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

Thank you, Presiding Officer. Deputy Minister, you'll be aware that First Bus has withdrawn its X10 bus service between Cardiff and Swansea. One of the reasons given by First Bus for this service withdrawal is that, and I quote,

'It carries a disproportionate amount of concessions customers, and not commercial customers, which makes it impossible to sustain the costs.'

Senior citizens and people with disabilities who were able to use a bus pass to travel between Cardiff and Swansea with ease have now suffered a blow to their independence and their ability to live their life to the fullest. What representations have you made to First Bus about the withdrawal of this service? And do you agree that your policy of getting people out of their cars and onto public transport for the daily commute will be adversely impacted by this? Thank you. 

I've recently met both with First and with the trade unions to discuss the range of pressures that the bus industry is facing at the moment. The specific issue that Natasha Asghar raises, I'm afraid, is a direct consequence of the privatisation of the bus industry back in the mid 1980s by the Conservative Government, and we're still living with the consequences. The way that the companies are incentivised in order to run routes that maximise their revenues and not invest in socially necessary routes remains a perennial problem for us. It's one of the reasons why we are developing our bus strategy this year, with legislation coming before the Senedd, because we do need to regulate the bus industry through franchising. We can't allow commercial operators simply to cherry-pick those routes that they wish to. So, I'm afraid, this is the result of the free market economics that the Conservatives insist we follow. This shows that it's failing to help people to make the necessary transition from cars to public transport, and until we fix that we won't be able to do it. 

Thanks for that, Deputy Minister, but from my records, Labour has been in power for the last 22 years here in Wales, so let's just focus on that first. 

The second question from me is: the Welsh Government recently announced its plans to promote electric vehicles in Wales, which was overdue and lacking in detail. I know I've said this to you previously. But under your proposals, you state your intention to create just 80 electric charging points on Wales's main trunk roads in four years. Rural communities across Wales will be left behind with no announcement of funding to accompany the proposals for community hubs. There's sadly no mention whatsoever of how much this plan is going to cost. Not that long ago, you actually said that 4,000 rapid charging points were needed by 2030. However, there is no reference to this in the strategy. So, Deputy Minister, has the target been dropped? And is creating just 80 charging points in four years on Wales's main roads really that ambitious, especially as we need some 20,000 across the country at large? 

Let's be very clear that the powers over buses—the regulation of them—remain at the UK level. So, the fact that we've been in power in Wales is irrelevant, because we don't have the power to change the way the market is regulated. We think that, through franchising, we're able to address some of that, but this is a direct result of UK Government policy in the 1980s that's been kept in place. So, let's just be very clear about that. 

In terms of the electric charging points, at the moment, we have proportionately more charging points than there are electric cars in existence. So, we think that for the number of cars currently in circulation it is broadly fine. The challenge we have, to keep that proportion in place as the number of electric cars purchased increases dramatically, as all projections suggest, is to keep pace with that. But we think this, again, is primarily a job for the private sector; the Government doesn't provide petrol stations, nor will it be expected to primarily be the main provider of electric charging points. Where there is market failure, particularly in rural areas, we need to make sure that we pump prime investment, just as we have with broadband, which again is another market failure—another failure of the UK Government to regulate. We need to be able to step in.

We're specifically looking at the development of electric car clubs with the use of community energy to make sure that people don't have to own an electric car, because they are at the moment more expensive than an internal combustion engine car, and that will create a level of flexibility so that people can become less car dependent.  

Thank you, Deputy Minister. I know that you often like to use the central UK Government as a reason and justification for a lot of things, and I know, on many occasions, you don't like answering my questions, so sometimes I think to myself would you be happier going back to ITV Wales and actually working on answering the questions that I'm asking you, as opposed to diverting the answer elsewhere.

