Thank you for the opportunity to speak in this debate on physical activity. First of all, I want to reiterate how important it is that children get as much physical activity as possibly, and that physical activity should be built into their days. We don’t want to raise a nation of couch potatoes, because we know how good physical activity is for you, as our doctor has just told us. Of course, we know it’s very good for mental health as well. Yesterday, there were a lot of mentions of the very moving occasion of the Samaritans event in the Pierhead, when Nigel Owens spoke so movingly about dealing with mental health issues. We do know that physical activity is very good for your mental health.

According to Public Health Wales in its 2016 report ‘Making a Difference’, each year, physical inactivity costs the NHS in Wales £51 million a year and increased cycling and walking in urban areas could save £0.9 billion for the NHS in Wales over 20 years. So, there’s a huge amount of difference that could be made to the actual running of our health service. So, I think that the most important thing that we can do is to encourage children to start good, healthy patterns of behaviour from an early stage in life. I do think it’s important to remember at this point that many of the activities that children undertake outside school do cost parents quite a bit money. Football clubs, swimming and tennis—parents do actually have to pay out of their pockets for a lot of that. That’s why it is so important that much of what is done is built into our education system.

I would like to praise the walking bus initiatives, which were mentioned by Lee Waters in his introduction. I would particularly like to praise the walking bus initiative at Ysgol y Wern in my constituency, which is supported now by police colleagues of Sergeant Louise Lucas, who was so tragically killed while crossing a road in Swansea in March last year. Sadly, there has been more publicity about that over the last few days. Her colleagues from Llanishen police station were determined to carry on the walking bus to the school that she had started. I went on the walking bus myself this time last year. I think the walking bus initiative is a really good way of building exercise into children’s lives, and I think it’s great for parents to know that their children are safe in walking to school. So, I think that that is an initiative that we need to push and spread as much as possible. That particular one was supported by Sustrans and by the local authority and by the police, very strongly.

Walking is, of course, the easiest and most accessible activity that we can all build into our lives. That is why I am a big supporter, as are other people here, of the active travel Act and the work that is going on to plan active travel routes for walking and cycling. Lee Waters has already mentioned the—perhaps—failure to engage in the first round of consultation. I believe he said that only 300 responses came in from the whole of Wales on the first consultation. So, I think it’s really important now that we do try and get many more views on where the routes should be. I think that if people get engaged in the process of deciding where these routes are, it is much more likely that they will actually use them.

The final point that I wanted to make, really, was about some of the gender differences that are there in terms of walking and cycling. A briefing from Sustrans earlier this year pointed out that local authorities should really bear in mind that there is a gender difference in the way that women want to cycle, for example. Women, for instance, are much keener to cycle when there are segregated cycle paths than men are.

The other issue is that I think there’s a big difference between the number of women who actually do cycle and the number of men. Only 34 per cent of women said in Cardiff that they ride bikes, compared to 66 per cent of men. So, that’s really quite a big difference, and, again, that was in Cardiff—a survey carried out by Sustrans. So, I just think we’ve got to bear in mind when we plan these things that there are specific gender issues that we should look at.

Finally, we had the International Day of the Girl yesterday. I think these international days are really important, because it really makes us remember and flag up different issues. I’d just like to quickly mention girls and sport, because, sadly, girls are still lagging behind boys when it comes to taking up physical activity in the form of sports. The most recent figures show that, in terms of those hooked on sport, 52 per cent of boys are hooked; only 44 per cent of girls are hooked. It has gone up, but there’s also a big difference between schoolchildren in areas of deprivation and by ethnic group, with Asian girls having the lowest level of participation in sport, with just 28 per cent taking part. So, I think there are lots of issues to look at.