Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Climate Change – in the Senedd at 2:10 pm on 18 May 2022.
I certainly share the Member's frustration that the scheme has hit some snags. Let me say a couple of things in response to the points he raises. First of all, I think he is a great champion of the private sector and I would've thought that, in this case, it is not for Government to be leading the roll-out of e-charging; the Government doesn't provide petrol stations and I don't think it's reasonable to expect Government to be the primary provider of e-charging facilities—that is a role, primarily, for the private sector. And the role of the public sector is to pump prime and deal with those areas that are going to be less likely to be served by the private sector, firstly.
TfW do have a programme of work and this does prove to be very complex, for the range of reasons that he set out, and there have been delays for a whole range of reasons, not least due to supply chains as well as legal hold-ups, and also, as we were discussing in the Senedd earlier, the constraints of the grid. And this is another problem where the grid that we have is not fit for purpose to deal with the climate change emergency. Now, these are not things that are within the control of the Welsh Government. So, it's a complex patchwork of reasons why there have been frustrations.
I would just say that the figures I've seen show that, per head, Wales has as many charging points as other parts of the UK. We have set out an e-charging action plan, which shows—[Inaudible.]—keep pace on that. But I won't deny that the progress to date on the TfW project hasn't been what I would've liked to have seen, but the number of reasons for that are as I've set out.