My final question is: passenger numbers using Cardiff Airport have dropped to the lowest level since the 1950s. Traveller numbers fell from 1.6 million to just 48,000, with the airport's chief executive saying that the drop is down to the Welsh Government urging people not to travel overseas. Last week, at the public accounts committee, officials from Cardiff Airport said that air passenger duty was a punitive tax that hinders the ability of airlines to add to their capacity. Cardiff Airport has been underperforming since it was taken into public ownership in 2013. This is a Welsh Government issue, Deputy Minister, and it appears that things are regularly going from bad to worse. So, Deputy Minister, will you join me in welcoming the announcement by the Chancellor, Rishi Sunak, from the UK Government, in the budget, that air passenger duty is to be halved for domestic flights? Do you agree that this is a positive move that will assist Cardiff Airport's recovery, or would you rather continue to bail out the airport with millions of pounds of taxpayers' money here from Wales?

Well, with respect, I do answer the Member's questions; she just doesn't like the answers. I don't think that subsidising and encouraging domestic air travel is in keeping with the challenge of climate change that we have and that the Prime Minister is trying to claim great international leadership on; I think it is a contradiction. The airport is a commercially run body, and its management makes decisions for the best way to run their own airport. That's as it should be. We have invested in the airport to make sure that Wales has an airport, but the Member will be aware that we have a pandemic, and there's been an international collapse in air traffic. That has had a significant impact on the finances of the airport, and we put a support package in place to support them through that.

Plaid Cymru spokesperson, Mabon ap Gwynfor.

Thank you very much, Llywydd, and I hope the Minister has recovered after having suffered a cold last week.

Following the election, the Government announced a plan to tackle the second homes crisis, which would include a pilot area. There are communities the length and breadth of the country feeling the impacts of this broad and damaging crisis. My concern, along with communities the length and breadth of Wales, is that the pilot is going to be far too narrow. It'll take far too long to implement properly, it will take even longer for its impacts to be understood and for any lessons to be learnt and to influence Government policy. Whilst the Government delays on real action, communities will suffer, houses will remain out of reach for people, prices will go up, and communities that have the language at their heart will be further eroded. With this pilot scheme in mind, therefore, will the Minister respond to the valid concern that other communities, those not involved in the pilot, are being left behind and ignored? What hope can we offer to these communities that need to see urgent steps taken on the issue of second homes? Thank you.

As the Member is well aware, we've been discussing this in the cross-party group, and amongst all the parties of the Senedd, attempting to find a cross-party way forward. So, it's a little disappointing to have it politicised in quite the way he's just done. We're running the pilot, as he well knows, in order to be able to ensure that we are going as fast as is humanly possible, given the range of very complex things that need to be done, whilst taking the communities with us. He will know as well as I do that this breaches a whole series of potential human rights, as well as other things, and that we need the people whose property rights and property investments are affected by this to be on board and happy about what is happening, otherwise the entire thing cannot work. The pilot scheme is in order for us to test that out, learn the lessons from it and then roll it out across Wales with the least problems possible, so that we can go at maximum speed. He is well aware of that, and, frankly, I'm very disappointed in his attempt to politicise it.

Thank you very much, Minister, for that response to a political question in a political chamber.

I want to turn now to the issue of gas power stations. Despite the seeming commitment of the Welsh Government to decarbonise, as is incorporated in your net-zero strategy, it's come to our attention that we here in Wales, or rather the Welsh Government, continue to allow planning permission for new gas installations. A power station in Wrexham is being built that will be operational 2,500 hours a year, a proposed power station in Bangor has been given planning permission, as well as a 5 MW development in Porthmadog, among many more across Wales. Surely, this is contrary to the Welsh Government's own strategy of decarbonising the Welsh economy and reaching net zero by 2050. If you are therefore serious about tackling climate change, why are you allowing new gas works to be built in Wales? Will you take the necessary steps to regulate and change planning regulations in order to prevent further developments of these unnecessarily?

Thank you for that question. This is a very complicated problem, because as we go as fast as we possibly can in the transition to renewable energy, one of the things we also need to do is to keep the lights on. At the moment, Wales is quite reliant on gas-fired power stations and gas-sourced energy in order to do just that. We obviously have to have a transition plan in place, and that transition plan has to work for everyone. It has to keep our industries running and our lights on. What we have to do is we have to ramp up the amount of renewables that we have coming on stream, at the same time as ramping down our reliance on fossil fuels of any sort. We've already removed coal-fired power stations from Wales early on. That was great that we did that and I'm very pleased that we did, but, obviously, it means that we've got some reliance on gas in order to have what's called baseload energy. That's energy that can be switched on at the drop of a—literally at the flick of a switch, when everybody goes to put their kettle on at 9 o'clock at night, for example. So, there are big energy surges in the country. We know when they are, but they can't be predicted to the point where we can turn renewables off and on. Sometimes, the sun does not shine and the wind does not blow.

