Item 6 on the agenda this afternoon is the debate on a Member's legislative proposal: electric vehicle charge points. I call on David Melding to move the motion. 

Motion NDM7239 David Melding

Supported by Angela Burns, Dai Lloyd, David J. Rowlands, Huw Irranca-Davies, Jenny Rathbone, Mark Isherwood, Mick Antoniw, Mohammad Asghar, Rhun ap Iorwerth, Russell George, Vikki Howells

To propose that the National Assembly for Wales:

1. Notes a proposal for a Bill which requires all new-build homes to be fitted with at least one electric car charge point. 

2. Notes that the purpose of this Bill would be to ensure that:

a) every new residential building with an associated car parking space has an electric charging point installed;

b) every residential building that is new or undergoing major renovation, with more than 10 car parking spaces, has cable routes for electric vehicle charge points in at least 50 percent of the total parking spaces.

Motion moved.

Diolch yn fawr, Dirprwy Lywydd. May I thank the Business Committee for giving me the opportunity to speak about this legislative proposal today? Can I also thank all the Members who have supported it? A great many, I'm pleased to say, put their name to this for discussion today. I'm very pleased that my proposed Bill has received support from all political parties, indeed. I believe that this shows that there is a broad political consensus in favour of rapidly improving the electric vehicle network in Wales.

It fits into the wider narratives, of course, that have been dominating this Assembly for the last few years, none more so than the declaration of a climate emergency by the Welsh Government. It also encapsulates the principles that we support and promote in the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015, and it would move us significantly closer to achieving our international climate obligations. Electric vehicles are the future. I don't doubt that that's the case. Indeed, only yesterday, the UK Government announced that new petrol, diesel and hybrid cars will not be sold from 2035, at the latest. And given that that target has now been reduced from 2040 down to 2035, I think 'at the latest' is an interesting qualification. 

As previously mentioned in this Chamber, there are still a number of barriers that need to be overcome, such as improvements in battery technology, better range, faster charging and growth in the choice of models available. But the sector is surpassing these barriers at an astonishing pace, Only last week, Tesla posted record sales of electric vehicles and their share price has increased significantly. The car industry itself is bracing for 2020 to be the breakthrough year for electric cars, with the number of models in British showrooms set to more than double, and annual sales of zero-emission passenger cars potentially breaking through the 100,000 mark. This is highly significant. 

But unfortunately, Deputy Presiding Officer, whilst Britain as a whole is on the verge of an electric car revolution, the people of Wales are not yet feeling that fully. So much so that even The Guardian reported on this issue towards the end of last year. According to the figures that they quoted, the eight counties in the UK with the lowest number of charge points per person are all in Wales. Rhondda Cynon Taf was at the bottom of the league, with only three chargers for every 100,000 residents; Caerphilly and the Vale of Glamorgan were not much better, with only four and five per 100,000 respectively. Now, two of those council areas are in my region of South Wales Central, so I definitely want to see this improve very quickly. 

Now, according to the experts, the lack of charging points across the country is one of the most important factors holding back the consumer take-up of electric vehicles. Drivers are, therefore, put off making this crucial change. That's why the UK Government has put forward legislation, on which my motion is loosely based. It would be apt for me to recognise, at this point, that the proposals build on foundations that have already been laid by Members in this Chamber, and I recall Rhun ap Iorwerth's similar legislative proposal from 2018, which also got wide support from Members and all political parties. 

What I am proposing, and indeed what Rhun proposed in 2018, is legislation that will be a step forward towards providing the basic infrastructure that we need to charge these electric vehicles in order to make it easier for people to make that choice for this new technology. So, why is the Welsh Government so dormant in this area, really? There are many options at our disposal, and we need to emphasise this. We could see Wales as a leader of sustainable and renewable transport, and I do think that should be our ambition.

My proposal is just one of those options, to ensure that all new-build homes come with the necessary infrastructure for this vehicle transition to take place. It is one piece of the puzzle. A key attraction of an electric vehicle is that it can be charged wherever it is parked, providing there is a suitable electrical outlet. People will want this to be provided with ease of access in all aspects of their normal daily life, whether they go to the supermarket, their place of work—indeed, I'm delighted that we do have some charging points now on the Assembly estate—or at the gym.

