7. Member Debate under Standing Order 11.21(iv): Air Quality

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:54 pm on 20 June 2018.

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Photo of David Rees David Rees Labour 4:54, 20 June 2018

I fully agree that the technology to look at, not just the hydrogen but the recycling of some of the waste gases released, and the emissions as a consequence of that, and how you can do some carbon capture on the stacks and those issues—these are technologies that we are advancing and we need to build upon them. We need to encourage people like Tata to actually invest in that research as well, so I totally agree with you on that.

In the remaining time, I want to focus also on the legal emissions aspect, because clearly we also have a problem. The M4 in Port Talbot was one of the areas reduced to 50 mph, and I will question the actual section, and I would love to have an understanding of where the measures were taken and how they were measured, because if you know Port Talbot, the M4 works its way through it and the section that had the speed limit put on is actually in the open air, it's above the River Neath and it will disperse quite easily. The section that wasn't put on is right against mountains and jammed in between the coastline and the mountains and where you would expect, actually, greater measurements of pollution to be recorded. So, there are some questions on that, and we also have the railway line going through it. Please don't ignore railway lines.

When people talk about the solution as the metro, please remember that the metro doesn't go west of Bridgend. In fact, it doesn't even go into Bridgend; it might go into Maesteg a little bit but it doesn't go to Bridgend. So, if we are talking about solutions, we need to look at solutions for Valleys that haven't got railway lines, Valleys that have limited transportation where people are forced to use their cars. And if we're also looking at ways in which we can have better flows on motorways, junction 41—Dai Lloyd might remember this; Suzy will—junction 41 was trying to be a solution to get traffic flowing easier, and then the worst polluted street, which is in Caerphilly—I'd have had four or five that would have beaten that easily because of all the congestion that was created. So, when you look at solutions, look at the wide solution; don't look simply at a simple solution to one problem, because you are creating more problems.

So, the air pollution is something that we have to address. I welcome the £20 million air quality fund. I really want to see how that works. I really want to see how the action plan in Port Talbot in particular will work, because even though we have got it now down to 9.6, we still have an issue to address, and the residents of Port Talbot clearly will tell you that we need to address it.

So, please, can you assure me that the action plan that is being put in place is going to address both aspects of pollution, not just vehicles, and will also look at how we can ensure that we can live with an economy and the pollution simultaneously.