Mark Reckless: Can I ask, Minister, is there compelling evidence as yet as to whether these zones are successful in reducing air pollution?
Mark Reckless: I was surprised to receive an e-mail from one of my children's schools earlier, saying, 'We are happy to authorise leave for any students. Please let us know if your child will be absent due to taking part in the strike.' I was particularly surprised because my child in question is two years old. But I oppose these strikes; I don't support strikes in general. I think strikes are a sense of a...
Mark Reckless: This country has reduced carbon dioxide emissions by more than almost any country in the world. A 40 per cent cut in carbon dioxide emissions since 1990. We have cut back our emissions levels not to those of the 1980s but to the 1880s. Where is the recognition of that?
Mark Reckless: Rhianon Passmore is also trying to intervene, so if I could deal with the point she also made earlier, because it's as relevant—she asked one of my colleagues, 'Do the Brexit Party now accept that the problems of air quality and climate change are intricately linked?' Yes, we do. And a key way in which they have been intricately linked is the policy of Labour Governments and the European...
Mark Reckless: I have always—well, since I studied the subject, since Margaret Thatcher first put this on the agenda by speaking to the UN about what was potentially happening with climate—[Interruption.] My view, ever since I first started looking at this issue 20 or 30 years ago, has been that it is likely that human activity is increasing the climate. What I questioned is what should be done about...
Mark Reckless: The First Minister admonishes the leader of the opposition about respect for the rule of law, but I do recall, last week, what he and his Counsel General said about the then binding judgment of the High Court in our jurisdiction, and they decided they would prefer to take the ruling of the court from another jurisdiction. What I would ask Members to think about—[Interruption.]—if I may...
Mark Reckless: I tuned into the parliament channel on Sunday morning, and enjoyed listening to the First Minister's speech in Bournemouth. It's only after listening to a bit more of the Labour conference that I came to see his contribution as a highlight. Could I ask him, though—? He failed in his efforts to persuade colleagues to break their promise to respect the result of the referendum by campaigning...
Mark Reckless: Given the First Minister accepted my correction on the number of Supreme Court judges, I accept his geographical correction with equally good grace. Could I ask him about another potential divergence between UK and Wales policy? At his conference today, there seems to be a big move to change climate change policy and have a policy of net zero by 2030—that's just 11 years away. Does the...
Mark Reckless: May I congratulate Welsh Government for what it's doing with the childcare offer? I've made some quite strong comments about areas such as respecting the referendum result or building an M4 relief road, where Labour hasn't followed its manifesto, but on this you have—indeed, getting it done a year early. I congratulate you on that. I also noted that the pre-existing offer was quite a lot...
Mark Reckless: Sixty per cent.
Mark Reckless: Will the Llywydd give way?
Mark Reckless: You say that you felt a duty to push for prisoners to have the right to vote, but doesn't that actually understate it? Aren't you under a legal obligation to do so, speaking for the Commission, in the same way Jeremy Miles would for the Welsh Government? As public bodies, the law requires you to have regard to the judgments of the ECHR.
Mark Reckless: The Finance Committee works hard to engage with stakeholders and the wider public as part of its budget scrutiny process. Nonetheless, during my intermittent membership of the Finance Committee, I have found a bit of a disconnect between the engagement that we have with stakeholders and others and the budget process. And I think it's a real challenge to engage people in a productive and...
Mark Reckless: Yes. And, clearly, we have our capital programmes and some ones where there is borrowing capacity, but there are greater hoops we must jump through than the UK Government to use those. But not quite such a dominant proportion of our income is coming from the block grant in the future and therefore that block grant only being set a year ahead isn't as defining a knock-down argument as it might...
Mark Reckless: Diolch, Llywydd. I move the motion in the name of Caroline Jones. The first bullet point supports Wales's membership of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and its indefinite continuance. Now, I would have thought that this wasn't something that needed to be asserted. I know Plaid Cymru take a different view, of course, but I had, before my election to this place, taken...
Mark Reckless: And to me, the issue is that of the failure of too many remainers, including and particularly perhaps at Westminster, to accept the result of the referendum. They've spent three years plus growing increasingly confident and going further and further against what they said in the past to try and block the result of that referendum, and I think it's that refusal to implement the result and the...
Mark Reckless: I agree with what the Member says, and it's one reason why we're keen to cancel HS2, but it's also, as David T.C. Davies, the Chair of the Welsh Affairs Select Committee said on Sunday night to the Brexit Minister, because of HS2, because of that unfairness, he was wanting to push to get UK Government to pay for the M4 relief road.
Mark Reckless: Unless I'm much mistaken, I recall the Member speaking in July about a desire for more devolution, and I don't think he'd been back to this place before I heard reports of him speaking in Newport saying that he now wanted to abolish the Assembly. Why the change over the summer recess?
Mark Reckless: Will the Member give way?
Mark Reckless: He says that our motion refers to funding from the European Union. It doesn't; it refers to the powers the European Union took over the trans-European network, and isn't the issue. In some of those, they regulate them and they require certain standards, and then require, in this case, Wales to pay for them.
