Questions Without Notice from Party Spokespeople

Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Environment, Energy and Rural Affairs – in the Senedd at 1:50 pm on 4 March 2020.

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Photo of Lesley Griffiths Lesley Griffiths Labour 1:50, 4 March 2020

If I can take your first point first, I think we have to have that flexibility and I think Julie James's portfolio is a classic example of how you have to have that flexibility, and something we've done in flooding and I think—. I probably may get a question on this later, but Rhianon Passmore certainly raised it with the First Minister yesterday and that was about, if a local authority is collecting flood-damaged furniture, for instance, from people's homes, would that be counted against their recycling targets? And the First Minister and the Minister for Housing and Local Government made it very clear that there will be flexibility around that, and I think it will be the same now. As this continues to unfold, we're going to have to have that flexibility, and, again, working with, obviously, food processors, food producers, that is clearly something we're going to have to work on. It's also—. I've been asked a question now about do companion animals, for instance, carry coronavirus and the short answer is: at the moment, we have no evidence of that, but clearly we need to keep a watching eye on that. So, there is so much early work that is now having to be accelerated, I think, in light of the action plan that came out for the four countries yesterday, et cetera.