Well, actually, earlier on, you said that the mountains behind Port Talbot actually shove it all my way. But I can tell you that’s what it is anyway. David Rees has already mentioned the problems with Port Talbot, and I don’t want to over-highlight those. Perhaps I should admit, though, to contributing to that poor air quality when I drive my artificially deflated car into Swansea every day. When I do that, I pass one—or two, I think, actually—of the six electronic nowcaster boards that are a mysterious feature of the Swansea city landscape. These are signs that are designed to take data from 47 monitoring stations around the city, identifying which areas are becoming over-polluted at any one time, and then re-directing local traffic to avoid those hotspots, or those cough spots. I’m not sure if they’re supposed to reduce air pollution in themselves, or protect us from it, because at the moment, they actually do neither. These signs, which cost the Welsh Government £100,000 back in 2012, are still not working.

Just last month, the World Health Organization identified Swansea—not just Port Talbot—as now exceeding ambient air quality guidelines, and even though it does name Port Talbot, I don’t think the title of the most polluted town in Wales is one we should be fighting for, even against Crumlin. I don’t think it takes, to be honest, Public Health Wales to find a direct correlation between air pollution and an increase in respiratory diseases—although of course it’s pleasing to have the obvious confirmed there. Respiratory diseases are particularly prevalent amongst older people in Wales, and last year DEFRA advised that as older people are more likely to suffer from heart and lung conditions, more effort should be put into making them aware of the effect of air pollution in their own environment.

A total of 29,776 people died of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease in 2012 in the whole of the UK. That’s quite a high number I think anyway, but 27,000 of those were over the age of 65. Over 45,000 people in Wales are admitted to hospital each year with respiratory conditions like COPD and lung cancer, and with the health of older people—which already presents complex challenges to the NHS—being more likely to be affected by pollution and low air quality, surely there’s a strong argument, isn’t there, that a clear and effective low-emissions strategy for Wales, properly implemented, would reduce impact on the Welsh NHS and social Services—not just in the terms of the £20 billion that one of the earlier speakers mentioned, but in reducing the personal poor experience of many older people who have a range of co-morbidities.

I’m a great believer in people being part of solving their own problems. Take the fabulous, although sadly late, now, Margaret Barnard of Breathe Easy Neath Valley, who, having being diagnosed with COPD back in 2005, spent the next 10 years of her life working with the British Lung Foundation locally, to raise awareness of respiratory diseases and their causes, and fighting for the improvement to the design of portable oxygen. She also got me to do an abseil to overcome my fear of heights to raise money for the British Lung Foundation, so that’s how persuasive she was.

But sometimes, it’s got to be Government that really takes the lead—and I think this is one of those occasions. While we all, of course, need to take control of our own behaviour, to avoid a range of diseases and conditions as we get older—you know, eating better, doing more exercise, stopping smoking and so on—it isn’t as easy to control our exposure to poor air quality. Because one electric car—let’s be realistic here—doesn’t make the difference. This need population-level action and I think all Governments of the UK should look across the world, not just to Europe, for inspiration on this, not least about what to avoid, but also, of course, what to adopt. I know it was some time ago, but in 1996 the UK Government introduced PowerShift grants to assist companies to convert their fleets of vehicles to LPG, which is 88 per cent less polluting than diesel. But the scheme was cut short in the 2000s, with the result that businesses, and potentially members of the public, turned their backs on LPG and went back to petrol and diesel. And it’s only now, some 20 years later, when the hybrid and the electric cars are becoming more familiar, that we recognise that was an opportunity missed there.

While I think that carbon taxes can be part of the answer, heavy-handed application makes them an easy target, doesn’t it, for blame when industries run into trouble. I think that nudges to our driving culture can help us as individuals make a meaningful and whole-population contribution to better air quality.