Questions Without Notice from the Party Leaders

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:49 pm on 1 February 2022.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 1:49, 1 February 2022

Llywydd, there is a timetable in place, it's the timetable drawn up by the non-devolved Coal Authority, acting under the direction of the committee that I jointly chair with the Secretary of State for Wales. I don't need any lessons from the leader of the opposition here about working with others when I co-chair the group with the Secretary of State that has overseen this work. We have funded, however, not the UK Government, we have funded the extra work of the Coal Authority, and the Coal Authority tell us that the timetable is a 10-year timetable, that it will require between £500 million and £600 million over that period in order to carry out the remediation of coal tips in Wales, where the current standards are not fit for an era where climate change produces the sorts of impacts that we have seen in Tylorstown and in other parts of Valleys communities in the last two years.

So, the timetable is there. The work that's needed is there. What we lack is a single penny towards it. Now, the Member says I mislead the Senedd, which I don't take very kindly to, Llywydd, because I can tell you that I did not do anything of the sort. The money that we have received from the UK Government was to help with the emergency work that was necessary in Tylorstown. It is not a penny piece towards that long-term programme that the Coal Authority has recommended is necessary here in Wales. When the UK Government comes to the table to help Welsh communities, they will find a willing partner. In the meantime, this Senedd will have to find that money because I will not see coal communities go without the remediation that they require, and that money will have to come from money that otherwise is provided to us for schools, for hospitals, for transport infrastructure and all the other things that are devolved to this Senedd. And that's the solution that his Government, in the letters that they write to me, proposes that we should implement.