The next item is a statement by the Minister for Housing and Local Government on the independent review on decarbonising Welsh homes. I call on the Minister to make her statement—Julie James. 

Diolch, Llywydd. I want to start by thanking Chris Jofeh and his independent group of stakeholders for delivering their hard-hitting but potentially transformational report, ‘Better Homes, Better Wales, Better World’.  The report, published on 18 July, contains few surprises about the action we need to take, the urgency, the scale and the costs , but it makes for very sobering reading.

When we asked Chris to lead this group in early 2018 the challenge was how, in the context of the future generations legislation, we could reduce the carbon consumed in 1.4 million homes by 80 per cent in 30 years through an all-tenure retrofit programme. Following our acceptance of the UK Committee on Climate Change’s advice in June, that target was in effect revised to require at least a 95 per cent reduction, with an ambition to achieve net zero carbon. The report from the independent group reflects this new target.

It sets out the vital interrelated components of the housing decarbonisation programme we now need to build, working with others. This is not a solo endeavour. Seven requirements have been identified: strategic commitment, challenging targets, a system to ensure quality outcomes, financial and other support, data collection, trialling and testing solutions, and working with people and communities to ensure change happens. All of these requirements resonate strongly with me and, I am sure, with others in the Chamber. But what I think the report also makes clear is that this is not a list of recommendations from which we can pick and mix. If we are truly to respond to the challenge of climate change, we need to appreciate the breadth both of the challenge we face and of the integrated response we must now construct. 

We must recognise that the Welsh Government has responsibilities in most of the key policy areas covered by the report. This and successive Governments must do its utmost to make the change needed over the next 30 years, but let’s not pretend it is going to be easy or cheap. There are so many areas of uncertainty, and three in particular. We still have a long way to go in developing comprehensive technical solutions to decarbonising our current housing stock in order to meet the targets in the report. We need much better data on existing homes, and that will be an early action. We need to build a much better understanding of the total costs of retrofitting. We are not yet in a position to be able to commit the funds that will be required, but we do know it will require commitment and investment from all parts of society, including householders. Our programme will need to reflect that. And thirdly, we do not know how fast the national gas and electricity grids are going to decarbonise. Despite the importance of delivering that change, we must also ensure that it will be achieved without passing on those costs to families least able to afford them.

We cannot wait until we have all the answers or until we have the resources. I’m not sure anyone has all the answers to climate change at the moment. What we do know is that inaction carries much bigger risks. So, despite all the risks and uncertainties, I have decided to accept all the recommendations in the report in principle. This is not because I disagree with the recommendations, but reflects a continuing uncertainty about the best way to achieve or implement them and the further work required inside and outside Government in order that we can be as clear as possible about costs.

I would just like to comment briefly about some of the key recommendations. Recommendation 1 includes the need for a commitment from other political parties to support a 30-year programme. I'm looking forward to hearing your response to that. Recommendation 2 asks for social homes and those in fuel poverty to achieve EPC band A in 10 years. I entirely understand this aim and support the need to do it, but I quickly need to know what this actually means for homes, the associated costs, the influence of grid decarbonisation, the people who own the homes and, very importantly, the residents.

My officials are already working with social landlords to start the modelling work for social homes. I would expect that to alter the focus of the Welsh housing guality standard after December 2020. I anticipate other benefits too, including considering the effectiveness of current approaches in programmes such as Warm Homes, appropriate support mechanisms for able-to-pay home owners, and the targeting of key policies such as the new fuel poverty strategy.

It is important to stress that the report and its supporting evidence are clear—not all homes can currently get to EPC band A. Doing so by 2030 may introduce costs in the 2020s that may be reduced or transferred in the longer term by adopting a less arbitrary target. Some homes may never achieve EPC band A, but I am purposely saying ‘currently’. In the light of the modelling and based on the evidence behind the report, I suspect we will need to pursue optimised retrofit solutions. This means doing the best we can to reduce energy demand and emissions on as many homes as we can, using existing solutions, on a low-regrets basis. The aim is to futureproof homes so that they are zero-carbon capable, ready to adopt future solutions and approaches when viable and safe to do so. The testing and trialling referred to in the report will be vital.

