Item 7 on our agenda this afternoon is the Member debate under Standing Order 11.21 on active travel, and I call on Huw Irranca-Davies to move the motion. 

Motion NDM6947 Huw Irranca-Davies, Dai Lloyd, Russell George, Jenny Rathbone, John Griffiths, Neil McEvoy, Vikki Howells

To propose that the National Assembly for Wales:

1. Notes that:

a) young people in Wales have some of the lowest levels of physical activity in the United Kingdom, contributing to rising levels of obesity and associated health issues such as diabetes 2;

b) several communities in Wales suffer from illegally high levels of air polution, with one community experiencing the worst air quality outside London;

c) congestion on the roads is estimated to cost the Welsh economy £2bn every year;

d) targets for carbon emissions from transport in Wales have consistently not been met;

e) levels of walking and cycling in Wales are in decline, with falling levels of active travel to school being a particular concern; and

f) each of these issues could be ameliorated if the Active Travel (Wales) Act 2013 was effectively implemented.

2. Calls on the Welsh Government to refresh its ambition for active travel in Wales by producing a comprehensive active travel strategy including ambitious targets and a detailed plan for long term investment in active travel infrastructure.

Motion moved.

Diolch, Dirprwy Lywydd. Having walked down from the highest hill in Maesteg this morning to the bottom of the valley to catch the train up here to Cardiff, and then cycled along the road here to work, I'm delighted to open this debate on active travel, supported by Members of different parties across this Chamber.

Now, we know that Wales has some of the most groundbreaking and farsighted legislation of any nation on this, setting a policy framework that allows us to make decisions very, very differently for the long term, not just for today, for future generations as well as this one, and for investment in well-being and active and healthy lifestyles, and for truly sustainable economic growth. The very farsighted Active Travel (Wales) Act 2013 and the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015 have laid the very foundations for us to take decisions very differently indeed.

So, this debate is about laying down the challenge to Welsh Government and the new Minister, who I welcome to his post, about spanning the gap between the laudable aims set out in our world-leading legislation and the reality of delivery on the ground. Now, having put the legislative and the policy framework in place, I can sum up my request to the Minister in three short words: delivery, delivery, delivery.

Let me turn first of all to active travel and the well-being goals. Active travel contributes more to the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015's goals than any other mode of transport. It aids the economy by reducing congestion, currently estimated to cost Wales £2 billion per year, and by improving the health of the workforce. It contributes to resilience by reducing emissions, to equality by providing a low-cost transport mode, it helps community cohesion by enabling people to interact more easily, and similarly making it easier and cheaper for people to involve themselves in cultural activities. And it has a global reach, with a global impact by helping people to combat climate change. But its greatest contribution is to a healthier Wales. 

Leaving aside the issue of the air quality improvements achieved by displacing car journeys, the simple physical activity of walking and cycling, as I did this morning, has profoundly beneficial impacts on the individual, but also on the nation's health. Wales has the lowest physical activity levels in Britain, resulting in obesity and a whole range of illnesses that are estimated to cost the Welsh NHS £35 million each year to treat. The situation with younger people is particularly concerning. Welsh teenage girls have the lowest physical activity levels out of the UK countries, with only 8 per cent of Welsh teenage girls meeting the physical activity guidelines. Now, given that our health expenditure in Wales accounts for 50 per cent of the Welsh Government budget, any interventions that help to avoid the enormous costs that lifestyle diseases such as obesity and type 2 diabetes impose on society should be a priority for investment. So, in short, every time someone chooses to walk or cycle rather than get into their car, it's a win for them, but it's also a win for Wales.

So, that's why, in 2013, the Assembly passed the groundbreaking Active Travel (Wales) Act 2013. The Act set out to make walking and cycling, and I quote the explanatory memorandum accompanying it:

'the most natural and normal way of...getting about' in Wales. 

Now, we know that the exemplar for cycling is indeed the Danish city of Copenhagen, where 41 per cent of all trips to work and study to and from Copenhagen is by bike, and 62 per cent of Copenhageners choose to bike to work and study in Copenhagen. In total, 1.4 million kilometres are cycled in the city on an average weekday, and that's an increase of 22 per cent since 2006. Now, closer to home, in London, the number of journeys made by bike has seen a 154 per cent increase since 2000, reaching 730,000 journeys each day in 2016. This is impressive.

