Questions now from party spokespeople. The Conservative spokesperson, Janet Finch-Saunders. 

Diolch, Llywydd. Members will be aware that, yesterday, during business questions, I did call, through the Trefnydd, on the Deputy Minister for Climate Change to make a statement regarding the horrendous situation on Monday that saw a number of trains, several carriages, hundreds of travellers stranded for several hours on trains on a very warm day, and the situation was less than ideal. Well, I'm very pleased to say that the Minister and I spoke yesterday afternoon, afterwards, and he did promise that he would get some kind of information back from Transport for Wales. I'm very grateful for the letter I've had from the chief executive, via you, Deputy Minister, and they are going to launch a serious investigation into that. They are asking anybody to come forward who was greatly affected by this, and I would urge people to do that. Diolch. 

So, moving on to my spokesperson's questions, my first one is on energy security. Now, our actions on energy security must be resolute and firm if we are to safeguard the future of a vibrant and international outlook in Wales. We must play our part to end the global addiction to Russian energy and unleash the power of our own Welsh dragon. Russian imports currently account for 8 per cent of total UK oil demand and 4 per cent of total UK gas supply. Now, in response to the shocking and illegal invasion of Ukraine, the UK Government is to phase out oil imports during the course of the year. The UK's exposure to volatile global gas prices underscores the importance of the UK Government's plan to generate more cheap, clean, renewable energy and nuclear power in the UK. Your vision as to how to scale up renewable energy in Wales has been outlined in the renewable energy deep-dive. Some of the recommendations are set to take some time to deliver—2023 for marine strategic resource areas, and 2024 for a national energy plan. In light of the new energy crisis, what steps will you take to supercharge work on producing more renewable energy and bringing forward the national energy plan? Diolch. 

Well, Llywydd, there are two separate points to address there, and I'll try and address them both. On the first, I was present yesterday afternoon during business questions, and I heard the quite harrowing accounts by the Member of the experience she and fellow passengers had had, and I was very sorry to hear it. I met with the chair and the chief executive of Transport for Wales straight afterwards to discuss it. Clearly, it's not right that just because there happened to be politicians on the train that there is a response, but there were a number of Members there who were able to give first-hand testimony, and I took it very seriously, and particularly the accounts of members of the public not able to attend a funeral and having trouble with their jobs. So, Transport for Wales are taking this very seriously. There was a problem with the train leaving a maintenance depot—not a TfW maintenance depot—but then it ceased to function once it hit a certain point, and that caused then a cascade of problems. So, I'm very keen, as are they, to use the exercise to learn lessons, particularly around the communications. There do seem to be some significant failings in the way the messaging was dealt with. So, I've had a very constructive and robust conversation with TfW about this, and we are both keen to learn from it to make sure we can try and prevent this from happening again. And I'd like to reiterate the apology that I gave to all members of the public who were on that train. Things will happen from time to time on the railways, but it's how we respond to them, I think, is the mark of it, and I hope that we can certainly learn the lessons from that. 

On the issue of energy security, I must disagree with the characterisation of Janet Finch-Saunders of the UK Government's response. The way we develop energy security is not just to wean ourselves off Russian oil, but to wean ourselves off fossil fuels. We not only face a short-term energy crisis, we face a parallel climate crisis, and digging more oil out of the North sea, which is what the UK Government is proposing to do, flies in the face of all the science, flies in the face of what the Prime Minister was saying not months ago in Glasgow. All of a sudden, his video-tape memory has been wiped clean yet again and he's learned none of the lessons of the past. What we need is a rapid deployment of renewables across the UK, both at a housing level—to have solar energy on every house, on every building, as well as energy efficiency—and the range of micro, hydro and generation technologies that we know work, we know are cost-effective, and we know are making a greater part of the energy mix. That is a major mistake.