Many of these decisions will fall to the next term of Government and several terms after that. For good reason, we are not allowed to tie the hands of our successors and I am not proposing it, but I am sure most people in the Chamber today will understand the need and urgency for action despite the level of uncertainty. So, we need to quickly start developing a new programme ready for the next Assembly term. We need to build the case for investment now even if the actual decisions on investment will fall to the next Government. I am, therefore, very pleased to say that Chris Jofeh has again agreed to lead the development work with stakeholders, supported by Welsh Government officials. I will be establishing a green finance group, as recommended in the report, to look for innovative finance solutions. We are making connections with the fuel poverty work under way in Lesley Griffiths’s portfolio. My department is working with colleagues in Kirsty Williams’s department to address skills needs, and we must build a skilled and trained workforce so our SMEs and communities can take advantage of the huge opportunities that will come out of 30 years' worth of work. This is in line with our work on foundational and circular economies.

Energy retrofitting our homes is not just a major opportunity to significantly reduce our carbon emissions and meet our targets, but also to tackle fuel poverty, improve comfort and quality in homes, create jobs and promote training, supply chains and industries in Welsh communities. It is about making Wales prosperous, green and equal. Diolch.

I'd like to start by welcoming this statement, in a very odd way, actually, because I note that all the recommendations have been accepted in principle and, usually, this really makes me quite annoyed, because I think you should say 'yes' or 'no' if at all possible. But I do think, given the long-term perspective that we need to take, and the thoroughness we need to approach such a groundbreaking report with, that I am able, I think, to accept that this, for the time being, is appropriate whilst we now really look at the task that’s ahead of us and the need, indeed, to build a cross-party consensus.

We know the overall efficiency of the housing stock remains low in the UK, certainly compared to many similar countries. The frustrating reality though is that the technology already exists to create homes that are low carbon, climate resistant, better for health and the natural environment, and have great design features. Indeed, we talked about many of these issues earlier today. We also know, obviously, that retrofitting is much harder, but we do need to remember that that's a key part of what we need to do because most people in 2050, or 2040, whenever we set the targets eventually, will be in homes that are already in existence today—many of them are a 100 years old or more.

If I can just refer to a couple of the specific points. In relation to recommendation 1 of the report: as I said, I think we do need to work together on a long-term decarbonisation programme. I'm always in favour of things that shouldn't really be a matter of partisanship, that we have these opportunities to work together. So, I don't know what you have in mind, but, I mean, I hope it's something that does draw us together so that we can genuinely input our ideas. And I have to say, I was very grateful that you did allow me to speak to Chris and to have sight of the report before it was published; that's not usual in Government, and I'm grateful for it.

I don't know if 30 years is too long; I think all these things are speeding up and we may have to react to much more public demand to go quicker. But it is something, at least, that we can now build on, and this report, I do think, is a very extensive and good piece of work.

On recommendation 2, particularly on social homes and those who are living in fuel poverty, and having a target of 10 years: again, I do think that this is very ambitious and we do need deeper inquiry into how we're going to achieve this. But it should be high priority; it's absolutely right to identify that sector. One, we have most control over it, and then those in fuel poverty who won't always be in social homes are obviously a particularly vulnerable group, so I think that is a point well made.

I think, on recommendation 5, we need to get ahead and do this straight away, and that's improve our data collection and just look at the depth of the current statistical base we have and what we can be doing to improve our future decision making.

I'd like to finish by reiterating, really, the thanks of the Minister to Chris Jofeh, who, I think, has conducted, as I said, a piece of work that matches the challenge of the times. And whilst your response is, 'Right, let's now work together and see how we advance these recommendations as soon as possible', and shape them a bit, I guess—and that's why you've accepted them in principle—but, you know, this shouldn't be a delaying tactic. You've really got to show how this is going to happen quickly and, you know, as you say, we can't bind the hands of a successor, but it's really important that we set an agenda here because I do not think a future Assembly is likely to overturn it. In fact, they may look back on us and say, 'Why didn't we take action more quickly?' But, as I said, I think it's an imperative for us all to work together on this, so I welcome the nature of the Minister's approach.