However, the newly compiled active travel figures produced to monitor the Active Travel (Wales) Act 2013 continue to show disappointing results for Wales. Sixty-one per cent of adults walked at least once a week for active travel purposes. This poor figure has fallen from 66 per cent in 2013-14. Forty-four per cent of children actively travel to their primary school. Thirty-four per cent to secondary school—this was a slight reduction from the 50 per cent to primary school in 2013-14. Cycling to school is relatively rare, with fewer than 1 per cent cycling to primary school or secondary school on a typical day.

And yet, our ambitions are high. But Welsh Government's ambition, which I set out at the beginning, has slipped from that fantastic declamation right at the beginning of making active travel the most natural and normal way of getting about in Wales, which it set out way back then. It's fallen. The Scottish Government, if I contrast it, have a clear ambition. In their 'Cycling Action Plan for Scotland 2017-2020', they include

'10% of everyday journeys to be made by bike, by 2020'.

The Welsh Government's active travel plan—it was put in place under a previous Minister, back in February 2016—contains a more vague, far less ambitious aim. It says:

'We are aiming to move towards a pattern by 2026 where 10% would cycle at least once a week'.

And as far as definite targets are concerned, the only commitment is to develop them. It says

'We will develop appropriate targets and also monitor which proportion of the population makes frequent active travel journeys, meaning at least three walking or cycling trips per week.' 

But we have no evidence that any targets have been or are being developed.

If I turn to resourcing, until this financial year, 2018-19, Welsh Government had been spending approximately £12 million per year on active travel. And, on 1 May last year, the finance Secretary announced a new funding stream of £60 million over three years from the Wales investment infrastructure plan. For the first time, Wales would have a dedicated active travel fund, as, previously, the majority of funding had been included in the local transport fund; it was up to local authorities whether they applied for active travel projects—my own Bridgend County Borough Council was very active in this area, others hardly applied at all—or other transport schemes—

Will you take an intervention?

I will indeed.

Thank you for taking an intervention. Very briefly, yes, there are funding streams available. One of the big problems that we face in my constituency with Ynys Môn council, is in people to apply for and co-ordinate the kinds of schemes that could happen, and because they don't have the staff, which long-term funding would allow, they can't draw down the money. So, there is no delivery.

It's a really good point, and the disparity in expertise to enable these applications to be put in is stark. We were fortunate in Bridgend, we had a very active cyclist who also happened to be the active travel monitoring officer—Matt, he's moved on now into Welsh Government, good luck to him, he'll be doing good things there—but he drove it, with the commitment of the local authority and others. In other areas, that just hasn't been happening. Huge disparities. So, it's a very good point.

But adding in other funding streams to that £60 million, such as safe routes and communities, the total spend in Wales will be £30,666,667 precisely per annum. It amounts to £10 per head of the population. Now, this announcement, I have to say, pulling this together, was widely welcomed. However, it does leave Wales well behind other areas committed to increasing active travel. Scotland have a commitment in their programme for government—'A Nation with Ambition' it's called—to doubling the investment in walking and cycling to £80 million a year. This amounts to £17 per head. Greater Manchester have set out an ambitious 10-year plan that involves spending £150 million per year on walking and cycling infrastructure. This amounts to £54 per head of population within greater Manchester. And we know that the Economy, Infrastructure and Skills Committee report 'Post Legislative Scrutiny of the Active Travel (Wales) Act 2013' recommends that capital and resource funding combined should be set in Wales at £17 to £20 per head, per annum. So, we can see how short we are.

But one of the main complaints about the operation of the Act is that during the three years that the Act's mapping process has taken, hardly any infrastructure has actually been built. Wales, therefore, has a lot of ground to make up. And yet, there is substantial evidence that investment in active travel provides major returns in public benefits. The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence found that off-road cycle routes, safe cycle routes, were really good value for money, with every £1 invested returning £14 in benefits. Investment in walking infrastructure returns £37 for every £1 invested. Greater Manchester estimate that their 10-year programme of £1.5 billion investment will produce returns of at least £8.3 billion in public benefits. And this is why we need a strategy.

