We move on to the next item, which is the statement by the Minister for Social Services and Public Health on active travel. I call on the Minister to make the statement. Rebecca Evans.

Thank you, Presiding Officer. Improving the well-being of people in Wales and enabling them to be more active is a key manifesto commitment for us. Walking and cycling in particular offer a multitude of benefits to individuals, to society and to the planet.

The Welsh Government, with the support of the previous Assembly, has put in place a new framework that will ensure that we can realise these benefits. We start from a low base. Last year, just 6 per cent of adults in Wales made an active journey by bike and 63 per cent made a trip on foot once a week or more, meaning that one third of adults in Wales made no walking or cycling trips in an average week. Similarly, only 49 per cent of primary school aged children typically walk to school and only 2 per cent cycle, with even lower figures for secondary school children.

The most recent figures estimate that the cost of physical inactivity to the NHS in Wales is £51 million a year. We want to help people across Wales increase their physical activity by providing the means to make walking and cycling short distances the norm. This will help improve our nation’s physical and mental health, save people and businesses money, improve our air quality, reduce congestion and carbon emissions, and increase our support for local shops and businesses.

A key element in this is our landmark legislation, the Active Travel (Wales) Act 2013, which was commenced nearly two years ago. Since then, we have made significant progress in changing the way that we treat walking and cycling in Wales. We now have our national design standards, which set out clearly what we expect from walking and cycling infrastructure. We expect the infrastructure to be safe and comfortable to use, and to really meet the needs of users. These standards will help to transform routes across Wales over the coming years.

We have conducted a comprehensive survey of existing walking and cycling infrastructure in Wales, which was completed in spring 2015. On this basis, local authorities were able to audit and identify the existing routes in their towns, which they consulted on and submitted to us on their existing routes maps this year. Local authorities have now begun work on the next stage, where we look at moving from looking at what we have already got, to what we want for the future. This will result in the submission of the first set of integrated network maps for 142 places in Wales next September. It is critical that the planning of these networks builds on engagement with as many current and potential users as possible to ensure that their views and knowledge help effectively connect the origin and destination points that people need to travel between.

Encouraging people to walk and cycle for everyday journeys requires more than good infrastructure, important though this is. We need to change people’s attitudes to walking and cycling, and support the emergence of a new active travel culture in Wales. Our active travel action plan, which was published in February this year, sets out the actions that Government is taking to support this change. It complements the wider work on increasing levels of physical activity in Wales under ‘Getting Wales Moving’, which will inform our healthy and active strategy, to be published later this year.

The action plan includes our high-profile Active Journeys programme, which supports promotion and engagement of active travel in many schools across Wales. In its first year, the new programme has benefited 230 schools in total, ranging from more intensive work with schools, including work to seek pupil involvement with Safe Routes in Communities schemes, through to simply providing advice and information. The work programme included, for the first time, secondary schools. Forty-five secondary schools benefited, most of which held workshops to get students’ input into the integrated network mapping process.

We are also supporting the Cymru Travel Challenge, which targets workplaces across Wales. Over three challenges, we aim to motivate over 4,500 employees across Wales to increase the frequency of active travel and the use of public transport for everyday journeys, and replace single-occupancy car journeys. Challenge 1 ran in May and saw over 700 participants logging 6,500 journeys and replacing 32 per cent of car journeys with walking and cycling. Challenge 2 commences on 10 October.

Increasing levels of active travel in Wales is something that requires action from many parties, within Government and outside it. Local authorities have a key role to play, and I am very grateful for the professionalism and the enthusiasm that many have shown in embracing the challenges of implementing this new legislation. I am working closely with the Cabinet Secretary for Economy and Infrastructure, and we are agreed on the vital importance of ensuring active travel is embedded in the planning of major transport infrastructure projects, such as the metro projects in north and south Wales, to ensure that our transport network is genuinely integrated, efficient and high quality. I am also working with my other Government colleagues to ensure the delivery of the Welsh Government’s actions and duties, and look forward to working with the active travel board, which I will meet at their next meeting on 5 October. Diolch yn fawr.

May I thank the Minister for her statement? May I welcome the details that have been provided and this update on active travel? Of course, we had a brief discussion on this issue of physical fitness in the health committee last week and the Minister will recall that we mentioned the importance of physical fitness and the importance of keeping fit for us all, whatever our age, but particularly as we influence our children, because it does establish a pattern of behaviour for life.

