Our priority, Dirprwy Lywydd, is to ensure that people living and working near coal tips feel safe and secure now and in the future by reducing the risks of further landslides. I am able to inform the Senedd that we have made significant progress in the last two years. Our first task was to establish the scale of the problem. The job of identifying and assessing the status of all disused coal tips has proven to be an enormously complex one. We now know there are over 2,500 disused coal tips across Wales, with 327 in the higher rated category.

The motion before the Senedd tomorrow refers to high-risk tips, but I want to be clear to Members that being placed in a higher rated category is not the same as being high risk, and the language we use is important. We have been focusing on the tips that need the greatest level of monitoring and have been working with our partners to carry out regular inspections. We’re working with partners such as the UK space industry to trial technology to improve the way tips are monitored in the future. There is much we can do to measure ground movement and water regimes and some of the technologies being tested are world firsts. We're also working closely with the research sector to have the best evidence possible on climate impacts. This is vital to understand the long-term stability of tips and to inform innovative approaches to tip reclamation. The Tylorstown tip, which caused the greatest concern, is currently estimated to cost approximately £20 million to complete all phases of remediation. Almost all of this investment will come from the Welsh Government.

I want to be clear with Members that it is the Welsh Government, not the UK Government, that is continuing to fund the Coal Authority to carry out inspections. We have so far spent £1.6 million on this task. The Coal Authority estimates it will take £30 million to bring them all up to standard, and a further £5 million a year to maintain them. Full reclamation is currently put at between £500 million and £600 million. The Welsh Government has committed £44.4 million over the next three years so that this vital work continues. But this is a legacy of Britain’s industrial past. It was Britain that reaped the benefits of our natural resources, and these tips were all in place before power was devolved to Wales in 1999. And yet the UK Government is willing only to contribute £9 million to the cost of cleaning them up. The Under-Secretary of State for Wales, David T.C. Davies, told the House of Commons Welsh Affairs Committee that

'if the Welsh Labour Government think that those coal tips are unsafe, they must act now to put them right. They have the money to do it.'

It's not us who say it's unsafe, it's the Coal Authority, which is non-devolved, and we do not have the funding to do it. We describe the United Kingdom as a sharing union. I hope the UK Government will think again about sharing its role in clearing up their legacy of our collective industrial past.

The Welsh Government and local authorities are working diligently together to provide a consistent approach to the current inspection regime. A third round of winter inspections on the higher rated tips concluded in February, and the inspections programme is a significant one. The outcomes to date have meant that maintenance works needed to help ensure the stability of sites have been identified. As a high percentage of these tips are within private ownership, there are a number of issues to resolve in relation to the handling of information, including ensuring that robust quality assurance has been completed and data protection issues have been fully addressed. This has proven to be time consuming.

While our understanding of the overall picture has vastly improved in the last two years, more tips are still being identified. This work is very much a live project, and we can expect further adjustments to the overall number of tips as the work progresses. We remain committed to publishing the locations of the higher rated tips as soon as possible and as soon as it is responsible to do so, but we must be confident in our assessments before we do so. For higher rated tips, information has already been shared with local authorities and local resilience forums to assist in the development of emergency preparedness plans where required. But public access to the data on the locations of higher rated tips is a sensitive matter, and it's vital that the information, when published, is accurate and as complete as possible. Once this work is complete, we will inform Members of a date for publication.

Dirprwy Lywydd, our priority is to ensure that people living and working near coal tips feel safe and secure now and in the future. Our proposals for a new regime aim to achieve just that by reducing the risk of further landslides. Diolch.