So, in light of the important work that she has been undertaking, I am pleased to confirm that the Welsh Government will be extending Dr Llewelyn Jones's contract for a further year, and I'm particularly pleased that it is Dr Llewelyn Jones. We're not just extending the role, but we're extending her role in it, and I think that's a very important point to make. 

The committee's report made a number of recommendations to the Welsh Government, and there is indeed a lot of work to do to ensure that we deliver on them. In particular, we will be looking to undertake a review of the interim measures. The aims of the review will be to evaluate the effectiveness of the arrangements, to ascertain whether current levels of resourcing are sufficient and to inform the development of a permanent environmental governance body. We will bring forward the details of that review in due course. I'm sure that Llyr will invite me to a committee session to grill me on it, and I'm very happy to keep the Senedd informed by statement as well, Llywydd.

The Welsh Government does recognise the pressure that the interim assessor has faced since her appointment, due to the high demand for the service. We will need to consider very carefully whether the interim assessor has the resources needed to carry out the intended functions effectively, and what we will need to do to ensure that she does have those resources. In the meantime, the interim assessor's secretariat team has been working with her to identify the best way to do this, and this includes commissioning external support from academics and legal professionals for her reports. We hope this will result in fewer demands being made on the interim assessor's own time, allowing her to devote it to finalising her reports.

It is worth noting as well, as pretty much everyone who's contributed has done, that there were a high number of cases received last year and very much an unexpected spike during November and December. But, since then, demand for the service has actually gone back to where the predicted demand levels were, with only four submissions being received since 1 March 2022. We just need to ensure that the resources are tailored to be able to cope with spikes, but also not sitting around twiddling their thumbs if the level is back. So, there's a little bit of work to do there.

In the committee's report, there were a number of recommendations for the assessor, as Llyr and others have noted, and they were related to raising awareness of the service and transparency around her work. And, as stated in our response to the report, we are providing the interim assessor with the support that she requires to deliver on those recommendations. We're very keen for her to be able to do so. And that includes taking steps to ensure that the webpages are much more accessible and exploring how better use can be made of social media channels to publicise the work, both of which I'm sure the committee will be pleased about. I'm also aware that the interim assessor has been taking steps to publish quarterly updates on her webpages to highlight how her work is progressing. This is a really positive development, and I am glad to see the action being taken so quickly in response to the committee's recommendations.

But, of course, despite all of this, and as the Chair of the committee highlighted, that's looking at the work of the assessor; it's not looking at what the gap is. We absolutely do recognise that the arrangements don't fully fill the environmental governance gaps left by Brexit. So, we have committed to legislation to bring forward a permanent environmental governance body during this Senedd term. We have got a number of important pieces of legislation in the same space over the coming year aimed at creating a greener Wales. I'm sure that Members all remember that only yesterday, we passed a Bill to ban and restrict the sale of some of the most commonly littered single-use plastics in Wales. I was very delighted to be able to do that. Congratulations, everyone, for taking part in that. We have a clean air Bill, an agricultural Bill to reform the way our farming communities are supported in the future, and a Bill on coal tip safety forthcoming.

We are developing the work programme for delivering on our commitment to establish a permanent environmental governance body, taking into account the need to ensure that there are measures in place to mitigate the existing governance gaps. This is part of the co-operation agreement that we'll be taking forward with Siân Gwenllian, the designated Member. I will be writing to the committee with further details on this work plan in due course. In taking forward the work, we will be able to draw on the experience that the interim assessor has gained to date and learn from counterparts in the other nations of the United Kingdom for where they've got so far. And, as I have repeatedly said to Delyth—I'm sure that she can almost repeat it back to me herself—one of the big things that I want to be able to achieve from this is to set the biodiversity targets in the 30x30 process.

I'm about to go out to COP, despite sounding like this—I'm sure everybody else on the plane will be delighted to be sitting next to somebody who sounds like this—and I will be working really hard with the coalition of what are called sub-national Governments and regions across the world to make sure that we play our part in making sure that those targets are meaningful and will actually bring back the biodiversity on which we all absolutely rely. I really mean this. We want those targets to be vigorous and stretching. We want them to mean something. We want them to make sure that we do, actually, protect and reverse and halt the decline in biodiversity. I want this governance body to be part of ensuring that that happens. I'm sorry that there's a gap, and, obviously, we don't want to be last—