Fitness and keep fit—. There are certain studies, as I mentioned last week, that demonstrate a reduction of 30 per cent in blood sugar levels if you are fit, as compared to those who are unfit, a reduction of 30 per cent in blood pressure, and a reduction of 30 per cent in cholesterol levels, and in weight. What is noted there, of course, is that if fitness were a tablet or a drug with that significant reduction of 30 per cent in those elements, everyone would be screaming for NICE to allow us doctors to prescribe it, post haste. That’s why fitness deserves far more attention that it’s currently given. It’s far more effective than most of the drugs available to us in dealing with these issues that I’ve just mentioned.

But if I can return to the statement, that’s why I was a little surprised at your third paragraph, when you mentioned that the latest figures on the cost of not keeping fit to the health service in Wales was £51 million each year. I would have thought, given all those costs that we face in dealing with obesity, that the saving in financial terms would be far more than £51 million per annum. That appears to be a very low figure to me, I have to say, in terms of tackling this situation.

Specifically, on your commitment under the Active Travel (Wales) Act 2013, can I ask how active travel is considered in the discussions that will take place on the rail franchise? And, specifically, when you mention that more children should be walking or cycling to school, of course, safety issues are given as one reason why people don’t actually choose to walk or cycle to school. So how are you actually getting to grips with parents’ doubts over safety as part of these active travel issues?

Finally, of course, particularly when you mention a workforce that, instead of travelling to work in their cars, is now going to do so either by cycling, running or walking, there are implications in terms of providing facilities to those people, such as toilets, showers and bike sheds to actually go hand in hand with those active travel routes. How are negotiations proceeding to ensure that the facilities are in place to meet the aspirations? Having said all of that, may I welcome the direction of travel, as they would say. Thank you.

I thank you very much for those questions and also thank you for the very constructive session that we had with committee in which we explored in quite some detail the aspects of physical activity to which you referred. You asked about the statistics—the figure of £51 million as a cost to the NHS every year in terms of the lack of physical activity. That figure was given to us by Public Health Wales. They’ve done a scoping exercise, looking at the economic cost of various things such as domestic violence, mental health, physical inactivity, smoking and many other aspects as well in a new document called ‘Making a Difference’. It’s a shorter document, but underpinned by a robust evidence base, looking at these various aspects. Although this just specifically relates to the physical inactivity’s cost to the NHS, obviously there is a much wider cost in terms of costs to the economy, for example, costs to people’s own quality of life and so on, as well. So, this was just looking at one of those aspects.

You talked about the importance of getting children engaged with active travel at a very, very early stage in their lives, and we’re completely on the same page there. I think our eco-schools programme has a particular role to play in that. Over 860 schools in Wales have already achieved the international Green Flag award for the work that they’ve been doing on eco-schools and, as part of that, they’ve been looking at things—there are walk-to-school days, for example, and walking-bus programmes. Schools have junior road safety officers, and in some of those schools they’ll be making bespoke parking tickets to put on the cars of parents who have perhaps parked insensitively and inappropriately on pavements and so on outside schools. I think that having a message perhaps from a child that is handwritten is much more powerful than politicians and others telling parents where they should and shouldn’t park and so on. I think children have a really important role to play in this particular agenda.

We’re trying to make sure that children are also safe on the roads from the youngest age as well, which is why, through the Cabinet Secretary for Economy and Infrastructure’s department, we’re identifying and creating safe routes to schools for walking and cycling, and that’s very central to the active travel Act. Nearly £800,000 is also paid to local authorities for child pedestrian training, and 17,000 primary school children have benefited from that. That’s about helping children have confidence to walk to school, but also making them understand what they need to do to keep themselves safe whilst doing so. Over £0.5 million is also paid to local authorities for national standard cycle training, which benefits 15,000 primary school pupils a year as well. Cardiff is receiving a grant at the moment to pilot some new approaches to refresher training for children as well, because we can teach this at a certain point, but then we want to see whether there is a benefit actually to offering refresher training and perhaps more detailed training that is more age-appropriate for them as they grow older.

On the issue of infrastructure, we’ve made it very clear—and I spoke to my colleague, the Cabinet Secretary, earlier about this today as well—how important it is that the major infrastructure projects and all infrastructure projects have active travel at the heart, really, because we have an Act in Wales that is there to promote active travel. So, it should be done looking at integrated transport in the wider sense, so including walking and cycling opportunities as well.

