Thank you very much, and can I thank Members and the committee for the debate and the report? The coronavirus pandemic provides a powerful reminder that we are still vulnerable to nature, and it also serves to demonstrate that the way we treat the natural world has the potential to impact on each of us, in a very visceral and personal way too.

Arguably, climate change represents a greater threat than the pandemic, albeit over longer timescales, and tackling climate change is hugely important to this Government, and we've already made bold, early strides in declaring a climate emergency and in setting targets for decarbonisation. Transport in particular has a big role to play in getting us on to a lower carbon path, and I appreciate the challenge and the scrutiny of the report, and we're going to need more of it if, collectively, we are going to confront the challenges that decarbonising the transport system presents, and it will take years of effort.

Fortunately, it's not all doom and gloom—there are opportunities here too. The UK Committee on Climate Change predict that transitioning to a zero-emission technology base across all transport modes will actually save, not cost money—more than £200 million between now and 2050 in Wales alone. And the UK Committee on Climate Change have indicated that Wales is on track to meet the emission target set out in our very first low-carbon delivery plan. We're now developing the second iteration of this plan, which we'll publish next year to coincide with COP26, and we need to make better progress in transport meeting its share.

Helen Mary Jones rightly challenged us to demonstrate how we are tracking our carbon budgets with the decarbonisation targets that we have set ourselves, and I think that is the right challenge. We have commissioned, as part of the Wales transport strategy work, Arup and Transport for Quality of Life to come up with a detailed analysis of what contribution transport must make to our overall targets, so that when we make decisions about individual road schemes, for example, or other transport interventions, we're able to know how much headroom we have within the targets that we have set, so we can make informed judgments, which currently we are not able to make. I think that will be a very important step forward for future transport Ministers to be able to inform them in their decisions.

We've also published our ambitions and targets on electric vehicle charging and our clean air plan. These strategies and plans set the framework for delivery over the coming years and we have made a reasonable start, allocating funding this year from the ultra low emission vehicle transformation fund to support 34 rapid charging points for taxis and private hire vehicles in the Cardiff city region; Wales's first rapid charging hub at Cross Hands in Carmarthenshire; charging points in Anglesey; and electric buses in Cardiff and Newport. These are modest first steps but important ones nonetheless.

And whilst very significant further investment will be required to deliver decarbonisation, some elements of behaviour change will be necessary too, and that will require difficult political choices and strong leadership, not just at a Government level but at a local level too. And Members of the Senedd in their own local leadership roles need to show the courage and leadership to make these decisions too. For example, what role might road-user charging play? As we made clear just two weeks ago, the Welsh Government has no fixed view on this yet, but we do have a responsibility to consider how it might be used to effect behaviour change in a fair, in a just way. The evidence shows that we need both carrot and stick to achieve the changes that we will require.

We should also be mindful of the UK Government's role and the levers they retain. For example, control over Wales's rail infrastructure, certain reserved regulatory powers, and powers to set incentives for electric vehicles, and we await publication of their first transport decarbonisation plan in the new year. The recent Wales Climate Week demonstrated our continued commitment to responding to the climate crisis with a collaborative approach, and we'll continue to work closely with the UK Government to ensure that policy outcomes work for Wales.

We do stand at an important moment, Dirprwy Lywydd. Tackling climate change will be the defining challenge of our generation and Wales has a great opportunity to be a leader in this. To capitalise on this, we need to act quickly and increasingly concentrate our efforts on decarbonisation, and stop thinking about what we can do by 2050 and think what more we can do now. The arguments to do are simple: decarbonisation, it's not a case of if, it's a case of when. The faster we act, the lesser the impact will be and the greater the benefits, and I'd strongly encourage the committee to keep pushing us. Diolch.