Research by the Welsh Liberal Democrats has shown that the Welsh Government has spent £900,000, £1,100,000 and £1,400,000 in each of the last three years on promoting climate change awareness.
Grants include £20,000 over two years for annual newspaper supplements on climate change and over £0.5 million a year to the Sustainable Development Commission and Cynnal Cymru.
We estimate that this could have paid for around 1000 improvements to homes in fuel poverty through the Home Energy Efficiency Scheme – making an immediate impact on carbon emissions.
The last few years have seen an unprecedented amount of public awareness of climate change from films, celebrities and the voluntary sector.
When money is this tight, we shouldn’t be spending so much public resource on awareness campaigns, when we could be spending it on effective schemes which have a real impact on carbon emissions.
Some of these schemes may have been ‘nice to have’ in years when Assembly budgets were expanding, but when we need to be concentrating on key services, the Minister really needs to make sure that money is being spent where it is needed most.
After spending £3.5 million pounds, the Government need to explain by how much the carbon footprint has been reduced. When we know investment in home energy efficiency would have tackled carbon emission as well as fuel poverty, there needs to be a good reason why we are spending money on these schemes instead.
I call on the Minister to undertake a complete audit of how her department spends money to make sure that the climate change budget is being put to the very best use.
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