Thank you, Minister, for your statement today, which is very welcome. This legislation does seem to have suffered from a lack of interest and ambition on behalf of the Government, causing, I should say, frustration among even the Act’s biggest supporters. The fourth Assembly’s Enterprise and Business Committee made a number of recommendations during their early post-legislative scrutiny of the legislation in February of this year. So, I would be grateful if you could outline how the Government has acted upon the committee’s recommendations. First, colleagues noted that the implementation of the legislation is hampered by a lack of dedicated funding and resources for local authorities to deliver the Act’s laudable aims. The Minister’s predecessor previously said that the Welsh Government did not accept the rationale for considering transport funding in isolation. Now, since you’ve been appointed to your new post, have you reconsidered allocating a dedicated pot specifically for active travel? There does seem as well to be a distinct lack of activity to raise public awareness. Could you therefore perhaps outline how the Welsh Government has sought to address the committee’s concerns with regard to promoting public awareness of the Act?

You also mentioned today that you’ve been working closely with your Cabinet Secretary for the economy to ensure that major infrastructure projects such as the metro and city deals should allow for active travel provisions. So, can you therefore outline what specific measures have been taken forward in that regard? Finally, given that the Act underpins so many of the cross-cutting policy agendas of all Welsh Government departments, including the strategies ‘Getting Wales moving’ and ‘Climbing Higher: Creating an Active Wales’, will you outline how you are ensuring that the active travel Act is implemented right across the Government?

I thank you for those questions. I’ll begin with the question that you raised on planning, and how we are ensuring that planning is an enabler for active travel. I’m considering now how we might make revisions to planning policy and guidance to strengthen the emphasis on active travel, and that’s something that I would be working with colleagues on as well. You would have heard the First Minister’s comments today in terms of active travel, and his support for it was very clear that, when we are thinking about building new roads, then we should also be thinking in the same mind-set about building new cycle paths and so on, as well. With regard to funding, I don’t believe that we should look separately at funding for active travel because the whole point is that it should be integrated within the normal way that we travel, and making short journeys on foot or by bicycle should be considered normal things to do. However, I do recognise that we do need specific funding to support the implementation of the Act. So, we’ve given local authorities previously a portion of £300,000 towards producing their existing routes map and the preparation of the work there. Also, £200,000 of local transport funding money has been allocated specifically for costs associated with the integrated network map stage of the process as well. You’re absolutely right to say that engagement is absolutely key in terms of how we move this forward, and having a conversation with the public about what the routes that they want and need are, because that really is going to be crucial to the success of this programme.

I’ll be looking to our active travel board to take a real leading role in this, and this is made up of key Government departments and external partners, Natural Resources Wales, Public Health Wales, the Welsh Local Government Association and a range of third sector organisations and representatives of business as well. They will have a role, I’m sure, in terms of both holding things to account, in terms of the delivery of the Act, but also being advocates for the Act as well. I recently launched, alongside our voluntary sector organisations, a new website where members of the public can register their interest to be consulted by local authorities on the plans. So, I would recommend anybody with an interest to go ahead and look at the Living Streets website to find out more and to register their interest in terms of letting the local authority know what their routes are, what would make the difference for them, what's stopping them taking a bike or walking to a destination at the moment. So, that's certainly something that I would ask Members here, actually, to promote in their constituencies as well.

We're certainly seeking to support local authorities in the discharge of their duties, because we know that we are asking a lot, but then I think that we can gain a lot from them as well. So, we consulted on, and published, delivery guidance on how local authorities should meet their duties under the active travel Act, and I think that this meets some of the recommendations to which you referred. And we’ve also published design guidance that sets out infrastructure standards and provides tools and guidance for network planning and auditing by local authorities. So, we certainly want to make sure that local authorities have access to the information and support that they need in discharging these new duties, because there will be a lot of work involved, but I think that we can achieve a great deal. This is actually a really exciting opportunity for Wales. I'm very aware that the eyes of the world are on this in many senses. I've seen blogs from America looking at what we're doing here in Wales. So, we absolutely have to work together to make sure that it's the success that I know it can be.

I thank the Minister for her statement. The active travel plan is a good initiative in terms of its objectives. There could be long-term savings in the NHS budget if people in Wales are basically fit, as Dai Lloyd asserted, and, ideally, physical activity should be nurtured from an early age. On these principles I think we agree. The problem lies, as ever, in how 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 children having to use vehicular transport to travel to school. To walk more than three miles to school would surely be too far and too time-consuming on a regular basis. So, you'd be unlikely to be encouraging regular walking to school in that instance. The same problem applies to workers whose workplace is many miles away, and, unfortunately, the tendency of modern life has been for people to travel further and further to their place of work.

