Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 5:25 pm on 7 December 2022.
Absolutely, Huw, I was coming on to say exactly that. We want those targets to be meaningful and stretching. We want them to be achievable, though. There's no point in having targets and everybody goes, 'Oh well, you'll never do that'. We need them to be realistic and achievable targets, where we can protect 30 per cent of our land, freshwater and seas by 2030. That's not very far away, so we need to get these targets right and we need to get them to be meaningful.
We have got positive collaborative working relationships already with the Office for Environmental Protection and Environmental Standards Scotland, as well as counterparts in the UK and Scottish Governments. We absolutely will be learning the lessons from what they have already done as we develop permanent environmental governance arrangements that reflect our policies and our legislative context here in Wales.
So, I will say this to all of the Members who've contributed to this and to the members of the committee: I am sorry to be last. I didn't want there to be a gap; would that we could prevent that from having happened. But, there are some merits in it as well. We will be able to set these targets, we will be able to ensure that they are meaningful, we will able to do the learning from what's happened elsewhere in the UK and we will get the interim assessor's seriously good input into how we construct this. I'm sure that the committee will help us construct the very best legislation that we can. I assure you that we will be bringing it forward; I am absolutely determined to do so. I just want to conclude by thanking the committee and Chair once again for their very valuable work and their continued positive engagement with this issue. Diolch.