Well, I very much welcome that, David, and what we're hoping to do is thrash out very quickly the parameters of a discussion that would be able to gain the approval of virtually everybody in the Chamber, we would hope, in terms of a way forward. The report goes into a lot of detail about possibilities, but what we need to do is explore how real they are and what consensus there is around some of them. I mean, there are a number of things that are frustrating, which we—I completely agree about the data collection, so we're in the process of actually trying to get people in to do that. I'm delighted Chris has agreed with us that he will continue to work with us to take that forward.

We have a whole series of things that we can do more quickly than the targets in here, but we need to just make sure there's a consensus around that. So, I will be asking people to come together and just try and agree some of that. I absolutely am not trying to put it off. What we're trying to say is, 'Look, the report sets out a series of principles—we accept those principles. What we need now to do is agree between us what we can do now, what we need to do in the slightly longer term' and so on. And without binding the hands of future Welsh Governments, what we need to do is see if we can set an agenda that looks consensual and moves fast enough.

But there are some things that we will need to look at. We might struggle to agree and so we need to think about them. One of the things I'm very frustrated about is that if you are a home owner, there currently isn't a market benefit in getting your house to EPC A. So, in the market, people just flip past the bit at the end that says what the energy rating is, and you could spend £40,000 on a three-bedroomed house to energy retrofit it and it won't get you the £40,000 back on the price. So, we will need to look at Government levers that might move that market in that direction, for example, but we don't want to do that until we've ensured that we've got the skills and the materials and so on likely to benefit owner-occupiers so that they can properly retrofit their houses. So, we need to make sure that we know, for example, what the most likely type of house in Wales is that's likely to do that and whether we get those skills and what the supply chain is and so on. So, it's just about getting some of the practical stuff in place, and I think we will, working together, be able to agree a programme that we do, and we'll also be able to agree some things that we can't agree on, and it's just as useful to be able to do that and park those for a future Government to have a look at. So, I'm really looking forward to getting a group together that we can use to steer that.

Can I thank the Minister for her statement and reiterate her thanks as well to Chris Jofeh and the independent group of stakeholders who've been working on the report?

I share the nervousness—when Government says that they accept something in principle, then you think, 'Oh crikey, there we are, it's a nod', and then they sort of walk away and come back to it a few years down the line. So, I am heartened by your insistence that—. And I understand that there's a practical reason for that as well, because you do issue caveats in terms of costs and the availability of technical solutions.

One thing I would urge the Government on, and it's a bugbear of mind, really: we really need to recast and reframe the discussion around—you know, can we afford to implement these changes, or can we afford not to? Because paying for the devastation of climate change is going to be much, much more significant than investing in measures such as retrofitting. So, I think we need to use different terminology sometimes, because retrofitting for me is an invest-to-save scheme and we should be talking about how we make those investments happen so that we can save, not only financially down the line, but, of course, in terms of all the other outcomes that we know we will face following climate change.

There are no clear actions from this statement, other than a recognition that we need more work to be done and an advisory group, or a couple of advisory groups being set up. So, that's again a bit of frustration, but again I understand why you feel that that's how you have to go about doing it. You say in your statement,

'We cannot wait until we have all the answers', and that's absolutely true. The energy vendor stuff in Germany—it's a pathway to decarbonisation, but they've no idea how they're going to fulfil the last 20 or 30 per cent. But they do know that they have confidence in their scientists and engineers to come up with answers and there's absolutely no reason to start on a journey just because we can't see the end. So, I think we really need to have the confidence to move forward in that respect.

You asked for some cross-party support—well, clearly I would give you that, because there was a commitment in our manifesto, in terms of retrofitting, to introduce the biggest retrofitting scheme Wales has ever seen, and that was very much a long-term commitment. Clearly, I'd need to see what the actual proposals are, but I can only imagine that Plaid Cymru would have issues because maybe it's not going far enough or moving quickly enough. So, I'm more than happy to stand shoulder to shoulder with you on that journey.

