Questions Without Notice from Party Spokespeople

Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Finance and Trefnydd – in the Senedd at 1:43 pm on 5 February 2020.

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Photo of Rebecca Evans Rebecca Evans Labour 1:43, 5 February 2020

I would disagree with that, because I think that when we do make pledges, then we keep them. So, this budget that I have published now delivers on our major pledges that we made at the last election. So, it delivers on the 100,000 apprenticeships for all ages across the term of this Assembly; it delivers on doubling the amount that people can keep before paying for social care; it delivers on providing small businesses with support for their rates; and it delivers on all of those other items that were our key pledges, and so we can go to people next time, saying that we did deliver on those pledges.

Insofar as electric vehicles are concerned, it is a very important issue and I'm pleased that you've secured the debate for it this afternoon. I think that there's a lot that the market needs to do yet. So, Mike Hedges, in the debate yesterday, was just reminding us that different kinds of vehicles will require different kinds of chargers. Now that, clearly, seems to me to be problematic.

Just this week, the European Union has put into law a requirement that phone chargers for whichever kind of device, be they Android or Apple, will now need to be the same. That's good news for consumers. I don't know why we can't explore what we can do that could be good news for consumers to make this easier.