Questions Without Notice from Party Spokespeople

Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Climate Change – in the Senedd at 1:43 pm on 18 May 2022.

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Photo of Lee Waters Lee Waters Labour 1:43, 18 May 2022

We are pleased, clearly, that we've been able to finally reach an agreement with the UK Government on the free ports. It has been a more protracted discussion than it ought to have been, and the way in which it was conducted was not ideal, but I'm pleased that we reached there in the end. My colleague Vaughan Gething showed considerable patience to get us to a satisfactory outcome, and he's been leading those discussions. I was very keen to make sure, as part of our agreement, we had a porous boundary between the different ports in Wales to allow collaboration, particularly for them to exploit the opportunities of marine energy and seeing the ports as a key piece of infrastructure to enable us to take advantage of the economic opportunities as well as the sustainability opportunities of offshore wind in the Celtic sea.

So, there is now agreement that the Treasury and the UK Government will look at bids for co-joining different ports, which could allow Milford and Port Talbot to present a joint bid, and there are words in the agreement that allow us to explore more than one bid. But they are caveated, as Natasha Asghar pointed out, by the UK Government's view of the quality of those bids, but there's been no definition of what a quality bid looks like. So, there's an ongoing conversation. We are keen to seize on the opportunities and we remain to have misgivings about the central thrust of the policy, but we are determined to work together for the best interests of Wales.