4. What recent discussions has the Minister had with the Minister for Housing and Local Government in terms of providing additional budget allocations to fund recycling in Wales? OAQ54324

I have regular discussions with the Minister for Housing and Local Government to discuss a range of financial issues, including recycling. Despite the cuts to our capital budget, we've invested an additional £30 million over the period 2018/19 to 2020/1 to support the collaborative change in waste procurement programmes. 

Thank you for that answer. Minister, you will be aware that local authorities throughout Wales are sending much of their collected recycling to recycling centres in England and further abroad. In our own county of Swansea, for example, the council sends thousands of tonnes of waste to Turkey, China, India, Indonesia and Poland. Do you therefore agree that we need to do more to focus on this agenda? And what additional funding is the Welsh Government prepared to provide to local authorities to develop regional or national recycling centres to ensure that we recycle all that we can in Wales, reducing our carbon footprint and creating jobs for people in Wales?

Well, yes, I certainly need to acknowledge that we need to do more in this particular area, because it is true that some of our waste is exported to Europe and, as you said, to other countries around the world, but it is important to recognise that most of it is processed here in Wales. We've supported the development of infrastructure to process our waste here, with the longer term aim to process as much of our waste here as we possibly can. Clearly, we don't want to be seeing waste being exported from the UK to other countries and not being treated properly, and we've seen some stories in the press about that.

I think the reason that we are able to have the figures, though, which you've quoted to us, is the fact that Wales is the only country in the UK that mandates local authorities to use WasteDataFlow, and that's a system for municipal waste data reporting. As part of that, local authorities are required now to report the end destination of their waste. So I think it's really positive that we have that clarity and transparency as far as that's concerned.

The Deputy Minister for Housing and Local Government will be making a statement next Tuesday on recycling, and that will be another opportunity, I think, to talk about this in more detail.

I hear what you said, finance Minister, about waste flow and monitoring that within local authorities, but surely one of the things that as finance Minister you must be concerned about is the strength of the audit trail. Many of us have seen television images and pictures in newspapers showing Welsh recycled waste—and people have entered that in good faith—appearing on shores many, many thousands of miles away from these islands. So, what efforts are you making to make sure that the audit process is robust and any new money you might be putting into the recycling initiatives can genuinely be used to recycle what product is available here in Wales or, indeed, the rest of the United Kingdom, rather than just dumped on shores, as I said, many thousands of miles away in a very cavalier way?

Well, as I say, Welsh local authorities do have that statutory requirement to report the end destinations of the waste that they collect, but I think that we're all well aware of the recent WalesOnline article that showed that 0.8 per cent of waste collected in Wales was sent to unspecified final destinations. Obviously, even though that's a very small percentage, it's something that is of real concern to us all. So, I can confirm that all local authorities have now been asked to review their contracts to make sure that we can put an end to that.