of franchising to allow local authorities to run bus companies, to ensure that there is better open data and data gathering so that we can better integrate timetables for rail and for bus services. And we will be bringing forward enhanced quality partnerships to ensure that the experience that passengers have are improved and that the infrastructure in place to support bus services is enhanced as well. This is an incredibly exciting area of work. It's exciting because the work that this Welsh Labour Government is doing will address, finally, the failure of deregulation in the 1980s.

Thank you, Minister.

The next item, therefore, is questions to the Counsel General and Brexit Minister in relation to his responsibilities as Brexit Minister, and the first question is from Mike Hedges.

I'm pleased to confirm that the legislative consent memorandum for the UK Environment Bill has been laid today. This follows recent memoranda on four Bills relating to EU exit: the Withdrawal Agreement Bill, the Direct Payments Bill, the Agriculture Bill and the Fisheries Bill. We will keep under review the need for similar memoranda in relation to future Bills the UK Government may bring forward.

Can I thank the Counsel General for that response? I accept that leaving the European Union is the will of the British people and have accepted that since 2016. Whilst leaving the EU is the will of the people, I do not believe the people want to return to the south Wales rivers of the 1960s, with no fish, high pollution levels, and the colour of the water varying from red to black, with some of them able to actually catch fire. I want to stress the importance of protecting the environment and request an update on any discussions on the LCM regarding the environment.

The LCM in relation to that has been laid today. I share with the Member the importance that he attaches to environmental protection in Wales and we have benefited from that during the course of our membership of the European Union. We have been very clear that what we want to see is continued alignment with the beneficial EU regulations that we've seen the benefit of in Wales over many decades, and I hope that we can persuade the UK Government in due course to continue to align to those standards into the future. 

During the transition period, the UK will remain in the customs union and single market, leaving tariffs and customs arrangements unchanged for that period. It's clear this will change significantly at the end of transition, with a real increase in non-tariff barriers, including requirements for customs documentation, and potentially tariffs also.

You'll be aware that I've raised on a number of occasions concerns by the RMT trade union about the impact of potential customs arrangements and changes, particularly with regard to the impact on shipping, the impact on competition within shipping, the impact on the collective agreements that are currently held by trade unions to protect terms and conditions of employment, and also the implications in respect of potentially undercutting of freight terms and conditions, the underpayment of minimum wage, as well as all the issues of external, broader non-payment of national minimum wage. I wonder what steps the Government is taking, and what discussions the Welsh Government is having to try and ensure that we preserve the recommendations of the Fair Work Commission and protect the rights and interests of workers within seafaring and within freight, and also in terms of the issues around the future status of the port of Milford Haven.

I thank the Member for that important question and his point illuminates one of the under-explored aspects of some of the impacts of non-tariff barriers in particular. I can assure him that we continue to take every opportunity to impress upon the UK Government in their negotiations the importance of maintaining as few barriers as possible to trade, including the kind of freight lines that he described in his question. That is part of a broader commitment, which I know very well that he shares, to ensure that labour standards are maintained into the future. Obviously, we wish to see the continuation of a level playing field in our future relationship with the European Union, now that we are outside the European Union. Part of that, and a crucial part of it, relates to labour standards and certainly we in Wales are committed to maintaining those.

Questions now from the party spokespeople. Conservative spokesperson, Darren Millar.

Diolch, Llywydd. Minister, can you tell us what action the Welsh Government is taking to increase the number of EU citizens that are applying for EU settlement status under the scheme?

Certainly. That scheme is a scheme of the UK Government; it is not a scheme that we would have designed had we been in control of how it works, but we recognise that it is the scheme that is available. As a result, we've been taking a number of steps in order to support EU citizens living in Wales to apply to the scheme. We've, I think, committed around £2 million most recently in relation to funding advice services. Some of that is through organisations such as Citizens Advice; some of it is of a much more technical nature through an immigration law firm. We've funded local authorities to support their own communities locally; and we have a communications strategy, including a digital communications strategy, to increase the numbers applying. We take every opportunity, including myself, this week, with Home Office officials, to impress upon them the need to make sure that communications across the UK do everything possible to encourage the maximum number of applicants.

Thank you for that response. I know that you and I both want to see as many EU citizens as possible that have chosen to make Wales their home stay here in Wales. But I think what is concerning is that figures that have been released by the House of Commons Library show that, as of last month, just 71 per cent of EU citizens based here in Wales have actually applied to the EU settlement scheme, and that's compared to 93 per cent elsewhere in the UK. So, obviously, there's a significant difference in terms of people taking advantage of the scheme from Wales, and I want to better understand why that is the case. Have you done any analysis as a Government as to why people might be having more difficulty in accessing the scheme, or taking advantage of the scheme to a lesser degree here in Wales versus other parts of the UK?

The most recent Home Office figures actually show Wales as the second of the four nations of the UK in terms of numbers of applications. Obviously, we want to see 100 per cent of eligible citizens applying, and we would hope and expect that the UK Government would share that ambition as well. Part of the issue, we believe, is in relation to the UK-wide communication strategy, which has focused on cities, and, of course, there are more cities with bigger populations of EU citizens in England than there are in Wales, where the populations are more dispersed. We think that's one of the aspects to the situation. The other aspect is perhaps the number of Irish citizens within that overall envelope of EU citizens. Obviously, Irish citizens living in Wales don't need to apply to the scheme, and we think that may be part of the factor as well. But we are absolutely clear that although this is a reserved scheme, not a devolved scheme, we are putting Welsh Government budget into maximising the number of applicants.

We've worked successfully to persuade the UK Government, for example, to increase the number of digital centres in Wales, from one to, I think, seven at the moment, and for them to be spread across Wales. We've worked hard to make sure that that's happened and to increase the number of support centres generally. But I know that he will share my ambition to make sure that 100 per cent of applicants in Wales are able to apply and succeed in applying. 

I note what you said regarding recent improvements in these figures, and, from the information that I have, it does suggest that, from December to January, we saw an 8 per cent increase in the number of people applying here in Wales for the scheme. But, notwithstanding that, the average across the UK is 93 per cent of citizens versus this 71 per cent here in those latest published figures. Now, I welcome some of the action that has been taken. You rightly refer to the fact that there has been a focus on communications in cities by the UK Government, and that that needs to be supplemented here because of the different nature of the population spread across Wales. But, obviously, I think it is a concern that we only have 71 per cent of people who have taken advantage of the scheme so far.

Can I ask what communications or discussions the Welsh Government might have had with local authorities about specifically boosting their role in reaching out to the diaspora communities within their respective areas, because, obviously, they have a key role, I think, given their interface with these communities on the ground? And given the limited resources of some local authorities, is there more that perhaps the Welsh Government might be able to do in order to assist them?

Well, the meeting I had earlier this week with a range of stakeholders around Wales and Home Office officials, included representation from the Welsh Local Government Association. Most recently, we've made funding available to each local authority to support their efforts in addition to the Wales-wide efforts that we are making, so that local authorities have the capacity to do it themselves within their local areas. One of the features of these figures is that it seems to be the case that there's a higher chance of getting settled status in Wales than a pre-settled status than in other parts of the UK. One of the great sources of concern for most EU citizens applying to this scheme is the very high number of pre-settled status grants in circumstances where we would expect to see settled status being granted. And it's difficult to overestimate, I think, the kind of anxiety that comes with that. For many people, engaging with this sort of migration policy bureaucracy is the first time they've ever had to do that. And, so, it is incumbent on the UK Government to make that as straightforward and as supportive, and to maximise the chance of those who are eligible getting their settled status and protecting their rights here.  

Plaid Cymru spokesperson, Dai Lloyd. 

Diolch yn fawr, Llywydd. Minister, plainly, continued international co-operation is needed for the frictionless trade of health products across UK-EU borders in the future, post Brexit. Now, around 45 million patient packs of medicines are supplied from the UK to the EU and European economic area countries every month, and, in return, over 37 million patient packs of medicines come from the EU to the UK every month. Yet, without any future regulatory alignment, as announced by the Conservative Government in Westminster, can I ask you: what could possibly go wrong?

He identifies a very live example, it seems to me, of some of the problems that we may well face unless the negotiations with the European Union conclude in the kind of agreement that minimises the barriers to international freight and to trade, which are so important in many aspects of our economic life, but, as his question also makes clear, the life of our citizens in a very direct way, in terms of public services. I can assure him that we take every opportunity—have taken every opportunity—to press the case on the UK Government, not only to seek to minimise tariffs and quotas in their negotiations, but also the kind of non-tariff barriers, which his question identifies as a significant problem. 

Can I thank you for that answer? Moving on to another aligned issue, a substantial proportion of UK employment law, as we've already heard, originates from the EU, including the European working time directive. That is what stopped doctors from working 120 hours every week down to around 58 hours over the years. So, can I ask: what discussions are you having about protecting employment rights for workers in Wales post Brexit? 

Well, the political declaration, as the Member may recall, was clear that both parties—both the United Kingdom Government, at that point, and the European Union—were committing to maintaining standards, in terms of workplace rights and so on, which were in place at the end of the transition period. That was a feature of the political declaration. 

He will, I'm sure, share with me the concern at reading speculation requests and in speeches, in fact, given by the Prime Minister and others, about the potential upside, as they would describe it—and he and I would describe it as the downside—of weakening labour regulation as a consequence of leaving the European Union. Those sorts of ambitions and aims are not ones that we share in this Government and would not be widely shared across this Chamber. We believe that the kind of relationship that people in Wales will expect into the future is one that enables those labour standards to be maintained, both in Wales and the UK, and for there to be a commitment to do that so that we can take advantage of that level of alignment to support our economy into the future.

Thank you for that. Going on to another field, anyone who has attended the annual National Social Care Awards here in Cardiff will know that social care is a skilled profession. In fact, the examples on show every year in that awards ceremony show a very high level of skills. But obviously, social care is plagued by low pay and has fallen foul of the UK Government's points-based immigration system as a result. Now, Wales relies on the EU social care professionals, as it is, in an already overstretched system. So, what representations are you making about social care in Wales post Brexit?  

Well, I thank the Member for highlighting that point. When I met with the chair of the Migration Advisory Committee, the social care sector was exactly one of the sectors that I identified to him as being at risk from the sorts of migration policies that were being floated by the UK Government at that point and that have been confirmed in the most recent announcement. We had hoped, as a Government, that the UK Government would be persuaded to bring forward a set of migration policies that would support the economy and public services across the UK. That has not been the case, and as a consequence of the salary threshold and the skills threshold, amongst other things, sectors such as the social care sector, but, indeed, others in food production, in logistics and in certain parts of the manufacturing sectors, will be concerned about their capacity to staff their services and businesses into the future.

And I want to make one point in relation to the remark at the start of the Member's question. He and I will both know, and many in the Chamber, if not, sadly, all, will not recognise the term 'low skilled' in the context of the care sector. Anybody who has had exposure to the kinds of support and skilled support that many of our people who are cared for receive will recognise that those are very skilled roles indeed.

The EU's draft negotiating mandate largely reflects the political declaration agreed between the UK and the EU in October last year. We, as a Government, set out our position on the political declaration in 'The Future UK/EU Relationship: Negotiating Priorities for Wales' in January of this year.

Thank you for that answer, Minister. It looks like the EU may try to insist that continued subservience to the European Court of Justice is a prerequisite of any trade deal. Do you think that UK courts, or Welsh courts, should our judiciary ever be devolved, should remain subservient to the European Court of Justice when the Brexit transition period ends?

Well, I don't understand the notion of 'subservience'. We have a UK Government at the moment that seems intent on questioning the role of the judiciary in British public life. I think that there are significant risks in fetishising this matter, which is what the UK Government is doing. It is absolutely an area where a more pragmatic approach should be taken. For example, there are many examples of EU-wide governance: the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control is one that might be in the minds of Members, given the circumstances we find ourselves in at the moment, where a degree of European-wide governance, and including, in some cases, the jurisdiction of the court, might be a sensible step to agree in order to protect larger interests.

I think just focusing on just one aspect, as the Member's question does, fails to grapple with the impact that that will have on a number of other areas, touching, for example, on the security of British citizens, which I'm sure all our constituents would take for granted.

I think it's important to understand that the UK Government appears willing to accept level-playing-field provisions of the type that were included in the Canada and South Korea treaties by the EU, and the broad non-regression and the international conventions referenced in those treaties. What the EU is saying, though, is that we should, indeed, be subservient to the EU on an ongoing basis by obeying their rules in these areas, whatever they are, without any democratic input and then have the ECJ determine how those roles are interpreted. Now, does the Welsh Government support the UK position or the EU?

The Member's gift for caricature remains undiminished. That is not the EU's position. What the political declaration said, which both the European Union and the UK Government have signed—have agreed—is that, at the end of the transition period, the standards that apply in both, including in the level-playing-field context, should continue to apply. It is not the case that you can draw a simple parallel with the Canadian free-trade agreement. The UK Government is seeking a zero-tariff, zero-quota agreement. The Canadian agreement is not that—it took seven years to negotiate. It represents a tenth of the trade that the UK does with the European Union, and it's 5,000 km away. There is simply no comparison in trade terms. And to expect the same provisions to be applicable in a deal with your nearest neighbour, with 10 per cent more trade, as you impose on a much less significant, in volume terms, trading partner on the other side of the world, I think, is just fanciful.

Counsel General, clearly, yesterday, the general council confirmed the EU's negotiating mandate—[Inaudible.] It is slightly harsher than the original draft, indicating clearly strong views on this level playing field. Tomorrow, we will see the UK Government's opening gambit, because we're yet to actually have that clearly defined. But what's important is actually the economy of Wales and how we ensure that the economy of Wales is not damaged by future EU-UK negotiations. 

Now, in that sense, what discussions is the Welsh Government having with the EU side of things to ensure that its position—its economy and the issues important to Wales—are being reflected and discussed in Europe, as well as in the UK? Because very often, we know that in the UK—. And we know Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings—they just put their own view forward; they don't even put the view of other parts of their party forward. Will you ensure that the Welsh position is put forward in all sides and all avenues so that we can get a fair share of this?

Well, we continue to do that. The Minister for international relations was in Brussels recently, the First Minister will be there shortly. We take every opportunity of making sure that what is in the interests of the Welsh economy is understood by any of our interlocutors.

But what I will say to the Member, though, is that in this period of the negotiations ahead, the parties to that negotiation will be the European institutions and the British Government. There is no parallel set of negotiations or discussions that the Welsh Government can or should have in that context. Our expectation, our vision, of how this should work in practical terms is that the UK Government should agree for the devolved Governments to have a role in those negotiations in setting a UK-wide position in relation to those matters that are devolved.

As he will know, that is not a principle that the UK Government has yet agreed in a way that we think is acceptable. The capacity of the Welsh Government to reflect the interests of Wales, and to reflect the devolved competences of this institution and the Welsh Government, is something that must be recognised by the UK Government in order to protect the interests of Wales through that period.

Most recently, we have provided an additional £224,000 funding to local authorities to put support in place for EU citizens applying to the EU settlement scheme. The funding is flexible, to enable local authorities to be able to provide tailored support to their local communities. This is part of a range of support we have made available to support EU citizens in Wales to apply.

Thank you. As you stated on 13 February, you have put in more than £220,000 to support councils across Wales, and that is to step up local outreach to tackle barriers to help those who still are not aware of the need to apply or who are struggling to apply. Minister, specifically, what will the funding to Caerphilly County Borough Council be, and how can the Welsh Government aid and support the authority in facilitating the European Union citizens living in communities throughout Islwyn applying to settle in the United Kingdom?

Additionally, Minister, with all European Union citizens and their families living in Wales having to apply now to the Home Office scheme by 30 June 2021, in order to protect their rights and to continue to live and work here, what can the Welsh Government do to ensure that, whilst councils are free to choose the best way to support residents, we ensure consistent best practice across Wales?

I thank the Member for that question. I'm afraid I don't have the precise number for Caerphilly council, but I will happily write to her in relation to that. Part of the objective in providing the funding is to allow a degree of flexibility in how this works on the ground, recognising that local, different communities in parts of Wales will have different needs. But we are also providing a Wales-wide bespoke training package for all public-facing local authority staff regarding the rights of EU citizens in Wales, and that includes their eligibility for public services. We are doing that through the EU citizens' rights project, which is designed to increase awareness and to assist authorities in recognising the support needs of individual EU citizens across Wales. That's intended to be a best practice-driven training package, and it will be available, as I say, to authorities right across Wales. 

Llywydd, I believe that you have given your consent to this question being grouped with question 6.

I was disappointed that the UK Government didn't share their proposals with us before they were announced to the media. Whilst immigration is not, of course, devolved, future migration policy is of profound importance and will have significant impacts on our economy and our communities. Reform must take into account the needs of Wales.

I thank the Minister for that reply. Is he aware that immigration—net migration—has averaged 330,000 a year since 2014? Would he agree with me that we do not need to add to the UK population a city the size of Cardiff every single year from immigration alone in order to plug gaps in health and social care, to revert to his earlier answer? The Labour Party at its last conference in 2019 voted for a series of motions that effectively commits his party to open-door immigration, and the effective end of all immigration control. Does that explain, perhaps, Labour's dismal result in the recent general election? Because they're obviously completely out of touch with the views of most ordinary people on this subject, and the fact that Plaid Cymru shares this view shows that two thirds of the Members of this place are therefore out of touch with ordinary people in Wales. Is that not yet another reason why the reputation of this institution falls year in, year out?

I'm sure none of those are rhetorical questions, but just to be clear, I would expect the Member to support a migration policy that that stands up and reflects the interests of the people of Wales and the public services of Wales, and the economies and employers of Wales. That is not, I'm afraid, what the most recent proposals from the UK Government have done. They certainly don't reflect the needs of the workforce or of public services here in Wales, and whatever people may have voted for in the past, I do not think they were voting to make Welsh public services less resilient, and to make it harder for Welsh businesses to grow and employ people.

Huw Irranca-Davies.

Diolch, Llywydd. Can I just check—do I need to read my question or—

No, you don't. You just ask a question. 

Diolch yn fawr iawn. Minister, there's been real and understandable anger at the crude label of 'low skilled' that the UK Government has now levelled at people such as social workers, when we know that they're not low skilled, they are low paid, and you simply cannot put a value on the precious human qualities of compassion and care. How would he respond to Dr Moira Fraser-Pearce, the director of policy at Macmillan Cancer Support, who has written saying

'The Government's plan for a points-based immigration system paints a concerning picture for a health and care system already under record pressure...The Government must create a separate migration route for social care as well as clarifying what specific measures will be put in place to protect the NHS workforce to ensure that people with cancer get the right support when they need it. Any immigration reform',

she says,

'that prevents social care workers from working in the UK could mean that some of the most vulnerable people, including those living with cancer, suffer the consequences'.

How would he respond to that, and what representations will he be making to the UK Government?

Well, I think he describes in a very vivid way some of the very real pressures and challenges and impacts that people in Wales will suffer, and I think his question is a retort to the question Neil Hamilton that raised earlier. I agree with him, as he will have heard me say to Dai Lloyd earlier, that people working in the care sector, particularly, perhaps, in the way that he has described today, do work of very great skill, and we have advocated a position in Wales for a migration policy that reflects the different skill sets and a different salary level in order for that to work in the interests of public services in Wales, but also the people of Wales, who need the kind of support that he's describing. It is the case that there are many thousands of people from the European Union working in our care sector either as providers of care or nurses in different settings. We want them to stay and continue providing those services, but we also don't want to put artificial barriers in the way of more people coming to take their place to fulfil what is a very real need.

The benefits of new opportunities will be outweighed by the downsides likely to result from the terms proposed by the UK Government for our relationship with the European Union. But the Welsh Government is committed to making use of opportunities in respect of supporting the rural economy, a new approach to regional development and our new international strategy, for example, in the best interests of Wales.

Last month's PwC chief executive survey found that European chief executives regard the UK as a key market for growth and investment, rated only behind the US, China and Germany internationally. On Brexit day, ITV Wales reported businesses that had spoken of the opportunities that could arise outside the EU, quoting companies in both the aerospace and agricultural sectors in Wales. Wales continues to have the lowest prosperity levels per head amongst the UK nations, and Brexit can provide an opportunity to help address this. However, growth in the Welsh food and beverage sector, for example, has excluded markets outside of the EU. What evidence have you got, therefore, to share with us of positive, practical action by the Welsh Government to increase the prosperity of Wales by taking us from a EU-dependant exporter to a global trading success, which includes the EU, but seeks growth globally with the new trading partners we all hope to have?

Well, I'd refer him to the international strategy and economic action plan as the Government's interventions in order to ensure the prosperity of Wales. I'm afraid he and I just disagree. I do not believe that membership of the European Union has been in any way an impediment to any of the opportunities that he describes in his question. There's no question that Welsh businesses are able to continue to export internationally as members of the European Union as well as in the period after membership. That is not the challenge. There is a myth that is grown up, I'm afraid, that membership of the European Union was in some way an impediment to that. That is not the case. But I do think that we need to be realistic and clear-sighted about this. Even on the UK Government's own figures, the contribution that the free trade strategy that they are pursuing with third countries—the contribution that that can make to the UK economy on current figures is absolutely marginal compared to maintaining the trading opportunities that we have with one of the largest trading blocks on the globe.

And finally, question 8, Joyce Watson.