My legislation ensures that we are connecting this technology into the most common and basic aspect of our daily life: one's home. This is where the vast majority of electric vehicle charging will happen. Home charging would provide the most convenient option, of course, and will more often than not be cheaper than using the public network, particularly when charging overnight and taking advantage of off-peak tariffs. Given that 98 per cent of journeys in the UK are less than 50 miles, many drivers with access to a charge point at home may never need to use the public charge point network.

I do think the time has come for us to hardwire this into our new housing. The UK Government estimates that a charging point costs about £976 per parking space if provided with a new build or a renovation, as opposed to over £2,000 for retrofit. So, clearly, we need to get on and do this and help our residents make that great choice. Thank you.

I'm very happy to support your proposal for a Bill, though I have some reservations on the detail, which I'd just like to outline. I think hydrogen vehicles are one of the solutions, but it certainly wouldn't be on top of my list of solutions, to the carbon crisis. At the moment, take-up is very low because they cost a lot of money and they aren't available. It takes at least three months to even get a new car, which are eye-wateringly expensive, and second-hand ones are almost no cheaper for the obvious reason that there's such a shortage of these vehicles. But the number of charging points that are being put in every single day is, I think, somewhere between six and 12, so the whole market is exploding. Nevertheless, I congratulate you on having a very timely proposal on the back of the Government's announcement.

But some of the reservations: will the city dwellers of the future really want to clog up their streets with metal boxes that are stationary for over 90 per cent of the day? Wouldn't the space between homes be so much better used for children and adults to play as well as grow food? I remember the visit that I made in the fourth Assembly with some members of the environment committee to Freiburg in Baden-Württemberg as part of the environment committee, and the quality and connectivity of the public transport and active travel routes meant that far fewer residents in that city bothered to have a car, and were renting one as and when they needed to go on holiday or make a special or unusual journey.

One housing estate we visited had a wonderful willow adventure playground whose footprint overtly represented the footprint of land set aside for an additional car park. And the question for residents was: did they prefer this wooded playground or another multi-storey car park? And it's worth noting that the design of that estate allowed people to drive up to their front door to offload people or groceries, but cars could only be parked in the existing multi-storey car park, and that made for just a much more pleasant environment. So, I think we have an awful long way to go in our thinking through of twenty-first century appropriate designs.

Secondly, whilst electric vehicles belch out a lot less pollution than diesel or petrol cars, I grant you they are not without cost to the environment. It all depends, for example, on whether the energy they're going to be using to charge that electric vehicle is clean energy from renewables—not much of that happening anywhere in Britain that I'm aware of—or dirty energy from fossil fuels. There's a huge difference in terms of the outcome for the environment and for carbon emissions. So, if this proposal gets the go-ahead, I'd want to see the proposal amended to insist that the electric charging points put in with new housing—

Will the Member take an intervention?

—are fired up by renewable energy. [Interruption.] I will take an intervention, yes.

Yes, but you are out of time, you realise, don't you?

Okay. All right. Well, I'll have to not take the intervention.

I'm delighted to be able to support David Melding's Bill. I think that this is very neat, very timely and actually is a small Bill that we could get through the Assembly in double-quick time, because it is so highly focused.

I heard what Jenny Rathbone said, and I do agree that there are issues to be overcome, but I also believe that we will only solve the climate crisis by lots of small steps. Anybody looking to find something that's going to be a complete panacea and solve it all in one go—it's just not going to happen. This is one small step. The other items you mentioned are other small steps.

I'm particularly concerned because there are more and more people who are trying to go down the electric car route but, particularly in rural areas, finding car-charging spaces is well-nigh impossible. Although, I would like to say, I've found a great website called Zap-Map that goes around showing you all of your charging areas throughout the UK; pretty bare in Wales, it has to be said.

I'm delighted, actually, that the UK Government has taken the commitment to ban the sale of fossil fuel cars by 2035. As somebody who loves her car, lives in her car, and likes to go at the speed of light, I'm having to bite the bullet. But actually, I want my kids to grow up in a really good environment and to have a planet to live on. So, I'm converted to the whole electric car opportunity.

