Jenny Rathbone: May I second that?
Jenny Rathbone: What is the Welsh Government doing to drive up breastfeeding rates in Wales?
Jenny Rathbone: I welcome Huw Irranca-Davies into this post. You've got some very big shoes to fill, but I'm sure you will bring your thoughtful and learned approach to this particular area of public policy, as you have to others in the past. We face a pretty difficult situation for children, and I think the children's commissioner's report reflects that in part. Under 'Provision', she highlights the fact...
Jenny Rathbone: The Institute for Fiscal Studies has calculated that in Wales we will see a spike of 7 per cent in the rate of increase in child poverty, which obviously is statistically huge. We know that those on working-age benefits are seeing a real cut in the amount of money they get to live off. What do you think can be done to mitigate the policies of the UK Government, which obviously are not of our...
Jenny Rathbone: I'm a relative latecomer to Carl's fan club. I first met Carl as a candidate in 2011, when he came to support my campaign for the redevelopment of a dismal shopping centre that was well past its sell-by date. Carl was a fantastic campaigner. He was also a great problem solver, as others have said. Julie Morgan and I will be forever grateful to Carl for negotiating a solution to the 15-year...
Jenny Rathbone: 3. How will the Welsh Government deal with the anticipated spike in child poverty in Wales as a result of changes to welfare benefits? OAQ51298
Jenny Rathbone: There are many things that we can learn from Communities First. I do think that there was a failure back in 2001 to establish a robust evaluation mechanism that could have exposed poor programmes much more systematically and much more quickly, because, unless you have some effective monitoring arrangement, it’s impossible for Welsh Government, based in Cardiff, to pinpoint areas of concern...
Jenny Rathbone: I support Simon Thomas’s Bill for all the reasons that have already been outlined on environmental grounds, and we need to be moving away from fossil fuels and on to renewables. There’s one aspect I’d like to interrogate Simon Thomas on, which is how we fulfil our global responsibilities in the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015. Because we have to bear in mind that...
Jenny Rathbone: The Vegetable Summit was held yesterday simultaneously in Scotland, England and here in Wales at the Pierhead. Its aim is to change our dysfunctional food system. Most people have heard about five a day, but few actually achieve it. Vegetables should be a fifth of our shopping; we buy less than half that. Sugary, fatty, salty foods are piled high and sold cheap, while some communities are...
Jenny Rathbone: Cabinet Secretary, I’m completely delighted by your statement, and also welcome very much the statement by David Melding, a forward-thinking Conservative, if that’s not too much of an oxymoron. I just want to delve a little bit into history as to why we are where we are today, because it was Gordon Brown in 2006, when he was the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who announced a UK-wide...
Jenny Rathbone: I find the glass-half-empty attitude of some Members a bit irritating. Because it’s really important that we seize the moment. The Government has moved its position from considering legislation to actually seizing the moment and doing it, and I’m very, very pleased to hear that. I welcome the approach—the measured approach—from Angela Burns, and, indeed, Dai Lloyd, that we have to get...
Jenny Rathbone: This week, we learnt that London has almost doubled the charges on the most polluting vehicles going into central London, and Oxford has just announced it’s going to be the first UK city to ban petrol and diesel cars from its city centre from 2030. Meanwhile, Paris has regular car-free days in the capital city of France to tackle the toxic air that they’re experiencing. Could the...
Jenny Rathbone: Thank you. I’ve just come from the vegetable summit being held in the Pierhead at the same time as in London and Edinburgh, and we heard really important pledges from a wide variety of producers and promoters of, for example, children’s rights. The children’s commissioner highlighted the fact that nearly 80 per cent of children aged five to 10 are not eating enough vegetables, and 95...
Jenny Rathbone: 4. How is the Welsh Government using public procurement to drive up horticulture production in Wales? (OAQ51250)
Jenny Rathbone: Diolch, Llywydd. Chris Blake, who many of you will know as a non-executive member of Natural Resources Wales and a proponent in many guises of sustainable, renewable energy, has invested in an electric car, along with a wind turbine and solar panels on his house, to make sure that his vehicle is only powered by clean energy. But his frustration is that he cannot use this electric car to get...
Jenny Rathbone: Many of us will be familiar with this argument; Simon Thomas also tells us about his pain that he can’t use an electric car to get from Aberystwyth to get round his region of Mid and West Wales. So, I was delighted to hear that there is a proposal in the budget for this year to invest £2 million in developing more electric charging points so that we aren’t just making them available on...
Jenny Rathbone: I’m delighted to see the pilot of the bottle deposit scheme in this year’s budget. I think that’s completely excellent, enabling us to understand the number of miles that may need to be travelled to get the containers back to the factory and to understand the process to make sure that it really is sustainable. It can’t come too soon, because David Attenborough has, once again, made a...
Jenny Rathbone: I’m delighted that the Cabinet Secretary is taking prompt action to get round the really unhelpful ruling by the ONS, and, as we’ve seen, legislation’s already been passed in England to ensure that housing associations can go on being able to contribute really important housing for people who cannot afford to buy their own. And certainly in my own constituency, housing associations like...
Jenny Rathbone: Thank you for this report, which is very interesting. Getting people out of their cars in a city like Cardiff is absolutely essential in order to reduce congestion. Counterintuitively, of course, congestion reduces the number of people who actually want to travel by bus, because they think that if they go in a car they can rat-run and they can get there faster by private vehicle. So, it’s...
Jenny Rathbone: I think that the Member raises an important issue here. I’m quite concerned to read that the Department for Transport expects this lifting of the toll to increase traffic by somewhere between 28 and 45 per cent over the next 10 years, and the savings of £1,400 a year for commuters mean that it’s more likely that even more people are going to be piling into Cardiff by car when we don’t...
