It's my birthday in a month's time, and it's often a fairly depressing experience as you get older, because you just assume that your youthful expectations of never-ending progress where people respond to evidence and experience will be an ever onward trajectory. But this debate this afternoon calls those assumptions into question. I was listening to Desert Island Discs earlier and Charlie Brooker, the comedian, who is a little older than me, said that in his twenties he used to shout at the tv, but nowadays instead of clenching his fists and throwing plates around he just gets slightly weepy and despairing. And I felt slightly weepy and despairing reading the motion and hearing some of the arguments that have been put forward. We're saying the same thing and doing the same thing over and over again, and bemoaning the fact we're getting the same results.

Russell George began with a catalogue of congestion overspend and delays, and yet saw no need to rethink our approach. Adam Price bemoaned the decline in spending on roads, whilst quoting the fact that we're still spending hundreds of millions on them, and in fact then went on to conflate casualties on rural roads with the fact that we weren't spending enough, whereas the evidence shows that most deaths on rural roads are young drivers who are speeding, and actually road casualties are going down. So, I'm not sure that argument particularly holds water. Adam Price from a sedentary position says, 'Not in Wales'. In Wales it's still the case that the primary cause of death is speeding by young drivers. So, yes, in Wales, we need to rethink our approach because we're doing the same again. Roads are not the problem—congestion is the problem, and we're banging our head against the wall throwing hundreds of millions of pounds—billions of pounds, indeed—on the same solution. 

We've heard for years about a war on the motorists, but the evidence points to the opposite. In the last couple of weeks, we've seen the cost of travelling by car over the Severn bridge going down because of VAT, and the cost of travelling by rail going up. If you were to travel from Cardiff to Bristol by car it will cost you £275 less, whereas a season ticket on the train will cost £100 more. We're making road travel cheaper and public transport more expensive. It's all very well for all the parties in this Chamber to pay lip service to the need to improve public transport when we're putting our investment into road building and we do not have the money to spend on the alternatives. And the money going into road building is not being controlled properly, so we have the overspends that have already been mentioned. 

The Heads of the Valleys road: it was meant to cost £44 million per mile—per mile. It's now going to cost £54 million per mile, a 23 per cent overspend not to create a new road but just to add a bit on to the existing road to dual it. Two years ago people were saying that the new black route would cost way below £1 billion. The public inquiry has been told it's going to cost £1.1 billion, and the deal that's been announced with Associated British Ports for them to withdraw their objection has resulted in them getting £136 million of public money for their private company to make works in Newport docks means that the cost of that project will go up, plus the delays. 

So, I'd like the Cabinet Secretary to let us know what the estimate of the costs now are for the black route, and whether or not that figure does include VAT. But I'm pretty sure in saying that it's not going to stick at the £1.1 billion figure for long, and in the light of the overspends on the Heads of the Valleys route, that figure has little credibility in the industry. It's going to be far closer to £1.5 billion and possibly £2 billion by the end of it. 

In the motion from the Conservatives, point 3 acknowledges the importance of a fit-for-purpose and proper-functioning road network for the long-term development of the Welsh economy. Well, I'd say, Llywydd, that the long-term health of the Welsh economy relies on multiple factors, not least a healthy workforce free from air pollution and obesity, and a stable climate free from flash flooding and extreme weather brought about by rising temperatures. Some of the biggest economic challenges Wales has ever faced are coming to us at alarming speed, and instead of facing these challenges head on, we are wedding ourselves to existing orthodoxies, the facts of which have never been checked. When a road is built on these fantastical numbers that have been quoted this afternoon, there's never any evaluation after the event to see whether or not these actually stack up. The fact of the matter is that roads don't build economies, ideas do. So, I can't support this motion nor can I support the amendment 3, because while Plaid Cymru may not be happy spending this money on the black route, they're quite happy to squander it on the blue route, which will not only bring misery to thousands of people in Newport but it will not address the underlying problem.

Llywydd, Radio 2 announced today that they're extending their drivetime slot by an hour to 8.00 p.m. What clearer sign could there be of growing congestion? At this rate, Simon Mayo will be on until midnight and we'll all be clamouring for more roads even then.