On 28 January the First Minister hosted the Joint Ministerial Committee for EU negotiations—the JMC(EN)—in Cardiff; only the second time it has taken place outside London. The meeting focused on the strategic choices that need to be made in setting out an opening negotiating position and the role of the devolved Governments in the negotiations.

There were—and it's been mentioned several times today—plans recently introduced by the UK Government on the introduction of the point-based immigration system from 2021. And, again, I'm going to repeat, the industry that will be most negatively affected—and the people—as a consequence of the changes is the social care sector. I don't think we can spend too much time here actually driving home this message, and Unison have warned that the plans by the UK Government will represent a disaster for the sector. They've said that companies and councils can't currently recruit enough staff from the UK, and they already have to rely on those care workers from elsewhere. So, suddenly ending this supply of labour will cause huge problems across the country. I notice that Neil Hamilton's already disappeared now, but he doesn't seem to think that that's the case. But this will be where people will need care, and there won't be sufficient people there to provide it, and others have said so here already today. So, Minister, what assessment have you, the Welsh Government, made of the impact that these changes can have on the social care sector here in Wales?

Well, I think that the potential impact is very significant. I think nurses in care settings—I think around 17 per cent are EU citizens working and living in Wales. And care providers more generally—I think the percentage figures are around 6 or 7 per cent, which is a high figure. The reasons she outlines in her question for her concern are exactly the same reasons that lay behind my concern, and which is why I and others in the Government have made these representations directly to the Migration Advisory Committee.

What we had hoped was that the version of the immigration policy that the UK Government brought forward would take into fuller regard the impact on our public services, both in Wales and across the UK incidentally. This isn't an issue that is unique to Wales—it's felt across the UK. Unfortunately, that hasn't been the case. We have said that, in the absence of having a UK-wide system that reflects the needs of our public services and our economy in Wales, we will wish to look at the case for a spatial differentiation—for example, in relation to additional points for people who wish to work outside London and the south-east or wish to work in specific parts of the UK or, alternatively, a version of the shortage occupation list. She will know that the Migration Advisory Committee has already advocated that in principle for Wales, and so I think there's a case for exploring that. 

Thank you, Minister. 

The next item is the topical questions. The Minister for Health and Social Services is currently attending a COBRA meeting with the UK Government, the Scottish Government and the Northern Ireland Government on coronavirus, and I've therefore agreed for the second topical question on coronavirus to be taken as the last item of business before voting time today. Therefore, the next topical question is to be asked by Dawn Bowden. 

Yes. Kasai has started a 90-day formal consultation period with the staff. This is clearly extremely disappointing news and my thoughts are with all those directly affected by this uncertainty. My officials visited the company earlier this week and we will continue to offer support as appropriate. 

Thank you, Minister. Clearly, the announcement from Kasai about the statutory consultation process with its employees is disappointing, particularly on the back of job losses and closures that we have recently seen announced in Merthyr at Hoover and Triumph. This particular announcement reflects, I think, the ongoing pressure on the motor manufacturing sector at this time, especially given the links between this factory and the Honda plant in Swindon. I do, however, note that there will be a continuing need for production at the Merthyr plant in the months ahead in support of the Honda contract, but around 180 loyal and hard-working employees could be affected in Merthyr Tydfil. Along with Gerald Jones MP, I will be meeting with the workers in the near future for a discussion about the next steps. So, can you reassure me that, once the statutory procedures are complete, the Welsh Government, along with local partners, will do all they can to consider all the options for the workforce and for this site? Furthermore, what is the Welsh Government's most recent assessment about the health of the motor manufacturing sector in the south Wales Valleys and whether this means that we need to reassess the types of businesses and companies that we support to ensure longer term commitments to our Valleys communities?

Can I thank Dawn Bowden for her questions and assure her that, through not just Welsh Government, but our partners in the Wales automotive forum, we are assessing every opportunity for existing automotive businesses and for emerging businesses in the automotive and mobility sector? Last autumn, I hosted an automotive summit, which looked at opportunities for Wales. That was incredibly well attended and we'll build on it by hosting the manufacturing summit on 2 April in Venue Cymru. The automotive sector will be present and we will be examining the very latest opportunities and, indeed, threats to the sector in Wales and across the UK.

It's worth saying that, over the last five years, automotive companies in Wales, including those supporting the supply chain, have had help to the tune of £200 million in supporting their growth and in supporting the 12,000 jobs that are contained within the sector. It's also fair to say that there has been, until very recently, a renaissance in UK car production. For a variety of reasons, the sector right now is facing considerable difficulty and transformation. We're assisting in the transformation through focusing our resource on those automotive companies that clearly have the best prospects of succeeding in the transition to low- and zero-emissions vehicles. And we have an incredibly strong record in attracting investment, including from Ineos Automotive most recently. As part of the support that we were offering to Kasai we, through the Wales automotive forum, introduced the company to Ineos and to Aston Martin Lagonda and to others in the hope that alternative work may be secured in order to avoid closure. Unfortunately, the bridge between the closure of Honda and the work that would come from other manufacturers was so great as to necessitate the announcement that has been made recently. However, the company is not due to close, if it decides to proceed with closure, until July 2021. This gives a significant amount of time for us to assist, through our regional response teams, through Careers Wales and so forth, every single individual that might be affected. But it also gives us, during the consultation period, an opportunity to say to the company once again, 'Reconsider the announcement. Please, if there is any way possible, maintain your operations in Merthyr.' 

Minister, news that around 180 jobs will be lost due to the impending closure of the Kasai plant in Merthyr Tydfil is a devastating blow to the workers and their families. My thoughts go out to them at this difficult time. Kasai provides highly-skilled jobs, producing internal parts for Honda, Jaguar, Land Rover and Nissan. It is a real loss to Merthyr Tydfil, which was recently ranked at the bottom of a league table ranking economic competitiveness in the United Kingdom. So, can I ask, Minister, what assistance the Welsh Government will provide to these workers so they can seek new employment? And can you also confirm that prompt action will be taken to help those affected so that their skills and talents are not lost, but can be redirected to contribute to growing the economy of Merthyr Tydfil? And, finally, Minister, what measures will be taken to assist those workers who are able to relocate to find jobs outside Merthyr and outside Wales?  

Can I thank Mohammad Asghar for his questions and say, first and foremost, it would be our hope that we'd be able to secure alternative employment for the workers affected within the Merthyr area? I don't see why people should have to move out of their community in order to maintain employment if they wish to remain where they live. And so we'll be doing all that we can to identify job opportunities within the Merthyr area. We will be deploying support services, including ReAct and Careers Wales advisers, at the earliest opportunity to carry out an audit of the skills in existence within the business and to match those skills to job opportunities within the area. There will be, for example, vouchers available for skills training if anybody requires upskilling in order to take on a new job opportunity. 

I think it's worth recognising, though, Dirprwy Lywydd, that the people who work at the site are incredibly loyal and incredibly well skilled, and this was something that the First Minister stated to the company when he visited the business headquarters in Japan in September 2019, when he reiterated Welsh Government's commitment to fully support them. That support, still available, comes in the context of huge problems for the business because they were so reliant on Honda in Swindon. As I said in response to Dawn Bowden, we have exhausted many opportunities that we had hoped would provide alternative sources of work for Kasai, including Aston Martin Lagonda and Ineos Automotive, and other automotive companies in Wales and across the border as well. But we stand ready to continue in that search for alternative work to keep those loyal and skilled people within the workplace. 

I'd like to express my heartfelt sympathy with all of the hard-working staff at Kasai who are going to face losing their jobs through no fault of their own after many years of dedicated service. I know this will be an extremely difficult time for them and their families. I'd like to offer my own office's support; in any way that we can help, we want to be able to. Now, as has been mentioned, we've known that this closure has been on the cards since Honda announced the closure of its Swindon plant a year ago this week, and media reports at that time had warned about the knock-on effect it would have on Kasai, and I raised the issue with the Brexit Minister in the Chamber in May last year.

Now, I've listened with interest to what you said, Minister, about what your ReAct programme will be offering to the workers who are going to be possibly having to find new employment, but could you tell us on this point, please, when you expect the Job Support Wales scheme to be up and running? I was dismayed to learn recently that this important employment programme had failed to get off the ground for a second time due to a challenge to the tendering process. Now, I'm afraid I do find it difficult to comprehend how, after 20 years of leading the Welsh Government, Labour is unable to complete a successful tendering process. So, I would appreciate some information about when we can expect this to move forward so that further support can be made available to help workers with skills training when that can become available.

Now, finally, I'd like to ask about your plans for future economic planning, Minister. We currently have people with valuable skills who are losing their jobs in the manufacturing industry and there is a dire need to build up a new green energy and transport economy. It seems obvious that these should be connected and that the Welsh Government should lead the way in building and incentivising industries such as electric vehicles and transport networks that would help with the green agenda but would also provide new, well-paid jobs for people who have valuable skills to contribute.

Now, I'm not saying by any means that the Government will be giving up on the Kasai workforce at all in their current jobs, but, alongside this, Minister, could you tell us whether you have any plans to strengthen our green manufacturing industry to futureproof the economy and provide new jobs for people who are currently being made redundant due to the closure of traditional car manufacturing plants and their suppliers?

Can I thank the Member for her questions and firstly invite her to welcome the success that the Welsh Government has had in attracting manufacturers that are at the forefront of utilising low- and zero-emissions propulsion systems within cars—for example, the success we enjoyed in attracting Aston Martin Lagonda to Wales? Aston Martin Lagonda have made Wales their home for electric vehicles; equally Ineos Automotive, who are looking at utilising hydrogen for future power systems within their vehicles. So, we are already investing very heavily in those industries that will become so significant globally in the years to come.

Now, in terms of the closure being on the cards when the announcement about Honda was made is concerned, there was a Honda taskforce established immediately after the announcement, because it was recognised that many businesses within the supply chain would be adversely affected. There are many businesses in Wales that rely on Honda for work, but Kasai was amongst those that relied the most heavily on that single manufacturer, and that's why the company is in the position that it is in today. However, we will go on searching for opportunities for the business during the 90-day consultation period in the hope that the decision—the announcement, rather—can be reversed and that the decision to remain open will be made. In the event that that does not happen, we will be deploying all of the support services that exist today and that will be formed as part of the Job Support Wales holistic support service—every employment service that currently exists will continue for those people affected at Kasai and for anybody else affected by unemployment in Wales.

Today, we have a record low unemployment rate of just 2.9 per cent, and that's because this Welsh Government is determined to ensure people stay in valuable work, and, when they do fall out of work, that we find them opportunities elsewhere to get back on to the employment ladder.

Thank you very much, Minister.

Item 4 on the agenda this afternoon is 90-second statements. First this afternoon is Darren Millar.

Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. Today marks the thirtieth anniversary of the Towyn floods, and I can recall the event vividly, even though I was just 13 years old. I was sat in a classroom, waiting for the English teacher to arrive. I was amongst a small group of pupils that were fixated by the view towards Towyn through the window. We saw towering waves, 40 ft high, smashing into the sea wall, and it was an incredible spectacle. But what we didn't realise is that those waves were pounding a 400m hole in the sea defences and the tide was rushing in. Within 20 minutes, 400 homes were under water, and, an hour later, it was thousands. The water came two miles inland, and it affected communities five miles along the coast. Our home—a bungalow—was submerged. All our belongings were lost, and irreplaceable items like family photos and keepsakes from relatives were destroyed. Along with 6,000 other people, we were evacuated: the largest evacuation since the second world war. It was six months before we moved back into our home and finally got our lives together, and other families took even longer.

Today, Towyn and Kinmel Bay are still thriving seaside resorts. They always have been, and no doubt always will be, but our daily lives are regularly interrupted by flood alerts when bad weather and high tides are forecast, and, even now, 30 years on, our sea defences remain vulnerable and are in need of further investment. Storms Ciara and Dennis have reminded us all of the power of the water. Let them and the events of 30 years ago in Towyn be a wake-up call to us all to do what we can to work together to prevent the devastation that flooding can cause.

Some years ago, I met Carolyn, a truly inspirational woman who went on to tell me that she was a SWAN. Slightly taken aback, I asked her to explain that, and that was when I began to really understand the challenges faced by people who have rare diseases and undiagnosed conditions, also known as syndromes without a name, hence SWAN.

Building awareness of rare disease is important, because one in 20 people will live with a rare disease at some point in their life. Despite this, a substantial number of rare diseases are undiagnosed, and a substantial proportion are without cure or effective treatments to delay the progress of the condition.

This Saturday, 29 February, is a rare day, it is an anomaly, and Rare Disease Day has been held on the last day of February since 2007 with the specific aim of raising awareness about rare diseases and the impacts on patients' lives. We marked this day yesterday with a reception here in the Neuadd.

But I would like to take this opportunity today to pay tribute to those who work so hard in undertaking research into these diseases, and to the Welsh Government for the funding that they provide for this research: Dr Graham Shortland, who leads the rare disease implementation group, and Professor Keir Lewis, who heads Wales Orphan and Rare Lung Diseases—I've got their badge on today—are the lead physicians who are at the front line of this treatment and research into rare diseases, and are much loved and appreciated by the patients they deal with. We are very lucky to have them working for us in the Welsh NHS.

This Saturday—Rare Disease Day—please spend a moment and think about those with rare diseases and undiagnosed conditions. They need to know that they're not alone.

Last Saturday, several years of ambitious plans were realised as the Pantside woodland park and play area in Newbridge was officially opened to the public. The park boasts a playground for nought to six-year-olds, a junior play area, and a multi-use games area for such sports as football and basketball. It is a true testament to the proud community of Pantside, which has, through the Pantside Association of Residents and Tenants, worked for seven years to secure this valued asset for its community. With a lack of facilities for youngsters on the estate, the residents and tenants worked together to secure £0.25 million from the National Lottery fund to establish this park. At Saturday's opening, it was really delightful to see just so many children—and there were so many children—from my community enjoying these facilities. And as a Newbridge girl, born in Pantside, the opening had an added resonance for me.

So, I would like to place on the record my sincere thanks to all of those involved over these years to help bring this fantastic facility to Pantside: local Councillor Gary Johnston and Councillors Leeroy Jeremiah and Adrian Hussey, and the residents association of Gwyneth, Julie, Jean, Amy, Sue, and many others, who have driven this forward.

Playgrounds are truly vital assets for our communities that can help to give children from all backgrounds the chance to play, to learn and to make friends. I know that this scheme will be a huge boost to the community, but it's only just the beginning. The residents are now hoping to add a skateboard park, an outdoor auditorium, and outdoor classrooms to this former disused site, and I wish to congratulate wholly their collective efforts.

Thank you.

Item 5 on the agenda is the Welsh Conservatives debate on roads, and I call on Russell George to move the motion.

Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. I'd like to move the motion for our debate today, listed in the name of Darren Millar, and in doing so also say that we will, of course, not be supporting the Government's usual 'Delete all' amendment, but we will be supporting Plaid's amendments 2 and 7.

I'd like to think that all of us in this Chamber can agree that a fit-for-purpose road network is vital to support our country's longer-term social and economic development. Our road transport network is crucial, of course, for future productivity, to ensure that we are competitive. It supports productive labour markets and is the arteries of domestic and international trade. I think we can all agree on that.

But I'd suggest that now, more than ever before, the Welsh economy requires the support of an effective and reliable road network in order to support Wales's long-term economic growth and in order to minimise the environmental impact of poor road connectivity and congestion. The current state of the Welsh road network means that Wales is unable to capture and lever in the drivers of economic activity. Congestion on Wales's roads is directly preventing Wales from achieving a step change in its level of productivity, which in turn is depressing the growth of Wales's wages and output. I'm sure that we'd all want to claim that we don't want to see that.

We don't have a good and effective road network in Wales, and when it comes to schemes that are coming forward, they are so often not managed well. Members who were in this Chamber earlier today will have heard me question the Minister in regard to a number of road schemes that are behind schedule and over cost due to poor procurement and poor management of those road delivery schemes. We are in a position where our current road transport system is unable to cope with the current level of demand.

Will you take an intervention?

Yes, absolutely.

Thank you, Russell, for giving way. Russell, I've got the pleasure of being, with you, a member of the all-party group on active travel, and I know your commitment to sustainable travel as well. If he, like me, agrees with the sustainable transport hierarchy, a real hierarchy about who should be using our roads, and he talked about the importance of freight—I absolutely agree with him on freight—how should that apply to our road network and the decisions that we make?

Well, one doesn't have to not complement the other. I represent a constituency in mid Wales and, I have to say, it's very different to your constituency, with respect. You just can't—the public transport is not there. Unfortunately, to get to your nearest school, you're 10 miles away. You have to have an effective road infrastructure. But I don't disagree with you at all; I think they're compatible and both are important. We heard an earlier question today from Helen Mary Jones in regard to electric vehicle charging points and infrastructure as well, and we need to have road infrastructure for the expansion of electric vehicles also.

I will perhaps highlight some of the issues that I raised today in my questions to the Minister. The delays and the cost overruns associated with A465 Heads of the Valleys route, I'm afraid, perfectly highlight the Welsh Government's poor track record when in comes to the management and delivery of specific road improvement schemes. I mentioned a couple of others as well. Perhaps the Minister will have more time in this response to deal with perhaps how procurement and contractual agreements can change in order that we don't see these kinds of poorly managed schemes in the future.

One of the worst and most worrying examples, I think, of the Welsh Government's poor management of the road network in Wales is of course the level of ongoing congestion on the M4 motorway—a strategic road that has been blighted by huge levels of traffic congestion for many years, and the Welsh Government is yet still unable to provide an adequate solution to that problem. While the Welsh Government has been dithering and shelving any meaningful schemes, the volume of traffic on the M4 is increasing.

It is with huge disappointment, I think, that the First Minister—and I'm pleased that he is in here to listen to this debate this afternoon; I'm grateful for that—has made that decision not to proceed with the M4 relief road, in spite of the support offered by the UK Government and support from businesses across Wales and support from Members in this Chamber, including from the Government's benches as well, and of course as a result of the very expensive independent inquiry, which concluded that the M4 relief road should be built.

The Planning Inspectorate report found that the Welsh Government's assertion that it would be inconsistent with its declaration of a climate emergency is incorrect. The report found that

'the scheme would save about 4,324 tonnes of user carbon emitted on the Welsh road network each year, with increasing savings into the future'.

Furthermore, of course, the economic benefits of the M4 relief road are clear. With the economic benefits to building the M4 relief road outweighing the costs, the scheme would have been a good value-for-money scheme. Instead, the Welsh Government, of course, wasted that £144 million on the inquiry, only to reject its findings because it didn't suit the First Minister.

Will you give way?

Yes, absolutely.

I thank you, and I agree with some of the points that you made. There will be arguments continuing for and against road expansion, not just around the M4, but it'll be Briton Ferry next, because—. The question for us as supporters of sustainable transportation is: to what extent do we advocate shifting unnecessary journeys off the whole of that stretch? So, we allow the white van man and woman to transport the goods the final couple of miles. So, we allow those who have no other option. Because this isn't rural Wales that we are talking about anymore; this is urbanised Wales.

Sorry, I heard most of your points, but I couldn't hear some of your points because my own side were talking. [Laughter.]

He was heckling you. [Laughter.]

They weren't heckling me. [Laughter.]

I think some of your points that I heard were fair points; I don't disagree, Huw, at all. But I think that my response would be—. Well, I quote back the Minister for economy and transport himself, who said:

'over the 60-year appraisal period, there is more than £2 of benefit for each pound spent on the scheme, without touching on the wider economic benefits likely to flow from the scheme, such as a stronger perception of Wales as a place to invest, which cannot be captured.'

So, I'd counter-argue what you say with that, which is the view of the Minister. In fairness, I think he probably agrees with that view still today. Perhaps he can inform us at the conclusion.

On top of that, the UK Government has provided the Welsh Government with the levers that are needed to proceed with the project, as well as ensuring that the capital budget has grown by over 45 per cent over the current spending review period. The UK Government has also committed to continue working with the Welsh Government on how to strengthen the Welsh economy and provide greater connectivity as well. [Interruption.] I can hear the First Minister talking as well, but I would say to the First Minister today, who seems to be engaged in this debate today, I call on him to rethink his plans and deliver the M4 relief road as soon as possible, although I don't think that he's going to change his position as a result of today's debate, unfortunately.

Other major road schemes in Wales have failed to receive the improvements that they require to ensure that they are better able to meet the demands of Welsh road users: the A55 in north Wales is an example that has long suffered from underinvestment; there's the A40, which has also experienced a lack of effective upgrades over the last 20 years; and we're also calling for proposals to be developed for major upgrades to the A55 trunk road; and, of course, I have to mention—I can hear Paul Davies talking to my left—the A40 road to Fishguard, which Paul Davies so often mentions.

Of course, it would be remiss of me not to mention the Pant-Llanymynech bypass in my own constituency, as well as focusing attention on other north and south links to Wales. When it comes to the Pant-Llanymynech bypass, I can see that the Welsh Government has engaged positively with the UK Government on that in the past, so I hope for some positive contribution in that regard. But, we need to have—. Huw Irranca has commented on a number of occasions in this debate today; I don't disagree with what he has to say. I think it's both having effective road schemes as well as having effective public transport and active travel. They are combined together. They don't compete against each other.

