4. Statement by the Minister for Climate Change: Net-zero Strategy

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:13 pm on 2 November 2021.

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Photo of Julie James Julie James Labour 4:13, 2 November 2021

Thank you very much for that question, Heledd. I'm not entirely certain how it aligns with the net-zero plan, but I think the answer to your question is that the roads review has within its sights all projects that are funded by local transport grants and Welsh public funding. However, the roads review will look to see whether a road is so far advanced that it cannot usefully be brought into the review because of the advancement of contracts and diggers in the ground, or whatever the colloquial phrase used is—that it is so advanced that there is no point in reviewing it. That is a matter for the review itself and not for Welsh Government Ministers. They are independent in that regard, and I'm sure that when they announce the set of roads that they've reviewed, they'll be able to say which roads are in and which roads are out.  

In terms of the funding of devolved areas inside Wales, the levelling up fund is, I'm afraid, an absolute cacophony of UK Government funding right across devolved areas for reasons that we're not entirely sure about. What we are sure about—and my colleague Rebecca Evans I know will be updating the Senedd on this during the budget discussions—is that we are not getting anything like the amount of money we would have got if the 'not a penny less of EU funding' promise had been made good. We're getting very considerably less, and the UK Government is also not using our well-developed regional investment arrangements. My colleague Huw Irranca-Davies worked very hard in the last Senedd on getting a consensus view across Wales on what regional developments needed to take place, and this so-called levelling-up fund has ridden a coach and horses through all of that for what I think is, and my friend Alun Davies earlier on in today's proceedings called, 'pork-barrel politics', and I have to say I entirely agree with him.