Part of 2. 2. Questions to the Counsel General – in the Senedd at 2:37 pm on 10 May 2017.
I thank the Counsel General for his reply. We did, of course, have a debate about this yesterday on the Public Health (Wales) Bill, and the Minister confirmed during that debate that the current powers that Welsh Ministers have are under section 80 of the Environment Act 1995. I think there are two problems with this. One is that that was initially passed, of course, before devolution, and therefore, the powers that Welsh Ministers have are administrative devolution powers, rather than a devolution of legislation that’s taken place. And secondly, as far as I can see, that Environment Act, though it places an obligation on Ministers to produce strategies around air pollution, has no obligation to reduce air pollution, in other words to improve the situation. So, you can respond to the legislation without doing anything about it. And, obviously, that’s 20 years ago, and that’s why I’m so keen that we should relook at this. And in particular, with the knowledge that we have that, with withdrawing from the European Union, we will lose that wider framework of European environmental legislation, does the Counsel General not think that in his ongoing work of the codification of Welsh legislation air pollution is one such area where we need and deserve specific Welsh legislation?