The other reason why I think this is such a good idea, David, is because I've long advocated the use of what we call the Merton principle in the building of new housing estates. Now, this is a prescriptive planning principle that is used, named after the London borough of Merton, which came up with it in the first place. It says that 10 per cent of all energy needs of a new housing estate should come from renewable energy sources on the site of where the houses are. So, why not expand that to put electric vehicle charging points in with all of those houses, because we're taking that and developing it one step further?

I'd also like the Government to consider, when we move forward with this Bill, looking at things such as an the interest-free electric vehicle loans that Transport Scotland currently run, which enables people to purchase electric cars. They are still pretty expensive, they have very convoluted sales and buying, you've got to have the facility to be able to put a plug-in charger at home—difficult if you live in a block of flats. But Transport Scotland have come up with a way to give people substantial sums of money on very low-cost loans over six years to get us moving into the electric car revolution, and that's what we all are. This is a small step, or a tiny drive, but I think this is a really good idea, a good piece of legislation. David Melding, I wish you well with it, and I will support it all the way.

As a proud campaigner in favour of greater adoption of ultra low emission vehicles, or ULEVs, I welcome very much this motion from David Melding, and I'm happy to support it.

Just in response to what we heard from Angela Burns—you said you like your car, you like to drive fast, but you'll support EVs—EVs drive like any other car. We're not asking you to give up anything; we're asking you to make a contribution to the environment.

David Melding mentioned earlier that I proposed a similar motion back in 2018. That was not just on housing; that was on introducing planning guidelines for new developments, whether they're public buildings or housing, in order to make sure that we have that wider network. I also proposed a Bill to have a non-carbon-emission public vehicles strategy through legislation for Wales. The point being that we need legislation, and we need to use our legislative tools. The market will deliver a lot of what we want, but just as with broadband, the market doesn't reach out to all parts of Wales. Government has to step in with funding, Government has to step in with legislation too, and we have to look at all those tools at our disposal in order to encourage take-up.

I talked earlier in the Chamber today about money secured by Plaid Cymru in a budget deal a couple of years ago, to secure money for a national network of charging points. Again, the market will pay for a lot of the charging points that we'll need, but when it comes to housing—[Interruption.] I don't think we can take interventions in these debates, can we? 

Yes, you can.

Just in a second. In years to come, no doubt when people insist on having charging points in their homes, builders will put them in. But what Government can do is insist that that happens through legislation now, in order to drive that culture change, which will lead us to that point in the not-too-distant future.

Do you agree that these new electric charging points need to be generated by renewable energy? Otherwise we're simply not actually moving the dial on our carbon emissions.

To keep my answer short, electric vehicles are still more efficient than internal-combustion-engine-driven cars even if they're fuelled by electricity generated by fossil fuels, because they're more efficient. But you're absolutely right, of course: that's where we need to get to, that we're using clean electricity to drive the car. So it's a central point.

There's much that we need to do in Wales. I published this report along with my team member, Jamie Thomas, last year, looking at lessons from Scotland, and there's so much that we can learn from what they did in Scotland. They took this seriously years ago. They put measures in place through central Scottish Government, and through local councils such as Dundee, in order to drive that culture change, and there are so many questions for Welsh Government to look at. What incentives can people be given to make the switch? Who can they work in partnership with to make ULEVs more attractive to people? How will the benefits of ULEVs be communicated to people? How can Wales innovate and normalise in the ULEV field? How can we control things centrally, as they've done in Scotland, in having a central, publicly owned hub to which data from private companies are fed in so that they know how people in Scotland are behaving in relation to electric vehicles?

So, this is another important piece of legislation being proposed by David Melding. I hope the Government really run with this.

I also support David Melding's legislative proposal. Like Rhun ap Iorwerth, I'm also a campaigner in this area myself. I think we're all very aware of the Welsh Government's climate change declaration, and of course David Melding's referred to the UK Government's announcement yesterday to phase out petrol and diesel cars at a much earlier stage. So I think it is important that we accelerate action in this area, to make sure that we're prepared for the change ahead.

