Of course, I support the proposal by my colleague to bring this legislative proposal forward, but I do that for a number of reasons. First of all, it’s my aspiration and Plaid Cymru’s aspiration that we cease selling new cars that are reliant on fossil fuels by 2030, and I’m shocked that the Westminster Government hasn’t taken steps to hasten this process. We are still looking to 2042 for this, although we know the impact on air quality that emerges from these fossil fuel engines, and diesel engines particularly. I’m also doing this because we are of the view that although this growth is happening almost organically in terms of electric vehicles, it is true to say, as with broadband, as I mentioned, that vast parts of Wales would be missing out unless there were state intervention to ensure equality. The point that Lee Waters made was a fair one, but in order to assist with that equality then Government has to step in and ensure that this does happen. I think that that is something that we’re familiar with in a Welsh context.

After Plaid Cymru negotiated the £2 million for the public vehicle charging scheme, I have contacted every county council in Wales to ask them what they were doing to help with this process and, to date, I’ve received responses from half of them, including Anglesey—so, congratulations Anglesey. I’m not here to name the councils because each of them say that they’re doing their very best, but, clearly, what’s missing is that there are some councils without any public charging points at all. There are areas of Wales—. If you travel, Rhun, from Anglesey to Cardiff, it’s quite possible, like with the train, that you’d have to travel through England to ensure that you can take that journey safely. That’s the kind of framework we have in place at the moment.

A few things have arisen that suggest to me that we do need some legislation, or the force of legislation, in this area, and they are: the need to create a national network; the need for that network to be badged with a Welsh identity so that people know that the Welsh Government is part of this process; that we ensure through legislative commitments that these charging points are open source and available to all—what you have is that one company wants to keep it for their own vehicles, but we need this to be available to everybody—and that we can encourage and help local councils and other public bodies interested in this area not just to provide one point, but many charging points. We need significant investment here. Yes, we need to prepare for future growth rather than what we have at the moment, as David Melding mentioned, but we need to see that happening.

The final point in the context of Government intervention is that the grid in parts of Wales isn’t sufficiently robust to deal with the growth that we will see in vehicle charging. The capacity of the grid is restricted in parts of Wales, particularly in mid Wales, and the Government will need to collaborate with the Westminster Government to tackle that particular issue. As the grid have said it won’t be possible to have batteries larger than 1 MW in Wales for at least a decade—that’s the position of National Grid—then the concept of having small batteries scattered around the place mainly in electrical vehicles and using renewable energy is very attractive to me, but we need Government intervention, there is no doubt about that.