We do need to have a road network that is suitable for making sure that Wales's economic prosperity grows. To remain a competitive Wales, we need to have an efficient road network structure in place. I look forward to Members' contributions to this debate, and commend our motion to this Parliament.  

Thank you. I have selected seven amendments to the motion. If amendment 1 is agreed, amendments 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 will be deselected. I call on the Minister for Economy, Transport and North Wales to move formally amendment 1, tabled in the name of Rebecca Evans.

Moved.

Thank you. I call on Helen Mary Jones to move amendments 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7, tabled in the name of Siân Gwenllian.

Diolch yn fawr, Dirprwy Lywydd. I'm grateful, I must say at the beginning, to Russell George for agreeing to accept, I think he said, our amendment 2 and our amendment 7, because the motion as it stands slightly reads like something that one might have seen in the 1980s, which implies that we can solve all of our economic woes by building more roads. I'm sure, from what Russell George has said in his responses to Huw Irranca-Davies, that isn't what he meant. But I do have to point out, Dirprwy Lywydd, that that is what the motion says. 

Nobody is denying for a moment that we will need to continue to invest in our road networks. I think the points that Russell George has made about the importance of that in rural communities, where it may very well be that some of those can never be effectively served by public transport networks—. And, on these benches, it's really important to us that those communities are supported and maintained, because, among other things, many of those communities are communities where Welsh is still a native language, where it's still spoken on a daily basis. And, so, we will need to continue to invest in our roads. Nobody on these benches is denying that. 

But it's not the whole solution. And I think that has been acknowledged. And we do know—and I commend the couple of really good academic studies on this, thinking particularly about what's been said today about the proposed M4 relief road—that the truth is that, over time, you build a road and it fills up. I will quote two of the studies. There's 'Demystifying Induced Travel Demand' written by Roger Gorham for the German Finance Ministry, and 'The Fundamental Law of Road Congestion: Evidence from US Cities' by Duranton and Turner for the 'American Economic Review'. And what they show is that you can't, long term, alleviate these problems by just covering up more of the countryside with concrete.

Now, that isn't to say for a moment that something doesn't need to be done about the issues around Newport. I think everybody in this Chamber—. All of us have driven that road or travelled on that road probably at some point, and we all know what happens at the Brynglas tunnels. But we don't believe for a moment that covering a really important site of special scientific interest with more concrete is going to solve that problem, long term. It is true to say that 43 per cent of the journeys made on that section of the M4 in question are journeys of under 20 miles, and many of those are journeys that, with proper public transport solutions, people would not choose to make by car. Ten per cent of the traffic on that stretch is what leads to the congestion. So, if we could take half of that 43 per cent of people off that road—and I say 'people' advisedly, because they are people who are in empty vehicles, just them and one other person a lot of the time—we could deal with that congestion problem. 

Now, the other issue, of course, with the M4 relief road is that it would take seven years to build. Even if we decided to do it, it would take seven years to build. And, in the meantime, Brynglas tunnel misery would continue to be a day-to-day reality. 

Will you take an intervention?

I'll very happily take an intervention. 

Thanks for giving way, Helen Mary. I hear what you're saying about taking more cars off the road, and, hopefully, that will help ease the congestion, and I hear also that you don't support the M4 black route across the Gwent levels. But, do you accept that there needs to be some kind of infrastructure improvement in terms of the road itself? That current road is a standard that's way out of date; it hasn't been fit for purpose for years. There needs to be some improvement, whatever that solution might be.

I absolutely accept what Nick Ramsay says about that—that part of the solution may very well be some additional road infrastructure, but it's not the whole story.

Now, I don't think it's fair to accuse the Welsh Government of having rushed into a decision about the M4 relief road. I think some of us thought we were quite possibly going to have retired by the time the decision was made. And the First Minister did take into account, and did, when he presented the decision, take into account that there were balanced factors. I think it's really important that the Welsh Government chose, in making that decision, to listen to our future generations commissioner. There is absolutely no point in the future generations and well-being Act, if, every time the person responsible for its delivery tells us something that we find inconvenient, we choose to ignore it. 

Will you take an intervention?

Briefly I will, but I'm just conscious I've got some other points I need to make. 

By the same token, is it not important that when we have an independent inspector's report and inquiry that the principle also applies there?

Well, I think that's a moot point, and it is a valid point, but it's about also the factors that those inspectorates are set up to look at. My own personal position—and I'm not speaking for my party—is that I think that some of those criteria need to be updated in the light of the future generations and well-being Act. So, I'm not disputing what the inspectorate found, but I may be partly disputing what the inspectorate was looking for. 

I want to turn—. So, we don't accept the points about the need to build—[Inaudible.] But I want to turn quickly to our amendments, and the question of where these decisions should be made. Some of us have been arguing the ins and outs of devolution for a very, very long time, and one thing that is completely clear to me is that any political organisation, any individual who says that they respect devolution at the other end of the M4 corridor should not be saying to Welsh Government, 'You can have this investment providing you spend it exactly as we tell you to do.' If that's the case, we may as well all pack up and go home. 

Will you take an intervention?

If the Presiding Officer will allow it. 

Briefly. I'm allowing for the intervention. 

It's just on that point about not wanting to instruct the Welsh Government how to spend money. I've heard you advocate on many occasions that we should direct local authorities how to spend theirs. So, what's good for the goose is good for the gander. Surely, if there are nationally important projects, like the M4 relief road, and the UK Government wants to progress it—

Sorry, Darren, I'm going to have to cut across you now, because time is short. I think I've got your point. I simply disagree. I believe in the principle of subsidiarity—[Interruption.] Darren, I've taken your intervention, will you be kind enough to listen to my response? I believe in the principle of subsidiarity, which says that the decision should be made at the most local appropriate level, and there are times when it is appropriate for the Welsh Government to be directing local authorities and times when it is not. What is absolutely clear to me is that, in devolved matters, it is not appropriate for the UK Government to be directing and it is also not appropriate for the UK Government to be effectively blackmailing Welsh Government. 

Now, by all means, extra investment. I love the talk that we get from Boris Johnson about levelling up. I'd love to see some levelling up, as would many of the single-parent families in my constituency love to see a bit of levelling up. But the principle is that these are issues—these are devolved matters. Now, it's perfectly proper, both for the Conservative Party here and the Conservative Party in Westminster to disagree with what the Welsh Government decides to do. But it is not—it is not—for Ministers who were not elected by the people of this country to be directing the elected Government of this country as to how it spends its resources in devolved areas. 

I move our amendments, Dirprwy Lywydd. 

I have great pleasure in speaking in this debate this afternoon. South Wales East is the gateway to Wales. The purpose of the gateway is to allow the passage of goods and services inwards and outwards. It follows, therefore, that good transport links are vital in increasing a growing and thriving economy. The M4 is Wales's strategic gateway to the rest of the United Kingdom and to Europe. It is the main artery that pumps the lifeblood of the Welsh economy, but this artery, too often, is clogged and congested. The fact is that we are serviced by a sub-standard dual carriageway that fails to meet modern motorway standards. Congestion on the M4 hits our major towns and cities hard. Our economy alone—. Cardiff loses out on £134 million a year; Swansea, £62 million; and Newport, £44 million a year.

In the last few years, this stretch of road has been forced to close over 100 times. One hundred thousand vehicles travel on the M4 around Newport every day. This increases when major events, such as concerts, rugby, football or cricket take place in Cardiff, Newport or Swansea. Constrained by the oldest motorway tunnels in the United Kingdom, this stretch of road causes increased vehicle emissions, poor air quality and accidents.

An M4 relief road was first proposed way back in 1991. The case for a relief road for the M4 around Newport is even stronger than ever before. The National Assembly's own planning inspector spent more than a year considering the case for a new M4 route south of Newport. He gives the proposal his overwhelming backing. In his report, he details the economic, environmental and health benefits of the project. He said that the M4 project would provide—and this is his quote—

'a healthy rate of return for the investment of public funds.'  

For every pound invested, Wales would receive £1.50 in return, yet, his recommendation was rejected by the First Minister—a decision taken unilaterally. I hope he will answer one day what was the real reason to reject this great opportunity, which, day by day, is not only going to increase the cost of the motorway, but also there are other reasons, which I'm going to mention now. This rejection was met by dismay, anger and frustration by industry and business groups in Wales. Ninety businesses and organisations, including Admiral, Tata and SA Brain signed a joint statement calling on Welsh Government to deliver an M4 relief road. The CBI in Wales said, 

'This is a dark day for the Welsh economy...Congestion and road pollution around Newport can only increase. Economic growth will be stifled, confidence in the region will weaken and the cost of an eventual relief road will rise.'

The Freight Transport Association also said, 

'The M4 is a vital stretch of infrastructure with international economic importance, yet it is blighted by heavy congestion.'

It is the infrastructure and the opportunity to deliver this essential investment into south Wales that have been missed. This situation can only get worse, Presiding Officer. The Welsh Government accepts that there are severe operational problems on junctions around Newport, especially between junctions 23 and 28. The removal of the Severn bridge toll, although set to inject over £100 million of economic activities into Wales, has increased congestion enormously. Between 2011 and 2016, the traffic on the M4 rose by over 12 per cent. Projection by the Department for Transport shows that traffic alone on the M4 is set to increase by nearly 38 per cent over the next 30 years. Failure to act is simply not the option, Presiding Officer. The people of Wales have waited long enough for this problem to be addressed. While the Welsh Government dither and delay, the traffic increases and the situation worsens. We need action now. I call on the Welsh Government to deliver an M4 relief road as a matter of urgency. Thank you.

This would feel like groundhog day if it wasn't in the context of the cataclysmic storms and floods that we've had in the last few weeks, which makes it astonishing to me that we are debating whether or not to invest in more roads, when it's absolutely clear that the climate emergency requires us to find different solutions to the congestion problems that we have.

We know, from the Government's own evidence to the planning inquiry that the effect of investing £1.5 billion in 14 miles of road would be to increase the traffic on the M4 and simply to move it further along that road. This is not a good use of public money at all, and the First Minister took absolutely the right decision.

I find it astonishing that the Conservatives would argue that a solution to actually just move the congestion further down the road and to bring more people into Cardiff and Newport by car is a solution that we should be considering. It simply doesn't sit well with the Welsh Conservatives' call for a clean air Act, because the proposal in this motion would be to simply make the problem much worse.

Declaring a climate emergency has consequences, and I believe that the Conservatives need to start catching up with the need to do things differently rather than promoting more of the car-centric policies that have led us to the current deplorable and unsustainable despoiling of the world's resources. We simply can't go on like this. I would like to see the Welsh Conservatives concentrating on getting the UK Government to rectify the historic underfunding of our rail system, which is the reason why 43 per cent of the people using the M4 are simply commuting into work. It is really not a good use of a car to be driving it to work, parking it for eight hours and then driving out again. We must have a better public transport system. We absolutely can agree on that.

But we simply need to reflect on the fact, as the economy Minister said in an earlier question this afternoon, that Wales has 11 per cent of the stations and the signalling across England and Wales, but only 2 per cent of the funding. So, there's clearly plenty of money around when London-focused projects are being decided on. I remain to be convinced that HS2 will have any benefit for Wales, but I can see that it might, if it led to the electrification and extension of the hi-speed line to Holyhead. But—

Will you take an intervention? Thank you very much, Jenny. In terms of improving the rail infrastructure in Wales, what are your views about those areas that are outside the urban centres of south Wales and north Wales? Most of Wales doesn't have a rail system worth speaking of.

I agree with you. We constantly abolish roads and there are areas of Wales where we don't any longer have a railway line, and therefore we know that people who need to go to work from remote villages are going to need to use a car, at the very least to get to the bus transport that might take them to the town where they are going to work. So, I'm not saying that no roads should be maintained at all, but I'm just saying that the red rag to a bull for me is the continual focus in this motion on harking back to the decision that was made in June last year about not going ahead with hugely expensive and ineffective road improvement proposals. We really do need to upgrade our rail system, as well as improve the integrated transport system that we must have to have a modern economy, so that we quite quickly have the trains and the buses being co-ordinated, so that people can make whatever journey they need to make.

So, I just think we absolutely have to have the modal shift away from the car for things like commuting to work and school. I think we either need to argue that spending on the rail infrastructure needs to be devolved, or we need to do something about the raw deal that Wales is getting at the moment to get a better railway service for Wales. We aren't going to get anything, as far as I'm concerned, from spending £16 billion on HS2, and we aren't even going to get the electrification of the line to Swansea, unless there's something in the budget that we don't yet know about, nor even the upgrading of the four lines between Cardiff and Newport and beyond, two of which could be used as suburban rail services connecting up the population of Monmouthshire with Cardiff and Newport.

These are the sorts of investments that we urgently, urgently need, but I would agree with the need to really tackle the M4 congestion that we can all agree is unsustainable, and we need to inject some urgency into the liberation of the South East Wales Transport Commission to deliver sustainable and effective solutions to congestion in Newport and the wider region.

Can you wind up, please?

The commission has years of transport expertise amongst its members: how long do they need to come up with the solutions that they must surely have to hand? We don't need to be a transport expert to realise we're going to need to be ordering buses in the short term as an interim solution until we have the new metro, tram and train lines that will need time to be constructed.

Thank you to Jenny for giving me that intervention as well. I have to start off, though, by saying how disappointed I am to see yet another entire opposition motion deleted by Welsh Government and replaced by one of its own. Every week the Government has an entire day of its own to bring forward debates of its own choosing, but as this is becoming an established pattern of Welsh Government in responding to our debates in particular, Dirprwy Lywydd, I wonder if you or the Llywydd would now consider reviewing the Government's use of the 'delete all' amendment. It is for Government to answer this Parliament, not shout over it with amendments like this, or, indeed, refuse scrutiny because it doesn't like our tone.

And, Minister, if your priority is holding the UK Government to account as you seem to be doing in your amendment, please don't use our opposition time to do it: become an MP and use your own opposition's time to do it in Parliament. Can we have just a little bit more about Welsh Gov, and a little bit less about 'not us, guv'?

I think the climate change points that have been raised in this debate already are really useful additions to this motion. They are important and they felt particularly live to me yesterday as I sat, along with many working in this institution, in a traffic jam from the infamous junction 33 of the M4. It took me an hour to get to Culverhouse Cross, unable to turn my radiator on because of fumes. Maybe a particularly bad day yesterday, but in the nine years I've been here, my journey from Swansea in the morning takes at least half an hour longer than it used to and the reason for that is because we have roads that cannot cope with the increasingly frequent need for lane closures. And to take Huw Irranca-Davies's point and, indeed, Jenny's point—I can't cycle from Swansea to Cardiff to get here in the morning, Jenny. [Interruption.] So, why don't I catch the train? Well, if it were one of those new, extra-fast trains in which the UK Government has invested, and which would speed up those journeys far more than electrification would have done, then I really would consider it. But, in truth, it still takes me longer than in congested traffic to get here by train, and with Transport for Wales's performance at the moment, I really don't see that in and of itself as a sustainable alternative. [Interruption.] I don't come from the same place as you on this train, Huw.

Can I just point out one obvious thing, really, which is that buses, which are a big part of what the Government is looking at, use roads? This really isn't just about the car. So, unless you really are thinking of a monorail, Minister, then I think your dispatch of this motion is just another distraction from a very difficult truth, which we've tried—

Will you take a quick intervention?

Okay.

And also electric vehicles, because electric vehicles need roads as well as buses, of course.

You anticipate my point, Mr George. I was trying to get to the point that this is a difficult question. It's not just car versus train versus whatever. We have roads that are in a dangerous state of repair, which don't at the moment have sufficient capacity to deal with the congestion that we've created for a number of reasons, and which are not designed to prioritise public transport. We should be looking with new roads, when they are brand-new, to design in that attractive active travel alternative that connects communities economically as well as socially, but that can't be true for every road, including the one that I use in the morning.

Green transport—well, trams share road space with motor vehicles, and whether it's green public transport or whether it's hydrogen taxis—let's have those as well—they will still use roads. And that's what this debate is about—raising a serious question about the present and future purpose of roads, as posited in the first two points of our motion. So, it's not a return to the 1980s.

Major roads are nearly always controversial, despite being the subject of compromise so often. Compromise may be driven by often unrealised cost savings, and it seems to me that neither of our Governments has the best of stories to tell on the cost of strategic infrastructure. But the difference between the work on the A465 and HS2 is that the former has been a point of reference in my life since, pretty much, I left university. Only the Sagrada Familia is taking longer to finish, and actually poor delivery on this strategic infrastructure is just as much against the principles of the future generations Act as plastering the country in concrete.

Compromise can be a lost opportunity as well. There are reasons why the distributor road south of Port Talbot is not a replacement for the elevated section of the M4—that would never have been built today—but reduced speed limits on this stretch just move congestion up the road to Llandarcy. The biggest increases in traffic in my region are at the five junctions west of Port Talbot. Experiments with junction 41—these are no adverts to those that we seek to attract into the city region, not least Milford Haven, nor those we seek to persuade to maintain a south Wales land bridge for trade between Ireland and the rest of the EU.

Just to finish, Dirprwy Lywydd, whatever this costs the economy, it's making a mockery of all our local development plans as well. The biggest rise in volume of traffic in my region is at junction 47 near Penllergaer, jumping 78 per cent in the last 17 years, and guess where the LDP is planning to build the majority of its housing estates?

Minister, in your response I really hope you will respond to this debate for what it is—a sincere appeal for some strategic thinking on our infrastructure, badly needed to level Wales up.

I want to confine my comments to the two major roads in Wales, and the financing of any enhancements that might take place, whatever sort of enhancements are decided. Those two major roads are the A55 in the north and the M4 in the south. Both enjoy the status of E-designated motorways by the European Union—in the case of the A55, E22, and the M4, E30. This means they are part of the pan-European road network designed to connect the nations of the European Union.

As we all know, we in the UK no longer belong to that union, but the next-door neighbour, Ireland, does. These two major motorways are vital to Ireland's connectivity not just to parts of the UK, but also to the countries of the European Union. It is therefore entirely acceptable, if not desirable, for it to contribute to the enhancement of these motorways. It is, of course, very much to the advantage of the Irish haulage business if road bottlenecks—such as the Menai bridge and the tunnel at Brynglas—were removed. It is also entirely feasible that they could seek funding from the European Union to enable such enhancements, given the EU is committed to making all its nation states equally accessible. So, I repeat my call to the previous First Minister that the present Minister initiates talks with his Irish counterpart to discuss this possibility.

I only rise to make a very brief contribution in this debate, which I've really enjoyed, actually. What it's thrown up for me, as I anticipated, is this real conflicted thinking that we struggle with—not just as a Senedd here, but also in the wider public—between our desire to be sitting in a warm car, on our own, with the radio turned on, with the heater on, driving wherever we want to, and actually the recognition that the poorest people in society don't actually rely on cars at all. What they rely on is good public transport. They don't have the option of having a car, even to get to a minimum-paid job. So, that's where the sustainable transport pyramid really plays very, very effectively. If we accept in this Senedd, as we did—[Interruption.] I will in a moment—just in a moment. If we accept, as we did when we brought through not only the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015 but, actually, the Active Travel (Wales) Act 2013, which envisaged Wales becoming a nation where it would be natural to walk and cycle first—and that's the top of the pyramid; it's the walking and cycling—and then you work your way down, and you work your way through public transport and mass-transport systems, through shared cars and shared taxis, through things like community transport initiatives and so on. And then you get down to the unmistakable question that there will be some people who cannot do anything but get into their own car, at this moment in time with the technology we have. And we have to accept that. But surely we have to work through the others first, and what this debate sometimes misses is that wider thinking about how we shift things up that pyramid to make it easier, much more attractive, much more affordable, so that Suzy as well, not just me, as I can nip down to the train station—[Interruption.] Just to mention to you, by the way, what I found, since travelling more and more by train, is that despite the issues that we've recently had through December with the 06:44 train in the morning—despite that, when I was travelling by car, I was stuck much more in delays, in traffic, in accidents, time after time after time, than the odd occasional train that gets cancelled. But I will give way.

I'm very grateful to Huw Irranca-Davies for taking the intervention. I entirely take your point about poverty, but I know people in the region that I represent where the mother of the family is eating bread and tea at the end of the week because she has to put petrol in her car to get to her minimum-wage job in a rural area. So, let's not just assume that people who are economically disadvantaged only live in those communities where they of course need access to good public transport, because some of those families, if they're to stay in their community, will never be able to have the bus and rail network, and they will need access to affordable private travel.

I absolutely agree, and that's absolutely the case at it currently is, but I don't think either we should give up on having good, affordable, accessible, reliable, frequent public transportation in rural areas as well. It's a measure of how far we've got to shift this paradigm to say we should be tipping the investment into that.

One of the greatest fears of god that would go through Westminster parliamentarians when we used to have the now infamous petrol-price escalator—which was designed exactly to have a discouraging effect towards filling up your tank regularly and so on—was that we had mass opposition to that, not least led by Top Gear and other presenters, who would march on Parliament and say, 'This is a disgrace.' You're absolutely right, in terms of where we currently are, there's got to be an acceptance that for some people, it's unavoidable.

