Julie James: Thank you, Huw. Llywydd, I'm in danger of needing to give an hour's lecture as the answer to every one of these questions. I won't try to your patience too much. Suffice to say, Huw, we've already announced that we'll make a state-owned energy development company. Part of the point of that is to build exemplar sites with a lot of community ownership and to exploit the resources we already...
Julie James: Thank you, Rhys. I have regular contact with the UK Government and other devolved administrations in respect of building safety. I engage with my counterparts in the UK Government and devolved nations through the inter-ministerial group meetings, in which I discuss matters including building safety.
Julie James: Thank you very much, Rhys. I met Lucy Frazer. Unfortunately, she changed jobs pretty immediately afterwards. I'm not going to take that personally. I'll have to look to meet the new housing Minister as soon as I know who that is. I do meet Michael Gove regularly at the higher level inter-ministerial group meetings, in which we discuss these matters as well, but I haven't had the opportunity...
Julie James: Thank you, Joel. As I said, we are very aware of what the position on each site is. We understand what the difficulties have been. The remaining sites, the ones that are not yet completed, all have either a complex management structure and it's taken us some time to get all of the consents in place for the intrusive surveys—I believe we've got all but two of those sorted now—and the...
Julie James: On the leaseholder support scheme, I said when we launched it in June last year that we'd continue to review it on a three-monthly basis, and we've continued to do that. We've reviewed and slackened the eligibility criteria each time in order to reach a wider range of people. Now, we've included the rising cost of energy in the hardship factors that are taken into account, and we've allowed...
Julie James: Thank you, Mike. I just don’t agree that it would allow action to be taken. We’re actually very well aware of those buildings. Both of them are in the intrusive survey stage; one of them is complete. One of the buildings has not asked us to pay for a survey that they’d already had done. I’m more than happy to discuss the detail with you if you want to meet with me about it. We'd like...
Julie James: If a local planning authority refuses an application for planning permission, the applicant can appeal to the Welsh Ministers. Planning law requires planning appeals to be determined in accordance with the development plan unless material considerations indicate otherwise.
Julie James: Thank you, Delyth. I absolutely do understand the frustration of that, and it’s deeply felt in a number of communities. The difficulty is that this is—as I know you know—a quasi-judicial process. This isn’t about your best judgment; this is about following a quasi-judicial process. I’m not going to talk about an individual application; I don’t have the details in front of me. But...
Julie James: Diolch, Cefin. We need a strategic solution to updating our grid infrastructure to achieve our net-zero commitments and give people access to clean heat and transport. National planning policy states our preferred position that new power lines should be underground where possible and expects public engagement to mitigate their impact elsewhere.
Julie James: Thank you, Cefin. The policy is that electricity transmission cables should be placed underground where possible, not just in designated landscapes, but where possible. Sometimes, it's not possible, even in a designated landscape. We don't anyone digging up our peatlands, for example. So we would expect developers to find the best route. Sometimes, that's not the shortest route, and then a...
Julie James: Diolch, Llywydd. I move the motion. This is a UK Bill intended to reform the regulation of social housing providers in England. English social housing providers own or manage around 500 homes in Wales; therefore, the changes proposed by this Bill will have an impact on people who live in these homes, because the Bill will change the way that their landlords are regulated. The legislative...
Julie James: Diolch, Llywydd. I completely acknowledge the disappointment of Members at the lack of time to scrutinise these LCMs. As I said in my opening remarks, we are very disappointed that the UK Government has chosen to table late amendments in this way, and indeed, we know now, has chosen to table further amendments at Report Stage. So, I may need to lay another supplementary legislative consent...
Julie James: Diolch, Llywydd. Llywydd, there are some basic economic realities that are quite clearly unknown to the Tory benches. Economic growth and action on climate are not opposing objectives; the greatest economic harm would result from a failure to prevent runaway climate change. The balance we must seek to strike is one that avoids policies that, by not considering economic and environmental...
Julie James: Llywydd, if I could just develop my argument a little more, then perhaps if Mark wants to intervene a bit later, then I'd be very happy to.
Julie James: I just wanted to point out that the roads review was looking at pipeline development schemes without an approval for construction final cost or capital funding allocated for delivery. And that's the whole point of an investment pipeline: something the Tories simply seem to not understand. Schemes are developed, some go ahead, some don't, and with our capital budget now 8 per cent lower in...
Julie James: Go on then—go on then, Mark.
Julie James: Well, I fundamentally disagree with that, Mark. If you're replacing all of the current cars on the road with electric or low-emission vehicles, you simply have a different climate crisis to look at. What we need here is a different solution to transport that does not rely on individual car transport. Anyway, let me go back to my Flintshire red route example. Three hundred million pounds would...
Julie James: Certainly. [Laughter.]
Julie James: Yes, Huw, of course we will, and we will be proactively doing that; we work very closely with our local authorities, and of course we'll be working with them on their local transport plans as they bring them forward. We need to get this into proportion. To get us to net zero by 2050, we need to cut car use by 10 per cent. So, all we are talking about is shifting one journey in 10 from a...
Julie James: Thank you, Llywydd. It's very difficult, isn't it, to answer all of the points raised in a debate of this sort in the very short time we have available to us. So, we will be bringing forward a debate in Government time to discuss this in slower time. But, Llywydd, just to sum up, a change in approach is undoubtedly the right thing to do, but to be effective we need to make the right thing to...
