I’m very pleased to be taking part in this important debate on the report of our climate change committee. Thank you to the Chair, Mike Hedges, for his introduction of the annual report of the Climate Change, Environment and Rural Affairs Committee on Welsh Government’s progress with regard to mitigating the effects of climate change. There are several recommendations, and, of course, whilst the Government has accepted the majority of them, they also don’t accept a number of others. We’ll go through those now, briefly.

Clearly, the Welsh Government won’t succeed in reaching its target of reducing emissions by 40 per cent by 2020. That’s obvious. The latest emissions statistics in 2015 show that Wales’s emissions are only 19 per cent below the 1990 levels, whereas emissions in the rest of the UK fell 27 per cent below 1990 levels. Clearly, establishing less challenging targets now could be seen as rewarding failure in this context. As others have said, progress on tackling climate change and the public health crisis resulting from poor air quality won’t happen until all members of the Cabinet take responsibility for cuts in emissions in their portfolios.

Now, turning to some of the recommendations briefly:

'Recommendation 5. The Welsh Government should: provide the Committee with details of what it believes should be the requirements of a replacement for the EU ETS'.

One of the reasons that the Cabinet Secretary has stated for the failure of the Welsh Government to reach its target of a 40 per cent reduction in emissions by 2020 is because of the role of the EU ETS. As she says,