The other issue for me, of course, is the houses that haven't yet been built. It's not just retrofitting, as I know you recognise: we're still building houses that are energy inefficient, which are locking in that inefficiency and that are creating an even steeper trajectory or an even longer backlog of homes that need to be retrofitted in future.

I've harked on about the Part L regulations plenty of times now, because everybody knows that I'm going to refer to the consultation of 40 per cent or 25 per cent strengthening of energy efficiency, and the Government went for, what is it, 8 or 9 per cent in the last Assembly, which was disheartening; it was inadequate and lacking in ambition. And I hope that that will be addressed very, very soon, because clearly we can't carry on as we are. But there are planning applications in the system now that will clearly create that issue for future generations. So, will you, therefore, put on the record that environmental considerations and the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015 can actually offer a legal basis for planning committees to refuse applications that are unlikely to be even attempted, maybe, in a couple of years. I'd like to hear that from you, if possible.

Finally, we're also aware, of course, of previous cavity wall insulation schemes that have been missold, and that clearly would undermine confidence, I think, in a retrofitting programme in future. So, can you explain, maybe, how lessons have been learned from and how that would be reflected, maybe, in your approach to future retrofitting schemes, and how you will ensure that those schemes are undertaken in a way that is suitable and of a high quality?

Thank you for that, Llyr. I very much welcome the commitment to work with us and I'm hoping to get, in the initial stage, a group of cross-party people together—perhaps the spokespeople, or whoever the party thinks is most able to do the work—just to shape it, really, so that we can take it forward and then we can decide how that group can reference it. But, as I say, Chris Jofeh has agreed to work with us to do this as well. So, we definitely want to get something that future Governments, of whatever colour and shape, will be happy to take forward. We need that commitment or we will never get it running. So, I very much welcome that.

I share your frustration about still building stuff that is going to cause us a problem. We are about to review Part L. I am hoping to be able to get consensus across the Chamber on a lot of this stuff, so that we can go further than we might do if we didn't agree. So, I am really hoping that we will be able to shove it forward when we do that review. We have to do it for fire safety reasons and all the rest of it, but there are other things that we can do as part of the review, which I'm really hoping that we can get through because it's a consensus across the Chamber. So, it remains to be seen, but we will be embarking on that shortly. So, I hope that will be the case.

In terms of things like mistakes that have been made in the past with cavity walls, which we're all aware of, and other unintended consequences—some of the Welsh housing quality standard stuff has clad houses that no longer breathe and have, of course, condensation problems and so on—what we need to be able to do is get the experts together and make sure that we are learning from those mistakes. We'll not be able to not make any further mistakes, but we need to learn the lessons of the ones that we are aware of. We do know that for some of the types of houses we've got in Wales we have no current solution. So, we need to look at that. We've also got to be aware that if the only solution for a house is that it's not able to get to this standard, we need to make decisions based on what would happen if you demolished that house. Would we be making a worse carbon footprint by demolishing it than we are by just getting it to whatever the best standard it can get to is? And it's all that kind of stuff, and there's a lot of historic environment things to talk about there about the shape of peoples' cities and towns.

So, there's quite a lot to consider here, but I think we can agree a broad direction of travel, and as I said in response to David Melding, we can also agree on what we don't agree on and we can park those bits and just continue with the bits that we broadly do agree on. So, I'm hopeful that we'll be able to do that swiftly. And we do need to consider things like if we have—whatever the data tells us—a percentage of stock that cannot go beyond EPC C or B, or whatever: what are we going to do about that? We'll have to consider what the recycling arrangements are. Demolishing a house causes carbon all by itself: what happens to the waste that you get from that and so on? So, we will have to make some difficult decisions about where we are.

