Well, Llywydd, it's not four months since I joined Janet Finch-Saunders on the steps of the Senedd to send a strong message to world leaders at the Conference of the Parties on the need to take dramatic action to tackle climate change. I've heard many times in the Chamber Janet Finch-Saunders lecture me how the Welsh Government wasn't going far enough, wasn't going fast enough to deal with the climate and nature emergencies. I would say to her, with the greatest of respect, that it's no good signing up to declarations then to run away from the actions that follow from that.

In order to meet our 2050 target, we need to cut carbon emissions in the next decade by 63 per cent. That includes achieving modal shift. We have a target set out in the Wales transport strategy of achieving 45 per cent of journeys by sustainable transport by 2045, up from 32 per cent now. That requires us to do things differently. That's why I set up the roads review panel, and they are patiently going through each of the 50 schemes currently in development, and agreed, because of the public inquiry—and I would note it didn't take her to tell me there was a public inquiry for me to spot that fact—but, because there was a public inquiry, we fast-tracked this scheme, and one other scheme, through the process so that an early decision could be made. The independent panel has now published its full report, and that is available for everyone to read, and they go through, in detail, their reasons. And they concluded, on the issue of safety, that the proposed grade-separated junctions replacing two roundabout junctions, would create little absolute improvement to the collision record. She rightly says that, in peak season, there are particular problems on the A55 around capacity, but they are limited to the high tourist season. The report also said, I'm quoting:

'The aim of the scheme is not in alignment with the sustainable transport hierarchy, the mode share targets, or increasing the proportion of freight moved by sustainable modes.'

Now, that's there in black and white, in the conclusion of the report, commissioned precisely because I was doing as she asked me to do, which is to respond to the climate emergency and to recognise the impact that transport plays in that—17 per cent of our emissions are from transport.

Now, I recognise there will be some people who are disappointed, and others locally who objected to the scheme who will be less disappointed. On the question of cost, indeed, there has been sunk costs into this. It will not be entirely wasted. The studies and the work underpinning them will be valuable for the Burns commission north in its work. And I see little logic in continuing spend on a project that was set to cost more than £75 million simply because we'd begun work looking at assessments—that makes no sense to me at all. And the purpose of our work is to shift funding away from schemes that add to our carbon emissions in order to fund schemes that help us to reduce our carbon emissions.

And if we want to create real alternatives for her constituents, we have to invest in them, and that's what the Burns commission will set out to do. It'll set up a practical pipeline of projects of all modes—road, rail, bus and active travel—to deal with the problems along the A55 and across the whole of north Wales of congestion and poor air quality, as well as looking at our carbon targets. And it will set out, just as it did in south Wales—. And, bear in mind, for all the comments on the Conservative benches criticising our decision on the M4, the union connectivity review, set up by the UK Government—against the backdrop of the Prime Minister saying it was going to back him in suggesting the M4 should go ahead and how he was going to override devolution; all the usual chest-beating statements we now expect from the Prime Minister—the union connectivity report looked at the options, it looked at the Burns recommendations for the south, it looked at the M4, and it concluded that the right way forward was the Burns recommendations for the south. I have every confidence that, over the next year, they will do similar work in the north to create a pipeline of schemes that'll make things better, which we can then all commit to work together to implement.