That's why the Economy, Infrastructure and Skills Committee did a piece of work on this last year, and we actually conducted our inquiry in a very different way. We started in a normal way, in taking evidence, but what we then did is we decided to publish our draft report, and we did that because this is such a fast-moving area of policy change. So we wanted that further input, and then once we had that we then published our final report. We also took into account the work that Rhun ap Iorwerth had done, because that coincided more or less with our report.

'Planning Policy Wales: Edition 10' has a new policy on ultra low emission vehicles that requires non-residential developments to have charging points at at least 10 per cent of the parking spaces available. But our report recommended going further than this, and we said that this should be extended to include residential developments, and that consideration should be given to raising the percentage of parking spaces with charging points as electric vehicles become more prevalent. So, as a result of that, I was very pleased that the Welsh Government accepted this recommendation and indicated that the move to charging points in non-residential developments was—and I'm quoting here—

'intended to be an interim measure in lieu of a more comprehensive approach to be taken forward through the Building Regulations.'

So, our committee's report called for urgent action and the Welsh Government has said that it will bring forward a new electric vehicle charging strategy, and what that contains will be very important.

We've heard about market intervention, and the market will intervene in this area, but it is a chicken-and-egg situation. We do need the Government to step in to break that cycle, and that's why I'm very supportive of the proposals that have been put forward by David Melding today and I'll be supporting his legislative proposal.

I'm pleased to support this motion, but recognise that the need for electric car charging points in residential buildings only represents part of the wider infrastructure required.

I chaired the first session at December's Policy Forum for Wales keynote seminar, 'Energy policy in Wales and enabling the transition to a low-carbon economy—priorities for cutting emissions, infrastructure and investment and supporting the economy.' As I stated there, the ability to store large amounts of energy is critical to renewable energy, because sunshine and wind don't simply appear at convenient times when humans need electricity, but if all conventional cars and public vehicles are replaced by electric cars and vehicles, the world would run out of lithium, which is used in batteries, in around five decades. I also commented that, in the United States, there's research now on alternative renewable energy batteries, but they're not yet ready to take to market. 

We also heard from the expert panel that we do see evidence that transition to electric and other forms of low-emission vehicles is under way, but it's under way much slower in Wales than the rest of the UK, and that's measured by the uptake of electric vehicles and by the provision of charging point infrastructure.

We heard that there's a long list of things that public sector organisations could and should be doing, including facilitating a network of charging points and leading by example, by encouraging the adoption of electric vehicles within public sector fleets and their supply chains, using their leverage through procurement. We heard that it's absolutely crucial that there are charging points at the right rates and in the right locations to give fleets and individuals confidence to go out and invest in an electric vehicle, and that the public sector can lead by example, as I indicated. 

My own son-in-law is a qualified electric vehicle charger installer, and I recently met Flintshire-based businesses delivering both training and installation. All are waiting for the dam to burst, yet UK Department for Transport statistics published in December showed that only 60 publicly available rapid chargers exist across Wales, with none, they say, in Gwynedd, Conwy, Rhondda Cynon Taf, Merthyr Tydfil, Caerphilly, Blaenau Gwent or Torfaen, and only 1.8 per 100,000 population in Wales, compared to 3.6 in England and 7.5 in Scotland. 

In his recent statement on the north Wales metro, the Minister for Economy and Transport referred to the new park-and-ride site and active travel routes on the Deeside Industrial Park—good things; however, I'm advised that only two double chargers are being installed for 240 parking spaces at the park and ride, and that even this took sector intervention with the council. We've got to do better. 

Can I now call on the Minister for Housing and Local Government, Julie James?

Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer, and thank you all for the contributions made on this topic. I very much welcome the opportunity to discuss measures that have the potential to contribute meaningfully to the transformation of our transport sector and our environment, and which have so much obvious cross-party consensus.

Clearly, this matter relates to transport, however I am responding to the debate as we have determined that building regulations, which fall within my portfolio, will be the key means to deliver electric vehicle charging for new buildings, as we said to Russell George's committee report, indeed. 

The electrification of road transport is central to our plans to reduce carbon emissions, as set out in 'Prosperity for All: A Low Carbon Wales'. Cars on their own account for almost 8 per cent of Wales's greenhouse gas emissions. Transport sector carbon emissions have changed little since the 1990 baseline, and the emergence of electric vehicles could reduce this significantly during the 2020s. Electric vehicles also have a key role to play in improving air quality in our towns and cities.

