Questions now from the party spokespeople. The Conservative spokesperson first of all, Natasha Asghar.

Thank you, Presiding Officer. Deputy Minister, during a recent interview on Sharp End, you hit out at Cardiff Bus for raising concerns about your controversial plans to roll out 20 mph speed limits across Wales. They feared that the move—which, I must stress, will cost upwards of £32 million—will lead to slower and more unreliable bus journeys. Deputy Minister, in response to the legitimate concerns raised by the company, you said Cardiff Bus had, and I quote,

'a remarkably narrow-sighted view'.

However, isn't it actually the reverse, Deputy Minister? It is in fact you who is narrow sighted, pushing ahead with this 20 mph plan whilst ignoring legitimate concerns, especially in light of a new report showing that cutting speeds to 20 mph does not actually, in fact, improve road safety.

I fear the Member's career as a tabloid newspaper editor has escaped her. The idea that I 'hit out' is rather sensationalist, I think. I was expressing my frustration with some of the comments that have been made, which I don't accept the premise of. I understand the concerns, and we're working with them on it, and we're working to understand better some of the problems they're having. We know one of the major problems that bus companies have is reliability and congestion. The evidence we have so far is that a 20 mph speed limit will produce smoother traffic flows. Most of the delays are at junctions, and people speeding up and slowing down to get to the next set of traffic lights as quickly as they can is a considerable cause of local air pollution, as well as using fuel, and, of course, being a danger on the roads. So, if we're able to smooth the traffic flows, that should help bus companies.

We're also not entirely clear how accurate most bus companies' timetables are. They're saying we're causing delays to their timetables; well, in many cases, they're not sticking to their timetables at the moment, and that's largely because of congestion. So, there's a circular argument here.

So, we certainly want to work with them to understand it better. Where there are problems, we're very keen to look at road space reallocations. The creation of bus lanes and bus priority measures is a different way of achieving efficiencies for the buses without, as she suggests, having a speed limit that we know increases the chance of being killed if you are hit by a car—some five times greater at 30 than 20. The study she referred to in Belfast is not a comparable study to what we're proposing in Wales, and I was disappointed that the coverage of that really did not reflect the reality of it. But I'm sure if she was to study it, and to study our proposals, she would notice significant differences. 

Thank you, Deputy Minister. Believe me, I did study your interview, and sticking with the Sharp End theme here, Deputy Minister, you were asked if the people of Wales should expect to see more 50 mph speed limit zones—just like the ineffective ones already placed along the M4 at Newport, where I live—pop up across the road network. You replied, and I quote, 'Yes.' The 50 mph cameras in Newport, Deputy Minister, simply haven't worked. Heavy congestion still plagues that stretch of road every single day. I fail to see why on earth you'd even consider installing cameras elsewhere across the country when they do nothing to ease congestion and do everything to make motorists' lives a misery. Deputy Minister, is it not true that the imposition of unrealistic speed limits has less to do with cutting pollution and everything to do with forcing motorists off our inadequate roads to cover up your failure to provide Wales with an effective and efficient road network?

Well, I do enjoy the post-match analysis of my interviews; it's always very good to get feedback, and, again, from tabloid newspaper editors. Perhaps she should be a tabloid tv critic as well; there are certainly other avenues open to her should she not decide her future is in politics, which would be a great shame. 

The provision of 50 mph speed limits, as the Member knows, were, in many cases, court ordered because they were breaching air quality targets, and, far from her saying have proven ineffective, the reverse is true, as she well knows. They have proven effective in bringing down the pollution levels, as well as contributing to smoother flow of traffic. So, I'm afraid she is wrong with her facts, wrong with her analysis and wrong in her diagnosis of the motivation behind them. 

Thank you, Deputy Minister. I appreciate your call for my future career change, whereas I'm quite happy where I am. I plan on staying here for a very long time because someone needs to hold you to account.

In the same interview, returning back to Sharp End, Deputy Minister, you were asked if motorists across Wales should expect to see road charges introduced. Again, your response was, and I quote, 'Yes.' We on these Welsh Conservative benches have never been in any doubt that this Labour Government is anti-driver, but you have confirmed our worst suspicions with just one simple word, which was your 'Yes.' People across the country are struggling to make ends meet with the rising cost-of-living pressures, whilst at the same time you are drawing up plans to squeeze even more cash out of them. Deputy Minister, will you finally stop punishing drivers at every available opportunity and go back to the drawing board and rethink your 50 mph and road charge plans?

Well, I can only assume that Natasha Asghar's researchers have the week off, but, clearly, she got a lot out of this week's Sharp End, which I'm sure they'll be very pleased about.

