Electric vehicles rely on batteries. Batteries require cobalt, and the vast majority of that is sourced from the Congo—an area rife with conflict. Furthermore, children are exploited to work in the cobalt mines for slave wages, and much of the profits the companies make is used to fund civil war. The term 'blood batteries' has now entered the lexicon of those talking about development of electric vehicles, and we must ensure that we're no part of it. We have to make sure that in our scramble to find a different form of fuel for our cars we don't end up fuelling conflict, poverty and child labour—however many miles away it is from Wales. Tesla have reportedly said that they're looking to source cobalt from Cuba, but in the global scramble for this finite resource, once the ethical sources have been depleted, it will be sourced from less ethical sources. There will be no other choice. Therefore, where point 2(b) mentions a strategy to move towards using electrical vehicles, please can we ensure that a constant element of that strategy is to only use vehicles that are free of conflict materials or blood batteries?

But it's not just the ethical sourcing that concerns me. Some of the practicalities have to be sorted before we rush towards mass use of electrical vehicles. The biggest problem is obviously going to be the recharging. Where, at the moment, we can fill up quickly mid journey, there's not the infrastructure or technology that allows that to the same degree at the moment, and other speakers have alluded to that. Many petrol stations, even now, have a queue of cars waiting for the petrol pumps, and I appreciate that charging points don't have to be restricted to the petrol stations, but there will have to be some centralised charging points for people to use when they're actually en route. So, we've already got queues; how big are these recharging centres going to have to be if a recharge takes, say, 30 minutes as opposed to a five-minute pit stop to just fill up with petrol or diesel? What happens if a car runs out of charge before it can get to a recharging point? The driver can't exactly take a petrol can up the road to a filling station.