Gareth Bennett: The Government’s focus on play is welcome. We now have a fairly weighty Government document on this. This document is geared up for schools, nurseries, social workers and local authorities. Surely, a major problem though is that so many parents are sedentary or even obese that we have to persuade them to get out of the house to the local park to play with their kids. So, I wondered what we...
Gareth Bennett: ...of social housing. Yes, we know there are cycling and walking schemes being pushed by the Welsh Government as part of their active travel programme. But this clashes with the reality of successive school reorganisations forcing parents to send their kids to schools further and further away—hence the traffic chaos of the school run. I note that schools do have the ability to be flexible...
Gareth Bennett: ...human rights, because I suspect that, for many people in Wales, human rights is a rather woolly concept that, as far as they are aware, has no real bearing on their lives. So, there may be a useful educational aspect to the inquiry, in which I look forward to participating.
Gareth Bennett: ...travel have not shown improvement, unfortunately, since the active travel Act was passed, and the independent charity Living Streets says that we are still dealing with a decline in the walk-to-school numbers as more and more parents drive instead of walking sometimes fairly short distances. We do need to do more to promote walking to school. I note that there has been a programme; can we...
Gareth Bennett: I think the issue of political education in schools may be quite pertinent now that we have the local government Minister’s proposals for extending the vote to 16 and 17-year-olds possibly at some future date. So, I wondered how we ensure that political education is taught in a balanced way to represent different political viewpoints.
Gareth Bennett: ...so should be entitled to the vote. But the truth is that, with university expansion, this group is actually cossetted in adolescence for a longer period, with most of them institutionalised in the education system until the age of 21 or later.
Gareth Bennett: ...and resource impact of resettling refugees here in Wales. How will it impact on local councils financially? How will it impact in terms of the housing list? How will it impact on the health and education services? So, along with hearing in detail from the providers of refugee services in Wales, the Assembly must also—at the same time, I feel—consider these wider implications.
Gareth Bennett: ...is a welcome development. The Active Travel (Wales) Act can potentially play a large part in helping with the objective of increasing physical activity. We do need to get more people travelling to school, work, and even to the shops. To this end, targets can sometimes help—a point that Janet made earlier—and I note that in England they are currently considering a target of getting 55...
Gareth Bennett: ...may howl at this point that we need migrant workers, and indeed one of the areas where we have a skills shortage is in the construction industry. The simple answer to this is to guide more Welsh school and college students into apprenticeships in the construction industry. Hence our support for university technical colleges, UTCs, on the Baker Dearing model, as they have in England. These...
Gareth Bennett: ...well the aims of the active travel plan can actually be delivered. Sometimes, the developments of modern living will tend to militate against this effective delivery. For instance, we can encourage schoolchildren to walk to school on a given day as part of this plan, but when we have school reorganisations that lead to the closure of local schools, we are left with the prospect of many...
Gareth Bennett: ...in future NHS bills in return for relatively small investments now. Instead of cutting sports funding, we need to invest. Invest where, though? Well, we need to strengthen the place of physical education in schools, we need to enhance links between the schools and sports clubs; PE teachers should be encouraged to develop these links. There could be a programme of regular visits to school...
