Questions now from the party leaders. The leader of the opposition, Paul Davies. 

Diolch, Llywydd. Can you tell us, First Minister, if carbon dioxide levels in Wales are falling fast enough?  

Carbon dioxide levels in Wales are falling. We have plans set out and timetables set out that we will continue to review and keep up to date. We are considering the advice of the climate change committee in the light of the Paris agreement, and, as you've seen, it suggests that we need a 95 per cent fall in emissions within 30 years. The advice, Llywydd, was detailed. It was over 300 pages-worth of advice. It's right that we take time to consider it, but our first reaction to the advice is that falls of that sort over that time period are necessary and achievable in Wales.

Well, clearly, First Minister, emissions are not falling fast enough, and it is doubtful if your Government will actually meet the target of a 27 per cent reduction by 2020, given that, so far, only a 14 per cent reduction has been achieved. Now, since 2014, the estimated number of deaths in Wales, according to Public Health Wales, relating to air pollution has actually increased from 1,320 in 2014 to more than 2,000 in 2017. In a recent debate, the former Minister for environment stated that in order to fill the gaps in legislation, the possibility of a clean air Act was actually on the table. Now, Professor Lewis from Swansea University indicated that the collection of air pollution information is inconsistent and more needs to be done to ensure that the data collected is accurate and representative of the whole of Wales, because missing out on vital data can lead to areas being overlooked and forgotten. Given the seriousness of the situation, do you agree, First Minister, that it is time now to bring forward a clean air Act, standardise data collection and bring an end to this public health crisis?

Well, Llywydd, let me begin by agreeing with what Paul Davies has said about the importance of clean air. A decade on from when this debate started, I think we are all more aware today of the impact that air pollution can have on public health and its impact on other health conditions. So, I want to agree with him about the seriousness of the issue. I can tell him that I have already had discussions with Lesley Griffiths, my colleague, about a clean air Act, and the preparation inside the Welsh Government has begun to think about how such an Act might be developed. Of course, we will want to talk with all those experts and those interest groups that would want to contribute to such an Act, and having better data, having data that is properly comparable, having data that allows you to track changes over time would be a necessary part of any piece of legislation that we might bring forward.

Well, First Minister, I'm glad that you're actually looking at a clean air Act, but I would suggest that I think it is now important that you do actually bring forward that legislation in order to tackle this very important issue. Now, your Government has set targets to halve the 2005 carbon emissions by 2030, but, clearly, not enough progress has been made towards meeting this particular target, because figures from the UK Committee on Climate Change show that, between 2015 and 2016, greenhouse gas emissions increased by 5 per cent in Wales, compared to an 11 per cent decrease in Scotland. Air pollution is not just contained to the target areas. In England and Scotland, progress, clearly, is being made following Berlin's example, with cities including Leeds and Birmingham bringing forward plans for clean air zones. Now, as you know, we on this side of the Chamber have called for these zones to be put in place in Wrexham, Swansea, Newport and Cardiff, and it is disappointing that Cardiff has dropped its plans for a zone. This is despite the Welsh Government being taken to the High Court last year over its failure to bring forward a firm plan to improve air quality. So, First Minister, since the Welsh Government announced the air quality fund last year, what progress has been made on improving the nitrogen dioxide levels in the five target road areas and what specific action is the Welsh Government taking to ensure that local authorities also play their role and are actually tackling air pollution in their respective areas?

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.

Plaid Cymru leader, Adam Price.

Diolch, Llywydd. First Minister, life expectancy in Wales is falling faster than in any other nation in Europe. We're the only country in these islands where child poverty is rising, and in the first three months of this year, we were the only part of the UK where unemployment increased. A month ago, at the Labour Party conference, the general secretary of the Welsh Labour Party said that

'Wales is better placed than any other part of the UK to deal with Brexit'.

How can that be true when Wales, under your leadership, is doing so badly even before Brexit has begun?

Well, Llywydd, the Member never has a good word to say for Wales. He never loses an opportunity to choose the most dismal statistics he can find and then to run Wales down. He does it not just in this Chamber; he takes the opportunities he has to do that when he is on national broadcast media as well, while, on this side of the Chamber, we do our best to build Wales up. We do our best to attract businesses to come to Wales. He never misses an opportunity to paint Wales as the most dismal place he has ever come across. He does it even when the figures bear no relation to what he says. And when the Labour Party, with which he has an obsessive interest, Llywydd—I've offered before to send him membership applications given how often on the floor of the Chamber he wants to ask me questions about what the Labour Party does. At our conference, we set out a prospectus for Wales that offers hope for the future, but shows the way in which, even in the circumstances of Brexit, we can create an economy that thrives and we can create a society in which people have chances to thrive. And it would be nice if, just once, in asking questions here, the Member could put his shoulder to that wheel rather than forever trying to find ways to talk Wales down.

First Minister, you're often fond of saying how disappointed you are in me, and I have to say, based on that performance, it's not half as disappointed as I am in you. Hywel Ceri Jones, who has been an adviser to your Government, this week cited the fact that the leader of your party has been deliberately ambiguous in the question of a second public vote on EU membership as his reason for leaving Labour and joining Plaid Cymru. Seeing as Hywel was the founder of the Erasmus programme, perhaps it's fitting to remind ourselves of the words of the great man himself when he said, 'Humility is truth.' So, in that spirit, before tens—[Interruption.] Before tens of thousands—[Interruption.] You may be laughing now; I don't think you'll be laughing on Sunday. So, in that spirit, before tens of thousands of Labour supporters follow Hywel in abandoning you at the ballot box, why not humbly admit, First Minister, that on the question of the second referendum, in slavishly following the British Labour line—or rather, the absence of one—you simply got it wrong?

