Part of 1. 1. Questions to the Cabinet Secretary for Environment and Rural Affairs – in the Senedd at 1:43 pm on 14 December 2016.
Well, thank you, Minister. I think it is a very important court case and it’s one that might be against DEFRA but it’s actually a UK reporting responsibility under the air quality directive. So, it does affect us, and it overtook or ran concurrently with your own consultation on air quality, which closed on 6 December. In that consultation on air quality you said this:
‘There is considerable uncertainty about the extent to which we will still be bound by our current EU obligations— though your response to Paul Davies sounds like you are bound by your current EU obligations— relating to air and noise pollution following the UK’s withdrawal from the European Union. Therefore, we are not yet in a position to state precisely what further action we propose to take forward in the second, third, fourth and fifth years of this Assembly.’
Can I put it to you, Minister, that having had an estimate from the British Lung Foundation that air pollution in Wales is linked to over 1,300 early deaths—that’s the Welsh figure; we’ve heard UK figures before; that’s the Welsh figure—can you really be so laissez-faire in your response to tackling air pollution?