Questions Without Notice from the Party Leaders

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:44 pm on 21 May 2019.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 1:44, 21 May 2019

Llywydd, the Member neglected to tell the Chamber that, of course, it was the UK Government that was taken to the Supreme Court over this matter because of infractions in relation to the European law, and the Welsh Government was there because we are part of that UK system. But he didn't mention that the UK Government was primarily in the dock on that day. Now, as it happens, I agree with lots of what he has said, and I share the ambitions that he set out to make sure that we do more to make sure that we leave a legacy for future generations of non-polluted air that doesn't cause the difficulties that we are now more alert to it creating. In relation to the five areas that he identified, we have new monitoring arrangements in place there. They are more sensitive to levels of nitrogen dioxide. It will be September before we have a data set of the sort that he advocated in his earlier question—reliable and over a time sequence—and we will know, in September, the result of that additional monitoring. As far as the work we are doing with local authorities is concerned, of course we work closely with local authorities, including Cardiff, to make sure that the actions that they can take and the actions that we can take together support the ambition that Paul Davies has set out this afternoon.