As a brand-new member of this committee who wasn't fortunate enough to be party to a lot of the evidence received, I did thoroughly enjoy reading the report, and I did read, as well, the Government's responses to the recommendations. It's clear we are still facing significant challenges in meeting our climate change commitments here in Wales, and a reduction in emissions of 80 per cent by 2050 will require bold and decisive long-term action by the Welsh Government, and making housing a central plank of achieving that in terms of making our houses more energy efficient is going to be one of the key elements in achieving that, albeit a very difficult one, clearly, because of the age of our housing stock—it's one of the oldest in Europe, and the report rightly demands an ambitious vision from the Welsh Government. The scale and pace of delivering highly energy-efficient homes needs to be urgently increased, or, of course, we'll fail to meet the challenges that we face. And some of these messages I'll be expanding upon in our later debate on climate change.

I would like to align myself to the comments made by the Chair and David Melding about this tendency to accept in principle. It was clearly a feature in the Children, Young People and Education Committee's report, 'Mind over matter'. In that instance, of course, the Ministers and Cabinet Secretaries were sent back to look at some of that again. And you're right to refer to a letter from the Permanent Secretary, David Melding, but the letter was explicitly in relation to the Public Accounts Committee, and I'm just wondering—I think it's got to a point now where we really need to consider whether this is actually extended to all committees, or at least that there's a process in place to sit down and look at all of this.

Anyway, the Welsh Government really needs to drastically upscale its home energy efficiency programmes in order to tackle not only climate change issues but, of course, as we know, fuel poverty, and to take advantage of those jobs that will be created as well. I'd like to see us put in place a target around reducing energy demand, and even aggregating that down to a localised level so that we can actually encourage more local ownership of what needs to be done, and making global ambition something that people in individual communities can relate to and can feel that they actually can contribute positively towards achieving.

Around 23 per cent of households in Wales live in fuel poverty, and we estimate around 1,800 excess winter deaths every year, of which, in 2016-17, around 540 could be attributed to cold homes. Now, that tells its own story as well. The Institute of Welsh Affairs has used Swansea bay city region as a case study of how that region could meet its projected energy demands entirely from renewable resources by 2035. It found significant scope for opportunities in meeting that challenge. For example, 200,000 homes—that's 60 per cent of domestic properties in that region—would need to adopt energy efficiency measures to meet the 2035 goal. Now, that as well, of course, would ensure that each home would save between £350 and £420 a year on their annual energy bill. Now, we as a party have said that we'd launch a national energy efficiency programme to help keep homes warmer, bring down energy bills, create jobs and help the environment in a multibillion-pound investment programme over two decades.

Before I run out of time, I don't want to let the second recommendation go, which refers to Part L of the building regulations. In the last Assembly, when I was the party spokesperson on this issue at that time, the Welsh Government went out to consultation on improving energy efficiency, and they had two options in the consultation. One was for a 40 per cent improvement; the other was for a 25 per cent improvement. They held the consultation, and they plumped for an 8 per cent level. Now, that was a hugely missed opportunity, in my view, for Wales to be ahead of the game, to gain first-mover advantage in a journey, of course, where we all have to achieve a certain level by a certain point in time, so there was never an issue as to whether we wanted to move in that direction, and it's good to see people who voted against that at the time now being much more enthused about this, and I'm glad that the Government is moving in that direction. Although, more generally, given that the clock is beating me, I have to say I am rather disappointed by the modesty of the Welsh Government's response. It doesn't really represent the urgency that we need, or indeed the ambition that we have a right to expect.