Of course, your plan also covers cycling, which may be more viable in the long term. It will be difficult, nevertheless, to overcome these rather fundamental obstacles, but it will be interesting to see what progress can be made with the active travel plan, and I will endeavour to monitor it closely. Thank you.

I thank you for the welcome that you've given it and for the support that I think that we've had right across the Chamber here in the Assembly today. With regard to the workplace, I think there is an opportunity for employers to be supportive of their employees' efforts to make active travel journeys, for example by providing showers in the workplace and so on. I know we certainly provide that kind of facility here at the National Assembly. Our Cymru Travel Challenge, to which I referred in the statement at the start, is an opportunity for workplaces to engage with what we're trying to achieve here, and many workplaces are also working towards the Healthy Working Wales corporate health standard, which is an opportunity for workplaces to demonstrate to their employees that they take their health seriously and that they’re able and willing to invest in and support them for the future as well.

I'm very keen—. You mentioned engaging with people from an early age, and that's important because walking and cycling have to be seen as an opportunity for everyone, which is why it's been really important that our active travel approach thus far has engaged right across all of the communities, and specifically looking at how we can engage hard-to-reach communities and individuals with the active travel agenda. So, we had an active travel conference, which looked specifically at this and our efforts to increase participation amongst disabled people, women, ethnic minority groups and older people as well, because we don't want people to feel that this perhaps isn't for them, because there are journeys that most of us can be making by foot or by bike.

Thank you, Minister, for your statement and for the personal commitment that both you and the Cabinet Secretary for the economy have shown for this agenda.

In many ways, passing the legislation is the easy bit in this project. This is an ambitious and generational project to try and change attitudes and behaviours, and even though, through the existence of the Act, we have some very progressive design guidance, probably the leading design guidance in the UK, it’s how it’s implemented that matters. For example, in my own constituency, Carmarthenshire County Council have recently built two new sections of cycle path alongside the main road between Llangennech and Dafen, and rather than following the guidance that says there should be a 3m-wide path, they’ve decided to build two paths: a 1.5m-wide path on one side, and a 1.5m-wide path on the other side, each with ‘one way’ signs on them. I’ve never seen a ‘one way’ sign on a cycle path before, and it’s highly unlikely it’s going to be given much attention.

So, it’s crucial that we engage with the target audience here, which is not people who already cycle; it’s people who have never cycled. This, after all, is about changing behaviour, and so it’s particularly disappointing in the consultation on the first maps that only around 30 people have been consulted by each local authority across Wales. Would she do her best to make sure for the consultation on the next iteration of the maps—the maps where we’d like to see the routes—that we engage as many people as possible, as I say, not people who already cycle and walk, but people who do not?

Thank you for those points. I’m very keen to ensure that we give local authorities the kind of support that they need, and the guidance that they need. So, it is disappointing to hear the example where perhaps the design guidance has not been followed to give an optimum cycle path, especially when having a new cycle path is a great thing, so let’s try and make it the best possible quality and standard that we can.

The target audience, you’re absolutely right, as I said in my statement, is not only the current users and the current people who make active travel journeys, but also potential active travel journeys as well. I’ve said the low figures of active travel present us with a real challenge, but also a real opportunity. So I really want to see local authorities engaging well beyond the usual suspects to people who perhaps would not normally consider this. In my answer to the last question I talked about reaching out to some of the groups who have been more difficult to engage in this agenda in the past.

I just wanted to assure you that I have written to all local authorities in Wales outlining to them the seriousness and the importance the Welsh Government attaches to active travel and the successful implementation of this Act, so I’ll be working very closely with them, and if there is support that they feel that they need, I would hope that they would be able to raise that with me.

Minister, I walked into work this morning and I’ll also walk home. I walked across the barrage from Penarth. I sometimes take the other route across Pont y Werin bridge. That’s a slightly longer walk. Neither of these routes would have been available to me five or six years ago. The only way I could have walked into the Assembly then was down Penarth Road, a much longer route and a very much less pleasant one. I think what you’ve got to encourage is the development of key infrastructure like that connection in the barrage, like that pedestrian bridge I just mentioned, and linking perhaps new paths—not necessarily always along the main roads, though sometimes that is appropriate. We must use infrastructure for key targets—that is, people who can walk to work. You can have satellite car parks, incidentally, and allow people to walk a mile or so from them, freeing up our urban areas, reducing the number of cars and improving air quality. Also, surely it is around schools that we need to be developing our infrastructure and aiming there, because if schoolchildren just get into the habit of walking and cycling, then there’s fitness for life, potentially, for them.