But, actually, for some of the discussion we've had today about some of the main transport networks, particularly on the south Wales corridor, all the way from Newport, all the way from Bristol, frankly, all the way to Pont Abraham services—that has now become, in effect, a de facto local transport network as well, with people nipping in and nipping off there. Now, surely, we have to do, in a sense, what Cardiff have—I'm glad Cardiff have launched the debate around, not only congestion charging, which has caused a lot of angst and debate and so on, but I'm glad they've launched that debate, I have to say. But it's also around car sharing, because my brother-in-law, who has worked in Cardiff for 30 years, shares a car with four other people, and they pick up along the way and they travel to Lloyd's Bank, and they've done that for year upon year upon year. If they can do it, why can't others? I know of a care home in my constituency that also has catering workers with it who have done exactly the same. This is in my constituency. And they travel along the M4 and they've decided they can't put up with what's going on there, so they've come together—partly for cost, to keep the costs down, because they're all in lowest, minimum-wage jobs, but they've come together to carpool. Now it's those options that are missing from this debate sometimes.

However, we do have to accept that there needs to be some investment in roads. There are some that are not fit for purpose; there are some that need upgrading and maintenance. I'm delighted that Welsh Government has given—I think it is— around £2 million to Bridgend County Borough Council. I hope that they will use that to fix places like Tonna Road. It needs major resurfacing, not just potholes done. So, that sort of money will continue to be needed. We must accept that some people will have no option but to have access to private transport, but let's not pretend we need to do anything other than turn the whole paradigm on its head and start investing in mass transport and then the car as an add-on, not the other way around, as we've done for 50 years.  

I just want to take this opportunity to reflect on the Welsh Government's transport commitments in its programme for government, which commits the Government to improving the A40 in west Wales.

Now, the Minister will know that one of my favourite subjects is talking about the A40 in Pembrokeshire, and he and others will not be surprised that I will continue to call on the Welsh Government to dual the A40 in my constituency, which, in my view, would have a hugely beneficial impact on local communities and it would transform the local economy. Now, as Members will be aware, the ports in my constituency are an important gateway for international trade, and it's more important than ever that the Welsh Government invests in the local transport network to ensure that these ports remain competitive in the future. Indeed, both Fishguard and Milford Haven ports have called for this infrastructure development for some years now, and so perhaps in responding to this debate the Minister could confirm that, in principle, the Welsh Government is in favour of dualling this stretch of road in the long term. And I'm sure the Minister will agree that dualling the road has never been a political issue and, if you ask members of all parties, I'm sure it's one of the few infrastructure issues that politicians of all colours can actually agree on, and so it's high time that this project is now taken seriously.

Whilst the Welsh Government continues to push ahead with transport schemes in other parts of Wales, such as the Heads of the Valleys road, which is extremely important, it's also crucial that the infrastructure needs of west Wales are also met. We've heard commitments in the past about feasibility studies and promises of improvements throughout this Assembly, but, in reality, little is being done to transform this road and open west Wales to the rest of the country. Indeed, it was disappointing to read in the External Affairs and Additional Legislation Committee's report on the implications of Brexit for Welsh ports that Wales had previously not taken full advantage of the funding associated with the trans-European transport network. During that particular inquiry, Ian Davies of Stena Line ports told the committee that there had only been minor funding but nothing of any real significance over the last 15 years. Well, that's simply not acceptable and it's sad to hear that opportunities have been missed in the past to access vital funding pots and, as a result, we're still no further forward. Therefore, I really do hope that the Minister will relook at this project and give communities in west Wales a meaningful commitment to dualling this road in the future. 

Of course, it's not all about larger scale projects; there are significant challenges facing the local road network across Wales and that, too, has an impact on local communities. I know from my own engagement with local people in Lower Town, Fishguard, for example, just how detrimental poor road infrastructure can be. In this particular case, oversized vehicles travelling through Lower Town have literally become stuck between properties, causing damage and also causing danger to pedestrians. The Minister will be aware that I've called for a footbridge to be installed to better support pedestrians on the A487 in Lower Town, Fishguard, but sadly those calls continue to fall on deaf ears. Now, I accept that an alert system is currently being developed to warn larger vehicles travelling on this stretch of road, and I cautiously welcome that, but it's absolutely crucial that this system is both practical and palatable for the local community. That's why I've extended an invitation to the Minister to visit the area for himself to see the problems first hand and so perhaps in responding to this debate he will at least be able to confirm whether or not he'll be taking me up on that invitation. 

Now, the availability of good infrastructure clearly has a direct influence on the sustainability of businesses across Wales, and that's why it's more important than ever that the Welsh Government rural-proofs its transport policies and ensures investment reaches all parts of the country. It must be remembered that the volume of traffic on the roads in increasing, and therefore it's essential that we ensure that the state of those roads is of a decent standard and safe for road users. In 2018, motor vehicles in Wales completed 29.4 billion vehicle kilometres. This is 4.63 billion vehicle kilometres more than in 2000. However, as I understand it, whilst the volume of cars and taxis has increased by 2.74 billion vehicle kilometres since 2000, the volume of buses and coaches has decreased by 0.8 billion in the same time.

I think it's important, as has already been said, to recognise that in rural areas like Pembrokeshire buses provide a valuable lifeline to so many people in accessing work and community facilities, and even in combating loneliness and isolation. Therefore, at the very least, I think the Welsh Government has an obligation to those people to ensure that our public road network is sufficient and capable of comfortably transporting people from one place to another, and perhaps the Welsh Government's forthcoming buses Bill will not only look at the type of services available, but how those services will actually be delivered on our road infrastructure.

Therefore, in closing, Dirprwy Lywydd, Pembrokeshire will soon be home to thousands of visitors, and yet to fully capitalise on what Pembrokeshire has to offer there needs to be a strong transport network in place. Therefore, I urge Members to support our motion.   

Can I now call the Minister for Economy, Transport and North Wales, Ken Skates? 

Diolch, Dirprwy Lywydd. I am very grateful indeed for the opportunity to respond to this debate this afternoon. I see no reason why Members on any side of this Chamber could possibly fail to support the declaration of a climate emergency, fail to support or acknowledge the Welsh Government's £5 billion rail service, fail to regret £1 billion of underfunding in transport infrastructure by the UK Government in Wales in the last five years—why no Member in this Chamber could regret a decade of austerity or support our call for funding for a comprehensive package of borderland road and transport projects, Dirprwy Lywydd. Nor can I see any reason why any Member would refuse to call on the UK Government to invest £1 billion in north Wales rail infrastructure or to note the decision—just note the decision—of the First Minister, or, of course, to welcome the Welsh Government's £1 billion spend on transport in north Wales. I can only take it that any Member that refuses to support our amendment does not support the £1 billion package of improvements in north Wales or our call for £1 billion to make good on the great train robbery by—[Interruption.] I'll gladly give way. 

I was looking at our motion, and I wonder why there's no reason to regret that you can't agree that you recognise the importance of roads as vital economic arteries which promote prosperity, or acknowledge the adverse economic and environmental impact of poor road connectivity. I could go on, but you don't recognise any of that. If you do recognise that, why are you deleting this? 

Dirprwy Lywydd, I simply cannot accept that we should be working with the UK Government to deliver an M4 relief road. That decision has been made. And, if I may start with the M4, first of all, the First Minister has commented repeatedly in this Chamber and has provided his reasoning for not proceeding with the M4 corridor around Newport project. And I can assure all Members that we recognise congestion on the M4 is a challenge that has to be addressed. Do not think it is simply not an option, not on this side of the border nor on the English side of the border.

Here, we are grateful for the work that Lord Burns has already completed with the South East Wales Transport Commission in their December report. That report is just the beginning of the commission's work, and I look forward to receiving further updates this year. We've also been clear in stressing that this particular project was absolutely unique in terms of the scale and in terms of the impact on the site of special scientific interest, and that therefore it had to be considered in its own right. 

Now, in recent years we have completed several high-profile road projects, including Newtown bypass, which is, I think, a fantastic example of how Welsh Government investment and commitment is delivering for the people of Wales. And it was delivered, as I said earlier, ahead of schedule and completed, I think, to the very highest standard that the scheme could possibly achieve. It's providing a real step change in how people travel in the area, as well as to and beyond Newtown. Now, in contrast, by July of 2018, the UK Government's road schemes were running approximately £2.8 billion over budget and 85 of the 112 road schemes were delayed, and let's not forget either the tragedies caused by the UK Government's disastrous so-called smart motorways project, recently exposed by Panorama as 'killer' roads. There are no such schemes here in Wales.

Dirprwy Lywydd, as noted in our amendment, the Welsh Government is providing £1 billion of improvements to road and transport infrastructure in north Wales, including major upgrades of the A55 and the A483, active travel schemes and the north Wales metro, and this is in spite of the fact that the UK Government is demanding £200 million of money back from us with just six weeks of the financial year to go.

Now, we fully recognise the importance of cross-border connectivity, and, over recent months, officials have been working closely with officials from the Office of the Secretary of State for Wales to identify possible schemes that we can take forward, and I am grateful for that collaboration. There are two major projects identified by officials that could be prioritised for development and construction over the coming years. There's the A483 Pant to Llanymynech road scheme and the A5/A483 Shrewsbury to Wrexham scheme. Maximising the economic benefits such improvements can bring to Wales will require both Governments to commit resources, and the Welsh Government is prepared to allocate funding if the UK Government can do the same through the road investment strategy.

Now, our national transport finance plan highlights our commitments to improving the motorway and trunk road network in Wales, despite the decade of austerity that we have endured. The Welsh Government, not being funded to do so, has also invested in our rail infrastructure, choosing to connect communities through reopening lines and new stations, prioritising increasing capacity to provide valuable and popular services, and closing, of course, level crossings to improve safety and journey times. My oral statement yesterday informed Members of the need for ownership and funding of rail infrastructure to be in the hands of Welsh people. We for too long have been low on the list of Westminster's priorities for enhancing the rail network. That could end with the devolution of responsibilities and funding.

By the end of the next financial year, we will also have delivered a significant proportion of the south Wales metro transformation, reaffirming our commitment to carbon reduction. Now, transport decarbonisation will be a key theme in the Welsh Government's new transport strategy, which is to be published this year, and, in the next financial year, we have allocated an extra £74 million for decarbonisation transport measures.

Now, as I said in my answer to questions earlier today, £2 million is being invested to create rapid-charging points throughout Wales to enable longer distance travel and encourage the transition away from petrol and diesel cars, and this supports our ambitions to have a zero tailpipe emission bus and taxi fleet by 2028.

Dirprwy Lywydd, I must just take this opportunity to assure both Suzy Davies and Paul Davies that, in this Government's determination to level up Wales, we are taking forward projects across the country, including the alleviation of congestion at junction 47 on the M4 and two major projects on the A40. Clearly, though, if the Prime Minister decided to abandon his £15 billion idea of building a bridge between Scotland and Northern Ireland, he could not only make up the £1 billion great train robbery, he could also have plenty of money left to invest in the dualling of the A40.

Dirprwy Lywydd, this Government's ambition to see a more prosperous, greener, and equal Wales through better transport connectivity is one I hope all will aspire to in this Chamber, and the UK Government can and should provide Wales with a fairer share of funding to make it happen.

Thank you. Can I call on Nick Ramsay to reply to the debate?

Diolch, Dirprwy Lywydd. It's a pleasure to round up this debate today, on, let's face it, what is a very important subject for this Chamber, for the people of Wales. It used to be said about the late Lord Wyn Roberts that he built more roads in Wales than the Romans, and he did build a fair few, it's true, including, of course, the A470, a major infrastructure project, which you can't imagine Wales without now.

Roads are not the answer to our transport problems—to all our transport problems—but they are a vitally important part of the overall transport infrastructure of this country. And of course, even if you are a keen advocate of public transport—buses are, of course, key to the transport needs of this country—buses need roads to run on, buses require tarmac. So, even the keenest advocates of public transport have to accept that roads have a vital part to play. Of course, it's not just buses, there are trams too, or even the trolleybuses, as we used to have. I can see Dave Rowlands smiling at the mention of the trolleybuses many years ago.

So, it's not just about cars, but cars continue, as Russ George said earlier, to be a major form of transport; and in the future, they will still be, even if they are electric. Yes, we are moving away from fossil fuels, but that doesn't necessarily mean moving totally away from cars, from a personal form of transport, particularly in rural areas where, of course, bus services aren't great. For all of the comments that are made by the Minister and the Welsh Government about attempts to improve the transport in rural areas, buses are still not providing the total coverage we'd like to see.

Now, turning to some of the contributions made during this debate, and as Russ George said in opening, our road network is vital. You also mentioned the M4 relief road, Russ, and the need for a solution to the congestion problems around Cardiff. As our motion says, we look to solve those. A great deal of money was spent on the public inquiry, but with no solution to the congestion in sight. It is hard to see—. As I said in response to Helen Mary Jones's comment earlier, whilst I understand some of the objections to tarmacking countryside and areas of special scientific interest, it's not possible to deal with problems such as those around Newport without some kind of infrastructure solution, and our motion addresses that.

Perhaps we could have an update from the Minister on the commission that has been set up to look at the issues around Newport. I think that that would be timely. We know it's been working for some time now, and there were different stages to that commission.

Helen Mary Jones, you did suggest, which amused me, that our motion is trying to turn the clock back to the 1980s. Well, that's certainly not the intention, Helen Mary, we are just saying that you can't solve all of these problems, certainly in the medium term, by trying to shift all of the traffic on to public transport. There has to be some kind of balance. Russ.

I was just going to say, I think it was said a couple of times during the debate, but, our motion doesn't say that we want to build more roads, it's talking about updating the current infrastructure that's there. I think that's an important distinction that needs to be clarified on our motion.

Whenever someone from your own side intervenes, it's always good to agree with them. So, I feel, Russ, you've made an important point. Yes, it's too often today some Members have said, 'Why are you talking about roads?' Well, it's necessary to talk about roads; they are a vital part of the overall mix, and that's why we brought that motion here today.

As Mohammad Asghar said, the M4 is a vital artery around Newport; it's an outdated artery that needs to be improved. And as Suzy Davies said, we seem to be waiting a long time for all of these things; I can't remember exactly the anecdote you used, Suzy, but it was a very memorable one. Dave Rowlands, you once again called for Ireland, I think it was, the Republic of Ireland, to have some contribution to improving our road network in Wales; it's quite ironic, actually, given that we have left Europe, that we'd be looking to another country to do that. We know that there's funding on offer from the UK Government, and that funding is all important, and that funding needs to be employed in improving our road network. I've forgotten the number of the European route that you were talking about, but I think the M4 is part of that European route, trans-European route, as is the A40 in Pembrokeshire, which was mentioned by Paul Davies—a well worn plea for the dualling of the A40. Many years ago, I was part of the SO25 committee that looked at the Robeston Wathen bypass and whether that should be dualled or should be three lanes; in the end, it was three lanes.

But in closing, Dirprwy Lywydd, these are very important issues I'm glad we're discussing in this Chamber today. Yes, we need improvements in public transport. Yes, we need the metro to be fulfilled. Yes, we need electrification, which is happening along the Great Western line. All these things are fine. But at the end of the day, we will also need investment in our road network, because it's only because of roads like the A470 today that Wales hasn't come to a standstill before now. So, let's make sure that, moving forward, all aspects of transport infrastructure are properly funded by the Welsh Government.

Thank you. The proposal is to agree the motion without amendment. Does any Member object? [Objection.] Thank you. Therefore, we'll vote on this item in voting time.

Item 6 on the agenda this afternoon is the Plaid Cymru debate on decarbonisation, and I call on Rhun ap Iorwerth to move the motion.

Thank you very much, Deputy Presiding Officer. We are at a turning point as a society, and this debate today is one of the ones that we have to have as we transfer from the old world to the new world ahead of us: a world that has to realise how fragile it is, in terms of the environment, and is uncompromising in its willingness to innovate in the face of that particular situation.

I'm presenting and moving this motion today on the same day as a new organisation is officially launched, an organisation whose aims and objectives I'm very pleased to endorse. The launch of the Wales Hydrogen Trade Association reflects the fact that the world has woken up, I think, to the huge potential of hydrogen as a weapon against climate change. Developments linked to hydrogen will help us not only strive towards our decarbonisation goals, but also to clean up the air in our urban areas. Air pollution was the topic of one of Plaid Cymru's most recent debates here, just a few weeks ago.

Some of you will have had a go on the hydrogen bike, hopefully, which was on show outside the Senedd at lunch time today, where hydrogen energy took the strain off our legs. The possibilities for hydrogen really are endless in terms of meeting our energy needs. You'll have heard me many times in this Chamber promoting the environmental benefits of a shift towards EVs, or electric vehicles, and direct electric power is certainly the leading technology for ultra-low emission private cars at the moment, but hydrogen offers potential there too. We even have our own hydrogen car company here in Wales in Riversimple. If cars could widely run on hydrogen in future, we're already seeing more developed applications in larger commercial transport—lorries, buses, ships, trains—add to that the fact that heating systems, even whole power stations, could run on a fuel whose only emission is water, and given that hydrogen can be generated using purely renewable power, you start to get the picture.

Nineteen organisations, I think, form part of the new Wales Hydrogen Trade Association, from energy generation and distribution companies to construction companies, utilities, Riversimple, which I mentioned earlier, a host of organisations that can see they have a role or an interest—commercially, environmentally or indeed socially—in supporting investment in hydrogen in Wales in the future. What they've seen is that now is the time for Wales to make a statement that we want to be genuinely a part of this first major wave in this new energy revolution.

What I'm looking for, in effect, from tabling this motion, is for this Parliament to express its support for that, to express that we see in hydrogen an area of huge environmental health and economic benefits. And, of course, I'll be listening carefully to the Minister for not just words of support, but evidence of concrete action that Welsh Government is ready to take and take quickly. For example, it's great that Government has recently put out a tender document seeking a provider to

'provide support to Welsh Government...to help bring forward a proposed support pathway and developing pipeline proposals'

in and around the development of hydrogen. It's a two-year piece of work, but I hope that we'll see projects begin to be developed now in parallel with that study. There's a study in Scotland, for example, that's due to report in just four months, by May this year, and we simply can't afford to miss this hydrogen-fuelled boat. And speaking of boats, I'm particularly excited about the potential of hydrogen to bring benefits to my constituency and the port of Holyhead; cross Irish sea traffic turning to hydrogen fuel could be a very important part of that.

The motion refers specifically to the potential for hydrogen developments on Ynys Môn. Just imagine the scope for using excess marine and wind renewable energy generated around Ynys Môn at night, say, to produce hydrogen in a plant in the north of the island, where we really need jobs, and using that to power road vehicles, trains and, yes, ships to and from Ynys Môn. Imagine then the potential of using the old Shell crude oil pipeline running from the north of the island directly to the north west of England, creating a new, environmentally innovative export industry, exporting hydrogen. Imagine tying that, then, into social enterprise, even.

We know about Morlais, the community initiative that's part of Menter Môn, which is developing a marine energy project in the demonstration testbed off the western Anglesey coast. But Menter Môn has also been leading a piece of work looking at the potential of the hydrogen industry on Ynys Môn: taking action locally for the benefit of the community and for the benefit of the environment. They, like me, see that we are looking at something here that can bring great benefits to us on so many different levels, from the local to the national, and indeed globally.

The German Government is excited about hydrogen. They're launching their national hydrogen strategy this spring. The German federal Government says that hydrogen is the new oil. I was reading earlier blogs and articles that refer to how hydrogen, for example, is going to transform supply chains globally and how it's going to be vital in decarbonising our homes, and how they're heated in particular.

There are projects in Wales already. I've referred to the tender from the Government and to Menter Môn's research into Ynys Môn as a hydrogen island. I'll refer also to the Milford Haven Energy Kingdom project in Milford Haven, which is trying to innovate in the shift from fossil fuels and fossil fuel gas to hydrogen. These are all things to be welcomed.

But, let us today make a clear statement that Wales wants to be an innovator in hydrogen. And as a sign of our seriousness and our intent in helping to lead in this battle against climate change, and to change to a new kind of industry as well, which will bring benefits on so many different levels, Wales, according to our statement today, will be part of that revolution.

I have selected the three amendments to the motion. I call on Andrew Davies to move amendments 1, 2 and 3, tabled in the name of Darren Millar.

Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. I move the amendments in the name of Darren Millar—1, 2 and 3—attached to the motion. I thank Plaid Cymru for bringing the debate, in particular on the day that the Wales Hydrogen Trade Association was launched here at the Senedd, a development that I welcome. I think as the opener of the debate, Rhun, highlighted there are some exciting projects going on across the United Kingdom. That's why we think that it's important that we not just work on a Wales-only basis but we look across the United Kingdom at projects that are going on and see what research funding we can bring into Wales.

In fact, it's interesting to note that, from the UK Government's own assessment of this, and in particular about creating a clean energy market, there's the potential for 2 million jobs and £170 billion-worth of annual exports by 2030. The hydrogen transport programme, for example, which has just had £23 million-worth of funding, launched in 2017, has helped to accelerate this hydrogen vehicle roll-out and more hydrogen infrastructure, including refuelling stations, ahead of the UK ban on diesel cars and petrol cars by 2030.

If we look across and up to Scotland, for example, there have been some exciting developments there: the HySpirits project in the Orkney isles of Scotland, which is exploring the possibility of converting a craft gin distillery from using liquid petroleum gas to hydrogen to make the process more environmentally friendly; and the £100 million low carbon hydrogen energy project fund to deploy low carbon hydrogen production capacity to enable greater use of hydrogen as a decarbonisation option within the energy sector.

