Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 2:55 pm on 12 November 2019.
Organiser, could I seek two statements if possible, please, and the first on ash dieback? The Tree Council recently did a survey and made a report on that survey across the whole of the UK, and the potential financial costs and environmental costs. In England in particular local authorities have faced bills of tens of millions of pounds. I appreciate that those local authorities are bigger than local authorities in Wales, but the magnitude of this cannot be underestimated. As you drive around you can see far more tree work being undertaken because of ash dieback, which is now taking hold across the whole of Wales and the rest of the United Kingdom. Indeed, this particular report identifies the potential loss of 2 billion trees. Dutch elm disease, which many people are familiar with, lost us 150 million trees, so you can see the scale of this. I'd be grateful if we could have a statement from the Government as to how—and I'm not quite sure which Government Minister it would be, whether it would be the Minister for local government or the rural affairs Minister—it is engaging with local authorities and other public bodies as to (a) the liabilities and (b) what work is being undertaken to try and obviously mitigate any fallout from such a massive impact on our tree canopy across the length and breadth of Wales.
Secondly, could I seek some clarification from the housing Minister, who very kindly agreed to go to Celestia residents up the road here and meet with them and discuss their problems? I met with them on Friday and they were anxious that they were able to meet with the Minister and, as I understand it, in committee the Minister indicated that she'd be prepared to meet the residents. I do accept that ministerial diaries are very busy and it takes time to plan these things, but it would be very helpful if the residents could get an understanding of when such a meeting would be furnished so that they could obviously plan accordingly.