The effective implementation of the active travel Act has got to be cross-governmental and include a huge range of other public services, including, especially, education. Given the importance of getting children walking and cycling to school in the passing of the Act, it is astonishing that active travel has not been a consideration in the Government's own twenty-first century schools programme. Some schools have done it, but they've done it off their own backs, not because it's bolted in there. Our approach and our determination to make this happen has got to be understood by planners, by road engineers, by public transport providers, health workers, and so many more across Wales. We need a clear statement of who is to do what and when they are to do it. And Transport for Wales is going to have a key role in delivering active travel, but currently, no-one is quite clear on what that role is, or how it will be carried out.

Making Wales an active travel nation is a long-term project, but it needs that long-term strategy that will not just stop when a Minister comes or goes. We also need to be very clear about how investment will be prioritised. Building networks is long term; it needs a strategic approach. Annual funding decisions result in short, isolated strips of infrastructure that end, they don't quite go anywhere, they don't allow people to make completed journeys. So, it's disappointing that the commitment in the active travel action plan to develop that funding strategy has not been developed. We need people to really buy in, follow on through the strategy, and we need it to be co-produced. And in that spirit of co-production, I declare my interest as vice-president of Ramblers Cymru. I must raise, as well, the issues of the lack of integration of the right of way infrastructure with the active travel network through the integrated network maps, and the lack of funding for rights of way improvements. But I'll write to the Minister separately on these matters.

So, in conclusion, let me say that I really do have full confidence in the new Minister, who himself has been amongst the most foremost advocates of active travel. If anyone can make it happen, he will, with the support of local authorities and with non-statutory partners, with the occasional spur from the active travel cross-party group, which I'm pleased to take over from him, and with encouragement from Members here today. If the active travel Act and the future generations Act have given us the framework to deliver high ambition, making Wales that country where walking and cycling become the most natural, normal way of getting about, then it is our persistence that will make that ambition a reality, and the Minister has a golden opportunity to carry that through. He truly can walk the walk, and cycle us on the way to success as well. Every one of us will be a winner, and Wales will be the greatest winner of all.

I would like to second Huw Irranca-Davies's motion, which has been co-submitted on a cross-party basis in an effort to urge the Welsh Government to refresh its ambition for active travel through a comprehensive active travel strategy. And I don't think there will be any disagreement in this Chamber of the benefits of active travel. They are numerous, including the contribution that it can make to tackling obesity, improving air quality, reducing traffic congestion and addressing climate change, and I think we need to see, certainly, more action to ensure that this important piece—and it is an important piece—of legislation creates the behavioural and cultural change that is necessary to tackle the challenges I've just outlined.

It's now eight months since the Economy, Infrastructure and Skills Committee, which I have the privilege to Chair, published its post-legislative scrutiny on the Active Travel (Wales) Act. The committee made 24 recommendations. I will not be going through those today—that debate's been had—but I would welcome an update from the Minister on what progress has been made on implementing the recommendations, because the unfortunate reality is, Deputy Presiding Officer, that since the Act became law almost six years ago, rates of active travel have been static in Wales and have actually decreased among children. And the active travel Act was never going to be—. We were never going to see that change overnight. I think that's recognised by us all. But it was supposed to change the way local authorities, planners and engineers approached their work. Regrettably, the Economy, Infrastructure and Skills Committee report found that this simply hasn't been achieved, and there is confusion over the purpose of active travel maps.

'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...We all agree it needs to happen. There's a gap to make it happen. We've got to raise our game.'

Those were the words of the now Deputy Minister for Economy and Transport, when he spoke in the debate on the committee report back in September, and I have no doubt at all in my mind that those are words that he stands by now as well. The committee found that there was a lack of leadership at both the Welsh Government and local authority levels, and that was responsible for the lack of progress made on active travel to date. We called on the Welsh Government, as a committee, to strengthen its leadership on the issue and to make clear its expectations from local authorities. Now, at the time, the Welsh Government did not agree with that assessment, but I believe that it is now clear that more leadership is required from government at all levels if we are to realise the ambitions of the active travel Act. Indeed, the Deputy Minister said that active travel should be at the heart of all Government legislation that is passed, and at the heart of all thinking that local councils do. He also said,

'We recognise what needs to change, but we are not driving through the change at the granular level'

And I have no doubt that the Deputy Minister will tell us how he is achieving that in his remarks later on.

