Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Economy, Transport and North Wales – in the Senedd at 1:40 pm on 26 February 2020.
Can I thank Helen Mary Jones for the question regarding electrical charging points? I think the explanation is really rather simple: it's that there's been a market failure to date across much of the UK, including huge swathes of Wales. To address that, the Government—any Government—could do one of two things: (1) wait for the market to respond to increasing demand, and we have seen a significant increase in the number of charging points; or (2) invest.
Now, if a Government is going to invest, there are further options. One is to just plough the money into existing charging systems and use taxpayers' money to pay for the infrastructure that's required, or use the moneys to incentivise the market. That is precisely what we're doing with the £2 million that was agreed with Plaid Cymru, working alongside the Development Bank of Wales, and the providers of electric charging points, so that we don't just get £2 million-worth of infrastructure points, but that we get many millions more, and, in so doing, drive up the figure quite considerably in terms of how many charging points we have across Wales.