4. Statement by the Minister for Economy: Net-zero Skills Strategy

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 3:36 pm on 28 February 2023.

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Photo of Jenny Rathbone Jenny Rathbone Labour 3:36, 28 February 2023

First of all, I'm having difficulty finding this new plan that's been published today on the internet. It would be great to know whether it has actually been made available to us all, because I'm very keen to understand which are the seven key areas and the 36 actions.

Following up on the points that you've just made to Luke Fletcher, we can hope that the UK Government will do the right thing about energy bills, but, really, the sustainable short-term solution has to be improving the energy efficiency of our homes. Britain has the most leaky homes in the whole of Europe, and energy bills are really a struggle for about a third of all our households. We know it's the biggest source of indebtedness. No. 1 must be reducing the amount of energy that people have to buy in order to keep their home warm.

I just wondered, within these key areas and targets, how are you planning to upskill the construction industry workforce so that we have the technical and precision skills to massively reduce the cost of heating Welsh homes? As identified by Darren Millar, there's a lot of interest in putting solar panels on people's roofs, but not very many people who know how to do it, particularly those who like to put new tiles on roofs—they're not saying, 'Oh, and by the way, you should put a solar panel on as well'. We really do need to accelerate the process of ensuring that far more people know how to do this, in order to reduce our carbon emissions, as well as the debt, which is going to foreign companies outside Wales.