That's why it is really important, I would suggest, that we also link in our university sector—hence amendment 3, which calls for working with the research base within the university sector here in Wales to develop those opportunities. When you talk about transport, for example, Transport for London is seeking to introduce 20 hydrogen powered double-decker buses across London. Also, Green Tomato Cars, as they're called, which is a taxi company based in London, have also introduced hydrogen-powered taxis as part of their fleet. But if you actually said to the average punter in the street about hydrogen energy and the potential for hydrogen energy in our energy mix, many would look at you and wonder what you were talking about.

So, this debate will be an important start in that conversation. The alliance launched today will help, hopefully, inform many people about the exciting chances that exist out there, should this technology become more greatly deployed. But it is vital that we link the dots to make sure that we have connection between research that is going on across the United Kingdom, that the Welsh Government develop that research capability here in Wales with some pump priming, but also work to draw down funds—the significant funds, I would suggest—that have been made available by the other Governments in the United Kingdom to make sure that this technology is a serious alternative and a viable player in decarbonising our overall economy.

Looking at it from what I've understood over recent weeks, as such, looking into this subject, the IWA did touch on this in their policy paper 'Re-energising Wales', but they did call for greater research in this sector, and innovation, in particular about the development of new low and zero-carbon projects. I appreciate that I only have three minutes—this is a half-hour debate, which, most probably, doesn't do justice to the subject. But I'll leave it there and I hope that our amendments will find support in the debate this afternoon.

As I’m sure everyone appreciates, the aim of this debate is to place a real spotlight on the potential that hydrogen has, not only in terms of the environmental impact in Wales, but also the social and economic impacts that we could take advantage of if this sector were to be given the support and opportunity to grow that it deserves. We often think that we're in the vanguard in trying various different things, but as we've heard from Rhun, there are already nations that are implementing this technology. Even in the UK, there are hydrogen buses in places such as Aberdeen and Birmingham, and London is investing in hydrogen buses. I rode a hydrogen bike outside the Senedd just an hour ago. So, the technology is available. What we need to do is to implement it at a scale that will make this sector valuable and allow it to grow, but, simultaneously, ensure that Wales is in the fast lane when it comes to the innovative opportunities that exist with this technology, and, of course, that is the focus of the debate today.

Now, two years ago, Plaid Cymru commissioned a research document looking at the potential of hydrogen from the perspective of decarbonising transport in Wales, and, of course, one of the apparent things is that you need a specific funding source for hydrogen transport schemes. There is much more that we could be doing to use the opportunities provided by the Wales and borders rail franchise, the proposed metros and changing the bus fleet—we need to move swiftly in that direction. There was mention of a tender that's out from Government at the moment, and, certainly, we need a designated team drawn together from universities, local authorities and the Government in order to drive this agenda forward, and people who will draw specific proposals to identify funding sources and to be proactive, to make things happen, rather than just having some sort of drift, where you hope, one day, at some point in the future, things will come together. If we want this to happen, we will have to make it happen, and, clearly, people are looking to Government for leadership in that regard.

We need to do more to ensure that the public sector and private sector institutions decarbonise their fleets and move towards hydrogen, for example, and so on and so forth—there is so much I could say in that area. Rhun has already referred to Riversimple, I had the opportunity to visit the company last year in Llandrindod, and, of course, they have developed a prototype of a vehicle called Rasa. It is an eco-coupé—that is their description of that particular car—and the first model will be, hopefully, on the roads this spring, with the right support, and this is the challenge for Government. Vehicles could be coming off the production line in two years’ time that are light, very efficient and clean, that do not pollute.

The Government is willing to invest in companies such as Aston Martin and the combustion engine, and one recognises that there is room for those at the moment. But that’s yesterday’s technology, to all intents and purposes. Why not give £18 million to someone like Riversimple and invest in tomorrow’s technology? That’s where the innovation is; that’s where the opportunities arise, and that’s the direction of travel. So, my plea is that the Government should set its political sat nav now to ensure that we are moving in the right direction, and hydrogen is part of that.

I'm very pleased to speak in this debate this afternoon. I didn't realise I had three minutes—I thought I had a bit more, so I'm going to need to speed up a bit now.

I think it's been highlighted, and I apologise for not being at the launch of the hydrogen bike, because I was actually chairing the cross-party group on cancer at the time and couldn't be there. But it is important for us to remember a few things. Power accounted for 17 per cent of the UK's emissions in 2016, and that's according to the Committee on Climate Change. These figures need to reduce significantly—we all agree with that, and I don't think anybody in this Chamber would disagree with that—to be able to meet our 2050 targets. Now, transport and industrial emissions are two major causes of increased carbon emissions in the country, and we need to address these.

Most people have already focused upon the transport agenda, so perhaps I'll look at the heavy industry, and that's responsible for 40 per cent of carbon dioxide emissions in Wales. But converting these emissions into high-value speciality chemicals and food products turns this waste into a major resource. Converting industry from using hydrocarbon fuels to using hydrogen generated from green electricity sources can both decrease industrial emissions and simultaneously lower energy costs to create a more competitive regional economy. Now, using hydrogen for heating and transport could be one of those ways. Hydrogen can be very versatile. It's been mentioned, it can be transported by pipeline, it can be transported by road in tankers as a compressed gas, or actually produced locally in a decentralised system. Therefore, it has many potential uses in an overall energy system.

Now, we can make an important contribution to long-term decarbonisation, combined with good energy efficiency, cheap, low-carbon power generation, electrified transport and new hybrid heat pump systems. A report from the CCC, 'Hydrogen in a low-carbon economy', acknowledged the potential of hydrogen as a zero-carbon energy source. So, it's been recognised and there's no difference in that, but it could actually replace natural gas. I do remember the days of town gas, and we moved over to natural gas, and now we're talking about hydrogen replacing natural gas, and therefore, it's possible. It wasn't possible many years ago, because it was considered expensive. But today, it is a more realistic option to help decarbonise the UK, because the costs are coming down. And therefore, it is important that we get Government commitment to improving support to develop the UK's industrial capacity in this area.

And Wales has a number of advantages that can be utilised in the transition to a hydrogen economy. We have abundant renewable sources to provide an opportunity for a cleaner energy system. However, one point—[Inaudible.]—oil based, I've talked about the energy, the transport—I'll leave that to you; I'll leave that one for others to speak about.

We have fantastic projects in this country, and amendment 3 from the Conservatives highlights that Wales should do more with the universities. Well, I actually want to put on record my appreciation of what they are already doing with universities on some of the projects. We have FLEXIS—flexible integrated energy systems—and we have RICE—reduced industrial carbon emissions. Both are fantastic projects. And I'm also proud of the fact that there are two research centres in my constituency—Baglan bay energy park and in the university's second campus. They are doing fantastic jobs. And let me give an indication of how they're working with industry and Tata in particular—I'll be very quick, Dirprwy Lywydd: using hydrogen to look at how we can actually capture waste heat in Tata, to turn that into usable energy, so we reduce our emissions. Using hydrogen has become a cheap an efficient way of actually generating electricity—again, from Tata's waste gases and renewable energy. Because if they can actually get energy into water, split the water into hydrogen and oxygen, hydrogen becomes energy and oxygen can be used, actually, in water cleansing in water treatment plants, which are also based in Tata, by the way. So, there's another option there. So, we can—

Can you wind up, please?

We can use it. We need to look very carefully. I appreciate the work being done by Welsh Government, but we all need to back it now; we need to make sure that it goes from research to an industry, and then into developing across the UK.

Thank you. I now call the Minister for Environment, Energy and Rural Affairs, Lesley Griffiths.

[Interruption.] Sorry. It went down the wrong way—sorry. This has been a really helpful opportunity to highlight a potential role of hydrogen in a zero-carbon energy system. Decarbonisation is driving a global shift in the energy world and the boundaries between transport, electricity and heat are becoming blurred, with energy being converted into different forms to address a range of needs.

The ability to store energy and use it when and where it's needed is vital for an efficient renewable energy-based system. The system will need to integrate renewable generation with storage and other services to minimise the need for new generation and ensure flexibility to meet peaks in demand. Smarter systems and appliances are needed to manage this increasingly complex system.

We expect to see low-carbon gas playing a greater role. It is not yet clear whether this will be in the form of biomethane, hydrogen, or other synthetic gases. Gases such as hydrogen may also have a role to play in helping us to store electricity generated from renewable sources during periods of low demand. The gas may then be converted back into electricity through combustion, or used as a heating or transport fuel. Targeted investment in a multivector system will help us to find the most effective solutions to serving peak demand. We are committed to this whole-systems approach to the energy transition that underpins our work on decarbonisation. Hydrogen is a natural energy vector to consider, as it has flexibility to provide heat, power, sustainable fuel for transport and is a medium for storage. The flexibility hydrogen could provide is of value to the whole energy sector. 

The potential for developing this is being explored through our Smart Living work as well as the FLEXIS programme and whilst we also participate in UK groups to co-ordinate work on hydrogen, Welsh Government already brings together the public sector, business and academics through its Smart Living demonstrators. Looking at how we transform the jobs in west Wales from fossil energy to low-carbon energy is fundamental to delivering a prosperous low-carbon Wales. A key example is the joint working we co-ordinated on the Milford Haven energy kingdom proposal, which secured a share of £21 million of Innovate UK funding to develop a detailed design to bring it closer to deployment.

Another success story is the Rasa, the Welsh hydrogen fuel cell car, supported by Welsh Government and European funding and now working on a pilot project to have cars in daily use. The Wales-based FLEXIS programme is looking at a range of innovations, many of which include hydrogen. One example is testing out how domestic appliances may be impacted by increased hydrogen in the gas supply. Understanding these impacts could enable new jobs in manufacturing. 

There are opportunities for Wales to build on these pilots and develop local and larger scale hydrogen-generation projects, both at the industrial scale and as an alternative to natural gas in rural areas. However, securing benefits for Wales will be dependent on successful demonstration projects taking place here. It also requires major investment to drive down the costs of hydrogen manufacture and storage. We need a low-carbon energy system, but not at any cost. Even with the current low financial cost of natural gas, we have people in fuel poverty. We need to build on the experience of making renewable sources, such as onshore wind and solar, the lowest cost sources of energy, applying these lessons to drive down the cost of flexibility and storage. 

I hope the enthusiasm of the Tory Members for this Senedd debate today will be translated into real commitment by their Westminster colleagues to provide the additional funding needed to help more renewable technologies become truly price competitive. There are a number of major energy announcements from the UK Government that are long overdue and I hope that, when these announcements are finally made, they will make it clear not just how they will support the development of these technologies but, where the responsibilities are non-devolved, how they will support the development of these technologies here in Wales.

The flexibility of gases such as hydrogen means we need to take a broader view of the energy system. An integrated system is likely to be cheaper for citizens in the long term and also help us to preserve security of energy supplies, even at times of peak demand. The UK National Infrastructure Commission believes these savings could be as large as £8 billion a year for energy users across the UK by 2030. I broadly support the motion and amendments, which, in my view, suggest the need to bring together and add further strategic focus to the wealth of activity already under way in Wales. No single solution can provide Wales with the low-carbon future it both needs and deserves. We need to consider the energy system as a whole. It is my intention to ensure that our thinking on the role of hydrogen and associated technologies across Wales is both co-ordinated and strategic. That is why a hydrogen strategy for Wales will be an integrated component of Wales's next low-carbon delivery plan for 2021-25.

Thank you. I call on Rhun ap Iorwerth to reply to the debate. 

Thank you very much. Only a minute or so remains to me. I won't summarise everything that's been said, but thank you for the contributions that we have heard. Andrew R.T. Davies noted that he, too, hopes that today, with the launch of the new Welsh group and this debate, is the start of a new period of intensity, if you will, of discussion with regard to hydrogen. Llyr Gruffydd spoke about the need to be truly innovative and proactive, and that’s what’s important. And thank you to Dai Rees for focusing on the element of whether hydrogen drives industry in Wales, which is so important. We need to decarbonise our industries and, of course, there are industries that make very heavy use of energy in your constituency.

In terms of what we heard from the Minister, we heard a summary of the different elements of uses for hydrogen. She also spoke about what the Government’s already done, and I think I summarised a lot of that work. I don't think I quite heard the urgency of what I am seeking in terms of what happens next, but, of course, the Minister is right to say that we need to start where we are. We need to build on the work that is being done now, and I’m excited about hydrogen—I’m genuinely excited, and I think we should all now keep a close eye on what the Government is doing to move this agenda forward. My criticism of this Government here isn’t very often that it does nothing, but that it’s not doing enough and with urgency.

Well, with this, we don’t have any choice now to take steps forward, or we’ll be left behind, rather than what we could be doing, which is being in the vanguard of this. And I think it’s going to be a revolution in terms of energy, energy production and use of energy globally.

Thank you. The proposal is to agree the motion without amendment. Does any Member object? No—[Objection.] Just in time. Dear me. Good job I was just pondering. Right, okay. We'll vote on that item in voting time.

Item 7 on the agenda this afternoon is the Plaid Cymru debate on adverse weather and storm damage, and I call on Leanne Wood to move the motion. Leanne.

I want to use this opportunity that this Plaid Cymru debate brings to follow on from yesterday's statement on flooding. I raised a number of issues in the Minister's statement yesterday that were not dealt with in her subsequent response. So, I want to return to those matters today and to raise some more issues that time did not allow for yesterday.

The first matter relates to Natural Resources Wales and the question of liability. This was a particular issue in Pentre, where I was again this morning with local councillors and Plaid Cymru's leader, but it's not just confined to that town. The tonnes of debris washed off the mountains that blocked the main culvert in Pentre was also a factor in other communities, such as Ynyshir and Blaenllechau. I would like to invite the Minister to visit communities like Pentre, Blaenllechau, Treorchy, Ynyshir, Ystrad, Porth and Trehafod to see the aftermath of the floods, and to see the scale of what people face to get back on their feet. 

If the next time, Minister, you come to the Rhondda you come with me, I'll make sure you speak to people who can explain to you very clearly the impact on their lives of what they believe to be Natural Resources Wales's actions or inactions. Perhaps you could also bring representatives of Natural Resources Wales with you. Such a visit will help you and officials to see why we need an independent inquiry into the causes of the flooding across the Rhondda and further downstream. An internal review conducted by Natural Resources Wales will not be good enough. 

Rhondda communities are demanding that Natural Resources Wales acknowledge their mistakes in leaving such large quantities of material on the mountain and, in some places, changing watercourses through the use of heavy machinery on the mountains without remedial works afterwards. For residents to receive justice, there needs to be an admission of liability on the part of NRW. They also want you to acknowledge that the guidance under which natural Resources Wales has been working to in relation to tree felling is no longer fit for purpose. It needs looking at again, and if you agree with me on that point, Minister, I'd like to hear from you how quickly you think such a review could be undertaken.

As Minister with responsibility over Natural Resources Wales, will you support steps to begin this process? While people are struggling to piece back their lives, there can be no lengthy delays to any part of this process. So, I ask you to act swiftly in terms of accepting liability, instituting an independent public inquiry and reviewing Natural Resources Wales's tree-felling guidance. Lessons have to be learned so this can never happen again. Where tree felling occurs, timber should not be left lying on the mountain in such large quantities. Watercourses, if disrupted through logging operations, must be reinstated.

I saw a prime example of this in Blaenllechau where a stream entered the property through the back door and left by gushing out through the front door. The woman living there told me that the watercourses above her home had been altered as a result of these tree felling operations. Naturally, she is concerned that this surge of water through her home will become the norm in heavy rain from now on until work is done to put matters right.

So, on behalf of this resident and many others, will you, Minister, ensure that these changes are implemented as soon as possible and that work is taken to reinstate whatever damage has been caused to watercourses on hillsides and on mountains? Not only do we have to put things right that have been damaged or altered, but we also have to futureproof our communities from further flooding. The climate crisis means we have to readjust and recalibrate everything we once thought was normal. Scientists are telling us that extreme weather events like large storms within quick succession will become more commonplace. We have to be more ready next time.

How do we further protect our communities, then, and our people? We must begin by looking at a programme of upland tree planting on the land especially that belongs to the Welsh Government. Where the land is privately owned, the occupiers need to be incentivised to plant and grow indigenous trees. We also have to seriously call into question planning policy that allows houses to be built on land that can be vital in the fight against flood prevention. We must also have a comprehensive and regular drainage and culvert cleaning programme.

The flooding not only damaged homes, it also damaged vehicles, and some are not covered for flood damage through their insurance policy. This is detrimental to everyone, but especially people who were relying upon their vehicles for employment purposes. In the light of that, will you consider granting people who have been affected by this free public transport, perhaps an extension of the free bus pass to those who have been affected? People have suffered enough; they should not have to pay extra to go back and forth to work.

There also needs to be consideration of the people who have lost their works vehicles if they're self-employed tradespeople. These people have not only lost their homes but they've also lost their livelihoods, and some will be left without their tools as a result of the flooding. So, I'd urge you to consider how people in that situation can best be helped.

I asked a number of other questions yesterday that did not get an adequate response. I asked about help with energy bills and packages of support in line with what is available elsewhere. So, I very much hope that these points will be answered through the course of this debate this afternoon. All of these matters are in your gift or in the gift of your Government, Minister. I hope you will address them, and I hope you will take the necessary action that our communities demand and expect.

I have selected the five amendments to the motion. If amendment 2 is agreed, amendment 3 will be deselected. I call on Andrew R.T. Davies to move amendments 1, 3, 4 and 5, tabled in the name of Darren Millar. Andrew R.T. Davies.

Thank you, Presiding Officer. It's a pleasure to move the amendments in the name of Darren Millar: 1, 4, 5 and 3 in this afternoon's debate.

I would just start with the point that I appreciate, in tabling arrangements, you are quite entitled to table 30-minute debates, and I agree with all the sentiments that the opener gave this afternoon, but I do believe such a serious issue does merit a full debate in the Senedd here. It's perfectly within the right of the party to table a 30-minute debate, but it is a little difficult to actually capture all the very relevant points that the opener of this debate did lay before us this afternoon.

So, in the amendments that we have put forward today, I'd just like to say that we stand shoulder to shoulder with the communities that have been affected, both in north Wales and south Wales, because this is a whole-Wales issue that does require adequate response from both Governments and local authorities as well. And the services that have been at the disposal of communities the length and breadth of Wales really has shown the spirit of Wales at its very best, hence our amendment No. 1, hopefully strengthening the point that is made in the main motion.

I do think that, in amendment 3, it is vital that businesses are offered the support to consolidate the cash that they will require to get them over what will be very lean times, in particular over the coming months whilst they await insurance payouts, while they await reconstruction costs, and just basically rebuild some of the business capacity that they've lost because of this flooding. And I do hope that the Government will come forward with a rate relief scheme that will recognise the challenges that many of the businesses in these communities that have been hit—and Treforest industrial estate is a good example—where there's been massive destruction and many other areas across Wales. It is within the gift of the Government to actually come forward with such proposals. So, I very much hope that there'll be support for amendment 3.

I do hope that amendment 4 will carry today as well, because I do think it's vital that whilst everyone's mind is rightly focused on the immediate aftermath of the floods and the devastating impact on houses, businesses and communities, this is going to be one hell of a long haul for those communities and those individuals affected—many people facing six, eight, 12 months out of their homes. Businesses are most probably facing a far longer duration in rebuilding those businesses. And this isn't something that can be shut away because we've had a week—we've had 10 days, we've had a month's focus. This will take many months, many years of focus, and I do hope that amendment 4 will enjoy the support of the Assembly, because it will require Government to take the lead, working with its partners in local government and the health boards and other agencies, to make sure that in three months, in six months, in eight months, in 12 months, that support is very much there and focused on in particular.

And I'd also like to ask the Minister to maybe focus some of the efforts of Government on watching out for scams that have been reported today. Where there's money flowing into communities, especially in volume, and situations that some communities, individuals, aren't used to dealing with, regrettably, in our society, there are people who are prepared to prey on that vulnerability to seek to enrich themselves. And I appreciate it's not a direct responsibility of Government, but working with partners—highlighting the processes that many people will never have had to deal with before and to be aware of people who are just generally going in there to try and rip people off.

And amendment 5—and I appreciate my three minutes are up, but amendment 5—

Thank you for drawing my attention to that. [Laughter.]

It's stating the blindingly obvious, and the point that the opener, Leanne Wood made—you shouldn't be building on floodplains, to be honest with you. Floodplains should be used for the very purpose that they've been designated, which is to help with the catchment of water, not to build houses on. Planning is a wholly devolved responsibility; it is something that we just shouldn't be allowing to happen. And I very much hope that the Minister will give special regard to that because that is something that is within the gift of Welsh Government and can be stopped tomorrow. Thank you.

I call on the Minister for Environment, Energy and Rural Affairs to move formally amendment 2.

Formally.

Delyth Jewell.

Diolch, Llywydd. There can be few things more frightening than seeing your home damaged when you're powerless to stop it. Last week, residents across my region awoke to the devastation of flood damage and have been doing everything they can to piece their lives back together. Now, obviously efforts are focused, for now, on the immediate clean-up, but once the debris is cleared, questions will remain, like why these events were not anticipated by those in power. Now, it's been claimed in this Chamber that the floods were unforeseeable. I'd refute that. This Government declared a climate emergency last year. That was an acknowledgement that rising temperatures make storms of this nature more likely. The storms were foreseeable. Why wasn't more work put into preventing the devastation, and what lessons will be learned?