And then the biggest one of all is greening the grid. So, we'll have to make some difficult decisions, which we'll have to try and be as consensual as possible about because unless you green the grid all the other stuff pales into insignificance. So, we'll have to work very hard together and face some difficult decisions, but I couldn't agree more with your German example. We have to do the stuff we can do and we have to fund and support our scientists and engineers to be able to take that a step further and we have to do it as fast as possible. We cannot wait another 30 years with this building up around us. So, I, for one, have believed in the climate emergency for the last 40 or more years and my parents became vegetarian in 1958 because they thought there was a climate crisis—I know vegetarianism isn't the solution to all, let's not start that hare running, but I'm just saying that people were trying to respond to it as far back as the middle of the last century. Whether the response was the right one or not, it doesn't matter—the point is they were trying to respond. So, it's just an accelerating picture, isn't it? So, we need to respond, we need to find what's consensual, and take that forward as fast as possible.

Thank you for your statement, Minister. Decarbonising our housing is the biggest challenge that we face, and I therefore welcome the report on the decarbonisation of homes in Wales advisory group. I, too, would like to thank the group for their wide-ranging report, which helps to highlight the stark challenges that we all face.

I'm pleased that you've accepted the recommendations of the advisory group, but I totally understand the need that you take to be cautious and I'm pleased that you have emphasised the importance on the collation of data for existing homes because that is extremely important, along with the total costs of the projects undertaken. So, our task is enormous, as the vast majority of our homes rely upon natural gas for heating, and as you make clear in your statement, Minister, decarbonisation of our national gas grid will not be easy. Therefore, in light of this, may I ask what discussions you have had with the UK Government and the other home nations about the best approach to decarbonising our national grid?

Work has been undertaken to explore the possibility of replacing natural gas with hydrogen in domestic heating and micro CHP, so is the Welsh Government exploring ways of bringing such technologies forward under boiler replacement schemes aimed at improving energy efficiency and reducing fuel poverty?

And my final part is, Minister: work is under way in London to harness the waste heat from the electricity grid. The high voltage power lines criss-crossing the city produce a lot of waste heat and require active cooling. So, London South Bank University are looking to capture up to 460 kW of thermal power every one and a half miles. This excess heat energy will be used in community heating schemes. So, will your Government look into the viability of such schemes in Wales’s urban communities? Diolch yn fawr.

Thank you for those points. The very simple answer to the last two points is 'yes, absolutely'. And one of the reasons that we have the innovative housing programme is to test some of the technical solutions, and we're very keen on looking to see what can be done. I'm also very keen in Wales on community energy solutions as well. So, I have had meetings with the grid. I've not yet had meetings with the UK Ministers, but my colleague Lesley Griffiths has the energy portfolio so she will have been taking that forward. We do work very closely together with Lesley's portfolio, and pulling this together is very much part of the picture of how to take this forward. But I've met with the grid about some of this as well.

There are some innovative solutions that we can look at, but I'm also very keen to capture any new markets or job opportunities or supply chains for Wales. So, I do think that a lot of the solution to this will be around community focused energy projects or local or distributed energy projects, as well as what the grid can do. So, we will need to work very closely with the grid suppliers and the big energy companies, and we will need to look very carefully at what kind of energies we want to consent across Wales and what the communities that host those projects get out of it as well as what Wales gets out of it more widely. But we're very interested in any technical solutions and we have a large number of universities here in Wales working on a number of those.

We're also looking to see what we can do, and I'd like to get a cross-party consensus on this, about getting a scheme together to test some of those as part of our retrofit as we go forward and as we decide what to do once we make the Welsh housing quality standard. I just want to make the point that, when we said what we were going to do with the Welsh housing quality standard, a lot of people thought we wouldn't be able to do it and that it was a very difficult target indeed, and here we are—we've done it. So, it is about having the right level of ambition as well.

I welcome the statement. Climate change demands action. The atmosphere has approximately 21 per cent oxygen at sea level. Below 19.5 per cent, the ability to work diminishes; below 17 per cent, things are getting difficult, and, when you get down to 15 per cent, people die. Sea-level rises will flood cities and coastal areas, storms will get stronger—inevitably so, because there will be more energy in them from the additional heat.