As David Melding acknowledged, building the comprehensive network of chargers needed to support the large-scale uptake of electric vehicles will be a significant challenge. There are a variety of charging systems and chargers, and they are needed with various speeds and at a variety of locations to offer convenient charging for all. However, charging at home, for those with the facility to park at home, will be the most convenient and cost-effective method of charging their cars in the foreseeable future. Charging overnight at home can also help to balance the peaks and troughs of electricity demand and so should be encouraged. Around 80 per cent of all electric car charging currently happens at home and we expect that to continue to be the most popular method of charging.

Later this year, the Minister for Economy and Transport will publish an electric vehicle charging strategy, which will help us to decide which actions are required to fulfil the requirements for chargers during the next five years or so. At this early stage in the adoption of electric vehicles, we recognise the need to encourage take-up. I highly recommend the Zap-Map, as highlighted by Angela Burns, for anyone who does have an electric vehicle—it is actually really useful to know where you might find a charging point.

As Russell George said, we've already introduced a requirement in 'Planning Policy Wales' for new non-residential developments, such as supermarkets and workplaces, to have electric vehicle charging points. For existing buildings, we have introduced permitted development rights to enable businesses to install electric vehicle chargers without the need for any planning permission. These measures are all important in addressing concerns about range anxiety. Obviously, anyone who's looked into an electric vehicle immediately works out what their normal range is and whether they can get there and back without the charging mechanism. For those of us who work in two different places, whether you can charge at work if the range is too far, as it would be in my case, for example, is a big issue. 

Will you take an intervention?

Sure.

Just to give you some context there, Minister, if I drive an electric vehicle up from Pembrokeshire to Cardiff Bay and then back again, I have to stop at the services on the M4 in order to re-zap myself to continue on my journey home. That charge itself takes half an hour, so it just lengthens the whole process.  

Yes, I'm in a very similar position myself. Actually, one of the things that I've yet to discuss, but I'm sure the Llywydd and Dirprwy Lywydd will welcome it, is whether we can introduce some electric charging points in this building for Members' cars. We do have some for Government cars, but if we can have a look at extending that, I think that would be very welcome to many Members on a personal basis. But, obviously, we need that spirit to go out into all employment in Wales, so that other people travelling distances to employment or for whatever reason can charge on an interim basis as well.

As I say, we're not stopping there. We've already planned some of the necessary powers to make the changes on electric vehicle chargers. The Minister for Economy and Transport and I have recently agreed to issue a consultation paper on changes to require electric vehicle charging points for all new dwellings and in parking areas for non-residential buildings. Further detail on the specifics of these proposals will be set out in the consultation.

Just in response to Rhun, we have been working in response to the agreement that we made with Plaid. We had 670 charging points across Wales in April of last year and we've got 1,000 at the moment, so it is bumping up a bit, although I agree that we could go faster. 

We do expect that consultation to come out later this spring. So, while I support the objective of requiring new houses to have electric vehicle charging points, it's not necessary to have a Bill as we will be developing our own proposals to bring this forward in our building regulations, which are due to go out to consultation very shortly and cover a range of matters, one of which will be this.

Jenny Rathbone is right about the green infrastructure and designs-for-living points. We do have a couple of programmes in our innovative housing project looking at exactly that, whether people will live in developments where their car is somewhere else. One of the issues that we've had in previous designs is that people will not use parking arrangements away from the house because, often, a car is the second most expensive thing that anybody's ever bought, after their house, so they're very, very reluctant to put it miles away from where they are. But, I agree that we need to look at the green infrastructure around that and what can be built into that.

As Rhun said, I agree that we need Government intervention in a market that isn't entirely delivering, but it's not necessarily primary legislation that we need—we do have other legislative vehicles, including building regulations and the planning arrangements.

Will you take an intervention?

Certainly.

Thanks for giving way. It's been a really productive debate so far. I agree with Members who've said that we need to, as the Minister has said, really ramp up the charging point infrastructure—that's clearly important. As to the future, in Europe there have been some prototype towns where they're looking at Wi-Fi charging, which might be one way of continually charging vehicles along roads in the future. I know that's some way off in Wales, and what you're doing in prioritising the current structure is right, but are you paying any attention to future innovations that might mean that some of these issues in the future resolve themselves? 