I thank you very much for those points. Just to reiterate again the key importance that we see to infrastructure being seen in the round when we’re talking about building transport links and the transport citizens of the future. They absolutely have to include walking and cycling.

I’m interested in what you say about the satellite car parking facilities. I think that’s fantastic, because as one of the previous speakers said, some people do have to drive several miles to work, but there’s an opportunity at the end of your journey, for maybe 10 or 15 minutes, to take that last part of your journey and clear you mind before a hard day ahead of you at work, and so on.

I’m really keen to listen to any innovative ideas, wherever they come from, within this Chamber or from the organisations who are supporting our work. I do have to say a big thank you to the voluntary organisations and others who have been working so closely and offering us such great support and expertise over the recent months and years.

Thank you. And finally, Julie Morgan.

Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. Making Wales active and making the active travel Act a reality is one of the key tasks for the Welsh Government in this next term, and we’ve already covered today the statistics and the consequences and the health issues that we have to address here in Wales. It’s good to hear that all the existing routes maps have been completed by the local authorities. Have you learned anything from the process of those maps being completed that would help local authorities produce their integrated network maps? Do you feel that any more guidance, for example, is needed? You said you want to support local authorities as much as you can; is there any more that’s needed for the next stage?

Would the Minister agree that it’s really important that it’s not only the transport officers and departments in local authorities that are involved, but all the other departments—the education departments, the housing departments—because this is something that affects the behaviour of everybody in most aspects of their life? Is the Minister aware whether, in local authorities, those other departments have been involved or are going to be involved, and what could she do to ensure this will actually happen?

I was very pleased to hear about schools’ involvement in thinking about the integrated network mapping process, because obviously this is an absolutely key opportunity, a key chance, for young people, children and, of course, the public generally to have a vital say, really, on the active travel routes that they would like to use. I think you’ve already mentioned the particular groups that you would like to make sure have their say—ethnic minorities—and it’s particularly important that women have their say, because, in terms of cycling, fewer women are willing to cycle for many reasons, and reasons of safety in particular. Living Streets, Sustrans Cymru, Welsh Cycling and Cycling UK, as you know, have launched a joint campaign that allows people to contact their local authorities about the mapping process, asking to be involved in any consultation and any public engagement events. I think it is very important for local authorities to have events, not to only consult online, but to try to do some real living events, such as an audit of an area—an active travel route audit, for example—with residents. Are you able to encourage that sort of event to happen, so that what we finally do is make the active travel Act a reality and that we have a vision that we are driving Wales to be active?

Thank you very much for those questions. We’ve received all, now, the existing routes maps and I’ll be, shortly, formally accepting the final three of them. In terms of what we’ve learned, we’ll be supporting our local authorities in terms of developing those integrated network maps through a pilot project, which I’ve just recently announced. That will work with a number of local authorities through some of the key integrated network map stages and enable them to share lessons and good practice with one another, because that’s something I think we learned from the previous stage—that we need local authorities to be working much more closely, sharing information and best practice, and so on, with one another, in order to make this the success that we know it can be. So, that pilot project will run on a modular basis, and that will help avoid any delays in terms of waiting for the completion of the project and getting the information to us to analyse.

There’ll be a conference later in the year on active travel, and I’m really keen to ensure that, again, it’s not just the usual suspects who are attending, who you’d expect to be there. I would like to see representatives from housing, education, and so on, and health at that conference as well, to see how we can work forward in partnership on that.

You raised the importance, again, of engaging with children. Children have been engaged by some local authorities in terms of the mapping exercises and in terms of understanding what routes children would like to see, and what the barriers are to making them more active as well. You mentioned women, and there’s lots of good work going on. For example, Breeze in Swansea is a club that has been set up for women who want to cycle, but who don’t want to cycle alone, and so on. I’d also mention BikeAbility and Pedal Power, for example, as organisations who are supporting disabled people and others to access cycling as well, because that kind of kit can be very expensive for an individual. But, then, with the support of charities they are able to access what they need. So, I very much see this Act as being an Act for everyone in Wales and an opportunity for Government to support people to become more active both through cycling and walking. We can’t do it alone; we need the partnership of local authorities. I’m confident that we have that and the support of the organisations who are giving us their knowledge and expertise as well.

Thank you very much, Minister.