Most of the houses that we will inhabit in 2030 and 2050, and even 2100, have been built already and people are living in them now, if you just think about how many houses in the areas that you represent were built pre-1919—to give some idea about how long houses last. We will need to retrofit. This is more expensive and intrusive than creating zero-carbon new builds, but we really do need to go for zero-carbon new builds. We need every political party to sign up to decarbonising housing, if only to give confidence to the industry that a change of Government will not lead to a change in policy. I think that will be the most important thing: to show that the Government might change, but the policy will continue.

What I want to talk about is not just the houses, but the house environs. We will almost certainly not be able to get every house down to zero carbon. We need to plant more urban trees and bushes. Trees absorb carbon dioxide and potentially harmful gases, such as sulphur dioxide and carbon monoxide from the air and release oxygen. One large tree can supply a day's supply of oxygen for four people. A tree can absorb as much as 48 pounds of carbon dioxide per year, and can take in a tonne of carbon dioxide by the time it reaches 40 years old. So, if we can't decarbonise the house, we can decarbonise the house and its environs, and that means planting trees and bushes, and, more importantly, not chopping down trees and bushes. So, I think it is important that we look not just at the building but at its environs as well. Alongside retrofitting, will the Minister commit to a substantial increase in the number of urban trees, bushes and other means of reducing the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere?

Yes, I absolutely agree with you. You've only got to look at the front page of Chris Jofeh's report, and the blue changing to red. The significance of that is that there's a stripe for every year of the temperature being recorded and the stark difference between the blue on the left-hand side and the bright red on the right-hand side on the front cover of the report. I did mean to bring it with me, Llywydd, but, of course, it's been a long day, so I've carefully left it upstairs. But it is a stark pictogram of the warming of the earth, and there's no getting away from the fact that it's changed substantially. We need to do everything that we can do in our power to stop it getting even brighter red, never mind turning it back to blue.  So, I couldn't agree more with you; we absolutely have got to push out the zero-carbon new builds policy as fast as we can, and review part L, as I was just saying in response to other contributors.

But the urban greening projects and the urban forest projects and the community orchard projects and community garden projects that we need to make our communities real communities—they bring mental health benefits, they bring socialisation and community cohesion benefits, but as you rightly point out, more than anything else, they bring oxygen and cooling, and they bring shade, and they bring biodiversity, so what's not to like? So, absolutely, we have to drive that kind of mentality into our planning system and into the urban environment. So, estate management around our housing is as important as the housing itself; I could not agree more.

Jenny Rathbone. No, she's not here. Huw Irranca-Davies. 

Diolch. I'm substituting for Jenny. No, no—I’m here in my own right. Diolch, Llywydd. Could I, first of all, just welcome the statement today, but also the tone and the substance of the responses that have come forward from fellow Assembly Members, and the response of the Minister as well? We hosted last week here—I was one of the co-sponsors of an event in response to the climate emergency. It was a day-long event. It went through a lot of areas, including housing. Rhun and others were there as well. Two things that came very strongly across in the panel that ended that day, where Assembly Members came along and discussed their findings with them, were the need for real, cross-party consensus to take some of these issues forward, not to bind in future governments, but actually to set a clear course of direction that would bind us all together, but secondly so we could take long-term decisions, even with the urgency on this—some of these things that go way beyond electoral cycles that we're going to have to really stick at very, very hard indeed. So, I really welcome the statement and the approach to it.

I also welcome within it the fact that you're setting up the green finance group. There is a level of ambition within this that shows that, whilst other parliaments at this moment may be in all sorts of challenge and difficulty and chaos to some extent, here in Wales we are trying to get on with responding to what is a genuine climate emergency, and has been for some time. Now, some people will say it needs to go further and faster, et cetera, et cetera, and Llyr has made that clear already. But I welcome the establishment of the green finance group, because that will have to work through some of the hard nitty-gritty.

