5. Will the First Minister make a statement on the current situation regarding ongoing coal mining at Ffos-y-frân? OQ59900

I thank Delyth Jewell for that question, Llywydd.

A planning enforcement notice was served on the site operator by Merthyr Tydfil County Borough Council. The company has submitted an appeal against the notice to the Welsh Ministers. In addition, Coal Action Network have ongoing legal proceedings, and discussion with the courts is currently taking place.

Ffos-y-frân opencast mine in Merthyr has received UK-wide attention because the company has continued to extract coal a year after it was told to stop, churning out dust and carbon and muck into the atmosphere. The Good Law Project estimates that more than 300,000 tonnes of coal have already been extracted illegally. The company has said it will cease mining in November—we have only their word to take for that—but my main concern is about the little amount of money that has been put aside to restore the land, a landscape that has a long history of being desecrated for coal. Fifteen million pounds has been put aside should the company not complete the work that's been promised, and that could be used for restoration, but estimated costs of that restoration stand at £100 million—perhaps £120 million. If the company doesn't keep to its promises or abandons the site, there will be a shortfall of more than £100 million. What measures is your Government taking, First Minister, to ensure that that land is restored, and what will you do to ensure that our Valleys don't see yet another mountainside forever blotted by an abandoned mining site?

Well, Llywydd, I share many of the anxieties that the Member has articulated. Here is a company where permission to remove coal ended in September of last year. They've continued mining coal ever since, using a variety of devices in order to allow them to do that, hence we have this complex set of appeals and court actions. But now, a new set of perils begins to emerge. There are the redundancy notices, which will have been issued to the 150 staff, and while it is the clear policy of the Welsh Government that finite fossil resources should stay in the ground, in that transition away from coal mining we still have to pay proper attention to the fates of individuals whose livelihoods are still bound up in it. The company say they intend to close the mine on 30 November. There is a genuine danger, given the history, that the site might simply be abandoned. If that happens, there are a series of immediate perils that we will have to be alert to. There is the whole potential for flooding, if pumps that currently are on the site are removed or switched off. There is ground stability to be thought of, if machinery that is currently used at the site is removed from it. There are old workings on the site that will need to be attended to. There will be no security on the site if it is simply abandoned. With all the dangers to—. I don't want to be pejorative and say 'young people', but anybody thinking that this might be a place to go and explore, they would find that they were exploring a pretty dangerous place and no security there to assist them. And then all the challenges that would be posed for restoration of the site. It is why—and this where it's difficult to say much more this afternoon, Llywydd—it's why the current court actions are so important, to try to bring all this to a resolution, deeply unsatisfactory as it has been, in a way that helps to reduce these new risks, which, if we're not careful, in the way that Delyth Jewell said, might crystalise in the next few weeks. If they do, then we will have to take one set of actions. The current focus is in trying to mitigate those risks.

Good afternoon, First Minister. Just following up from the issues raised by Delyth Jewell and your comments about the workforce there, one of the things that I've been really keen to look at is a transition universal basic income, that is, how we support workers moving from fossil fuel industries, carbon-heavy industries, into green industries and ensuring that they have the skill base in order to do that.

In relation to Ffos-y-fran, and we have other coal mines that are in this particular state as well—Aberpergwm and Glan Lash—would you, if funding were available, support a transition universal basic income? Diolch yn fawr iawn.

Well, Llywydd, that is a very interesting idea. The Member knows I'm interested in universal basic income generally. I suppose, if that idea had not been put to me, I would have said that what I am in favour of are decent redundancy arrangements, because decent redundancy arrangements provide exactly that cushion that Jane Dodds has spoken of. What we've seen is the erosion of workers' rights and trade union rights and redundancy rights and what they should have been in a solidarity state that says to workers who find themselves in this position that collective action of the wider community will support them while they find themselves in transition from one form of employment to another.

I was asked by the leader of Plaid Cymru a series of questions about the leader of the Labour Party. Well, today, in front of the TUC congress, the Labour Party has once again reaffirmed our commitment to those rights that workers ought to be able to enjoy in the workplace. It's good for workers and it's good for the economy when people know that, if things don't turn out as they would hope, there will be a safety net there strong enough to support them. A universal basic income in those circumstances might be a different way of doing it, but a decent redundancy scheme, as a right, guaranteed to people in the workplace, would be another way of achieving the same objective.