Questions Without Notice from Party Spokespeople

Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Finance and Trefnydd – in the Senedd at 1:52 pm on 8 January 2020.

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Photo of Mark Reckless Mark Reckless Conservative 1:52, 8 January 2020

I can see that the Minister wants to draw on best practice. And to the extent there's a UK Committee on Climate Change and it has a list of various projects that it considers may be effective, I can see why she uses that as a starting point. But, as a finance Minister taking a decision about how much of our precious resources to invest into particular areas, surely, to the extent this is badged as about climate change, she would like to make the maximum difference she could for the amount of money that she has available? Whether the climate impact assessment Rhun suggested is the right way or not, I don't know. But, surely, she needs to do more work on understanding what the bang for her buck—if she does get such—is in each of these different areas?

For example, she mentions the national forest—and, on balance, it strikes me as a good initiative to plant more trees and to have a national forest and work on that in Wales—but, what is the relative cost of that compared to another of her initiatives, which is to invest money in planting trees in Uganda, given the different types of trees that grow, how fast they grow, how much carbon dioxide they absorb, how much it costs to plant them, and how effective is the governance going to be about that? Surely, we need to consider that?

She talks about the way we build new homes, and elsewhere in the budget she emphasises the importance of affordable homes. But, may there not be a trade-off between these two different ambitions? One area where there is, I think, strong evidence of the effectiveness of spending is on energy efficiency and on home insulation, where you both reduce energy bills for the person involved and may have some impact in terms of what she seeks to do around climate change. Is that not an area where she should be investing money, relative to other areas that may be more expensive? For instance, what is the cost of getting that electric bus compared to, say, investing in a few more buses, for example, for Blaenau Gwent? It might either get people out of their cars or allow them to transport in ways they wouldn't otherwise be able to do. Please, in advance of next year's budget, at least, can we have a more rigorous way of making these assessments?

And, she talks about wanting to invest money in communications—I assume telling people how wonderful the Welsh Government is and what it's doing about climate change—but, will she consider actually effective messaging? One of the things that stops those trees being planted is the CAP, because farmland is subsidised but, generally, not woodland. If that's going to change, how will she publicise that? How will she encourage people to do that home insulation, which will benefit them as well? Will she work harder to join up and improve policy in this area?