Huw Irranca-Davies did talk about the Government's additional £60 million for active travel over the next three years; that's welcome funding. He talked about funding in his own areas delivering projects, and indeed in my own local authority area, Powys County Council was successful in bidding for a new active travel crossing over the Severn river in Newtown, which will help to encourage more people to walk and cycle.

If the Government is going to bring ambitious legislation to the table, then it must bring the means to deliver that ambition. Indeed, as Huw Irranca-Davies has pointed out, the committee report last year stated that Welsh Government funding falls short of the £17 to £20 per head per year of capital and revenue funding that is necessary to achieve the Welsh Government's ambition for active travel. In the debate last September, the then Cabinet Secretary for Economy and Infrastructure said, in his closing remarks, that we must now start to walk the walk rather than just talk the talk. So, I do look forward to contributions this afternoon. I particularly look forward to the closing comments from, I think, Dai Lloyd, who has about two minutes to deliver that—

No. No, it's not.

It's not, it's somebody else; it's another Member.

You just carry on and wind up and I'll do the presiding.

I just look forward to the closing remarks. [Interruption.] John Griffiths has got two minutes in his closing remarks. That's what I look forward to. [Laughter.]

It's a good job I know what's happening, isn't it? [Laughter.] Dai Lloyd.

Thank you, Dirprwy Lywydd. I was slightly sidetracked there for a moment, but there we go. I'm glad to be able to take part in this very important debate. Obviously, it was also a very important debate when we had it last September as well, and I take on board both what Huw Irranca-Davies and Russell George have just said. So, just to reiterate the points, really, that it's about physical fitness, and I'll just emphasise the benefits of it. As I've said before here, if you're physically fit, your blood pressure is 30 per cent lower than if you're not physically fit. If you're physically fit, your blood sugar level is 30 per cent lower than if you're not physically fit. And if you're physically fit, your cholesterol level is 30 per cent lower than if you're not physically fit. I mean, if we produced a tablet that did that, we'd be crying out for it to be prescribed left, right and centre. We haven't produced a tablet that can do that. Most cholesterol-lowering drugs—they can drop your cholesterol by about 10 per cent. Here we have the means to drop your cholesterol level by 30 per cent and still not enough of us are doing it.

It requires 6x30 minutes sessions of brisk exercise per week. You can be the very epitome of Geraint Thomas there in Huw Irranca and cycling all the way to Maesteg and back or whatever, but it doesn't have to be that way, or get hold of Lycra. It can be a brisk walk. You could do your 10,000 steps a day in this Senedd building. Try not to use the lifts—those of us who can avoid using the lifts, you can get your 10,000 steps a day in the average working day in the Senedd. You don't need Lycra, and that's basically—[Interruption.] Well, they can have Lycra if they want on the Conservative benches over there, but, frankly, you can do your 10,000 steps here in the Senedd just by walking. But we do need the additional infrastructure, as Huw was saying earlier, to make walking easier around Wales. We have the coastal path, but let's make it easier. Ramblers—amazing; we need to be walking everywhere. There is that thing about walk the walk, and we do enough talking the talking here, but walking the walking and cycling the cycling is amazingly successful.

In a couple of weeks' time, the health committee is launching a physical activity report, and part of that is about just getting this idea of physical activity into children early enough so that they have the confidence, as they grow, to be physically active—not decide randomly that all that physical activity stuff is not for them. And the evidence shows that you've got to be adept at motor skills and running and walking and catching and kicking a ball by about the age of seven to have that sort of confidence to go all out and be physically active. If you haven't got that, you tend to be a bit reticent as you grow up about the whole physical activity agenda. So, there is a lesson there. But, basically, we know the facts now, and it requires a behavioural change in terms of the amount of physical activity, and it requires a behavioural change also in our diet, and to recognise that sugar is the enemy now, not fat, so much—sugar. I'm not looking at anybody in particular on the Conservative benches. Carbohydrates are converted to sugar, obviously, in the body. So, sugar and carbohydrates—we need to look at that personally. We can call for Government to do a lot of things, we can call for schools to do a lot of things, but an awful lot of things are also down to how we live our lives personally. So, support the motion. Diolch yn fawr. 

