Questions Without Notice from Party Spokespeople

Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Climate Change – in the Senedd at 1:46 pm on 26 January 2022.

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Photo of Julie James Julie James Labour 1:46, 26 January 2022

Thank you, Janet. Once again, you've conflated about five different things there, so I don't intend to proceed to unpick it. The green Brexit you talk about, of course, had we just stayed inside the European governance arrangements, we wouldn't have needed to do anything in addition, and one of the big issues for us will be maintaining parity with European laws going forward, and not having the current Conservative Government already headlong towards removing many of the protections that we have in a number of areas in England. So, I despair as to the idea that a green Brexit is what we're talking about. It's quite clear, from various of the laws already passed, that that's not what we're talking about. Here in Wales we've got interim arrangements in place for environmental protection. We will be, of course, legislating to put that on a statutory basis. I wish to do that at the same time as putting the targets for biodiversity halt and decline and recovery into place, and so we will be bringing those forward once we have those arrangements in place. In the meantime, we have functioning interim arrangements in place to do just that.