One of the big programmes that we have running in Wales, alongside a number of Governments across the world, is the quest for baseload renewable energy, which is renewable energy that can be turned on at the flick of a switch. That is why we have a tidal lagoon challenge and a number of marine energy challenges going on in Wales, because it seems that, to everyone, marine energy possibly holds the key to baseload renewables. I very much hope that we will be able to capture for Wales the start of a global industry in renewable baseload. But, until that time, we absolutely have a duty to keep the lights on and our industry and businesses working with the energy supply that they have. I appreciate and have a lot of sympathy with the thrust of the Member's question to me, but, obviously, we are attempting to put one slider up while we slide the other one down, and we have to absolutely make sure that we do that in the right proportions.

Thank you very much, Minister. I would be delighted to see that transition plan, and I welcome your words on marine energy too, because that, of course, is the way forward.

I want to turn finally to the issue of discretionary housing payments. In this regard, I want to focus on how effective local authorities are in using this addition of over £4 million for discretionary housing payments. As we know, the purpose of these payments is to assist those on benefits who have difficulty in paying their rent, particularly following the grave cuts by the Westminster Government. There's no doubt there have been problems in ensuring that people are making applications for these payments, and given the housing and homelessness crisis facing us here, with a number of people being kept in temporary accommodation, I'm sure the Minister would agree with me that it would be shocking if not all of this funding was allocated by the end of this financial year. But it's come to my attention that there are problems in terms of how many can actually claim these payments. So, I would like more detail from the Minister on this issue. Will the Minister confirm how many homeless households, since April, have been able to move from temporary accommodation to permanent accommodation by benefiting from these payments, including the additional £4 million allocated by the Welsh Government? And is the Welsh Government of the view that there is a need for stronger guidance for local authorities as to how to use that additional £4 million? Thank you.

Thank you, Mabon. One of the things that we're currently dealing with is that the flow of people who are presenting as homeless, as a result of the pandemic and a number of other economic issues, has not diminished in any way. So, our local authorities are still dealing with in excess of 1,000 people a month presenting as homeless across Wales. We currently have just upwards of 12,000 people in temporary accommodation, although many of them are still being moved into permanent. I don't have the figures with me, but I will check for you. I don't think we link particularly the discretionary housing payment with the move to permanent housing—you can have that for paying your rent in temporary housing, for example. I'm more than happy to share with all Members the chart of how many discretionary housing payments have been made and in what proportion.

There are two important things to say here. We do monitor all the time what the local authorities are able to do with the discretionary housing payments, and whether the eligibility criteria are sufficient for their purpose. We've changed that, during the course of the pandemic, on a number of occasions, as he will know, in order to make it more accessible to people. The idea is, obviously, to assist people to stay in their housing, whether that's temporary or permanent. I'm very happy to write to the Member, and, indeed, share it will all Members, with a grid of how many payments have been made.

The big issue that we have, as he correctly identified, is the problem with the welfare system. An under-the-radar change that the Conservative Government has done in their completely heartless way is to freeze the local housing allowance two years ago, so that already the value of a benefit to somebody who isn't in social housing is diminishing. These small changes make an enormous difference in people's lives, and the positive tsunami that's about to hit people on the lower income brackets this winter with the rise in national insurance payments, the removal of the £20 universal credit and the freezing of the local housing allowance is just appalling to contemplate. So, I'm very happy to work with any information he has about local authorities struggling to pay out the money. I absolutely agree with him that we want that money paid out to people who need it right across Wales in order to try and temper some of the most heartless cuts I've ever seen in the welfare state, in any Government in my lifetime, actually. It's quite eye watering, the appalling lack of sympathy that this Conservative Government is showing, and I'm more than happy to share with him and other Members where the payments are. I don't have that information to hand, but I'm more than happy to share it with him.