Well, humility may be truth, Llywydd, but irony is certainly not lost. If ever there was a figure who should have avoided that as a strapline, I think we've heard from him twice now this afternoon. The position of my party in relation to a second referendum is one that reflects the complexity of the position that faces the British people. The day is coming, Llywydd, when the House of Commons, which after all is where this decision will be made, will have to grasp that issue and make its mind up finally as to whether or not it is prepared to ask the people of the United Kingdom to vote on this matter again. I believe that that day is coming very quickly.

Two opinion polls in the last three days have placed your party in third place for the European elections. One has placed you third for elections to this Senedd on the regional list. If you do come third on Thursday, this will be the first time this has happened to the Labour Party in an all-Wales election since the year of the Labour Party's formation in 1900, when Keir Hardie was elected as the MP for Merthyr Tydfil. Do you feel some sense of personal responsibility for the depths to which your party has plunged? Some will no doubt view your personal loyalty to Jeremy Corbyn as an admirable quality, but many more will judge it to be at the expense of a greater loyalty, which is to the people of Wales. So, to quote another phrase that you should be familiar with, because you penned it, was this perhaps not a time for a drop or two of clear red water?

Llywydd, my interests are always on what matters to people in Wales. I spend every day that I have that opportunity trying to do everything I can to make sure that the future of people in Wales is safeguarded, and that the best prospects are available to them. I do that, I'll continue to do that, and when the time comes, I'll be judged like anybody else in this Chamber will be, against the efforts and the success of those efforts, when people come to make the choice that they will make about who is to be in charge in this Chamber.

The leader of the Brexit Party group, Mark Reckless.

Diolch, Llywydd. First Minister, do you respect the result of the referendum? [Interruption.] You promised that you would. [Interruption.] 

The First Minister can't hear the question being asked. Can we have some quiet to hear the question, please?

First Minister, do you respect the result of the referendum? You promised that you would, but it's not clear that you do. Will your party let us leave, or do you want to make us remain? Do you agree with your Brexit Minister when he said that your Government had to balance the decision the people of Wales made in the referendum with his superior understanding of what he says is in their interests? First Minister, you face your first electoral test on Thursday, but no-one knows where you stand on Brexit or whether people should be made to vote again. Who do you expect to receive a mandate from the people of Wales?

Llywydd, it's an afternoon for irony on the floor of the National Assembly, clearly. The Member asks me about respect and mandate. Here is somebody who I shared a platform with during the run-up to the last Assembly election when he urged the audience in front of us to support the United Kingdom Independence Party. No sooner had he arrived here under that ticket than he flew across to the other side of the Chamber to be a cuckoo in the nest of the Conservative Party. Now the bird has flown again. This sort of peripatetic approach to politics is not one that I think leaves him in any position to ask others in this Chamber questions about respecting democratic mandates. The Welsh Government has always respected the result of the referendum. We have always recognised the way in which people in Wales have voted, and we've been focused, as we've said so many times, on the form rather than the fact of Brexit. Of course the Brexit Minister was right to say we have to balance what people said in that referendum against the harm we know would come to Wales from the sort of Brexit that he and his party now advocate.

The First Minister thinks that he knows better than the people of Wales. First Minister, I have consistently backed Brexit. Unfortunately, every party said that they were going to respect the result of the referendum. Unfortunately, you are doing anything but. You claim that you have always respected the result, but you haven't. You came out with a White Paper that you agreed with Plaid Cymru—who have an awful lot to say about who'll come third on Thursday, but very little to say about who might come first—and what they said with you was a Brexit in name only, but you still said you wanted to respect the result and deliver that Brexit, despite it being in name only.

Since then, as soon as you thought you could get away with it, you started shifting your policy to say that the people of Wales should be forced to vote again, because they got it wrong. Now, you may not have said that quite as clearly as Adam Price has, or quite as clearly as Kirsty Williams has, and it may be that many of the Labour voters who voted remain may vote Liberal Democrat or Plaid Cymru on Thursday in consequence, but the people I speak to hear that you are saying, 'They got it wrong—they need to vote again', because you know best. You promised to implement the result, your promised to respect it. You are doing anything but. Do you understand why it is now time to change politics for good?

I think I heard the Member use the word 'consistency' in the first part of his question. It's a pantomime turn that we're offered, but the trouble is, Llywydd, the Member is a lot more than a pantomime villain, and the prospectus that he offers people in Wales would, without a shadow of a doubt, lead people in Wales to be worse off in future. Their security would be undermined, their influence in the world would be diminished. I'm proud of the White Paper that we published with Plaid Cymru because it has stood the test of time. And unlike the meanderings of the Member around this Chamber, the things that we said then about membership of a customs union, full and unfettered participation in a single market, a sensible approach to migration that doesn't damage Welsh businesses and public services—those are the things that have stood the test of time. Those are the things that have been consistent throughout this debate. And it may be more complex than the Member would like to admit, but those are things that we will go on contributing to this debate. That's our consistency, and I think it's a consistency that people in Wales will come to recognise.