3. Statement by the First Minister: The Programme for Government

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:08 pm on 15 June 2021.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 4:08, 15 June 2021

Llywydd, thank you very much to Jenny Rathbone. Of course, our ambition for zero-carbon homes extends beyond the public sector homes that will be built during this Senedd term. One of the reasons for putting housing alongside planning and alongside energy in the portfolio of the new Minister is to allow her to have all of the levers she needs, including further reform, as I believe we will need to see, in building-standards work to make sure that we are not creating houses today that we will then have to retrofit in the future.

There are Cardiff Members here who envy the Maelfa development and wish that we had similar things in our own parts of the city, but our twenty-first century surgeries programme in the programme for government is a programme to create those well-being hubs in more parts of Wales. In the meantime, in the virtual way that Jenny Rathbone referred to, we’ll be working through the 64 primary care clusters we have in Wales, and who, I think, have done so much to support and to energise the primary care response that we’ve seen during the pandemic.

And finally, in relation to the marine environment, Dirprwy Lywydd, I should report that there was a meeting of the British Irish Council last week where I was able to put on the record the new programme of work that we have agreed with the Republic of Ireland—a five-year programme of work—much of it focused on that shared marine environment that is the Irish sea. We’re committed to working with the Republic on an agenda that brings researchers from our universities together and third sector organisations together to make sure that we use that fantastic environment for the renewable energy that we will need for the future. But we do it in a way that fully respects the unique environment and the diversity of that marine environment where its occupants know nothing about, Llywydd, whether they are swimming in Welsh waters, or Irish waters, or waters in between.