Thank you, Dr Dai. I do take your advice, I do have quite a low blood pressure level. I bicycle to the Senedd most days and I find it very beneficial. If I don't, I don't feel as well. Cardiff is the fastest growing city in Europe, and over the next 20 years we're going to have an extra 40,000 homes, making it a third larger than it is now. Given the already unacceptable levels of air pollution we already have, it's imperative that we change the way we travel around the city. Otherwise, this bigger, expanding city will become completely unliveable and the golden goose will have been cooked.

So, no change is not an option in my view. I'm completely delighted that Natural Resources Wales has teamed up with Cardiff Council to get pupils measuring the level of pollution in their playground—a very powerful tool. I'm sure it won't make comfortable reading. Six schools in my constituency, nine across the city, already have illegal levels of air pollution. That knowledge will give pupils the clout that they need to ensure that not just that they change but that the adults all around them are changing too. Because we know that nearly half the children surveyed by Sustrans back in 2010 wanted to cycle to school, but only 4 per cent were allowed to do it—of the ones who were surveyed. It was obviously a bit self-selecting because, as we've already heard from Huw Irranca, only 1 per cent cycle to school. It's because parents say, 'There's too much traffic for our children to walk to school, so we drive them.' But by doing so, they add to those very same traffic levels that deter children from walking or cycling to school. This circular argument is completely unsustainable.

One of primary schools in my constituency recently banned children from leaving their bikes and scooters on the school premises. This is the same school where adults use the lanes at the back of the main road as a rat run and displace pedestrians and the occasional cyclist off the path—a clear example of how people are absolutely doing the wrong thing, and even imposing their wrong behaviour on others who are doing the right thing.

So, people take their kids to school in a car, exposing them to more traffic fumes in the car than by walking or cycling, and also make it more unpleasant for those who are doing the right thing. These so-called 'school runs'—no running involved—account for 60 per cent of the pollution that children take in each day and generate 20 to 30 per cent of rush hour traffic. We'll be able to see next week the difference when there'll be far fewer cars on the road as a result of half term.

So, we are absolutely a very long way off from Cardiff's target for over 50 per cent of journeys to be made by bike, foot or public transport. Getting people to leave their car at home for commuting to work and school is the quickest, most effective way of tackling this major public health problem, as well as tackling our carbon targets. With polluted air killing more people every year than road accidents, we know that we have to do something about it. In particular in relation to children, damage to the lungs in early age is irreversible. Children breathing in dirty air is linked to chronic chest problems later in life. So, we have an obligation, all of us adults who make decisions on behalf of children, to change the way we're doing things. So, active travel to school is absolutely key to this, and I'm delighted that Cardiff Council has now dedicated £100,000 to ensure all schools in Cardiff have active travel plans by next year, 2020. That will be very important, because at the moment we have lots of fine words in the local development plan, and indeed in the Cardiff Council cycling strategy, but actually what's happening is the opposite.

We have to take leaves out of other cities who have banned parents from dropping children off at the gate of school—it's very dangerous for children who are walking to school anyway—and forcing people to park and stride the last part of the journey. I'm not clear how Cardiff Council is going to achieve this. It's no use having active travel plans for each school if they don't have the resources to then implement them and make them safer for everybody. So, my question to Government is: when Cardiff Council submits a business plan to you detailing the actions they're obliged to achieve to comply with the EU ambient air quality limits this June, what will the Government do if it doesn't include a clean air zone, which is what would give councils the resources—like Cardiff—to actually implement the good intentions that they now have?

The Llywydd took the Chair.

I'm very grateful for the opportunity to speak in this debate brought forward by a cross-party group of Assembly Members. Alongside the future generations Act, the active travel Act is a truly ambitious and important piece of legislation and one that, as has already been said, we are all rightly proud of. It is a made-in-Wales Act that we all need to make sure is properly supported at all levels if we are to achieve its full and exciting potential for Wales. So, it is of course disappointing to see that levels of cycling and walking are in decline, and there are indeed a number of clear external societal and socioeconomic factors that are contributing to this. But I would like to focus my attention particularly on the issues around air pollution, as this is a particular concern for society and a concern for my constituents. It must be tackled on all fronts, and with all the mitigations in our power.