Now, I understand that the Climate Change Commission for Wales from 2010 were giving advice to Ministers on the need to spend money on adaptations to prevent flooding. The commission was abolished in 2013, and I have anecdotal evidence that the Government had ignored some of the advice given. So, I'd ask the Minister whether the expert advice that was given was followed, if there's a paper trail, and if so, if we could see that advice. I'd ask another question: why is it that people who have least are so often the people who suffer most in these circumstances?

I'm glad that the Welsh Government has offered an extra £500 for households without contents insurance, but that is like a drop in stagnant floodwater. Let's get this straight—the people without insurance hadn't neglected to get cover, they were refused cover because of previous flooding, or told that the premiums were extortionate and unaffordable for them. So, what conversations is your Government having with their UK Government counterparts to bring pressure on the insurance industry to stop refusing cover to the people who need it most? And the Flood Re scheme that exists is welcome, but why did so few people know about it?

I'd ask some specifics to put residents' minds at rest. In Islwyn, the culvert in the Navigation site collapsed, putting a question mark over months of regeneration work that I know the Welsh Government is keen to back. What support can be given to the friends of the Navigation to rectify this and to prevent flooding in nearby residential areas? In Crumlin, highway drainage infrastructure has to be altered or else properties will be flooded again. So, if alterations can't be made, would the Government consider purchasing the properties that are affected?

Finally, residents in Abergavenny are concerned that plans to downgrade their A&E will put them in future danger because the main road to the nearest A&E in Cwmbran was closed during the floods. Now, flooding like this is likely to happen again, so what account of these issues will the Government be taking in deciding whether to stop the closure of that A&E?

Llywydd, no-one is claiming that councils or the Government failed to act to help people affected by the floods through malice. There was no malice, but there was an element of negligence, a failure to foresee the foreseeable. People want assurance that the Government won't be caught unawares again. Minister, can we give them that assurance?

Minister, in view of the limited time, I'm just going to focus on a few questions and so on and issues that really arise as a result of this motion. The first one is that I think it would be very useful to have a public health analysis post these events, not just in respect of the psychological trauma that's been suffered, but we know that many people in the clearing of their homes have had to have additional tetanus injections and also been put on a series of antibiotics. We've seen people with inflammation of their skin in areas where they've had nicks and cuts as a result of this process. Now, this is quite significant and I think it's something that is well worth a public health evaluation.

The other issue, of course, that has been raised, is that of the issue of flood defences. I know, in Ilan, Welsh Government, with European money, invested substantially in containment pits for water running off the hills above Rhydyfelin and that, in fact, has worked very, very effectively. Those flood defences did work, but they were exceeded in some areas and there were certain areas where certain measures might have been taken that would have limited the flooding that did occur—certainly not on a scale that's ever been known before, because it was an area of regular flooding.

The other issue, of course, in areas around the A470—culvert drainage, culvert clearance, is clearly something that has been a bit of a problem. I've written about this to Welsh Government separately. But, clearly, there were homes that were flooded there, not as a result of the River Taff breaking its banks, but as a result of those culverts overflowing, because, I suspect, of, potentially, a lack of maintenance.

Another area that needs to be addressed, it seems to me, is the issue of the placement of large containers and similar sorts of objects in flood liable areas. Because those containers flowing down the river, crashing into bridges, have actually doubled and massively increased the amount of damage. It seems to me that we need to look at the actual planning or the licensing arrangements, or the arrangements that exist for people being allowed to place such objects there.

And then, finally, I have written again separately about this, and that is I think there needs to be a moratorium on proposed planning developments in floodplain areas, with a need to actually review what we understand by 'a floodplain'. Because, quite clearly, there are areas that are marginally outside floodplain areas being developed, but that, in the light of what we now know and we are now seeing, really need to be reassessed. So, we need really a moratorium on developments, because developments that may take place in the next year or two—it's really too late in terms of the subsequent consequences that there may be. So, what I'd ask is that perhaps one of the things that we need to do is to consider the nature of planning and the nature of what we have previously understood as floodplains, and have a review of that.

I won't rehearse the arguments as to why we need to take action on this. Climate change is a reality and we will be seeing more of these unprecedented events in the future. But my region, like many others, has been affected and I've been speaking to people since Sunday who have been severely affected and how their lives have been changed overnight by this instance.

Just in relation to the local issues, I believe—I'm here often criticising local authorities, but I do believe that many in my region have responded really well and we've heard reports of teams from local authorities who were out working double shifts or even longer. One local co-ordinator in the Neath area, named Emma, she's been out in Aberdulais and she hasn't stopped for over a week and she's co-ordinating an enormous community response effort and she's now a pillar of the community. These people across Wales, whether they're workers in the council or volunteers—you can only know in a crisis what you would do and we've seen amazing activity from people across the whole of Wales, I think, who've just got up and rolled their sleeves up and have got active. I haven't been one of them, and I've been criticised for virtue signalling, because I can't get out there. But, believe me, if I wasn't nearly nine months pregnant, I would be out there and I would be helping, as has everybody else here in Wales.

In Aberdulais—Canal Side, I have got many friends who live there. They're right beside the canal. They've been flooded again and again and again, and this time they've had sewage enter at the back of their houses. And what they have been disappointed with is that they're not sure why that has happened, and Welsh Water has still not clarified to them exactly why the sewage has entered their homes. Many of those residents have got sick, as Mick Antoniw has said, as a result.

And if I was scrambling around as an AM, trying to find out—. Public Health Wales were giving me information; NRW were giving me information; Dŵr Cymru—. They just want to know what they have to do in a crisis situation. They don't want to be reading mass documents about how to clean up sewage. They just want to be given advice, and they want someone on hand who has that expertise, as the First Minister said was happening; I didn't see that in my region.

We were also told by Canal Side that, the last time that they had flooding there, there was an emergency meeting at the British Legion—which I wasn't invited to—and that they did promise to have stronger flood defences there. I want to see another such urgent meeting organised with all AMs, all representatives, there, so that we can understand exactly how we can build on the flood defences in that area, looking at how they can be improved so that we can all try and make it better if it happens next time.

The lack of information, I think, was fundamental for them. They just didn't know what time they were supposed to leave their housing. And, if you did look at the sandbags, compared to some other areas of Wales, it was pretty pitiful. They just did not do anything much to help in that regard. Another issue in my region was in regard to the Canal View Café in Resolven. That's now closed as a result of damage and I'm trying to help them find ways that they can rebuild their café and to reopen. So, I would appeal, as other AMs have done here now, for people to be able to assist in that regard and to give them support.

So, of course, we have to discuss the practical elements, but I think, long term, we all want to see solutions and we all want to constructively be part of this discussion, because it won't just affect Neath Port Talbot, Ystalyfera, Rhondda, Cwmbran, it will affect every single area. Because that's what climate change does. It doesn't discriminate based on the parochialisms we may have here in Wales. It will not discriminate on that behalf. It will invade our lives and it will affect us in many, many different ways. So, if we can work together on that, then I would hope that we would be successful.

I call on the Minister for Environment, Energy and Rural Affairs to contribute—Lesley Griffiths.

Diolch, Llywydd. I welcome the debate today regarding the recent flooding experienced by communities across Wales as a result of storms Ciara and Dennis. I think it's another opportunity for us to again thank the tireless work of our emergency services, local authorities, NRW and volunteers in their response to the storms. We've been severely tested in our communities these last few weeks, but I think that the people of Wales have shown extraordinary resilience.

As Members know, the First Minister and I have visited a number of communities affected by flooding, and witnessed for ourselves the devastation flooding causes to families and business owners. As others have said, finding your home or business filled with floodwater is extremely traumatic, and I extend my sincere sympathies to everyone who has been affected by the recent flooding. I and my ministerial colleagues will be continuing to visit communities affected this week and over the coming weeks and months. I think that the way in which those communities have come together in the face of these devastating events is a really clear reflection of the type of response they expect from us all. 

Will the Minister take an intervention?

No, I've got very few—a very short time.

As others have recognised, the scale of the threat to Wales's communities from the climate emergency is very clear, and the frequency and intensity of storm events like Ciara and Dennis is increasing, so it's vital that we drive a more rapid and comprehensive response to the climate emergency. The Government amendment to the Plaid Cymru motion reflects a commitment that I hope this Senedd will share. We must offer real, specific and immediate relief to people at the same time as ensuring that we urgently put measures in place to protect our communities over the longer term.

If I can look at point 4—and I think that this is in response, firstly, to Leanne Wood—the Welsh Government will ensure that local authorities carry out their duty to investigate the causes of the recent flooding. Those reports must be published and will be available for public scrutiny not only by affected communities and independent experts, but by the Members of this Senedd. As Leanne knows, NRW is working closely with RCT to investigate and draw together their findings. I think they should be allowed to do that, and I give you my commitment that I will visit with you and I will ensure NRW come with me at the appropriate time. 

In relation to supporting people, we've found money, as Members know, immediately to help people affected, and have given additional help for those without insurance. We managed to get a system in place very quickly to get that money out through the door to those affected. I know people have already started to receive those payments of £500 and £1,000. Members make very important points around insurance: the UK Government's Flood Re scheme has made it possible for many people who, a few years ago, would have been unable to get insurance against flood damage. But I don't think enough people know about that, so I think that's an area we need to work with the insurance association to promote.

In relation to the longer term, we are working with local authorities around the scale of the damage because, again, we are going to bring forward additional funding in the shorter term and in the longer term. But, as I said yesterday, people will have to be patient, because it could take many months to ascertain the final amount of funding that's needed. We've also invited local authorities to apply for funding to undertake emergency repair works to flood assets. We have said we will fund those by 100 per cent, and my officials are also reviewing the applications received, and will be releasing funding as soon as possible to local authorities and NRW.

Several Members have raised concerns around planning rules and how they should be strengthened so that greater resilience to flood is designed into all new developments, particularly in light of the climate emergency. Members will be aware that we've had a recent consultation on technical advice note 15, and that will bring forward the changes we believe are necessary to achieve that. We will also be publishing a new national strategy for flood and coastal erosion risk management. That will set out our approach in Wales over the next decade, complementing new planning advice and aligning with our natural resources policy, encouraging wider catchment approaches and better information for the public. Somebody else—I think it was Bethan Sayed—made a point around the public receiving better information. This year we will also publish a new flood risk assessment for Wales to inform our decision making using the latest data, and prioritise investment to those communities at highest risk. 

It is already clear that our investment in flood defences in recent years protected 73,000 homes across Wales—9,000 homes on the River Taff alone. I want to increase financial and practical support to local authorities so that we can accelerate the development of new flood defence schemes and natural alleviation projects. We also need to work with our local authorities and NRW to have a look at the flood defences. Every flood defence held, but some only just, and we need to revisit and ensure, if any work is needed to be done, that we do that very quickly.

Andrew R.T. Davies I think made a really important point about scams, because we have seen this, haven't we, in other situations, maybe when people have been made redundant and had significant redundancy money, for instance—we've been aware that scams have taken place, so I think that's a really good point to make. [Interruption.] Sorry—I'm going to run out of time. 

So, it is about all working together. I'm sure everybody in this Senedd will want to do that, because we know that the last few weeks have been a very testing time across Wales. I wish to reassure people who've been affected by flooding that the Welsh Government will continue to do all we can to assist them with the restoration of their communities. 

Llyr Gruffydd to reply to the debate. 

Thank you very much, Llywydd. Yes, half an hour is a very short period of time for a debate like this. It's not the only one we’ll be having, and the other half an hour, of course, was used to point to one way of getting to grips with climate change. A core theme is shared by both debates, namely that the climate crisis is a reality. That's the message that comes through clearly to all of us, I'm sure, from these debates. That is, floods like this are going to become more common in the future; there are areas that haven't been threatened in the past that are going to be under threat in years to come. So, we need urgent answers. I think there has been a tendency for us to think that we can find our solutions for tomorrow. Well, tomorrow has come. We do have to find these solutions today. So, we do need solutions immediately, and those are listed in our motion, of course, namely an independent inquiry, that we need to revise the plans for adverse weather, we need to deal with insurance issues and all of the points that have been raised in this debate, in addition to the long-term solutions: hard and soft infrastructure, more resilience in the system, and dealing with issues in the planning system.

I have a housing estate close to where I live that has been built on a field called 'salmon field'. It's named so because the fields flooded every year, and the local residents used to go to fish for salmon in the pools when the water receded. There's now this housing estate on that field. And do you know what? It flooded a few years ago. That tells you everything that you need to know about that location. There are lessons to be learnt, and clearly we haven't learned them sufficiently.

In the opening remarks to this debate, when we were hearing about the need to futureproof, there were words that stuck in my mind: we need to 'readjust' and we need to 'recalibrate'. As a society, we need to readjust and we need to recalibrate. The economy needs to readjust and recalibrate. Our communities, and all of us as individuals, really have to readjust and recalibrate. And the Government has to be the catalyst that facilitates and spearheads that change. We have to learn from the misery that's been suffered by so many people over recent weeks, and we have to minimise the occurrence of any similar experiences in future.

The proposal is to agree the motion without amendment. Does any Member object? [Objection.] I will defer voting under this item until voting time.

That brings us to the next item, which is the Brexit Party debate, and I call on Mark Reckless to move the motion—Mark Reckless.

Diolch, Llywydd. I move, formally. Ron Davies described devolution as a process not an event. 'An evolving process' is another way of saying 'No stable settlement'. Our constitutional arrangements are constantly contested and that, we believe, is a failure. Welsh Government may assert in its amendment that our current devolved institutions are the settled will of the Welsh people, but that is all it is: an assertion. Why, if these institutions have such settled support, is Welsh Government always agitating to change that supposed settlement?

Of course, through history, people and institutions agitate for money and power. The Welsh Government in this Assembly demand more money and more power, and claim it will be spent or exercised better than by UK Government. But what is the record? For education, Wales is still bottom of the UK table and below the OECD average for maths, reading and science on the PISA results. For health, we have record numbers waiting more than 12 hours in A&E—two and a half times as many as in England—and we have a health board mired in special measures for a whole Assembly term. Meanwhile, gross weekly pay in Wales is £50 less than the UK average, a gap that has massively grown during devolution. And where Welsh Government has levers to improve our economic performance, it fails to use them effectively. Still, we see costs spiralling on the Heads of the Valleys road, far from completion, while £114 million was spent on a promised M4 relief road, now cancelled, cutting south Wales off from key sources of economic growth. You can look forward to hearing from my colleague Mandy Jones about north Wales.

So, is it really the settled will of the people of Wales that UK Government should forever be stripped of power, substance and authority to the benefit of the Welsh Government and Assembly? I don't believe that it is. Wales voted by 4:1 against devolution in 1979, and by a fraction of a percent for a limited model—devolving the Executive and administrative powers of the Wales Office—in 1997. And we should face the fact that the trajectory of devolution in Wales has been in the slipstream of Scotland. There are, of course, many polls we can cite, but on any measure, the demand for self-government, autonomy or independence in Wales is less than in Scotland. But the Welsh Government likes having more power, so says we must have the same as Scotland. The self-interest of devolved institutions and politicians acts to increase separation and accentuate difference between Wales and England. Is that wanted, and is the structure of devolution sustainable?

The greater powers that the Scottish Government and Parliament have—at least those granted through the infamous pledge—reflect the fear of UK politicians that Scotland would otherwise vote for independence. They have no similar fare with respect to Wales. The Minister for Economy, Transport and—now, the order paper tells us—North Wales writes threatening letters to Westminster, demanding full devolution of rail, or else. He tells Westminster MPs it must be done to save the union, given a growing movement for Welsh independence. I'm afraid, on this matter, he is not taken seriously. 

The First Minister, at least, takes seriously Wales's fiscal deficit. According to the Wales Governance Centre, total Government spending in Wales in 2019 was £13.7 billion more than the taxes and other Government income raised in Wales. That fiscal deficit is equivalent to 19.4 per cent of Welsh GDP, compared to about 7 per cent in Scotland. It is the First Minister's knock-down argument against independence; Plaid Cymru's demand that England take away £1 in every £5 spent in Wales. Yet, the Welsh Government is happy to hide behind that demand, as it agitates for more and more devolution. The latest demand, articulated in a long and worthy report commissioned by the ex-First Minister, is for justice and policing to be devolved. Because the courts and police interface with public services that are devolved, we are told that they too must be devolved, although that logic can of course work in two ways. Similarly, we are told that it is illogical for a legislature not to have its own jurisdiction, and therefore Wales must have its own legal jurisdiction, separate from England and English law. Again, that logic can work two ways.

What will we do if voters in England decide they have had enough of the cost devolution entails for them as our common governance erodes? Many, including in this Chamber, recognise how hard devolution in the UK is to reconcile with the logic of political systems we see elsewhere in the world. On Saturday, in Newcastle, I heard the ex-First Minister set out his vision of a federal UK. I've heard David Melding develop his ideas in this field on many an occasion. Indeed, we heard yesterday that he now has his colleague Darren Millar on side, although whether that is through force of logic or repetition, I do not know. I'm not persuaded by their case. That is because, while I emphasise commonality between Wales and England, the differences are greater than those between English regions. And, as we saw in a referendum in the north east of England, there is little appetite there for separate Assemblies. The alternative to that is, within a federal system, an English Parliament. As well as likely bringing another layer of politicians, for which there is no demand, the power, size and budget of such an institution, and presumably its associated Government, would imply a dominance that would itself tend to undermine continuing UK institutions. 

Many Members who voted remain, and feel that the UK is diminished through leaving the EU, fear this will lead to Irish unification and Scottish independence. [Interruption.] I give way to the Member for Monmouth. 

Thanks for giving way, Mark. I remember when Dafydd Elis-Thomas once told me, or told this Chamber some years back—or I think it was on the radio, actually, Dafydd—that Snowdon was the highest peak in Wales and, because there was nothing higher in England, it was the highest in England as well. I remember that well. You are quite right to say that England and Wales are different.

Is it not worth looking into this federal system, though? Because that does seem to me, and to my colleagues on the front bench here, to be a way for us to move forward to secure the UK; but at the same time to give Wales that sort of independent voice within the structure that it needs.

Yes, Snowdon is the tallest mountain in England and Wales, absolutely—[Interruption.] The highest mountain in Wales as well. That is also true. I don't think it's the highest mountain in England, whatever Dafydd Elis-Thomas said previously. 

I do take the arguments seriously. There are many countries in the world that have federal systems, and one potential attraction of a federal system is that many, if not most of them, are stable. So, rather than having this process of ever more devolution and this slippery slope, we potentially replace it with a stable system. 

Would you give way?

I will give way to David, who will educate me further on this point. 

The advantage of federalism is that it does give you a rulebook, but it's constant bargaining between the state and sub-state level. You see this in the United States, where the state level—i.e. the sub-state in America—was thought to be declining, and books were written on the end of federalism. Now, we see it's quite the reverse, with California leading environmental policy for the whole nation.

I agree there has been some waxing and waning in the power and influence of the states and, in particular, where a state comes out with a good policy idea and does things better than other states, often those other states will adopt it, or potentially the federal Government will seek to impose it. And yes, there are tensions in federalism, and it empowers a supreme court, but I would submit, whether the United States or Germany, that federal systems have been much more stable than the system of devolution that we have had, which has been a constant flow of powers one way towards greater devolution.

I don't know if you will speak later, but I don't discern an answer to the question as to what happens with England. The debates about federalism seem to be of greater interest and spoken about much more in Wales, Scotland, and perhaps to a degree in Northern Ireland, than they are in England, and either of those models of a regional Assembly or an English Parliament have very significant problems with them. I find it difficult to see a sustainable UK polity where you have an English Parliament and a separate English Government of such power, influence and size relative to the UK Government. And while I will listen to contributions, whether here or elsewhere, I'm yet to see an answer to that.

I was talking about the many Members who voted remain and see that our leaving the EU diminishes the UK. I, of course, see it differently. I believe leaving the EU enhances the UK, so perhaps I do not put the weight that some others may on the risk of Scotland becoming independent or Ireland reunifying. But if you expect Scotland and Northern Ireland to go their own way, devolution for Wales will indeed be a live issue, and not settled, as the Government amendment purports.  

Will you take an intervention? 

Yes. 

I'll try to make a few points. These are very much the early days of devolution. We're in the process of settling down, if you like. And if we look at the relationship between the countries in this union—this is one area perhaps on which we'll agree—I believe that, just as you think the UK will be stronger from having left the European Union, we could be stronger as nations in these islands by becoming independent nations, with an agreed method through which we work together. 

Rhun, I'm aware of your view; I just don't think it is very widely shared. Were England not to support the continuance of the current devolved system, I've little doubt that, in a forced vote, Wales would choose the status quo ante or near-unitary England and Wales Government, rather than independence. I believe, however, there were considerable drawbacks to that pre-1999 system, and Governments of Wales have diverged quite markedly from England, but with very little in the way of reference to the people of Wales democratically. In practice, the Wales Office ran a fairly self-contained fief under successive Secretaries of State, at times with very different policy emphases from the rest of the Westminster Government. However, the outlook of John Redwood was enormously different from that of Nicholas Edwards, Peter Walker, David Hunt. Few would suggest that his appointment reflected any democratic shift to the right in Welsh society.

