Janet Finch-Saunders said that we needed to show action on funding the green agenda, skills, and decarbonising buses, but, acting Presiding Officer, last week in a budget when not once was the term 'climate change' mentioned, we saw our capital budget cut. At the end of this Senedd term, it'll be 11 per cent lower than it is today; £3 billion less for the Welsh economy than if the Conservatives, since they've been elected, had kept spending in line with the growth in the economy. We can't simply invest money that we do not have. The money we are currently spending on apprenticeships and building support is funded by the EU. We were told by this Government that we would not have a penny less by leaving the EU. This year, if we were still within the European Union, we'd expect £375 million, and this Conservative Government has given us a fraction of that. So, how the Conservatives expect us to fund these things they're demanding us to do whilst cutting our money I simply do not understand.

Janet Finch-Saunders again said that we're not taking action on banning single-use plastics, but since this Government has passed the United Kingdom Internal Market Act 2020, we are not clear what powers we have to act. So, again, they're criticising us for not acting, but their own Government is taking actions that are preventing us from acting.

There was further hypocrisy, I think, from the Conservatives on fossil fuels. We've heard, at the COP in Glasgow, the Prime Minister saying that the UN needs to move away from coal, but that is the opposite of what the UK Government is doing. It's the current policy of the Government that the Coal Authority has a duty to support the continued extraction of fossil fuels. That is not what we want to do in Wales; we have a very clear policy of stopping using fossil fuels. Unless the UK Government agree to our request to cancel a licence granted in 1996 at Aberpergwm, some 40 million tonnes of coal will be extracted from this mine by 2039—100 million tonnes of carbon dioxide. We want to keep this coal in the ground, but the UK Government, because of the powers in place, threaten to sit by and watch this coal being extracted in the face of our wishes. Now, the Coal Authority have told us they are minded to agree to our request—to deconditionalise this licence, as it's called—and we have written to the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy to intervene. So, if the Conservatives in this Chamber are really sincere about the need for action, perhaps they would support us in writing to Kwasi Kwarteng, asking him to stop this coal being extracted from Welsh soil, because we don't want it to happen, and the only reason it may happen is because of their inaction and their policies.

So, enough of this hypocrisy. We do want to collaborate with our colleagues in the other parts of the UK, and we are trying very hard. We've met throughout the summer with UK Ministers and officials, as we drew up our net-zero plan in parallel with their net-zero plan. In fact, the UK Government Minister told us they would share their plans with us in advance so that we could collaborate. Did they share them? Did they heck. We did not see their plan until midnight the day it was published. Now, how is that collaborating? It is not collaborating; it is hollow words.

We are nonetheless doing our best to work together on the deposit-return scheme, and despite Janet Finch-Saunders saying that there was no action, we intend and hope to bring regulations forward for the scheme, to implement the scheme, in the summer of 2022. Janet Finch-Saunders mentioned a scheme in Conwy—an excellent scheme. She failed to mention this was a scheme in partnership with the Welsh Government that we have funded. And I visited the technology firm Polytag in Deeside last month and saw the exceptional work they've been doing with Conwy on a digital deposit-return scheme. I think that has real potential, and I commend Conwy for their work with us and Polytag on that.

We are delivering our clean air plan, which includes the development of a clean air Bill, which will establish a more proactive regime for improving air quality that will have regard to the World Health Organization guidelines on setting targets. These have only just been published, acting Presiding Officer, and it takes time for us and our officials to assess that and build that into the scheme that we are developing. But, of course, we're not waiting for a Bill to act, we are acting now. At the beginning of the last Senedd term, Wales was spending £5 million a year on active travel schemes—schemes to get people out of cars, using clean transport for local journeys. At this point, we are spending £75 million every year on schemes. We know that 10 per cent of car journeys are under a mile, and that half of car journeys are under five miles. Many of these could be replaced through active travel. We're investing. We're not waiting for a clean air Act, we're acting now.

Our Net Zero Wales skills action plan is being developed to support workers to gain the skills they need to play a role in delivering a just transition that reduces emissions while promoting well-paid jobs. As part of our commitment towards renewable energy, we are working to establish Wales as a centre of emerging marine energy technologies, and we have set up a marine energy programme to deliver on this commitment. But, to continue to support the industry to the level I think everyone in the Senedd would want, the UK Government must replace, in full, the EU funds that, in the past, have proven so vital in the progress that we have made to date. I'm at the moment working with industry experts on a deep dive on barriers to renewable energy. I met again this morning, I met with industry earlier this week, and we're making good progress in setting out actions that we can take in the short term to move progress. 

Acting Presiding Officer, climate change affects every aspect of our lives and every corner of Wales. These are challenging times and there are difficult choices ahead of us, but there is hope, and, as Delyth Jewell said, there is still time. There are practical steps that we are taking and can take together to ensure the green recovery and our transition to a net-zero Wales is a just transition—one that leaves no-one behind, making sure the cost of change doesn't fall onto the shoulders of the worst-off in society. And our recently published Net Zero Wales plan sets out 123 policies and proposals that'll deliver, in the next five years, on our climate change targets to put us on the trajectory we need to be on to reach net zero by 2050. We all need to step up, to play our part and to lead the way for a greener, stronger Wales. But words won't do it, Dirprwy Lywydd. We have to follow through in actions, and we've heard this afternoon, I'm afraid, from the Conservatives, a complete load of hypocrisy that serves no-one.