In that respect, could I ask the Minister: has she had time to reflect and accept in principle all the recommendations that have come forward? Has she done this through the filter as well of either any discussions with, or any reading of, the future generations commissioner's 10-point plan? Two of those points in the 10-point plan were specifically to do with housing and buildings. One was to do with retrofitting, and it put a cost to Welsh Government of around £300 million, but a total of £1 billion a year. So, that green finance group is going to have to work hard to meet with what the Minister has said, but certainly the ambition that the future generation commissioner has. And for new homes—that all new homes and public buildings should be zero carbon from 2020, building on the learning from the recent £90 million through your innovative housing programme, which we've talked about here. So, has that been looked at in terms of the light of accepting these in-principle recommendations? And will she also accept that we may need to revisit these again, in light of the need to constantly ratchet up our levels of ambition as well?

Finally, I want to echo Llyr's point in terms of, if we're going to drive this forward at a rate of knots, particularly in terms of retrofitting, we really need to make sure that it's right. One of the lessons we have learnt is it has actually generated—. When you have a really ambitious green industrial strategy, which has people on every street corner setting up to install retrofit and so on, you'll have really good people there, but occasionally you'll have people who are giving the wrong advice and installing the wrong things.

I've got a chap in Tondu in my area who will lose his house over this. It's already cost him probably around £60,000 plus on his home itself, plus the cost of going to court and so on. It's devastated him and his family. So, for all the good examples out there, and there are many, we need to avoid that poor quality from some cowboys as well, giving the wrong advice. How do we make sure that that'll do it at the speed and intensity that we're going to take this forward with the retrofitting?

So, just on that last point, we have been discussing with industry and industry representatives having some kind of licensing scheme. We're very keen to work with the UK Government on that, though, because lots of people in this kind of industry across the board are very regulated and they're very anxious not to have to comply with two different regulatory regimes. But we are very keen on getting a licence scheme going.

My colleague Mike Hedges has been involved in a couple of social media arguments about whether you can call yourself a particular type of trade without any qualifications and so on, and I think we've got to move to a situation where, actually, you aren't able to do that because there are some professional standards to be met, and that's for all kinds of reasons, not just for retrofit: so, that you can't, you know, have somebody knock on your door and offer to fix your roof if you can't check what their qualifications might be to do that. So, I completely agree with that and we're exploring with local authorities ways that we can use their approved lists to give people reassurance about contractors and so on. So, I very much take that on board. 

But here we have a situation where we actually have almost no skill in this area anyway, so we'll have to develop it anew. There are huge opportunities here. I think Llyr said, didn't he, 'Don't think about the cost of it; think of the cost of not doing it.' Well, that's absolutely right. But also there are opportunity costs here. So, we can make an industry out of this and we can make Wales the centre of it if we do it fast enough and in the right way. So, I completely agree with that. But we do have to make sure that we start in the right place with the right experts and we start where we can do things and we get the right research going for some of the rest of it. 

As I said, there are some difficult decisions to be made here. So, yes, we absolutely are setting up the finance to do it; we'll have to leverage in other finance to do that. As I said, we'll have to incentivise homeowners—people lucky enough to be able to be buying or who already own their home outright, we'll need to get them to do it as well. We'll need to probably do some market intervention to make people be rewarded for—you know, if they have spent that much money on it, they need to be getting that back. We need some incentives here, and it's not just the lowering of your energy bills, is it, it's the value of your asset. It's probably the only asset most people have, so they will need to have that.

And then when we do the shared equity schemes that we talked about earlier in the innovative housing programme—some of the stuff Dawn was talking about earlier up in Merthyr Valleys Homes—we'll need to make sure that people get their share of that and that we're able to spread the skills and expertise. But you can see this as a huge opportunity. You don't have to see it as a doom and gloom, my goodness. If we do it right, we can stimulate an industry here that gives employment to our communities and actually keeps the power in them as well. But we have got to get it right. That's why I wasn't hesitant about saying we'll accept them in principle, but we need to start somewhere and then build on it. So, I take whatever he says about that, but we really are not trying to fob it off. We are trying to start in the right place to get consensus to build a programme here. 

Thank you, Minister, and thank you to Members, and that brings today's proceedings to a close. 

The meeting ended at 18:44.