My proposal is, therefore, we consider a system where Welsh Government remains devolved but with a First Minister directly elected and accountable to the people of Wales, and the legislative framework embedded at Westminster. This would put a stop to our present slippery slope, where devolution is a process that is only ever in one direction, with more and more powers being devolved and less and less done at UK level. [Interruption.] I'm sorry, Carwyn, I'm unable to give way because of the passage of time. 

MPs elected in Wales but embedded in Westminster would lack our institutional incentive to demand more and more power for themselves, applying a brake to the centrifugal forces affecting the UK. Rather than looking to drive through a large legislative programme every year to make Welsh laws more different from English laws, Welsh Ministers could make their case to an enhanced Welsh grand committee where they have the strongest case for further differing legislation. An elected First Minister could appoint the best and brightest from across Welsh society as Welsh Ministers, instead of taking legislators away from their proper job of scrutiny. That may not, of course, suit the interests of all Members and Ministers here, but it may be the right way forward for Wales.  

I have selected the six amendments to the motion. If amendment 1 is agreed, amendments 2, 3 and 4 will be deselected. If amendment 2 is agreed, amendments 3 and 4 will be deselected. If amendment 3 is agreed, amendment 4 will be deselected. I call on Neil McEvoy to move amendment 1, tabled in his name. Neil McEvoy. 

Diolch, Llywydd. Too many people talk Wales down. I'm here to talk our country up; to talk about our potential, to talk about living in a place where the Welsh dream can become a reality. Now, the Welsh National Party has a vision of our Welsh dream. We can live in a nation where there is good-quality housing for all, people owning their own homes, a Wales where people with good ideas can create businesses and jobs, where we can be an outward-looking country, connected to the world.

Cardiff used to be the second biggest port in the world. Our Welsh ports can thrive again, shipping top-quality Welsh produce around the world. But this reality for Wales will not happen whilst our ability to make our own decisions is so limited. I regret the failures of successive Labour Governments in Wales, but my biggest regret is that we, as a nation, are still denied the opportunity to govern ourselves. Government by the people: it's an old concept called democracy.

There are two particular areas where we should have taken control already, which is the focus of my amendment, both, where, in Scotland and the North of Ireland, they already have control but it's denied to us in Wales. Firstly, on air passenger duty. It's ridiculous that control over this still resides in London. The reason we don't have control over this tax is because Bristol Airport doesn't like it; they don't like the idea that a Welsh airport could be more competitive, so an entire nation is denied control over air passenger duty because one medium-sized city outside of Wales doesn't like it. It's an incredible situation.

Justice in Wales. I find it, again, incredible that we don't have justice devolved, especially when we pay 40 per cent of the bill. Attempting to be just and trying to ensure that justice is at the heart of what any Government should be doing, but this Welsh Government has no control over justice. We can make Welsh laws in this place, but we do not have a Welsh legal jurisdiction; we cannot align our social and health needs with justice. We arrive in strange situations where Welsh people have higher rates of imprisonment than any other country in Western Europe. We've also got super prisons where we actually have to import prisoners from outside of Wales to fill the spaces, but if you're a woman, it's impossible to go to jail in Wales because there are no women's prisons, and that means you'll be sent outside of your country where your family have to travel long distances to visit you.

So, these are my real regrets, and, yes, the Welsh Government could be doing much, much better, but the long- term interests of our nation will be served through Welsh sovereignty—sovereignty for the individual, the community, and national sovereignty. A Wales where people have power over their own lives, where communities can decide what happens in each community and where we decide as a nation how we live.

Now, there are people calling for this place to be abolished, but how we are governed is a matter for people who live in Wales. I say to Neil Hamilton here to my right, who is moving the amendment to abolish the Welsh Assembly: if there were a referendum, you wouldn't even be able to vote because you live in England.

I could buy a house.

You're very welcome to buy a house.

I could leave my wife. 

There is a Wales that we must create. There is a Wales that we can build. So, let's get it done. Diolch yn fawr.

I call on the Counsel General to move formally amendment 2. 

Formally.

I call on Dai Lloyd to move amendment 3, tabled in the name of Siân Gwenllian.

Thank you, Llywydd. I move amendment 3 in the name of Siân Gwenllian, and just to quote, We regret

‘the dismal record of the Labour Welsh Government that has been in power continuously since the inception of devolution.’

We further believe

‘that successive Westminster UK Governments – under both Labour and the Conservatives – have presided over intergenerational poverty and underinvestment in Wales.’

We further believe

‘that decisions about Wales’s future should be made by those who live and work here.’

We also believe

‘that having the economic and fiscal levers of an independent country is the key to Wales’s future prosperity.’

And we also agree

‘that the power to call a future referendum on independence should lie with the elected representatives of the people of Wales free from any veto by Westminster.‘

Will you take an intervention on that point? Why has he airbrushed his time in Government from the history in his motion?

I don't recall I was in Government, thank you, Hefin.

Your party, sorry.

Now, to respond to the motion, fundamentally, it’s the Government here that is underperforming and failing, not the institution. By the way, we agree with Neil McEvoy’s amendment, but we’re unable to support it, because that would delete our own amendment.

However, having said all of that, there are some successes that we could quote from this Senedd over the years. We have seen the prohibition of smoking in public places—that started in this place 19 years ago, we would still be waiting if we waited for Westminster; free prescriptions; the medical school in Swansea—we fought for a generation for that, and it’s devolution that has delivered that, it’s this Parliament that has delivered that; charging for plastic bags, years before England did so; changing the organ donation system almost five years ago now; and the minimum alcohol price.

Certain things have been achieved in this place, but we should have achieved much more in 20 years. With a Government that is underperforming, the way forward, naturally, is to vote against that party when there is a Welsh general election, that’ll happen next year, of course—a vote for a change of Government. After all, when the Westminster Government makes a mess of things and underperforms, then people talk about a general election, instead of calling for the abolition of Westminster. It’s a change of Government that is the solution, not the abolition of the whole institution up there.

And there has been plenty of talk about respecting the result of the referendum in 2016. I note that Mark Reckless paid no attention at all to the referendum held here in 2011, because I have to say, we need to respect the result of every referendum, including the 2011 referendum.

Does he remember the wording on the ballot where it said, 'the Assembly cannot make laws on tax, whatever the result of this vote', and doesn't he think that should be respected?

I will take you back to 2011, as Mark Reckless, of course, wasn’t here at that particular time, and in the 2011 referendum, the people of Wales stated clearly—64 per cent of them, in fact, said ‘yes’. They stated clearly that this Senedd needed more powers to work properly, and we are still waiting for that aspiration to be truly delivered by more powers here so that we can work effectively as a Senedd. We need to respect the decision of the 2011 referendum, and we need to respect that decision, and, further to that, we need to support amendment 3 in the name of Siân Gwenllian. Thank you.

I call on Darren Millar to move amendment 4.

Diolch, Llywydd. I'm a little bit surprised, actually, by the opening contribution to this debate because, of course, the motion on the order paper talks about the failure of Welsh devolution and yet, you went on to speak very much more widely about devolution across the United Kingdom and the various challenges that that might face if a federal system, effectively, were to be introduced.

Our amendment, of course, is designed to actually get the real steer of the fundamental problem that we've experienced in Wales since the advent of devolution, and that is that we've had a National Assembly that has been dominated by one political party, and that political party has been the Labour Party and it's been in Government in one way or another since 1999. It’s a misconception to associate the failures of that Government with devolution and therefore to draw the wrong conclusion, I believe, that, because of the failures of that Government, devolution doesn't work. We believe that devolution has a great deal of potential to transform this nation into the powerhouse that we believe that it can be. We also believe that the way to do that, of course, is to vote Welsh Conservative in the next Welsh Parliament elections in order that we've got a Conservative majority Government.

I think it is a little bit rich of Plaid Cymru to be critical in its motion of successive Labour-led Governments when it did form part of one of those Governments for a period of four years. And, you know, I know that they like to have or seem to have collective amnesia about those four years, and we'd like to forget them too, frankly—[Interruption.] Yes, I'll happily take an intervention.

I think you'll remember in Dai Lloyd's contribution that he was very clear that devolution had achieved some good things. Many of those things were delivered by Plaid Cymru Government Ministers, some of them have been delivered by Labour Ministers or by Liberal Democrat Ministers. We're not saying it's a total wash-out, but we are saying that it hasn't reached its potential and on this, I think, we'd agree.

I would absolutely agree with you that there have been some achievements in Wales over the period of devolution and Dai referred to some of them: the carrier bag levy that we proposed on these benches, for example; the protection of school playing fields, which was also something that we proposed; the implementation of new legislation on mental health—also something that came from these benches too—which I would like to celebrate; and, indeed, the collaborative work that we all did in terms of the introduction of a ban on smoking in public places. So, there have been some significant achievements, I think, over the past number of years, but of course we mustn't forget either that there have also been some significant failings of the Labour Government and that, of course, is the focus of our motion.

So, we think it’s a matter of deep regret that our education system is the worst in the United Kingdom. That’s because of choices that have been made by the Labour Party and the helpers of the Labour Party over the years in terms of their policy decisions, which have been implemented. We believe that it’s a matter of deep regret that our health service falls behind on so many measures as well with other health services in parts of the United Kingdom too. We also believe that it’s a matter of deep regret that our economy is still one of the poorest in Europe, in spite of the fact that we have been the recipients of significant sums of EU aid, all of which have been managed by the Welsh Labour-led Governments over the past 20 years.

That’s why we think that it’s important to draw the distinction between devolution and the performance of the Government here and that’s the purpose behind our motion. I very much hope that people will support it when it comes to voting later this afternoon.

I call on Neil Hamilton to move amendments 5 and 6, tabled in his name.

Diolch, Llywydd, and I beg to move the amendments standing in my name. I agree with Darren Millar that this doesn't necessarily mean that devolution could have succeeded and that it's because we've had a Labour Government, propped up by Plaid Cymru, for the entire life of this Assembly in one shape or form—either in coalition with it or at the beginning of this Assembly, of course, they were instrumental in voting for the Labour Government to be put back into office under the former First Minister, so Plaid Cymru bear equal responsibility for the failures of the Labour Government.

Dai Lloyd said in his speech that we should respect the result of the 2011 referendum, which raises a horse laugh in those who didn't want to respect the result of the referendum in 2016 and wanted to reverse the decision of the British and Welsh people before it had even been implemented. It took us 41 years from 1975 to get a new EU referendum. It's been a generation since the first referendum to establish an Assembly in Wales and I think, after 25 years of failure, unrelieved failure by a permanent Labour Government, it is time to allow the Welsh people to have their say once more. I wouldn't, personally, be against having a referendum on independence as part and parcel of that. I see no reason why that should not be put to the Welsh people as well. So I hope that Plaid Cymru will support me in a demand for a referendum on the various options that the Welsh people can decide between. 

There's no doubt that there's been considerable disaffection growing in Wales, from both ends of the spectrum here, in recent years. The latest YouGov poll, in January, had in its results that 21 per cent of those who responded favour independence but 24 per cent want to abolish this place. That's 46 per cent one way or another who express an extreme form of dissatisfaction with the performance of the Assembly. Until Gareth Bennett started to raise this issue a little time ago, there was nobody in this Assembly who was giving voice to that very substantial minority that now wants to see this place abolished. I'm pleased to see the Brexit Party following in our slipstream, but I'm not sure that the proprietor of the Brexit Party actually knows about the policy change that has been adopted. Maybe we'll find out about that later. 

There are arguments for devolution, of course—in fact, I've made them myself in this Assembly, earlier on. I have seen what devolution could have done from other parts of the world and, if we had had a Government that was prepared to put forward policies that could start to solve some of the problems that have been pointed out in this debate so far, then I could support it—[Interruption.]

Thanks for giving way, Neil. You've made a very interesting contribution. I think it's a thought-provoking debate. Would you agree that, as Darren Millar said earlier, we have to distinguish between devolution and the Welsh Government? Too often, people don't do that. For instance, if you were First Minister yourself, maybe you'd look a little bit more sympathetically on devolution. 

Well, that's an interesting thought. 

But that is the problem, that in Wales we have lived under a permanent one-party state. And it's because I see this as an incurable flaw in the system that I have reluctantly come to the conclusion that not only has devolution failed, but it will always fail because the political culture is such that anybody who is right of centre is never going to have a Government that he or she will be happy with. And that, I think, is the flaw with the Conservative amendment as well. [Interruption.] I'm not sure I've got time. Well, I'll give way to the former First Minister.

I'm grateful for you giving way. Just two points: firstly, nations have parliaments. If Wales did not have any kind of democratic institution such as this but Scotland did, Northern Ireland did and there was one in Westminster, we would not be a nation, we would effectively be in a position where we were actually less important than Manchester or London, who have democratic institutions. Secondly, what he's arguing is people in Wales are really too stupid to vote for his kind of politics, so therefore this institution should be abolished as a result. Now he's arguing that the real problem is democracy, not the Assembly. 

No. All I'm saying is that the democratic institutions by which Wales is governed actually exclude the views of a very substantial proportion of the population permanently, and that is a big flaw in the system. When I was at Westminster, I saw the opposite side of this coin, which gave rise to the Scottish Parliament. It's because the Scottish people were permanently represented at Westminster by a party of which they didn't approve. We couldn't say that here in Wales, or at least to the same extent.

The catalogue of failures of the Welsh Government are legion. We are languishing at the bottom of the income tables in the United Kingdom by a very long margin indeed. We have about 75 per cent of the average UK income here in Wales. There are all sorts of problems of poverty in Wales that have not been addressed by the Welsh Labour Government—fuel poverty, for example, which has been made even worse by their policy of driving up energy prices. There are so many other things as well, which I've now not got time, unfortunately, to go into.

But the big problem is it's the UK Government that has got the money. The fiscal deficit that we have in Wales, which as has been pointed out, is a very substantial proportion of our GDP, can only actually be met with money that comes from the English taxpayer. Therefore, if Wales is to have even a small chance of changing the deplorable state of the Welsh economy and living standards of the Welsh people, then it can only be done through the greater firepower that a UK Government has.

The reason I actively got involved in politics was because of the endless loss of power and control to Brussels. I am someone who believes that power should be as close as possible to the people. I believe that government is, and always should be, a servant of the people and not a master.

Let's take a little reality check here. Some people in Wales will be facing a hard winter living on the streets. NHS staff are dealing with the chaos winter inevitably brings. The elderly and the poor will be choosing between heating and eating, and we have potentially transformational additional powers set to arrive at the Assembly as a result of leaving the EU. To my frustration and disappointment, this institution spends our time, in fact the people of Wales's time, debating what we call ourselves and what we call this institution. I have no doubt that these feelings are echoed across my region. Changing the name of this institution or changing our titles will not address any of those issues. Changing our title from 'Assembly Member' to 'Member of Parliament' or even 'Senator' will not help any constituent. Our time should have been spent improving our constituents' lives, not our curricula vitae.

The taxpayer in Wales already pays for too many politicians. Scotland has around double the population of Wales but they have fewer councillors. I sat in this Chamber when the Cabinet Secretary for Local Government and Public Services spoke of the need to reform local government, but this Government now backs away because they cannot make any difficult decisions. At the last Assembly election I, like most of the Members in this Chamber, attended hustings with constituents and they raised concerns over things like Betsi Cadwaladr and the NHS in north Wales. The sad reality is that the health board will still be in special measures at the next election, despite the promises from parties around this Chamber. This is a failure of the Labour Government and this institution as a whole.

The A55 is a vital road connecting north Wales. The lack of investment in that road has a negative impact on the north Wales economy. Stationary vehicles in traffic also have an impact on our environment. This is also a failure of the Labour Government and this institution as a whole. The lack of investment in rail and bus services in north Wales, the crumbling road infrastructure, the lack of phone and internet connection are all failures of the Labour Government and this institution as a whole. It's not working, and I urge all Members to support our debate today unamended.

Can I make a very short intervention? Thank you. Were you here when we debated Betsi Cadwaladr a few weeks ago? Were you here when we debated the A55 earlier this afternoon? Were you here when we discussed broadband connection a couple of months ago? Because it sounds to me as if you're totally oblivious to what's happening in this place.

None of it is working.

Llywydd, I wasn't planning to speak, but having listened to the contributions I thought that I should. One of the issues that is never addressed by those people who want to see abolition is what it means for the rest of the UK, Scotland and Northern Ireland, and why it is that Wales, apparently alone, should not have its own voice. Why is it that Wales alone—compare us to Scotland, Northern Ireland, England, the Isle of Man, Jersey, Guernsey, take your pick, Gibraltar—shouldn't have its own legal jurisdiction? Why is it that in two years' time it will be possible to be arrested for an offence in England that isn't an offence in England? Namely, if you hit a child, you cannot use the defence of reasonable chastisement. It will be possible to be arrested in Newcastle for an offence that isn't an offence in Newcastle. That is legal nonsense. It's nonsense. It doesn't make any sense at all. And the issue with jurisdiction is not as radical as people think. It's normal, actually. This is the abnormal situation where a Parliament does not have a jurisdiction.

I listened to Mark Reckless's arguments. He made them at an event we both attended in Newcastle. I have to remind him that we did not seek income tax varying powers. They were imposed on us, effectively, by a Conservative Government. That's what happened. So it's not as if we deceived the people of Wales in 2011. It was decided by a Conservative Government that we needed—and I don't necessarily disagree with the logic—to have revenue-raising powers in order to be able to borrow. But it wasn't something that we particularly sought, because Northern Ireland didn't have revenue-raising powers, but did have the ability to borrow.

Do I think Wales should be on a par with Scotland and Northern Ireland? Yes, I do. And I heard him on Saturday say with pride that his grandfather was a Fianna Fáil TD, so, a member of the anti-treaty forces in the Irish civil war. But is that not a lesson for us? That if Irish home rule had been granted—and the first world war intervened, we know that—then Ireland might not be independent today. It was the intransigence of the Westminster system that led to the slicing off of one part of the UK back in 1921, because the UK, remember, is not even 100 years old with its current boundaries. My argument would be—and I listen to what he says about where does this end, devolution is a process not an event, where does it end—for me, it ends with a structure that makes everything clear. There are others in the Chamber who want independence. I don't seek that; for me, it's four territories with their own powers and, call it what you want, a federal parliament at the top.

It doesn't mean more politicians. You don't need 600 MPs in a federal parliament. The UK Government delivers very, very few services across the whole of the UK, very few: border control, currency, fiscal policy, and that is pretty much it. Even vehicle licensing is devolved in Northern Ireland, and that's not done by—. [Interruption.] Sorry? Defence. I knew I'd missed one out. I'm not looking for the devolution of defence. And so, that's something we need to consider. You wouldn't need to have a large UK Parliament in order to scrutinise a UK Government in those circumstances.

And I have to say, this idea that it's an institution's fault—. Now, it's perfectly democratic, of course, for others in this Chamber to criticise the Welsh Government. I don't agree with what they've said, but this is what the Chamber is for, to have that kind of debate, and if this Chamber wasn't here, there wouldn't be that debate. In fact, none of us in this Chamber wouldn't have a voice. There'd be no debate at all. And that's something we have to remember because I could argue that in the 1980s Westminster was a malevolent force in Wales. It destroyed the coal industry. It destroyed the steel industry. I could argue, 'Well, the problem is Westminster, let's abolish Westminster.' Equally, you could argue that the problem is democracy: 'Let's get rid of democracy because the problem is in Wales, people vote for the wrong parties.' And it's not fair that the centre right—well, he calls himself the centre right, Neil Hamilton—in Wales don't have a voice. Win some elections.

I'm not going to stand here and apologise for the fact that my party has been successful for the past 20 years. I know it gets more difficult with every election—of course, it does. People say, 'Well, you've been in power a long time', and I know that that's something that you have to work hard to combat. But to say people in Wales are effectively too stupid to vote for the right kind of politics is a reason to abolish the institution that they themselves created in 1997, and they themselves in 2011 decided by a majority of nearly two to one—and it would have been higher if the opinion polls hadn't shown it was going to be a clear victory. They decided by two to one in 2011, a mere nine years ago, that we should have primary powers here in Wales. It was clear what people voted for and people did it as a matter of pride and there was a cross-party campaign, in fairness, that supported that.

And finally, I'll simply say this: you cannot pretend, as I said earlier, to be any kind of nation if you have no political structure, especially in a country like the UK where there'd be a Scottish Parliament, a Northern Ireland Assembly, Manchester, London, Westminster Parliament and Wales would have nothing. Even Cornwall has a county council. And the idea that somehow Welsh MPs are so devoid of work that they could actually scrutinise a Welsh mayor—the only way I can describe it—I just find that fanciful. I'm sure that they are overwhelmed with work as it is. And of course, it fails to address the question: does that mean then that the 40 Welsh MPs could instigate their own legislation? Because if that's not the case, then that directly goes against the referendum result in 2011 when the people of Wales decided by a hefty majority that this was the place where primary legislation would be drafted and passed in devolved areas.

I've gone on for longer than I wanted to, Llywydd, but surely the time has come across the whole of the UK for a stable constitutional settlement that's in everyone's interest. 

I've listened to the contributions. I think they've been thoughtful and entertaining and fanciful. I'm not going to pin the actual description on each speaker. But I do think in any new system of Government, you need to look at the institutions, and the Government is an important institution but the legislature is at least as important. In fact, from the legislature the Executive draws its authority. In a review of what we've done in the last 20 years, I just want to mention what I consider to be some of the things we've led on in the UK. Nearly all—in fact, all of these had cross-party support, as far as I recall. 

