Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Environment, Energy and Rural Affairs – in the Senedd at 1:47 pm on 18 November 2020.
Thank you, and thank you for confirming that, in July 2019, you did convene a task group of key stakeholders to work with you to further develop details of the environmental governance structure for Wales. Now, on 5 November, you stated that you intend to publish these proposals for longer-term environmental governance arrangements by the end of the year, alongside the environmental governance task group report. Whilst that itself already represents a delay to the original promise to publish the task group recommendations this autumn, it turns out that the group did actually report in April 2020. You did advise us last Thursday in committee that the report could not be made available due to lack of capacity and resources. Will you provide some more detail today as to what are the specific capacity and resource challenges that have rendered you unable to share the report for some seven months and explain why you are denying this Welsh Parliament the opportunity to scrutinise the report and recommendations ahead of your proposals for environmental governance?