Questions Without Notice from Party Spokespeople

Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Climate Change – in the Senedd at 1:52 pm on 18 May 2022.

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Photo of Julie James Julie James Labour 1:52, 18 May 2022

Yes, we are absolutely going to do that. I'm not going to promise it in the second year, Delyth, because I'm in the hands of the legislative programme to some extent. We have a large number of competing priorities, unfortunately, and it's about what's in the best position to go forward at any point in time and how we can get it through the committee systems, and so on. It's not about whether we think that it's a priority. We do think that it's a priority.

I'm really delighted that we have just started the biodiversity deep dive process. I'm really, really pleased with how that went last week. We have a whole series of them now, running forward. Just to explain, we have the core group for that, but we also have a series of stakeholder meetings involved with that and expert groups involved with that. Then, I will be making a statement to the Senedd. I hope that we'll be able to have something at the Royal Welsh, by way of a public engagement process on that as well, once the process for this initial phase of it has passed.

The whole purpose of that is to tell us how to get to 30x30, what the target should be, and how we should structure that for Wales in a way that really makes a difference on the ground. I think that we share the view that that needs to happen. I absolutely want to put in place an independent body that holds our feet to the fire, but I want to know what they are holding our feet to the fire about, and how we can put them in the best possible position to do that, before we go for it. So, I am really looking forward to the outcome of the deep dive, which will be the first big step on the route to being able to do that.

Then, I hope, Llywydd, that we will be able to have a session in the Senedd that gets us all into the same space about how we should take that forward. There will be difficult decisions along the way. If we are going to protect 30 per cent of our landscape to the level that we want to, that is going to affect people who live in that landscape and who work and want to make a decent home and life out of it. So, it's important to get it right, so that we get that buy-in, as well as just the targets.