7. How many socially rented homes does the Welsh Government expect to have been retrofitted by the end of 2022 as part of the programme to reduce carbon emissions from all Welsh housing? OQ57028

Llywydd, we have committed almost £700 million [Correction: £70 million]FootnoteLink into our optimised retrofit programme in the last 18 months to explore how best to decarbonise homes in Wales. By the end of 2022, this investment is forecast to have reduced emissions from around 5,000 social homes.

Clarification from the First Minister 

Thank you very much, First Minister. Last week, I took advantage of the Open Doors programme to visit some of the building sites in my constituency and observe the fantastic construction work going on. Given the urgency of creating the green skills jobs we need to retrofit our inadequately insulated homes, particularly from the cold winds of Tory cuts and our country’s failure overall to generate sufficient renewable energy to avoid us being involved in this scramble for scarce gas, I was really surprised that a lot of the skilled constructors I met didn’t always have an apprentice working alongside them. Given that I know you have the ambition to retrofit all these socially rented homes, I wondered what the Welsh Government can do to fast forward this programme of decarbonising all our homes if we don’t have the skills that we need to do the job.

Well, Llywydd, I think Jenny Rathbone makes a series of really important points. Just as the operation of the grid has been left to the marketplace, so meeting the energy needs of the United Kingdom has been largely navigated in the same way by the current UK Government. It wasn't true even of previous Conservative Governments, who, at the start of the last decade, provided the feed-in tariffs that have led to the growth in solar and wind renewable energies in Wales. Now, the approach of the Welsh Government is very different. We look to a planned approach. We look to the UK Government to make sure that there is genuine investment in marine technologies, for example, so that we can make sure that we are not left reliant upon marketplace availability of scarce commodities, with the prices that we now are seeing being charged for gas.

The Member makes another really important point, Llywydd, about the supply chain and about the skills involved in it. If my colleague Julie James had been answering this question, you would have heard her passion for the way in which the retrofit programme can create the jobs that are needed for the future. Now, the apprenticeship programme in Wales has been affected during the pandemic. It has been harder to be able to supply those practical experiences for young people that allow them to get the qualifications that they need. But, alongside the rest of the economy, there is strong recovery in all of that, and we certainly will be working closely with the sector to make sure that, as we move to build houses for the future that do not need retrofitting—and that's really important—but also to work to retrofit social care homes, private-rented properties and privately owned properties as well, there is the skilled and competent workforce there equipped to do so to take advantage of those opportunities and to help us all in the challenge of addressing climate change.