4. Statement by the Counsel General and Minister for European Transition: COVID-19 Reconstruction — Challenges and Priorities

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:29 pm on 6 October 2020.

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Photo of Jeremy Miles Jeremy Miles Labour 4:29, 6 October 2020

Huw Irranca-Davies's questions go to the heart of many of these issues really, so thank you about the point about engagement. The good thing about engagement is a range of voices, and you have with that sometimes things that you want to hear, sometimes things that you don't want to hear, but that's an important part of the process. And I would like to acknowledge how important the well-being of future generations legislation has been to our thinking in this, and to thank the commissioner for her engagement in relation to the Government's work in this area.

On the question of control for future bus provision, that is at the heart of the proposals that I know the Minister for economy and transport is working up. Huw Irranca-Davies will have heard Ken Skates say—you know, with the vast amount of public money that goes into the provision of bus services, we ought to be able to deliver more control over the outputs than the current set of arrangements provides, so I know that his plans are designed to meet that objective.

I couldn't agree more in relation to town centres. I have a constituency, as does he, with a number of towns—not big towns—all of which need, I think, some support. On the last point, in relation to low-carbon retrofit for housing, I'll make sure that the Minister has heard that point; it's been made by more than one speaker today. The intervention in the document, in our assessment, is the best means of making rapid progress, if you like, in a relatively short time frame, but there is no doubt that the point of that is to generate scalability over a longer time horizon.