Yes, that's a very good point. We have looked at some innovative programmes. I know that the Minister for Economy and Transport's officials, for example, have been looking at whether it's possible to have slow charging lanes along trunk roads, so that you have—I don't understand the technology—some kind of induction looping so that if you drive your car along at x miles per hour it charges back up. We are looking at some of those innovations, but I do think they're a little way off in terms of general infrastructure, but, nevertheless, they need to be kept a weather eye on.

The other thing to say—I think Angela Burns brought this up, and a number of others may have as well—but local authorities already can set renewable targets in their local development plans in accordance with the Merton rule that she mentioned specifically, and others have mentioned the greening of the grid. So, local authorities already can do that in Wales. The thing that we're doing now, in terms of the national development framework and the strategic planning arrangements that we're putting in through the local government Bill, is encouraging them to do that on a strategic, regional level, as well as in their local development plans. But they do have the power to do already. 

So, just to say in summing up, Deputy Presiding Officer, we absolutely support the thrust of this motion to ensure electric vehicle charging points are installed in all new houses and, in fact, in non-residential buildings as well. We are abstaining, however, only because we don't think it needs primary legislation. We're looking at doing it through the building regulations route instead, and that forms part of our forthcoming consultation. 

Can I now ask David Melding to reply to the debate? 

Thank you very much, Deputy Presiding Officer. I think we've had an outstanding debate and really pertinent points brought forward that have added to its depth, and I think really added also authority to the need to move, and I thank the Minister for replying in that spirit also. 

If I can just say, I think, Jenny Rathbone, you're right to say that there are other technologies, and hydrogen is the most likely one, perhaps, when we're comparing, but electric is much more advanced and there are quite formidable challenges still facing hydrogen. But, whatever happens, we want these new technologies to be available. How many cars? I'm with you in being fairly agnostic on car use. I would like to see fewer cars bought and more shared, and we will probably see social trends like that. We're not building that many new houses, so it's fairly limited, really, if we're going to bring in this law. It's not as if we're going to be requiring every house to retrofit. And you're right about renewable energy; it's got to be part of the picture. I think there's a cartoon in the Telegraph today—or it's in one of the newspapers, anyway—showing an electric charging point then linked to a dirty coal-fired power station, and that defeats the object completely.

Angela, I think rural charging points are really, really important, and the zap map, which just sounds wonderful and I'm sure is wonderful, but it's new to me. And you like your car—you're not there with Jenny and myself. We've got to remember this, that lots of people find cars very, very liberating, and Jenny and I live in very urban areas with lots of public transport and other options, so let's remember those that really do rely on their cars. 

Rhun led this agenda and I'm pleased to have the encore here, I suppose. You reassured Angela that electric cars have high performance as well—I don't want to say 'go fast', that might encourage the wrong thing, but, anyway, 'high performance', let's accept that euphemism. And the need, you said, to use legislative power and planning, and look at what Scotland did—you know, it's a vital tool.

Russell, again, the committee has worked hard in this area, and you did remind us about climate change obligations, which this is a very key part of in meeting them. 

Mark talked about the technology, and we do need to improve the battery technology, and the reliance on lithium at the moment is potentially problematic. And the lack of rapid-charging points in Wales is something that clearly is a problem at the moment. 

Then, the Minister focused on building regs and secondary approaches, in the sense of not needing primary legislation, and I really welcome the Welsh Government's plan to bring a strategy forward in this area, which the economy and transport Minister will make. I do politely point out that this is a take-note motion—it's not saying there should be a Bill brought in—so I do hope that you don't have to object to it, because it does not commit you, as far as my reading of the motion goes, anyway; it's merely a take note that this proposal has been made, and you've obviously entered your reservations anyway. So, I hope this can now go through by acclamation, as it were. 

Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. 

Thank you, and the proposal is to note the proposal. Does any Member object? 

I'm afraid I am objecting; we need to abstain.

Okay. So, we defer voting under this item, then, until voting time.

Voting deferred until voting time.