Questions now from the party spokespeople. The Conservative spokesperson, Natasha Asghar. 

Thank you, Presiding Officer. Deputy Minister, in 2019, the Federation of Small Businesses Wales released a report called '"Are we there yet?" A Roadmap to Better Infrastructure for Wales'. It was based around a significant survey of work from the small and medium-sized enterprise sector looking at the role of infrastructure. The survey found that 86 per cent put investment in road infrastructure as quite or very important, making this the most important transport priority for them. Given that the road network is a key concern for the FSB members, and in the absence of further details, the freeze on new roads whilst a review takes place is worrying. So, Deputy Minister, can you advise whether your roads review panel will contain representatives of businesses in Wales, and not just academics with an interest in transport and climate change? And how are you engaging with small businesses to ensure their voice has an impact on decisions made here in Wales? Thanks. 

Well, I think all businesses need to have an effective integrated transport system, and that includes sustainable transport as well as road transport. We've been very clear that this roads review is not saying we're never going to build any roads again. It is saying that the challenge that all of us face, businesses especially, of an unstable environment and an unstable economy from the climate emergency, requires a new approach. And we need to methodically understand how much carbon headroom we have to spend on road schemes, which, as we know, generate additional journeys and additional traffic, and how we go ahead with our investment decisions in the years ahead, and what more we can spend on maintaining the roads we have and improving public transport so people have a real alternative. And I would have hoped, given all that she said about the importance of being bold and making decisions to tackle head-on the net zero challenge, she would have been supportive of that rather than trying to whip up opposition where really none ought to exist. 

Thank you, Minister, for not answering the question. I was actually asking about participation in the actual plan that's going ahead, not actually what you answered. 

But, anyway, next question: can I, please, ask the Minister for more detail about tackling the problems of air quality and congestion? How are issues of congestion and air quality going to be taken into account in the road building review? And will the panel adopt an evidence-based approach taken from experiences and studies of such improvements and projects, like the recent bypass for Llandeilo, Caernarfon and Porthmadog?    

I think, yes, absolutely, and to apologise for not directly answering every part of her first question, let me address it now. We will absolutely be looking at air quality and what to do in situations where there is a real problem with air quality. Now, at the moment, the often default response to that is to build a bypass, and simply going on building bypasses not only diverts funding away from more sustainable forms of transport, but also cumulatively adds to the problem of a car-centric and car-dependent society. So, in the medium to long-term, that does not help the solution. Clearly, the move to electric cars, to decarbonised cars, at a tailpipe end will help areas of traffic congestion from the air quality point of view, and there are other things we can look at too. So, the panel has been explicitly asked to look at that, and it will absolutely be formed of experts. Again, we're not going for a representative body of every stakeholder; we're going for a focused team of experts who understand the evidence, understand the challenges of delivery. So, for example, I very much hope that we have a local authority representative as part of that group to understand what needs to be done at a local level. 

Okay. Thank you very much. The signal that public transport is a priority is welcome, and genuinely welcome. However, the timescales involved in infrastructure strategy, including public transport improvements, are long and cannot address immediate problems. How will you take into account the time lag here, bearing in mind the need to ensure gaps in infrastructure needs are filled in the interim? Will this form part of the review process? And will you undertake to progress studies into projects, such as the Chepstow bypass and a motorway junction on the M48 where the Severn tollbooths used to be, to relieve congestion on the M4? Thanks.    

There isn't really a meeting of minds here on this one. Despite attempts by both of us to persuade the other one, I don't think we're going to. I don't think endless bypasses and motorway studies are going to help with the problem of congestion in the medium term and indeed, especially not with the problem of air quality or of carbon reduction. So, we flatly disagree, as we've discussed before, on the best approach for this. Now, she can keep raising this at every possible opportunity, and we can keep having the same arguments, or we can try and work on some solutions that achieve our joint goals of making Wales better. But simply repeating the same hackneyed lines is not going to get us very far. 

The Plaid Cymru spokesperson, Delyth Jewell. 

Thank you, Llywydd. Minister, community energy has a crucial role to play in ensuring that we deliver net zero. It has a role in ensuring public consent, increasing participation and incorporating behavioural change. A recent report that looks at the state of the sector calls on the Government to show its support to the movement by ensuring that the Welsh Government and the UK Government have stable policies in place, as well as by providing access to funding and resources, and also providing enhanced opportunities to help groups to sell their energy at a local level. With all of this in mind, Minister, can you, outline how the Welsh Government will aim towards supporting the community energy sector during the sixth Senedd? 

Diolch yn fawr. Thank you very much for that question, Delyth. It's something very close to all of our hearts, I think. One of the things we need to be able to do across Wales is not just generate mega amounts of electricity renewably, but also we need to have community buy-in and community energy projects that thrive across Wales. I will be approaching the UK Government around its scheme, which has been very underperforming unfortunately. We have a number of local community energy networks set up, all raring to go, and, unfortunately, the UK part of that has not been as forthcoming as we'd like. I've already had some conversations about how we can, as the Welsh Government, build on the energy in the community—forgive the pun—to embrace these schemes, and to see whether we can step in and build on the work that was done around a hope from the UK Government, which has, sadly, not come to pass.

