Part of 3. Topical Questions – in the Senedd at 3:30 pm on 12 June 2019.
Is the Minister suggesting the devolution of APD as an alternative to the M4 relief road? I'm not sure it would be on the same scale in terms of impact on congestion. I wonder, though, could he clarify, because he's used this word 'varying APD', and I think Andrew R.T. Davies has, entirely understandably, considered that might reflect a change of policy from the previous First Minister saying 'reducing', since varying may mean either increasing or reducing. The Minister has also said that he wants to consider this decision in light of environmental impact assessments, and I've heard some people—at least from a sedentary position on the Plaid side—suggesting that APD might need to go up in order to reduce the climate change impact.
Can I also just ask for clarity on the legal situation here? You said just now that the well-being of future generations Act requires these environmental impact assessments. If so, why wasn't this realised or at least spoken about previously? And why didn't he take the opportunity of the 2017 York—sorry, the York Aviation report was 2014, but the Northpoint study in 2017 that his Government commissioned, that looked into quite a lot of these issues around where traffic was going to go? Why didn't that also consider the environmental impact? You also mentioned just now that it could lead to an increase of up to 500,000 passengers from Cardiff Airport. The York Aviation report said it might reduce Bristol by a million, and even his own Northpoint report said it might reduce Bristol by 600,000. So, why that discrepancy?