My comments relate to section 2 of the motion, which refers to parking charges. Empty town centres and boarded-up shops are an all too familiar sight across Wales, despite attempts to liven things up with a little bit of tinsel and Christmas lights at this time of year. The decline of the high street across Wales reminds us that we need a strategy from the Government to support local businesses in our communities. As we’ve heard, it is becoming increasingly difficult for commercial operators to survive on the high street. Whilst developments on the outskirts of towns flourish, and online shopping is on the increase, high-street retailers are seeking support from Welsh Government. In my constituency, in Bangor, one in five shops is empty, although I have to say that there are signs that things are improving since establishing the business improvement district in that area.

In another town, Caernarfon, it’s a story of success as independent, niche operators create excitement. So, the picture isn’t an entirely bleak one. Following an agreement on the budget between Plaid Cymru and the Welsh Government, a fund of £3 million has been established that will enable local authorities to pilot the use of parking facilities for free in town centres across Wales. This will also enable local authorities to assess the actual effect of this on the regeneration of town centres. I hasten to add that it’s not free parking every hour of the day, every day of the week, every week of the year, in all car parks: that isn’t the answer. That’s not a realistic thing, to start off with, and it could also militate against the intention, with office workers misusing the scheme and parking there through the day, for example, meaning that there wouldn’t be room for people who want to come to the town centres to shop.

Evidence from Welsh Government itself has shown that out-of-town destinations that offer free parking benefit at the expense of town centres. Lots of councils across Wales do offer free parking schemes over the Christmas period in an attempt to attract people to spend their money in town centres. Gwynedd Council, for example, this week has stated that it wants to offer free parking across the county to encourage people to visit our town centres over the Christmas period. But what our motion today notes is our success in establishing a new fund that will allow local authorities to offer free parking facilities at specific times in towns across Wales. In Plaid Cymru’s opinion, this will be a fund that will allow local authorities to make a bid for a grant to offer free parking for a few hours to support towns that really need that support. We would need specific criteria to ensure that specific towns qualify for this scheme. I think that the best way forward would be to create a pot of money that local authorities could bid for, and then to have criteria for the funds. For example, a council would put a bid in for £100,000, say, to offer free parking for three hours a day for a year in a small, convenient car park near the town centre, and the funds then would go partly to compensate the council for the fees that they would lose. The bids would have to be measured against criteria—for example, a high street that has lost such and such amount of footfall for such and such a time, a car park near the high street, and an explanation of why the council thinks that it would make a difference. The council would have to measure the success of the scheme as well in order to increase the evidence available related to the effectiveness of offering free parking in increasing use. The fund should allow councils to trial the scheme in specific areas.

So, that’s an outline of some ideas about how we should go about implementing this fund, and we look forward to being part of that discussion, if possible, so that we do develop a scheme that is viable and is genuinely going to have an effect.,

We need a holistic strategy to regenerate our high streets. Offering free car parking as a policy on its own, of course, isn’t going to solve the whole problem. But Welsh Government does need to try and pilot these kinds of alternative schemes to try to overturn this historic decline.