3. Statement by the Minister for Environment: Air Quality

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 3:33 pm on 24 April 2018.

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Photo of Hannah Blythyn Hannah Blythyn Labour 3:33, 24 April 2018

I thank the Member for her questions. I think in terms of things like invest-to-save and the clean air plan and the clean air zones, I think Cardiff council is one of the areas that has been identified that is in exceedance, and as I said to your colleague Julie Morgan, I've been working, and officials have been liaising closely with Cardiff council on that. So, these are all things that can be considered as part of the plan and the programme going forward, and clean air zones. 

I am not a politician who would like to guess and make things up, so on the A48, I'll get clarification on that for you and come back to the Member. I think your first point is absolutely the most important: air quality and tackling it is as important as tackling road safety. And, actually, we have to work across parties, and across layers of Government, and across organisations within the community. As I said before, we're bringing in reducing speed limits, not just to annoy motorists, it's not to raise any charge or anything, it's not to raise revenue, it's actually for a reason, and I think if any authority was going to go down the road of a charge, particularly within the clean air zones, any profit from that we would look to go back into investing in public transport.