In terms of her criticism that our moves on marine are not quick, then the idea that deploying nuclear energy is going to happen at speed is rather fanciful. It is neither cheap nor clean nor quick, I would say to her. We take a pragmatic view on nuclear. In north Wales, we know it provides innovation and economic development, and is part of the energy mix whilst we scale up renewables rapidly. But it is a short-term fix. For the UK Government to seize on that as a response to the energy crisis I think is misguided. I'll repeat what I said to Altaf Hussain earlier: the removal by the UK Government of the feed-in tariff in 2019, the moratorium on onshore wind, and the failure to support the Swansea tidal lagoon are historic errors. We've had a lost decade. Rather than getting ourselves resilient with true energy security and a renewable system, they've continued our dependence on Russian oil and gas, and look where it's got us.

I thank the Deputy Minister for both responses. In addition to driving forward the work on meeting the recommendations of the deep dive, you could act on the majority will of the Senedd. Whilst the deep dive recommends publication of guidance to signpost appropriate and inappropriate areas for development of different renewable energy technologies, the Senedd gave its full support to my legislative proposal, which did call for legal levers such as a duty for the Welsh Government to facilitate the creation of a national marine development plan. As the RSPB have stated, the lack of robust statutory weighted development control and spatial policies to steer development away from environmentally sensitive areas from the outset creates uncertainty for all. And as is highlighted in the report on the Welsh Government's marine policies, environmental stakeholders called for a cross-sector statutory spatial plan that does address the cumulative impacts of marine developments. So, rather than leave the siting of much-needed renewable schemes to guidance and the Crown Estate, will you follow up on our successful legislative proposal by creating a national marine development plan? Thank you.

The Member is rehearsing arguments we had not a matter of weeks ago in the Senedd Chamber, and I don't intend to go through them all again, other than to say we are satisfied, as we set out in that debate, that we have a mechanism to do that, we have a long-term plan, and there are already policies and actions in place that will do that. As she mentioned, the deep dive was conducted to look at any short-term barriers. One of the things we did identify was the need to review the marine licensing and consents process, and we're doing that now with Natural Resources Wales. The proposal is to look at it from the view of a developer, and go step by step through what might be slowing it down, any points of friction, and to blast them away. I think that has been widely welcomed by stakeholders, and I think it will make a significant difference.

Thank you. Alongside our joint support of renewable schemes, it is important that we do everything possible to back nuclear. Last week, the Prime Minister hosted a round-table with leaders from the nuclear industry to discuss how to improve domestic energy security and rapidly accelerate nuclear projects in the UK. As the Rt Hon Boris Johnson MP, our Prime Minister, stated,

'now is the time to make a series of big new bets on nuclear'.

This week, we have learned that the UK Government plans to take a 20 per cent stake in Sizewell C. The Secretary of State for Wales is visiting the US to champion Wylfa. I do appreciate that the Welsh Government has established Cwmni Egino. The leader of Plaid Cymru, Adam Price, has made clear that Plaid Cymru will stick firmly to their anti-nuclear stance. Given their role as co-operation partners, what discussions have you had about the future of nuclear in Wales? Can you clarify whether the Welsh Government does support the development of nuclear projects at both Wylfa and Trawsfynydd, or will your co-operation or coalition agreement change your view on that? Diolch. 

Well, my favourite right honourable is the Rt Hon Elin Jones, and I'd much prefer that she were our focus, rather than Boris Johnson. 

I really feel the UK Government are not learning the mistakes of the past. You've just criticised the energy system for being dependent on Russian oil and gas and we're now racing into the arms of Chinese investors to be committed to large nuclear builds. They're the only game in town hitherto when it comes to nuclear. Do we really want to put ourselves in the hands of yet another volatile international partner? I suggest that we don't.

As I've said, our nuclear policy is well-established. We do have proposals through Cwmni Egino and preceding that to look at the development of new nuclear technology at existing sites, and we've set up a company to explore that. We do think there are economic advantages to doing that in the short term. But, as I said, our energy policy focuses primarily on renewables because we think that has both a minimal environmental impact as well as producing energy resilience. And if we do it right, we'll capture the economic benefits entirely in Wales, rather than continuing to leak out funding, as indeed nuclear risks doing. 

I fear that the party opposite, despite their commitment to net zero and commitment to economic development in Wales, are making all the same mistakes all over again.

