It was 11 years ago that I stood on the steps of the Senedd and handed a petition to Dafydd Elis-Thomas, the then Presiding Officer, for a law to promote walking and cycling. And, a decade on, we have a law and I must say, to the great credit of the Cabinet Secretary, we have the first real substantial chunk of money behind it. And I think the Welsh Government deserves real credit for that. But let's be blunt about this. What I've found most depressing about this inquiry—and we had some good evidence, and it's a decent report—is it's the same issues that have been coming up time and time again for the decade or more I've been involved in this debate. We recognise what needs to change, but we are not driving through the change at the granular level. Eleven years ago, I swapped my second car and bought a bike. I hadn't ridden a bike since I was a teenager, and the experience of cycling in Cardiff then versus now was very different. It was quite an eccentric thing to do 11 years ago; now it's a mainstream thing to do. Cycling in Llanelli now is like it was in Cardiff 11 years ago—it's quite an eccentric thing to be going through the main streets of the town on a bike; I don't see many others. I see others on the traffic-free paths around the town, but not as an everyday mode of transport. But Cardiff, I think, shows that you can through critical mass create momentum and change, and that is happening organically, not because of things that the Government and the council have done, by and large, but because there's a movement behind it. 

But the thing I've seen from personal experience is it's the detail that really matters, and we need to see this from the point of view of somebody who would not normally cycle. That's the problem with this debate, and that's the danger of holding Geraint Thomas up as an example. These are not typical people. These are elite sportspeople who are doing superhuman efforts to do Herculean tasks. And, actually, it's my mother and it's me and it's my kids who actually we should be seeing this through prism of, and it's the little things that make all the difference. Is the dropped kerb in the right place? Is there a sign showing you where to go? Do you feel safe and comfortable? And that's the bit where we're falling down.

And I must say I was quite depressed reading the Government's response to the report, because it's a challenging report, but the response that officials have put forward makes you think that they're doing it all, they've got it cracked. And we know from the evidence we've received they're not doing it all; we haven't got it cracked. The first step of change is recognising where you're failing, and there's no shame in that. This is a very challenging agenda of cultural change. We can produce the strategies that we like—we know from management books that culture eats strategy for breakfast, and so is the case here. We heard the detailed evidence about engineering practice, about local authority planning officers and their attitudes, their assumptions. This is the stuff we need to change and what I worry about, having seen Government, is just that the capacity isn't there, the expertise isn't there, the bodies are not there to make this happen. Because it's the detail that needs to be got right.

I think handing over some responsibility to Transport for Wales for this is encouraging, so long as they've got the remit and they've got the capacity to do it. And I worry about the money that we are now allocating—how well it's going to be spent, based on the evidence we've received— because it's all very well a local authority putting forward a plan, but, unless it's complying in detail with the very good design guidance that Phil Jones has done for the Welsh Government, it's not going to work—it's money wasted. I'm all for doubling the funding, but, unless we get the plumbing right, it's money down the drain, and that's where I think the Government needs to focus here. It's no good just having debates and issuing high-level statements. There needs to be rigour, there needs to be focus, there needs to be challenge—both of itself and all the different partners—to get the detail of this right, because it is difficult but it is doable. I really urge the Minister to consider how a step change at that implementation level can take place.

Because, of course, the paradox of this is this is not a transport policy, really, that we're talking about; this is a health policy. It's a health policy we're asking highway engineers to deliver. And highway engineers don't get it. They have been trained to cater to make cars move faster and they don't understand, often. It's no fault of theirs. We have to help them, we have to train them, we have to give them capacity. Where's the role of Public Health Wales in this? We had really poor evidence, I thought, from Public Health Wales. They're great in producing the strategies showing the public health benefits of it, but where are they in these meetings, challenging, just as they challenge on smoking? Where are they pushing the authorities to do better?

I could speak for some time on this, Dirprwy Lywydd, but, naturally, I cannot. But let me just finish in saying about ambition. We said in the Act that we were aiming to make

'walking and cycling the most natural and normal way of getting about.'

And yet the active travel action plan has a target of 10 per cent of people cycling once a week. Now, when you think about the targets we have for renewable energy, which are, in effect, becoming relevant in planning decisions—material considerations—those are testing targets. Think of the targets we have on recycling—those are testing targets. We've got high-level ambition here and our target is 10 per cent of people cycling once a week. That is not going to deliver the ambition we set out. So, we lack the ambition, we lack the rigour and the honesty about where we are, we lack the skills and capacity at a local level to take this through, and, frankly, I'm getting bored of debating this. We all agree it needs to happen. There's a gap to make it happen. We've got to raise our game.