In Islwyn we are fortunate enough to have a number of dedicated cycle routes, in particular making use of a number of disused railway lines that link our disparate communities and allow cyclists to take in some of our fantastic, unique stunning scenery of our Gwent Valleys. However, we must make sure that our roads are also a healthy and safe place to walk and cycle. Indeed, it is perfectly understandable that people may be averse to cycling on, for instance, the Hafodyrynys hill, which has received notoriety of late given the evaluated high levels of air pollution. Yet if we are truly to tackle this pollution, getting people our of their cars, as has already been said by many in this Chamber, must be a key feature of our national and local approach, and we cannot hide our head in the sand. The billions less to the Welsh block grant equate to that passported issue for our local authorities, and that passported issue is of a lack of capacity at a local level, both financial and human. Indeed, we should be doing nothing to make congestion worse, and pollution in this area, in Hafodyrynys, indeed must be looked at carefully, and is being looked at. We must do the opposite, and therefore in planning we must look at this also in terms of the quarry that is being proposed for this particular area, so I do say 'no' to that.

So, I welcome the work that the Welsh Government is doing to improve our public transport network in the Valleys, but we need to make sure that this is linked with active travel networks that are integrated, smart, useable, affordable and healthy. So, for instance, at the bottom of Hafodyrynys hill is the former site of Crumlin railway station on the Cardiff to Ebbw Vale line, and if we were able to transform and reopen the station here, it would be an ideal and unique opportunity to alleviate pollution in a very congested area, if people were able to walk or cycle straight to the station, meeting many of our strategic well-being and active travel goals in one fell swoop. So, I hope that Welsh Government will continue, and I know it will, to listen to a number of the serious points raised across party lines in this debate, to fully support the active travel needed to increase active travel journeys. So, I'll be interested to hear in particular what the Welsh Government is doing to support active travel across the south Wales Valleys. Indeed, our unique topography has its own unique challenges, but also unique opportunities for active travel. I’d also be grateful to hear how active travel is being used alongside wider strategic efforts to tackle air pollution in Wales and for the common good of all in my constituency. And I would echo that we can and we must, and I hope we will, do better.

I call on the Deputy Minister for Economy and Transport, Lee Waters.

Diolch, Llywydd.

It’s a curious position I find myself in as the Minister responding to this debate. I’m thrilled to be given the opportunity to try and advance this agenda and turn into reality some of the things I’ve been saying for some time. It’s a nice touch that I have Dafydd Elis-Thomas sitting next to me, because it was to Dafydd, when he was the Presiding Officer in October 2007, that I handed the petition that started the process to create the active travel Act. So, I think it’s appropriate that he stands beside me at my first outing as Minister to respond to this debate.

It is ambitious legislation, and I welcome the motion, and the Government will be supporting it. Ambitious we must be. The legislation itself, we mustn’t forget, is ambitious, and it’s particularly ambitious because it’s trying to create a culture that doesn’t exist, and that is difficult, and that will take generations to do. But we must put in place solid foundations. One of the key things it seeks to do is to make walking and cycling, active travel, the normal thing to do for everyday journeys—not just for leisure journeys, not putting Lycra on for sport, but for getting around every day for the majority of journeys that we make. And that requires a different mindset, and it requires a different culture. It does require motorists to be more considerate of people on foot or by bike, and it requires for us all to see that as not an eccentric act. Because, for too long, it’s been seen as a slightly odd thing to do, and that kind of oddness then encourages a confrontational mindset on the road, which really isn’t helpful and needs to be got rid of.

I’d be happy to take interventions through what I have to say this afternoon. I’m entering this agenda in a spirit of cross-party consensus. This is an agenda that has had all-party support since the outset, and it’s an agenda that I hope will continue to have all-party support, and there’s no reason why it shouldn’t do so. The report that Russell George cited earlier was agreed unanimously by the economy committee. I was proud to be part of it. I stand by everything I said in those speeches, and now is the task for us all to work together to achieve that. And an important part of achieving that is challenge. And I think consistent with the cross-party support is challenge from across the Chamber on me as the Minister and us as the Government to deliver on the promises.

In that spirit, will the Minister take an intervention?

Of course.

