1. What plans does the Welsh Government have to insulate the most energy inefficient housing? OQ58189

Llywydd, improving energy efficiency of homes in the social rented sector is progressing through the Welsh Government's £220 million optimised retrofit programme and the Welsh quality housing standards. Plans to assist those in privately owned and privately rented sectors, through the Warm Homes programme, will be announced in the autumn. 

Thank you for that information. As the constituency with the highest number of private sector renters, I know that they are really shivering in all winters, and with bills expected to rise to nearly £3,000 a year per household—something that we have no control over—I wondered why it is not possible to have an emergency programme to protect the most vulnerable households living in fuel poverty. What exactly are the barriers to instituting an immediate insulation programme, targeting the most vulnerable households living in the worst insulated homes, which tend to be in the private sector?

Llywydd, there are a series of measures the Welsh Government is taking to assist households with the escalating price of energy. But there are a series of barriers, I'm afraid, to instituting an emergency programme of household insulation. To begin with, we simply don't have the capital available to the Welsh Government to mount such a programme. Astonishingly, Llywydd, the capital available to the Welsh Government will reduce over the period of this Senedd. We will have less capital to invest in infrastructure of all sorts later in the Senedd term than we do now. And when the Chancellor announced his measures in May, I know the Member will recall that there was incredulity on the part of the industry that he did not announce a single penny of additional investment in energy efficiency and insulation measures. It was, the Financial Times said, just a footnote to his announcement, despite the fact that the director general of the Confederation of British Industry had called the day before for an all-out national effort on energy efficiency. 

So, we simply lack the means to be able to mount an emergency programme. There are difficulties in implementing such a programme. Unfortunately, those properties that most need to be insulated don't deliver themselves in neatly organised bundles. They exist across the different sectors, clustered though, as the Member said, in the private rented sector. They exist across all geographies, and every home is different. Every home has a history of its own, a set of measures that have already been taken, and every home has to be individually assessed to make sure that the plan for it responds to those measures that have been taken in the past. 

And then, thirdly, the third barrier to that sort of emergency programme is the skills deficit in the workforce. Successive UK Government schemes in this field have failed. David Cameron announced the Green Deal, aimed to insulate 14 million houses by 2020. That 14 million house scheme resulted in 14,000 loans being offered—14 million houses to be insulated; 14,000 loans altogether. The result is, Llywydd, that the supply chain, both in materials but also in skills, simply hasn't developed across the United Kingdom to the point where the very sensible suggestion put forward by the Member for Cardiff Central could be easily mounted by the Welsh Government.

Between now and 2028, Wales will need to recruit, on average, an additional 2,000 full-time equivalent workers to carry out the highly technical challenge of decarbonising homes in Wales. Now, during a recent Climate Change, Environment and Infrastructure Committee meeting, Mark Bodger, from the Construction Industry Training Board, highlighted that there has always been an appetite for people to retrain and reskill in sectors that can improve and broaden their trade. He also identified a major untapped market—shockingly, only around 3 per cent of these workers are female. So, with the Welsh Government—yes, your Welsh Government, First Minister—failing to publish the net-zero skills action plan, and we're not set to see one until the winter of 2022, which is of course much too late because the cold, harsh weather will have kicked in by then, will you as the First Minister clarify why there has been such a delay to a plan being developed, and what steps are you taking to encourage women to take up decarbonisation roles? Diolch.

Llywydd, I very much agree with the final point the Member made. The construction industry, unfortunately, continues to attract people from only part of Welsh society. And for women looking to work in it, too often it does not look like the sort of place that you would feel comfortable in working. Now, I do know that, through our colleges, real efforts are being made to attract young women into those occupations and to make them feel welcome, and for them to feel that the necessary adjustments are not adjustments that they need to make but adjustments that need to be made in the workplace so that those people feel that they would be welcome and that they would be able to make the contribution, which, I agree, is there to be made. Our new skills plan in this area has always been scheduled to be published by the end of this calendar year, and we remain on track, Llywydd, to do exactly that.

I thank Jenny Rathbone for the question. We've heard Governments many times talking about encouraging owners to retrofit or to use renewable means of producing energy, such as solar panels on their homes. But, for many of my constituents in Dwyfor Meirionnydd, neither of those options is realistic, because they live in buildings that are listed. Think of the wonderful architecture of Dolgellau or Maentwrog, for example. The owners of these homes come to me regularly, expressing frustration that they can do nothing to save on their energy costs and ensure that their properties reach the necessary environmental requirements. They can't have double glazing or solar panels. So, what will you do to help these people?

Well, Llywydd, I understand exactly the point the Member is making about the nature of construction of houses in parts of Wales; it's not confined to the part of Wales that the Member represents. And we have local authorities who have put forward plans to us that allow us to help them to invest in novel and innovative technologies, that, even where the basic construction of a home doesn't lend itself to normal forms of insulation, there are still things that can be done. It is not easy—I do not for a moment suggest that, in the types of houses to which Mabon ap Gwynfor has referred, there are easy solutions in this matter. But we continue to work with the industry and with local authorities, where they are able to come forward with innovative proposals, to try to find solutions for people whose homes, by the nature of their construction, mean that conventional means of insulation simply won't work for them.