Now, the issue of road charging is simply a reflection of the fact that petrol tax will disappear as people stop driving petrol cars. It's her party's Government in the UK who has set a legal deadline to stop selling petrol cars, which I strongly support. That means, by definition, the Treasury's reliance on fuel duty to fund large parts of public services will have to be reassessed because people won't be buying petrol. So, some of form of road user charging is inevitable, and is, in fact, being actively worked on by her Government in London. So, whenever she comes up with hysterical labels to throw at me, she really needs to think beyond the soundbite to what she's saying, because this is something all Governments are doing, because, simply, the rules are changing. What we have said in our transport strategy is that we favour a benefits and charges approach, just as is being considered in Cardiff, where we do look at charging in some circumstances, but the money from that is used to pay for improved public transport and alternatives to the car. I think people would be willing to pay a charge, and certainly the polling would support that, if they felt they were given real, good quality alternatives to driving. That's what we're working on, and we're doing it carefully. But the idea of sticking to the current system simply will not fly.

Plaid Cymru spokesperson, Delyth Jewell. 

Thank you, Llywydd. Minister, I want to ask you about COP27. Developing nations were celebrating on Sunday morning, because, for the first time in 30 years, developed nations agreed to provide funding to help them respond to disasters related to climate change, known as a loss and damage fund. The agreement in COP27 was far from perfect, with several key elements missing from it. Some nations said that the commitment on limiting temperature rises to 1.5 degrees Celsius did not not represent any progress, and the language used on fossil fuels was weak. The loss and damage proposal did draw praise, but it is clear that climate change is causing damage now, as we speak. So, do you agree that what we should be aiming at, if truth be told, is avoiding and preventing disasters, rather than pricing them in? If so, what contribution will Wales make to these efforts? 

I completely agree with Delyth Jewell that the outcomes of the COP summit were disappointing and frustrating. The problems with these international summits is they inevitably move at the pace of the slowest, because there needs to be unanimous agreement. Clearly, a number of countries have their own reasons for slowing progress, and that, simply, is not going to be adequate to deal with the severity of the threat that the science suggests we now face from man-made global warming.

I think she is right that the one little bit of comfort was some support for the developing world—people, of course, who contribute the least to global warming, but are suffering the most the first. So, there's a real moral obligation on us, as an economy founded on fossil fuels to make a contribution, but, also, a strong self-interest. We know that levels of migration are set to increase as climate change hits, with people having been displaced from their land not being able to sustain a livelihood. They will be going onto other countries, and that will inevitably impact us. Even those who are not fully signed up to the science of climate change and fill our newspapers with warnings about migration should pay attention to the need to help the developing world mitigate the impacts to avoid adverse effects on things they care about further down the line.

The Welsh Government has been, for a number of years, working through our Wales and Africa project, in helping developing nations. It's an outstanding project. To give you just one example, in the Mbale region of Uganda, we're working with coffee farmers to plant trees. We've planted now 20 million trees since the project started. That not only helps give them a livelihood, but also stabilises their land from flash flooding that is produced by climate change, by using the trees to bind the land together. I've met a number of the coffee farmers, who are remarkable people. We need to understand the impact of our behaviour on their ability to live their lives. 

Thank you for that, Minister. Sticking with the COP theme, after COP27, it seems that Governments across the world have abandoned hope of 1.5—that chance of limiting global temperature rises to an only slightly catastrophic 1.5 degrees C above pre-industrial levels. That is escaping us. It's being written off in newspaper columns and government policies. It is slipping into the past—a future we might have saved for ourselves but we didn't manage to do it. And whilst the difference between 1.5 degrees and 2, 2.5, or 3 degrees can be measured in the number of extinctions, deaths and droughts, it can also be catalogued in the turmoil and despair of young people. What more can your Government do to retain that hope for young people in a world that's writing off their future? Can your Government bring its influence on keeping 1.5 alive? 

She is, of course, right to be distressed by the increasing likelihood that we're not going to be able to reach the target set in the Paris agreement, and I think people need to focus on what this means. When we have the world's scientists telling us that we are facing catastrophic irreversible climate change, we really need to sit up and take notice. We're going to have to account for our failure to act in the face of very clear evidence to our children and future generations. So, it's imperative that we fight hard to make sure that we do take meaningful steps now, not wait until 2030 or 2040, by which time it'll probably be too late as we'll have locked in embedded emissions.

To answer her question, 'What can we do?', I think we can show leadership, we can show other Governments that we are prepared to match our rhetoric with action. That's one of the reasons why we have commissioned the roads review. There are always difficult short-term trade-offs to face up to, and sometimes unpopularity, because change is difficult and painful, but the alternative is far, far worse.