I don’t know if this would count as challenge, but I wonder if you’d agree with me that one of the key factors in this agenda is safety, both in terms, as you’ve said, of other road users needing to be considerate for example of cyclists, but there’s also a particular issue for women and girls around pathways and cycleways needing to be well lit, needing to be safe. I can’t recommend to my 22-year-old daughter that she walks home at night from her work in the St David’s hotel to our home in Grangetown, because a lot of those pathways aren’t safely lit. I wouldn’t be confident, and neither would she. So, I'd place that, whether as a challenge or a request to you, so when we are critical, as we sometimes are, of people who don’t travel actively—and I’m guilty of that myself—there are, particularly for women and girls, real safety issues, and we need to make sure the infrastructure is right before we start giving people a hard time.

The Deputy Presiding Officer took the Chair.

Absolutely, and I think that when Carwyn Jones, the former First Minister, said that he wouldn’t dream of cycling in Cardiff, he was roundly criticised, and I think he was right to say that. It’s important for people to feel comfortable to say that they don’t feel happy to cycle or walk under current conditions. The answer to safety is to have enough people doing this so you feel safe, and there is safety in numbers. That’s the real way we address safety, so that it’s not an isolated task.

I want to try and address the main point in the motion around ambition and the call for a strategy. I don’t really mind what we call it, whether it’s a strategy or an action plan, but I think it is essential that we do address that and are more ambitious in what we say we’re going to do and what we try to do. The existing plan does not include targets, but it expressed an ambition to increase the percentage of people cycling for active travel by at least once a week from 5 per cent to 10 per cent, and walking once a week from 64 per cent to 80 per cent by 2026. But these are not ambitious. Even if you achieved 10 per cent of people cycling once a week, that would count somebody willing to go down to the paper shop on a Saturday morning once a week as achieving the target, and that does not lead to the words that we heard Huw Irranca-Davies quote from the Act, which said that walking and cycling would become the natural and normal way of getting about in Wales. So, that just does not cut it. But, even to achieve that, it would require a doubling of current levels. That just shows the gap that there is, which we want to fill.

The current action plan does include a commitment to develop this further and specify evidence-based targets. Now, three years on, I think it's time that we do that. Next year, we will have a Wales transport strategy published, and it's essential that active travel is mainstreamed into that, not hived off as a different agenda. So, my proposal is that we don't have a specific active travel strategy at this stage—the Wales transport strategy is the strategy—but that we do have a refreshed active travel action plan and delivery plan, and that it is ambitious. The targets that we come up with need be achievable because unachievable targets are counter-productive. We need to do that. We need to develop them in collaboration—to co-produce with the undervalued workforce who currently deliver active travel. We do have a small band of people in local government who are doing their best, under difficult circumstances, to deliver this agenda. We need to involve them and give them a stake in developing the way forward.

Would you take an intervention?

I would.

We do need clarity in terms of Welsh Government and Transport for Wales, in terms of who is driving this agenda, and in terms of that resource capacity in local authorities, where some local authorities do not have the expertise that Huw Irranca referred to as Bridgend having had. How is the Welsh Government going to ensure that every local authority in Wales is supported to be able to deliver fully and properly on this Act? 

Well, that is a correct challenge. There is not enough resource, either at the Welsh Government level or at the local government level, to really make this agenda fly. For example, today, officials are assessing the latest round of Safe Routes in Communities bids. For a £5 million pot, we have only had £6 million-worth of bids. This is the lowest number of bids that we've ever had, and the quality of the bids is, at best, variable. Now, I think that reflects the fact that the local government workforce has been depleted, and they are struggling to get the time and expertise to submit good-quality bids. That is not in anyone's interest, to make this agenda achievable. [Interruption.] I haven't finished the point, but I'm happy to give way.  

Thank you. What about the resources that could be available through a clean air zone, obviously with a congestion charge to go with it? 

Okay, well, that's a slightly different point. Let me just finish addressing the other point first. I'm mindful of time, and there's much that I wanted to try and say that I won't be able to say today. We do need to look at regional collaboration as a way of achieving the resources available. The proposal in the bus White Paper for joint transport authorities has the potential, if that's expanded to include active travel, to create a greater critical mass. We do need to provide training. I'm going to be meeting with all the people delivering active travel—not the higher up officers but the people on the ground—to have a robust conversation with them, where they can tell me what the constraints are and how we can streamline the process and help them. We do need better guidance, which we then give training to deliver. The design guidance that we have is seen as sector leading, and England are looking to copy our guidance. But our delivery guidance is not right, and we are currently reviewing that to publish it afresh, alongside the design guidance.

