Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 3:46 pm on 1 July 2020.
Thank you, Minister, for your statement this afternoon on this very important subject, obviously building on the announcement that you as a Government made last year, supported, I believe, by all the parties in the Assembly at that time. I'd like to touch on, first of all, your point in your statement around resilience, and, obviously, with the COVID crisis, you've had to make some reallocations within your budget. The regulatory body that, obviously, oversees much of this work is Natural Resources Wales. They've had a realignment in their budget of some £7.5 million. How confident are you that the regulator—? And I've been as critical of NRW as anyone, but, if they haven't got the tools to do the job, it's going to be very challenging for them to build that resilience into either flood prevention or other fields of the environment. So, how confident are you, with that budget cut, that they will be able to meet the expectations you're placing on them to make improvements in this area and live up to your expectations?
I'd also like to point out about Government delivery, when it comes to tree planting, which is another part of your statement that has been constantly raised time and time again, last year, only 80 hectares of fresh tree planting was undertaken in Wales, against a target of 2,000 hectares. Your statement, obviously, is littered with various commitments, various goals, various objectives—on something that is as simple as tree planting, which has been such a longstanding commitment of this Government for the last 10 years plus, each year, it has been getting worse and worse for tree planting in Wales, it has. So, how confident can we be as Assembly Members—and, indeed, the people of Wales when they're reading your statement—that you're going to be able to deliver on those commitments when something as plain as this target that the Government itself set itself has been missed by a country mile? I think we need to have real confidence that you're able to step up to the plate on that front.