8. Statement by the Minister for Environment, Energy and Rural Affairs: The Climate Emergency

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:06 pm on 1 July 2020.

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Photo of Jenny Rathbone Jenny Rathbone Labour 4:06, 1 July 2020

Sticking with housing then, for the time being, that's absolutely right, and the social housing that's being built is of a much better standard than most of the private sector that's on offer. And that's why, it seems to me, that having consulted on Part L, I would urge the Government to get on with actually implementing a much higher standard of Part L so that we only have homes built to zero-carbon standards in the future. Because otherwise we're going to simply have to retrofit the houses that are being built today, as was pointed out by John Gummer in his frustration last week over the lack of seriousness with which the Prime Minister seems to be taking this climate emergency. 

I completely agree that we have to have a green recovery and not simply go back to our old ways. So, not only do we need to decarbonise our housing stock, but we need to decarbonise our transport, and reallocating road space to active travel is very welcome—this £15million you mentioned in your statement. But I also would like to ask you how we're going to decarbonise our food system, because, at the moment, our food system is organised to suit the large supermarkets. For example, eggs laid in north Wales currently have to travel all the way to Norwich to be packaged by a large supermarket, into their boxes, and then they go back to north Wales to be sold as Welsh eggs. This is really obviously very, very expensive of carbon emissions and we need—