Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 5:06 pm on 20 June 2018.
I thank everybody who has taken part in the debate. I think it illustrates that there is cross-party support for really tackling this incredibly important issue. Simon started off by pointing out the 2,000 early deaths highlighted by the chief medical officer and the problems that we face in Chepstow, Newport, Cardiff and Swansea. He was one of several people who mentioned the link with poverty, which I'll come back to in a moment. He recognised that the Government is taking action on speed limits on some of our motorways and that this is supported by people like the British Lung Foundation, but that we don't know nearly enough about what is going on, particularly how it's impacting on children, and he pointed out that only one school in Swansea has a monitor nearby, so we simply aren't collecting the information that we need to know what we need to do and the extent of our problem.
He pointed out the need for a clean air Act for Wales and I would support that call. He reiterated that clean air zones work because they lead to reductions in the noxes and the particulates that are killing some people—leading to an early death—as well as permanently disabling many of our children. He also mentioned the need to reduce the number of fossil-fuel cars and the fact that he'd taken a punt on 2030, but that was reiterated by many city authority leaders, including Cardiff, who have pledged that we should indeed phase out dirty vehicles by 2030. So, that is going to happen as far as I'm concerned.
We obviously need to think about what's happening in terms of technology, with China being a leading investor in hydrogen and we want to see more hydrogen trains being introduced by the new train operator. I didn't know that we have an electric vehicle charging point, but that's great.
Gareth Bennett is resisting the idea of clean air zones, but nevertheless, he made some important points, which I think we can all support, about the school run being a major cause of pollution, but I don't think there's a causal link between both parents working. I think it's much more to do with attitudes about what is the appropriate way for children to get to school. When I was seven, I always went to school on my own, I crossed busy roads, I got on a bus or I walked. It's just the mindset that children are not capable of taking themselves to school and they are, and we need to—