Questions Without Notice from Party Spokespeople

Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Finance and Trefnydd – in the Senedd at 1:55 pm on 8 January 2020.

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Photo of Rebecca Evans Rebecca Evans Labour 1:55, 8 January 2020

I think the two areas that Mark Reckless focused on—well, two of the areas that he focused on—are actually two of the areas where the evidence from the UK CCC indicated that decarbonisation efforts should be focused on. So, one is the road transport sector—one that's crucial to delivering a net-zero target—and so, in response to that and the evidence that the UK CCC provided, over £60 million of additional targeted investment in decarbonisation is now directly aimed at the transport sector in our budget for next year.

And, alongside that, Mark Reckless identified housing, domestic heating and domestic energy as important areas to address. And again, UK CCC says that's somewhere we should be placing our attention. So, the budget provides an additional £25 million in our innovative housing programme to look at just that. So, we are taking the evidence that's being provided to us and the recommendations from experts and using them to inform our budgeting decisions.

Obviously, there are ways to compare things. So, Mark Reckless refers to our ambitious tree-planting project that we have in Uganda and then looks at the national forest work that we're doing here in Wales. And obviously, we want to do both. You can get more bang for your buck if you only plant those trees in Uganda. It's generally cheaper to do, they grow faster and so on. Depending on what kind of trees are planted, then you will have different results in terms of carbon. But, equally, we want to plant trees in Wales, because we know what the benefit will be for your well-being and so on if you do have the opportunity to walk amongst trees and in woodland. So, there are obviously several benefits to planting trees and they're certainly things that we would want to be doing in Wales, even though you could technically get more bang for your buck doing it elsewhere.