The children's commissioner. That was our response to the report, 'Lost in Care'. We're still seeing the ripples 20 years later about a very different view about what children's rights are and those in the care of the state. It's been copied by all the other jurisdictions in the UK.

The foundation phase—does anyone ever remember that—that followed the Cambridge review, a UK, or an England and Wales Government review—a UK Government review for England and Wales? The Cambridge review was soundly rejected by, I think, it was just the Blair's Government's final days; it may have been Mr Brown. In fairness, the Labour Party here took it forward. Now, as far as I know, early years learning, based on play, is accepted throughout the UK, and I accepted it back then. I was probably the only Conservative, but I may have had other allies then. 

The mental health Measure was mentioned by Darren and proposed by Jonathan Morgan. The active travel Act—one of the greatest pieces to—. Although it was taken over by the Government, it did emerge from the civic sector, led by my great friend Lee Waters and Sustrans at the time. The human tissue Act, or presumed consent, which, incidentally, I disagreed with, but anyone watching the way the health Minister, who is now our First Minister, took that legislation through its stages, with all the tact and sensitivity that generous hearts could have very different views on it, you could show that in any seminar around the world about how a legislature should operate. And then, another one—the well-being of future generations Act. I think the great mark of that success is it's doing more to hold the Government that passed it to account than I think they probably realised at the time. But perhaps you'll allow me that slightly barbed remark. 

The question is: has Welsh political autonomy become the settled will? Well, however you cut it and dice it, and you've got to work quite hard, you can get about 20 per cent of the population to say they want the Assembly abolished. Now, trying to add to that figure the 25 per cent that now believe in independence I do think is a slight of hand, because I think you have to say that at least 80 per cent of the people want political autonomy, and some want it so full that it would amount to independence. The polling consistently indicates this. Now, there is some truth that we've had to work at this. I have said in some speeches I've made in the past, particularly to students from abroad, that we've had a long political convention, because we started with a very strange model. In fairness, it may have been the only model in 1997 that could have passed a referendum. I have no criticism for the Labour Government's pragmatic view then. But we had a sort of 101 version of political autonomy, and we had to work at it. And the result was the remarkable success of the referendum in 2011. And I played a very small part in explaining to David Cameron what it would mean if this place, under the 2006 Act, voted for a referendum by two thirds, and then Parliament denied that on a simple vote. And he said 'Oh, hold on now, what are we talking about—that we would vote in Parliament to say the Assembly was wrong after a two thirds vote to ask the people of Wales whether they wanted full legislative powers?' And, in fairness to him, he saw the complete nonsense of that. And as he says in his autobiography, he then had a job of work to do to convince some in the political community of that reality. And I'm glad he did it. 

My own view is that greater federal mechanisms will be necessary. I think, in England, it's frankly up to the English what political institutions they want. There is a danger that if there's an English Government, as England as a whole, it could overpower a British Government. I do think that's a genuine danger, which is why I prefer the sort of super-municipalism that we now seem to be seeing. And let's not forget—there is a devolved institution in England in the London Assembly.

So, I think we can look on this record as one of great work, generously done by nearly all parties, anyway, to make political governance in Wales a much more coherent entity. And now all we've got left that's a real absurdity is the legal jurisdiction we don't have, so that laws made in this Parliament extend to England and Wales, but are only applied in Wales. If you can talk any sense around that principle, I'd be glad to hear you. But, Presiding Officer, I think we should remember that there have been great successes. The challenges, the mistakes, they're all there too, but really, devolution has worked. 

Llywydd, I had thought twice about participating in the debate, because, in the light of everything that's happening, it all seemed a little bit untimely, but also one where it comes from a party that has no democratic mandate in this Chamber. It's a motion proposed by a party that has never been elected to this Assembly; there's never been an Assembly election in which the Brexit Party has appeared on any ballot paper; they've never had the endorsement of any manifesto or policy proposal in the Welsh Assembly; and their presence in this Chamber is, effectively, an unforeseen consequence of an electoral system that was intended to broaden democratic representation, but has, in my view, been abused to subvert its real democratic objective.

And you have to ask what is the real purpose of this motion. Well, I think it is an opportunist attempt to exploit a minority of anti-politics populism, in the hope it will provide them with some electoral basis during the next Assembly elections when they wish to return to this Chamber. It is, in my view, a motion that is a cynical and a blatant attempt at vested political interest and survival. And one of the amendments is from a Member who cannot even be bothered to live in Wales. In other countries, this merry-go-round of party switching, renaming, recreation, to suit the whims and self-interests of the individuals concerned, is, and I regard as—well, certainly in other countries, it would be regarded as undemocratic. And the creation of this Assembly—this Parliament now—is the result of mandates from a variety of general elections and from referenda, and there is a clear democratic mandate for it.

Devolution to me is about empowerment, it is about the decentralisation of power and bringing it as close to the people as possible. It is true that there has been a major loss of confidence in our democratic political system, and that the deep divisions in our society over Brexit have contributed to this, undoubtedly, and we have to address this. But we must continue to look at ways of increasingly empowering communities, and strengthening community and local government, and that these take place within a framework of common values. And we shouldn't ignore what we have so far been able to achieve through the decentralisation of power to the people of Wales, which devolution has enabled us to achieve.

Those of us who were brought up during the pre-devolution era, in particular the Thatcher era, are well aware of the failures of the top-down, centralised, autocratic political system that we were subjected to. And since then, with devolution, we have resisted, for example, the privatisation of the NHS taking place in England. We have resisted the privatisation and fragmentation of education that is taking place there. We've resisted the attempts to introduce systems of selective education that is happening in England. And we've protected agricultural workers in Wales, public sector workers' rights within Wales. We've led the way in social partnership, in organ transplantation, in tenants' rights, and economically we have the highest levels of employment that we have had for decades—levels of employment that we could have only dreamt of decades ago. In Wales we have the largest school-building programme of anywhere in the United Kingdom, and we provide free medicine in Wales, unlike in England. And we are now extending our democratic entitlement to vote to 16-year-olds.

So, we have achieved this, and we've achieved much more, in a decade of Tory austerity, which has deprived us of billions of pounds of public funding. And of course there is a long way to go, and much to do, of course, and there are failures, and there are things that go wrong. But in that respect I'll say this, and I say to those who weren't brought up during the pre-devolution period: when we talk about the mistakes and the errors that we made, and the things that go wrong, well, that's because we know about them, we can debate them, we can hold Government to account. In the pre-devolution period, we never could—we never knew about them, and they were hidden in the annals. That was the type of democracy that we had at that stage, and that's why the decentralisation of power was so important, and why devolution was so important. We can now hold our politicians and political institutions to account in a way that we never could before.

This motion, Llywydd, is a negative, it's a destructive motion, of the type that we have learnt to expect from the far right. It contributes nothing to the challenges facing Wales, and it should be rejected outright.

I'm very grateful you've allowed me to gatecrash the end of this debate. I wasn't going to speak, but, actually, I found the content of it has completely exercised me.

I absolutely refute all notion that there should be any rolling back of devolution, whatsoever. What we need to do—and I'm not going to stand here either and say what we need to do is split the difference between the Assembly and the Parliament, and, you know, the terrible Welsh Government. Because, actually, we all need to look at ourselves, because we haven't been brave, and we're in this situation today because we haven't been brave. We haven't gone for more Assembly Members, and we need them. Why do we need them? We need them, actually, because you guys have been in power for a long time, and if you had a free backbench, if you had more Assembly Members, you could have that critical analysis and that critical scrutiny that is so important from—[Interruption.] No, you do it now, but there's a freedom that comes with numbers. There's more freedom with numbers in the opposition as well. We need to have a better committee system. We need to consider how we're going to revise legislation going forward. What we need to do is have a robust and effective Parliament here. We need to build in improvements, not seek to reduce and row back. Because I'm absolutely with Carwyn on this, and I speak as somebody who was born in England, lived most of my life in the far east, and came here 20 years ago. My kids are Welsh, I claim Welshness, I love this Parliament, I'm really, really proud of it, and I absolutely do not understand why Welsh people should not have exactly the same rights as my darling husband who's a Scot, or my friends who are in the Irish Parliament. So, absolutely—we have to be equal. How we work out that tension and that balance with England—again, a country I love, respect and admire, but a political force that is much bigger than us—I do not know. And those are the things that we need to work out.

But look to ourselves first, guys, because how many times do people not turn up to committees? How many times do people not read the papers? How many times do people not bother to do accurate scrutiny? How many times do people not bother to read legislation and make all those improvements? We want to be a good Parliament here. We have to up our game, and then we start arguing about the rest of it. But do not—do not—let out failings be a reason why people should say 'no' to the Welsh Parliament.

I call on the Counsel General, Jeremy Miles.

Diolch, Llywydd. This a motion in search of a headline from a party in search of a purpose. It's a pretty crude attempt by the Brexit Party—and the clue is in the name—to find a new target to attack now that they won't be able to blame the European Union for all the ills. Who's next on the list of targets? The very institution in which they choose to sit. But, Llywydd, it seems to me there's a basic contradiction at the heart of the attempt by the Brexit Party to switch its focus from a cause that has been won to one which I profoundly hope and expect is a lost cause.

Their campaign against the EU was built on the anxieties of people in communities across the UK that key decisions were being taken too far way from their communities. Their new target is this Senedd. And whatever else may be said about us, we are, in the main, rooted in our communities and very happy to be held to account by our voters.

So, what does 'take back control' actually mean? When the electorate sent a message that they felt powerless to influence the critical decision in their lives, are we really to believe that what they really wanted was a centralisation of all of that power in a square mile around Westminster, an elected dictatorship by a UK Government with a large majority, capable of riding roughshod over any other source of legitimacy in the UK, whether that be the devolved institutions, local government or the judiciary? I don't think so.

Llywydd, this Parliament is still relatively young—we will shortly reach our twenty-first birthday—and devolution in Wales has been anything but static. We've come from being a corporate body to being a Parliament, from a maker of secondary legislation to being a primary legislature, with growing tax powers and a grown appetite for further devolution. We now have the capacity to make choices that are better and different and better suited to the people of Wales. And it think it's a real achievement that, while the model of devolution has changed, the principle of devolution has now truly become the settled will of the people of Wales, and the credit for that achievement is one that is shared by all the mainstream parties represented in this Chamber. So, let's reject the motion for what it is—an attempt to subvert the will of the people of Wales by a party on its last legs.

Turning to the amendments. The Plaid Cymru amendment, as Hefin David said, attacks successive Welsh Governments, despite the fact that they were part of, what I would say, at least, was a successful coalition Government from 2007 to 2011. Amendment 1 is one the substance of which we don't at all disagree with, but we want to be able to vote on the amendment that we've laid, which captures the cross-party and the civic nature of the devolution settlement here in Wales. I heard fantastic contributions from the Conservative benches in relation to devolution. The amendment, I felt, didn't capture that. I was thinking perhaps you were waiting for a line from Westminster; I think that may be unfair, given the contributions that were made in the debate. And Neil Hamilton, I thought, for a man rescued from political oblivion by devolution, made a particularly ungrateful contribution in moving his amendment, perhaps sensing his political demise in this place, setting his sights on an elected health board job somewhere in the future, perhaps.

But, in seriousness, Llywydd, in a complex and globally networked interdependent world, where some problems can only be dealt with—like climate change—across jurisdictions, some others—like social care or education—must be tailored, in terms of their solutions, to local need. What we need in that kind of world is a distributed model of power and decision making and democracy, one which recognises and celebrates the role of devolved institutions like this Senedd, capable of creating parliamentarians who've given speeches today like Carwyn Jones, David Melding, Angela Burns and others, and we should be proud of the contribution this institution makes to Wales and to Welsh democracy, and not decry it. So, Llywydd, I ask Members to reject the motion and support the Government amendment.

Mark Reckless to reply to the debate.

Diolch, Llywydd. May I thank all Members for their contributions? I regret slightly the tone of the later two contributions from the Labour benches, because I thought many of the contributions before were very thoughtful and we were having a good debate. And may I remind, in particular, the Minister, when he speaks about subverting democracy, that Wales voted to leave the European Union. Now Mick Antoniw may like to say that view, or our standing, and what we say, that that must have been respected, was somehow going against democracy or being to an extreme—[Interruption.] I haven't got time for an intervention. I am sorry.

But, actually, you said that you would respect that referendum, but you then spent three and a half years seeking to subvert it. Thankfully, you lost, but there are consequences of that three and a half years for how many people in Wales feel about this institution and your Government. Now Dai Lloyd speaks about the—and others spoke about the—difference between Welsh Government and this institution, but, of course, to start with, for several years, they were the same entity, and that language still continues. But we see, when we talk about what Plaid say, that there has been no alternation in power in this place. And the Conservatives say how great devolution could be if only there was a Conservative Government, but how will that ever happen when Plaid say that they will never work with you? If you will not work to present an alternative Government, there is no alteration of power, and the natural upset with politics and disappointment comes at the institution, added to that three and a half years of seeking to block Brexit.

And we keep on hearing about the 2011 referendum, but what it said was: full law-making power in 20 devolved areas. And the system that predated it was pretty preposterous and didn't make any sense to anyone. Yes, Wales voted for that, but you then changed it to a reserved-powers model, with all powers devolved except in areas reserved to Westminster, and, specifically, you had on the ballot paper a statement that said the Assembly cannot make laws on tax whatever the result of this vote. In 2014, I was an MP who voted again in Westminster to legislate for that. But, in 2017, having stood in 2015 and 2016 on a manifesto of respecting that, you reversed it, didn't have the referendum, and forced tax-raising powers on Wales. I think there's a price to pay for that.

The proposal is to agree the motion without amendment. Does any Member object? [Objection.] I will defer voting under this item until voting time.

And that brings us to the second topical question and the question is to be answered by the Minister for health, and to be asked by Andrew R.T. Davies.

The latest public health advice for returning travellers has been updated and is available on the Welsh Government website. Public Health Wales also publish a daily update on their website at 3 p.m. Anyone potentially affected by a change in advice should not attend their GP practice or present at hospital emergency departments, but should call NHS Direct Wales on 0845 46 47 or 111 Wales. That advice, of course, applies to people returning from specific countries around Europe and the wider world.

Thank you, Minister, for that update. I understand you've been in discussions with other colleagues around the rest of the UK this afternoon. From those discussions, it has been reported in the press today that, certainly in some parts of the UK, there will now be random screening for coronavirus at GP surgeries and hospitals. The list that I've seen doesn't seem to include any Welsh hospitals or GP centres. Are you in a position to confirm whether Wales is actively considering random screening for coronavirus, such as has been reported in the media today? 

Can you update us on what Welsh travellers might be experiencing across the continent, given that there's a lockdown in certain areas and an isolation period? Can you confirm that, if the seriousness of the coronavirus does break out here in Wales that we would see similar actions to what we've seen in Italy or other parts of the world when dealing with the outbreak, should it occur, and the impact that is likely to have on services more generally, such as the health service in its day-to-day existence?

Well, look, I think there are three particular questions there, and perhaps to deal with the issue about British nationals, some of whom may be Welsh residents, and, indeed, Welsh residents who are not British nationals who may be caught up in some of the potential lockdown quarantine isolation that has taken place in a number of parts of Europe where they're seeking to contain the spread of coronavirus, there is a regular and constructive conversation between the four UK Governments, in particular with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, about how many British nationals are affected, where they are and the support they're being provided with. This is, of course, a developing situation and we're not in charge of where other authorities are making choices about either individual or community isolation. 

On your point about random screening, I would caution the Member to return to the advice that is being provided, not just by me in the weekly statement I provide, but the Chief Medical Officer for Wales in his weekly statement and the daily advice on the Public Health Wales website. We are not implementing random screening at any point within our system. We are looking at a targeted approach to people who are at risk and, as I say, in the advice that has been given, where people are returning from specific parts of travel, within a specific timescale, if they have symptoms—cough, cold, sore throat, cold or flu-like symptoms—then to self-isolate and to contact the national health service and they'll provide them with advice and guidance. That is the right thing to do. If the advice changes because there's a change in transmission, then we will make that absolutely clear. 

I think what is helpful about this, and this goes to your broader point about the potential for more widespread transmission—and I don't want to get into a series of what could be unhelpful hypotheticals, but, to be very clear, the four UK Governments are working together. It's really important it's underpinned by a collective endeavour between the four chief medical officers across the United Kingdom giving advice to the Governments of the United Kingdom about what we could and should do to properly safeguard and protect the health of the public. Obviously, if there are changes, they won't just appear in a weekly update, but if there are more urgent changes that are required then I'll be happy to report not just to this place but to the wider public as well. 

Just a few questions—I'm grateful for the latest guidance that was issued by Welsh Government today, and I'm just asking you to clarify even clearer for individuals who are contacting us as their elected Members on a few issues. On self-isolation, people are being asked to self-isolate on return from named countries or regions. Will you confirm that self-isolation means (a) isolating yourself whether or not you are showing symptoms—flu-like symptoms—and (b) that isolation means total isolation, if you like, within your own home, not just staying away from your workplace or place of education and otherwise somehow carrying on with your day-to-day business? 

Secondly, will Welsh Government offer guidance or at least make an appeal to employers to be sympathetic and supportive of their employees to, for example, facilitate home working—on full pay, obviously, where that is possible, as this institution, for example, would be able to? For somebody working in a factory or a shop, that might be difficult and people might find themselves in financial difficulties very early on if they were forced, in some way, to go without pay. So, we will need that guidance to employers on how they can be supportive of their employees.

Yes. Look, I recognise completely the second point about wanting to provide guidance and set out some expectations about how businesses behave. But, of course, we don't have specific powers to compel businesses to do so, and this is an active conversation between the four UK Governments as well about wanting to have as consistent an approach as possible on the advice and guidance that we do give. 

On the point about self-isolation, I think the most helpful thing is to repeat the advice that's been given—that self-isolation means to stay indoors and avoid contact with other people, as you would do if you had the flu, and some simple messages of 'catch it, kill it, bin it' to make it clear that you're not simply leaving around the opportunity for transmission, in exactly the way that we do with the seasonal flu campaign every year, to behave in that way as if you had the flu— and that point, I think, is well made—and to make remote contact and not attend a national health service facility if you are symptomatic and you have returned from one of the particular travel areas. And, within that, the advice differs, and so I think it's really important for people who are concerned to look at the advice that is available. If you've returned from a particular part of the world—. There are some countries where, if you've returned within the last 14 days—since 19 February, in specific areas—even if people are not symptomatic, they're asked to self-isolate. But that is very specific: that relates to Iran and the specific locked-down towns in northern Italy and special care zones of South Korea—in those circumstances, to self-isolate. But, in others, to make sure that, if you have returned to us, if you become symptomatic, to self-isolate, but there is no need to self-isolate if you have been travelling through Vietnam, for example, but are not symptomatic.

So, it's important to look at the advice and to follow it, and that is the best way for people to behave to make sure that we do all that we could and should do to properly protect the health of the public in a phase where we're still looking at the potential containment of coronavirus. If that were to move on, which was the final point that Andrew R.T. Davies made, then we'll provide further advice and guidance to people in Wales, but, of course, we'll be looking to make sure that there is a consistent message across the United Kingdom. 

Thank you, Minister.

That brings us to voting time, and unless three Members wish for the bell to be rung, I will move immediately to the first vote and that first vote is on the Welsh Conservatives' debate on roads. I call for a vote on the motion, tabled in the name of Darren Millar. Open the vote. Close the vote. In favour 14, no abstentions, 37 against, and therefore the motion is not agreed.

The next vote is on amendment 1 and, if amendment 1 is agreed, amendments 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 will be deselected. I call for a vote on amendment 1, tabled in the name of Rebecca Evans. Open the vote. Close the vote. In favour 27, no abstentions, 24 against, and therefore amendment 1 is agreed and the rest of the amendments are deselected.

That brings us to a vote on the motion as amended. 

Open the vote. Close the vote. In favour 27, four abstentions, 20 against, and therefore the amended motion is agreed.

The next vote is on the Plaid Cymru debate on decarbonisation. I call for a vote on the motion tabled in the name of Siân Gwenllian. Open the vote. Close the vote. In favour 43, three abstentions, five against, and therefore the motion is agreed.

We move, therefore, to a vote on the Plaid Cymru debate on adverse weather and storm damage. So, the next vote is on the motion, which is the motion tabled in the name of Siân Gwenllian. Open the vote. Close the vote. In favour 20, three abstentions, 28 against. Therefore, the motion is not agreed.

I call, therefore, for a vote on amendment 1, tabled in the name of Darren Millar. Open the vote. Close the vote. In favour 49, two abstentions, none against. Therefore, the amendment is agreed.

The next vote is on amendment 2, and if amendment 2 is agreed, amendment 3 will be deselected. I call for a vote on amendment 2, tabled in the name of Rebecca Evans. Open the vote. Close the vote. In favour 30, one abstention, 19 against. And therefore, amendment 2 is agreed. Amendment 3 is, therefore, deselected.

Amendment 4 is our next amendment, and that amendment was tabled in the name of Darren Millar. Open the vote. Close the vote. In favour 50, no abstentions, one against. Amendment 4 is, therefore, agreed.