In terms of Jenny Rathbone's point on air pollution, she is absolutely right. The only way that we are truly going to address the issue of air quality is through modal shift. Yes, lower emission cars are part of the solution, but unless we have fewer people driving and more people travelling actively, we are not going to address the issue. But, there are some difficult issues for us to confront in that, which we are currently working through, and I will be happy to speak to her separately, given the time that we have, to understand her points better.

I don't have the time to cover the points that I wanted to say. Let me just say, with your permission, Chair, a couple more things. I think the maps we currently have, submitted by local authorities to deliver their networks, are not good enough. There are some exceptions but, overall, the quality is not high enough. We are where we are on that. I intend to look afresh at that for the next round of submissions in 2021, to start with consultation—because if a council can only inspire 20 people to take part in a consultation on their plans for a network, they're going to find it very difficult to inspire me to invest millions of pounds in it.

So, I intend to take a bold approach when it comes to the next round of funding, and I anticipate there will be complaints from Members that I will not be distributing funding evenly throughout Wales. I will be rewarding ambition. It's essential that, for the next two years, we have schemes that show what difference looks like. So, I will not be rewarding a lack of ambition, but we will be helping those authorities that haven't been ambitious to become more ambitious for the next time round.

And I'm afraid I must bow to the clock, but I can assure Members that I will work with them to make this agenda we all feel passionately about a reality, but let's be under no illusions how difficult this is and how long it's going to take to make it stick, but I genuinely think we can make real progress in the next couple of years. Diolch.       

I call on John Griffiths to reply to the debate. 

Diolch, Dirprwy Lywydd. May I thank everybody who's taken part in this very important debate? There is a strong consensus, as Russell George mentioned, behind the legislation. I do believe that it's legislation with great potential and great importance; I would say that, Dirprwy Lywydd, having been the Minister that took it through the Assembly, but I do genuinely believe that. And it is very frustrating, I know, for all of us, given the consensus behind the Act, that delivery hasn't been as effective as it should have been and as it must be for the future. We have seen fairly static figures for cycling and walking in Wales, so there is a great deal of work to be done.

It's also very frustrating that resource—considerable resource—has been committed by Welsh Government, but some local authorities in Wales are not understanding the opportunity sufficiently to bring forward the bids that would access that money for their local areas, and bring the improvements that Members have referred to. That's why I very much welcome what Lee Waters has said about looking at that situation, and providing the support and help that will enable those local authorities that are struggling with their own internal capacity to be helped to get their act in order, as it were, and access that money and make those improvements.

We've heard of the great benefits that would arise were that to happen, Dirprwy Lywydd, and that's what makes it so frustrating that we don't see the delivery that should be in place. The school run, for example, was mentioned by Jenny and others. The congestion that arises at school run time, the pollution that that brings, the economic impact from that congestion, the deleterious effects on health that result, the chaos at the school, which is a real safety issue—all of that could be addressed if there was more cycling and walking to school, and we then could be developing those good exercise behaviours in our young children that would stay with them throughout their lives. And Dai Lloyd made the health case very effectively, as ever. We need a public health investment, and active travel could be part of delivering that improvement. 

We also know, of course, Dirprwy Lywydd, that the integrated transport approach that we want to see in Wales relies on active travel, in itself helping to deliver that modal change, but also linking to public transport to help make that change. We do need a change in the behaviour of drivers, and that will come if we see many more people cycling and walking, and 20mph zones in our urban areas could be a part of that change. 

It's an ambitious piece of legislation, Llywydd, but we do have the opportunity to drive that forward, and that's why I very much welcome the consensus that exists within the Assembly and evidenced by Assembly Members today, but particularly the commitment from Lee Waters. I think we're all aware of Lee's history with Sustrans, and we value that commitment and the opportunity that Lee now has with the responsibility that that brings also to work with all of us to make that necessary change.  

Thank you very much. The proposal is to agree the motion. Does any Member object? No. Therefore, the motion is agreed in accordance with Standing Order 12.36. 

Motion agreed in accordance with Standing Order 12.36.