Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 3:10 pm on 21 March 2023.
Yes, thank you very much, Huw. So, it was a pleasure to come to the cross-party group, and we absolutely will continue to engage with everyone.
What we need is a Bill that's capable of delivering improved benefits over time. So, I do think it's ambitious enough for where we are now. It might not be ambitious enough for where we want to be in five years, and that's the point about future-proofing it, isn't it? So, to make sure that we can move with the times without having to come back for primary legislation all the time. It doesn't have targets on the face of the Bill, quite deliberately, because we want those targets to be able to be made stricter as time goes on. It would be very difficult, anyway, to hit on a target, and then I think there are some unintended consequences of that. So, it's that kind of thing. And as we go through scrutiny on the Bill, we can explore this in greater depth.
We want to be able to do some other things. So, we want the Bill to be enabling enough to be able to do that. We also want it to be able to work well with the other legislation in this field. This isn't a consolidation Bill. So, we need it to amend properly the other legislation, and we need that to be as flexible as possible, going forward, as well.
And then, primarily, we want it to place a duty on us to get the data on air quality in Wales, and that's one of the big pieces. So, it places a duty on Welsh Ministers to make arrangements for obtaining data about air quality in Wales as they consider appropriate to monitor progress being made towards meeting air quality targets set under the Bill. So, there we go—that's it, isn't it? So, it gives us the chance to improve what we have already. We haven't got very great data in this regard, actually, and it gives us a series of levers, if you like, that we can use to morph people's behaviour, and that's whether we're drivers or pedestrians, whether we're home owners or employees—we've all got a role to play in that.
We, obviously, work very closely with our industries here. We're actually quite lucky—we have a very clean steel industry, as clean as steel can be, and actually they're very engaged in that. We have other industries in Wales similarly engaged. This is about the air we breathe, this is about human health. But this is also about the climate and nature emergencies. It's about making a planet fit for all of the species, isn't it? So, I've got a lot of—. I think this Bill has a lot of ambition. I've got a lot of ambition for it, and as we go through the scrutiny process, I hope we can make it as futureproofed as possible.