I am very grateful to the Member. And then the prevalence of pollution through nitrogen oxide seems to be increasing, with eight out of 10 monitoring sites in Wales recording an increase last year.

I just want to turn to some of the health impacts, because inhaled particulate matter and exposure to nitrogen oxide causes a considerable increase in morbidity. It is calculated that it reduces life expectancy on average by between seven and eight months. Of course, there are many, many vulnerable groups that suffer much greater risks to their health, a point that’s been more strongly made quite recently by the British Lung Foundation, and I commend their work on this to Assembly Members.

The whole sort of health harms that occur to society come at a cost, and also they cause other harms in terms of the use of public services, the effectiveness of the economy and business as days are lost to ill health. And, indeed the Royal College of Physicians estimate, that the cost to the UK is about £20 billion a year that can be attributed to air pollution. It really is quite remarkable.

I want to turn now to how we achieve cleaner air, and it has been a challenge. I mean, in the 1950s it was first apprehended, and, as I said, by 1970 they had begun to make very significant progress, but perhaps in the modern age now, with the rapid increase in car use and frequency of its use, it’s something that needs very particular attention. And I should say also—I don’t particularly like turning to this point—but in post-Brexit Britain, all Governments need to co-operate to improve air quality—all Governments within the UK. There are responsibilities here shared across the different Governments. And, of course, what we do can affect other parts of the UK, so it’s very, very important. The legislative guidance and regulations that are currently embedded in the EU must not be lost, and in the work that now follows, as we unpick our membership of the EU, it’s very important that those safeguards are continued and, where appropriate, planted in our own regulatory and legal frameworks.

I think also in terms of Brexit, the future of the metro needs to be very carefully considered. In my view, help with this project is something we can quite legitimately take to the UK Government and say, ‘This is key to the progress of our economy in south Wales, but in particular to health and well-being and opportunities people have via public transport.’

And better air quality monitoring is also required, especially in Wales’s 36 air quality management areas and in particular, I think, monitoring of air quality near schools. The impact on young people of air pollution is particularly acute.

We must ensure that the Welsh Government delivers effectively on its own national air quality strategy, and that is something that we will pay a lot of attention to in the Welsh Conservative Party. And I’ve no doubt that the Minister will pay a lot of attention to this as well, as to where the general policy framework will now have to be strengthened in terms of taking forward the consequences of Brexit.

There are opportunities. There have been some advances that create real opportunities for the future of air quality and its improvement. I turn to the Active Travel (Wales) Act 2013. If that’s taken up extensively, if local authorities in particular use the tools that are in it, then I think we could see some marked decrease in the use of vehicles, especially in urban areas—in the centre of urban areas—and people taking up opportunities to walk and cycle, which will lead to direct health benefits to them as well as improving the quality of the air we all breathe. So, there are double benefits there in terms of the advances we can make.

I think also we face a wider challenge to redesign our urban spaces, and perhaps I slip slightly here from just being the Conservative spokesman to talking about one of my pet enthusiasms. There are too many cars in urban places, basically. I think the next generation will look back and think, ‘How on earth did they allow their urban environment, especially the most precious parts of it around schools and the centre of cities, to be dominated by car or more generally vehicle use?’ I mean, I have a car—it’s a—. I nearly said ‘Mini Metro’. It’s a Fiat 500, which is the same genre, perhaps. I do barely 5,000 miles a year, but lots of people need to use their car more frequently. But I think, whatever the car use appropriate for people, they can take other opportunities, other than the car, when they are presented. Certainly, we need to design our urban areas so that people can park in satellite areas and then take public transport into the centres. We need to reform the way that children get to school and try to unravel the school run and how that has dominated the current generation when it never used to happen before. There are important things that we need to do, and they will create ways where we can improve the general quality of the environment and of life.

I also think direct alternatives to car use need to be promoted, and this is why, as I said earlier, the metro is so important. I’m an enthusiastic user of the bus, of the train; I often walk to the Assembly; I sometimes have to drive. That ought to be a typical profile for citizens. It shouldn’t be exceptional. It should be how, certainly in urban areas, we all make our journeys.

Every large van in the UK runs on diesel. Now, how have we got there? They’re highly polluting, some of those vehicles—visibly polluting. It’s just astonishing the black muck that comes out of those vehicles. There are alternatives—liquefied petroleum gas, for instance, scores on some environmental measures. I know that it does have some carbon implications, but it does lead to cleaner air, and there is a good infrastructure in place to use LPG. So, that could be looked at. Taxi fleets could also run on LPG. There are definite ways we could improve air quality in that direction as well. Local authorities need to act decisively when air pollution levels are seen to be and are recorded to be too high. They need to be more active.

Finally, can I just say that we do need a greater understanding amongst the public so that we can move forward with full co-operation? At the moment, the harmful health effects and also the harmful effects on the economy, I don’t think, are fully appreciated. So, there is some work for us to do in the fifth Assembly. Thank you.