There are a number of other things we want to do in the field of renewable energy, and, at the risk of making my Deputy Minister's workload too great, we are seriously considering having a similar exercise done on renewable community energy, as we've just done on trees, to figure out the barriers, obstacles and solutions to getting this to be a thriving sector in Wales. And as always, Delyth, we don't have all the good ideas; we know the good ideas are out there. This will be an exercise in ensuring that we harness the good ideas and build on what we know has been a big effort already. As I say, I will be approaching both the UK Government and the Office of Gas and Electricity Markets to see what we can do to help the scheme that I know is faltering.

Okay, well, I welcome that and thank you, Minister, and I welcome the pun as well. 

Turning to a different area about nature targets, the Senedd, a fortnight ago, voted in favour of Plaid Cymru's motion and declared a nature emergency, and that motion had called on the Welsh Government to introduce legally binding nature recovery targets. This represented an important step and it's not just about—as we have discussed so many times—addressing the nature emergency, but also the climate emergency because of how they are intertwined.

With the Conference of the Parties 26 happening in October within a month of the Senedd returning from recess and a global framework to address biodiversity loss on the way, Wales now has a really important part to play in developing the legal architecture to tackle the nature emergency. So, could I ask if the Welsh Government is indeed planning to develop nature recovery targets and, if this is the case, could you outline a time frame during which we could expect to see those targets or the framework being published please?

We absolutely are, Delyth. We're part of a global network of nations working on this and what we're looking to do is make sure that we fit nicely inside the global framework in an ambitious, but nevertheless achievable way. We don't want this to be a council of despair either. It's a very hard balance to strike. So, what we're doing is we're working with the global community. We'll get some learning from COP26 as well and that will enable us to swiftly put our own targets in place. As you know, as we've rehearsed on many occasions, I'm very keen on having the targets, but we have to be absolutely certain that they don't have unintended consequences where we overlook things that don't have specific targets associated with them and so on. So, we'll be wanting to work very carefully across the Senedd floor and with the sector to make sure that the targets are both stretching, but also realistic and have as few unintended consequences as we can manage. And we think that's best placed in that global environment. We sit in a plan, don't we? So, we have the global one, we have the UK one and we'll have the Wales one, and I'm very keen that Wales takes a global role in that, so that we show what small nations that are very dedicated to this can actually do.

So, in terms of the time frame, that will slightly depend on the legislative programme. We've rehearsed a number of times the problems we've got with capacity, but we're looking to put an environment protection Act in place as well; we're looking to see if there are other opportunities to add the legislation on targets and so on to a Bill that might already be programmed in, and if not, to work with the Llywydd and the Commission staff to see where we can find some space in the programme to fit it in. So, what we'll do is we'll make sure that the regime is in place without the statutory backing at first if we can't find the programme, but we will put it on a statutory basis as soon as we can. I'm trying not to overpromise the statutory thing, given that I know the problems, but the regime itself and the consensus that the Government should be acting to make sure that happens will definitely be there.

Thank you, Minister. Actually, that ties in with the final question I was going to put to you about the concern about the environmental governance gaps that have been created since the UK has departed from the EU. On this governance gap, there is a real fear, which I know that you're aware of, that it could really lead to environmental harm continuing and there are limited options for redress for Governments and for public bodies because, as it stands, the environmental watchdog is little more than a complaints inbox.

So, you've talked in your previous answer, Minister, about the constraints, as you put it, that are in the legislative programme, but there was dismay that although the Government had voted in favour of a robust and independent environmental governance body, that wasn't actually in the programme for government, or it wasn't gone into much detail at least, and it wasn't in the legislative programme. So, could you confirm, in conjunction with what you just said in your previous answer, that that legislation will indeed be prioritised as quickly as possible and as practicable please?

Delyth, I'm very happy to confirm that. So, obviously, we have an interim programme right across the five years of the Senedd term in our head. That's not what's presented to the Senedd because that's been firmed up at that point. But I can assure you that I've been sharpening my elbows against my colleagues to make sure that the environment protection Bill is right up there. We have to obviously make sure that we're in a position to present it to the Senedd in good order, but we absolutely are prioritising that, I can assure you.

We're also ensuring that the four EU environmental principles, which I'm sure you're aware are precautionary, prevention, rectification at source and polluter pays, are principles that are absolutely embedded in our policy formation and application now. Dr Nerys Llewelyn Jones has been appointed, as you know, to advise me on relevant concerns arising from her interim role, and we're very keen to make sure that we get as much of what will be a statutory regime in place prior to the statute as possible. That has two benefits: first of all, it doesn't wait on the statute, and secondly, it allows us to test various things that we can then reflect in the statute when we've understood what they look like in practice. But I can assure you that we are as anxious as you are to get this onto the statute book, it's just the frustration of the resource from Brexit and COVID still, I'm afraid, reverberating through the system. But, with any luck, we're coming to the end of that now and we can start to accelerate back into normal Senedd mode.