2. What consideration has the Minister given to the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015 in preparing the Welsh Government's budget for next year? OAQ54525

I've met with the Future Generations Commissioner for Wales on a number of occasions to discuss how the Act can inform our draft budget preparations to maximise our available resources to have the greatest impact over the longer term.

Thank you, Minister. Obviously, since the Government declared a climate emergency, back in April, which has been fully endorsed by nearly all Members of the Assembly, how does the Welsh Government plan to assess the upcoming budget in the context of the climate emergency and the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015? And what analysis is being done about the impact of budget decisions on our goal of achieving zero carbon?

The well-being of future generations Act has very much been at the heart of all of our budget discussions so far. So, when I've met with each of the Ministers in Welsh Government, I have been asking them specifically what they are doing within their portfolios to bring to life all of the ambitions within the well-being of future generations Act and how they're using that to help inform their decisions in terms of their own departmental budgets at an early stage. We've had excellent meetings with the future generations commissioner, and we're working with her to develop a journey checker—so it's part of our budget improvement plan—which will show what actions we're going to take in the short, medium and longer terms to fully embed the well-being of future generations Act within our budget process. And that responds, I think, very much to one of the Finance Committee's recommendations that they put forward.

Overall, across Government, we've looked at this particular budget through the lens of our eight priority areas, and one of those is decarbonisation. And I think one of the ways in which we can really make some good strides with decarbonisation is looking at how we spend our capital funding in particular. So, this is an area that I've been working very closely with colleagues on to ensure that we have positive news in terms of the capital element particularly of our budget.

I note that Lord Bird, the founder of The Big Issue, is introducing a future generations Act into the House of Lords, inspired very much by the work of Welsh Government. So, a big tick for that. I think this is a really good process, but I have to say, in the financial scrutiny I've been involved in in committees, when you ask the senior officials what training they have had in the use of the Act in budget formation, what decisions have been made that have been different to previous decision making, where the shift's occurring, we get sometimes an embarrassed silence. So, I do hope there'll be some rigour in your monitoring and evaluation of how this Act is used in the budget-making process.

I hope that when committees ask officials this during this year's budget scrutiny they won't have that silence. Because we've been working hard to ensure that officials across Welsh Government, not just within the finance department, understand the importance of embedding the Act within their decision making. And one of the meetings with the future generations commissioner has been among senior finance officials across Welsh Government—so, not just within the finance department—and that's to ensure that officials working in finance in the various different Government departments have a consistent understanding of the need to embed the Act within decision making.

Can I thank Jenny Rathbone for bringing this question forward today—a crucially important question at a crucial time for our planet and for our future generations? Minister, I welcome your comments, but can you tell me specifically what you are doing to assess and analyse the carbon impact of existing spend as well as any new spend, and how do you plan to publish this to allow Members and others to scrutinise?

Well, you'll be familiar with our 'Prosperity for All' low-carbon plan for Wales, which sets out 100 of the different actions that we are taking across Government in terms of ensuring that decarbonisation is very much at the centre of the work that we are doing. But I think it's important to do this within the context of our Environment (Wales) Act 2016, and that puts in place a really robust governance system for Welsh Ministers

So, following advice from the advisory body—the UK Committee on Climate Change—we've increased, as you know, our long-term pathway to respond to a climate emergency: so, from 80 per cent to 95 per cent by the end of 2050, and the Welsh Government is committed to putting a higher emissions reduction target of at least 95 per cent into law. And that really does mean that our pathways have to change and that the decisions that we make have to be made in a different way.

But I think that our low-carbon delivery plans, going forward, will also continually need to show how each Minister's contributing to the actions within our carbon budget, and, as a result, all Ministers will need to reflect on the spending decisions that they have made and that they will make in setting their detailed main expenditure group spending plans.

Within my own portfolio, I think that we can look particularly to the work that's going on in procurement, and that plays a really important role in helping to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. And one of the things that we've done to assess those decisions that we've already made and then to inform better decision making in future is to introduce a decarbonisation dashboard that was developed by Value Wales, and that shows the carbon dioxide emissions for categories of various spends across Government. So, that allows us to look at the decisions that we've made and then seek opportunities to make better decisions in future.