Plaid Cymru spokesperson, Delyth—

Had you finished? Yes.

Plaid Cymru spokesperson, Delyth Jewell.

Diolch, Llywydd. Minister, around Wales we have many important ecological sites in very low-lying coastal areas. Sites such as RSPB Newport in the Gwent levels, RSPB Conwy, WTT Llanelli wetlands centre and RSPB Ynyshir near Machynlleth are all vitally important sites for coastal birds, which are unfortunately already endangered. Even a small amount of sea level rise would spell certain doom for species like the sandpiper, the oystercatcher, and numerous other species as well, like otters and rare insects. Even lizards could go extinct in Wales if we lost our unique wetlands. I'm concerned that focusing only on preventing further climate change and sea level rises may not be enough to save our beautiful bird species. Constructing coastal flood defences to protect ecological sites should surely be part of our effort to reverse biodiversity decline. Minister, I know that the Welsh Government has announced a deep dive to look at effective implementation of the Convention on Biological Diversity's global biodiversity framework 30 by 30 target, which is a very long title, saying that that would be initiated after the February half term and in-depth discussions completed by mid May. Given the importance of this ahead of this year's COP15 summit, could you give us some more detail please on when the deep dive discussions are going to start and when the terms of reference will be clarified?

The purpose of these deep dives—and I must say I'm rather going off the title as it's beginning to sound a little pretentious; as I've said, if we keep having deep dives like these, we'll end up with the bends—is a rapid review of barriers, and they start as an open-ended process. In the ones that I've carried out on woodland creation and renewable energy, and I'm now doing something similar on town centres, it's the process rather than the outcome that starts off predesigned. So, we get a range of people in a room, and we meet intensively over a short period. We have a mix of voices. We have people who are practitioners, we have people who are academics and policy experts, and we have some deliberately awkward characters—and I think this is a really important part of the mix—to really create some challenge and some tension. Then we ask them to go with us to identify what they believe, given their experience, are the principal barriers and the main issues. And then, the key challenge from the Minister to them—and it'll be Julie James leading the biodiversity one—is to get them to translate their criticism into practical action. It's very easy for observers to tell us what's wrong; what is harder is to come up with practical policies that can make a difference. That's what we've done successfully, I think, in the other deep dives, and that's what we'll be seeking to do with this one that Julie James will be leading. So, it's impossible to anticipate what it'll come up with, because that is the whole point—we don't know. But we will be relying on an alliance for change to work with us to identify practical steps.

Thank you for that, Minister. Obviously, I hope that coastal flood defences will form part of that work, but I look forward to finding out more as time progresses on it.

Turning, secondly and finally, to the Climate Change, Environment and Infrastructure Committee's annual report on NRW, it has highlighted widespread concern among stakeholders about NRW's ability to effectively carry out its roles and responsibilities because of a lack of capacity and resources. That includes its ability to monitor and assess the condition of terrestrial and marine protected sites for nature. Could you, therefore, Minister, give us an update, please, on any assessments that have been made of the capacity and resource needed for an adequate programme of monitoring for these sites, and how this compares with the capacity and resource that is currently available?

Well, after more than 10 years of austerity, there isn't a single public body in Wales that has the capacity that they would wish to have, and I think that is just a fact that we have to deal with. NRW is no different from Conwy council or from any other public body, and we, all of us, have to live within our means. There are discussions going on with NRW about how we prioritise. For example, in the hitherto referred to deep dive that I did on woodland creation, one of the things we identified there is that there were 82 people where part of their jobs on woodland creation was about erecting barriers to planting trees. So, that wasn't a capacity issue; that was how we use the capacity we have to align it to our policy outcomes. What we want to do in that case is to recalibrate that effort so that those same people are focused on pursing a different policy outcome. It's not about extra people; it's about using the people you have in a different way. So, there's that discussion to have with NRW across the piece, but there's also prioritisation to have. We've done a baseline budget exercise with them. We're going through that with them now as part of the budget-setting exercise, and we're having other discussions with them about how we treat different forms of spending in order to enable them to do the task that we all want them to do.