Thank you, Presiding Officer. Members will remember in my recent oral statement I set out what the Welsh Government is doing to support active travel in Wales and what we’re doing more broadly to encourage people to become more physically active. I’m pleased to give my full support to the motion being debated today and I’m very grateful to Members for the genuine interest and enthusiasm that they are bringing to this agenda.

Our programme for government includes a commitment to support people to be healthy and active. Achieving this, though, requires cross-portfolio action to create the environment and the opportunity for people to make healthier lifestyle choices. We continue to work closely with our partners, including Sport Wales, Public Health Wales, Natural Resources Wales and a really wide range of third sector organisations to ensure that people are aware of the benefits of physical activity and are motivated and provided with opportunities to introduce physical activity into their daily lives. Sport Wales has a number of programmes in place which encourage young people in particular to take part in sport and physical activity and I’m really pleased to report that participation rates are increasing, but we do know that there is more work to do.

Over the summer we have considered, alongside interested parties, a range of recommendations to increase levels of physical activity. Dr Frank Atherton, the Chief Medical Officer for Wales, will chair a newly established cross-cutting group to prioritise our actions to support this agenda. This work will help inform our healthy and active strategy, which we have committed to in our programme for government.

The second point of the motion today refers to the Welsh health survey data on physical activity rates among children. Improving the physical activity levels amongst children must be a priority because the benefits of a healthy and active lifestyle in childhood are realised throughout life. There is also a link between physical activity and educational attainment. I saw a real example of this recently when I visited Pantysgallog Primary School to see how they’ve introduced a 1-mile walk, jog or run for all key stage 2 pupils, and that takes place between breakfast club and the start of the school day. In addition to the health benefits, the teachers at the school have noticed a reduction in disruptive behaviour during lessons and the children told me about their improved concentration levels. They also told me how much fun they thought it was, and we can’t over emphasise how important that is.

The latest Welsh health survey results reported that the rate of school-age children meeting the chief medical officer’s recommended level of physical activity has increased by 1 per cent to 36 per cent, so things are moving in the right direction, but we want to accelerate that improvement. This requires a whole-of-society response.

Schools do have a key role to play. In response to the ‘Successful Futures’ report by Professor Donaldson, we’re developing a new curriculum that will support children and young people to become healthy and confident individuals. The implementation of six new areas of learning experiences will be central to the new curriculum and one of which will be health and well-being. Our programme for government makes clear our commitment to work with schools to raise awareness of the importance of healthy lifestyle choices.

The Welsh Network of Healthy School Schemes supports a whole-school approach to health. Ninety-nine per cent of all maintained schools are involved in the scheme and it’s regarded as one of the best in Europe. Furthermore, the scheme has been successfully extended now to include pre-school settings.

The Active Journeys programme, which works in schools to promote active travel to and from school, complements these efforts in a really practical way and makes resources and support available to schools across Wales. To build on this, I can announce today that I’ll be commissioning Living Streets to deliver a Walk to School in Wales project, which will highlight the health benefits of active travel. It will also support a number of schools to carry out their own review of walking routes in their area, offering a sustainable way of assessing and identifying ways of improving the active travel infrastructure.

The home environment also plays a vital role. Public Health Wales’s 10 Steps to a Healthy Weight campaign helps parents instil healthy habits in their children by setting out easy steps they can take to support their child to develop and maintain a healthy weight, such as limiting screen time and encouraging outdoor play. Through our newly launched Healthy Child Wales programme, we’ll ensure that health visitors are able to support families to make healthy choices from before birth to the age of seven.

The third point in the motion highlights the potential of the active travel Act to raise physical activity levels across the population. You’ve heard me say before that I see active travel as a key element of building physical activity into people’s daily lives and that the Act puts in place the framework to support this. It does so by mandating the planning of coherent walking and cycling networks in our communities across Wales and promoting their use. To ensure that these networks are fit for purpose and that they really meet people’s needs, local authorities need to involve those who regularly walk and cycle, but also, as we’ve heard, crucially, those who don’t. I was pleased to meet recently with our active travel board, to demonstrate how seriously I take their work. And I’m delighted that Dr Adrian Davis has agreed to join our board as he brings with him a significant expertise, both in active travel and in public health.

In relation to the fourth point of the motion, we agree that effective community engagement is key to determining how local active infrastructure is best designed, and this is a requirement that we put on local authorities, which are best placed to engage with the varying needs and assets of their local communities.