Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:55 pm on 28 January 2020.
Llywydd, lectures from the Member on public transport, from the party that cancelled the electrification of the main line here in Wales—do you remember that? I wonder if the Member remembers. No, I think he doesn't. He's forgotten that his party promised to electrify the main railway line all the way to Swansea, only then to turn to turn its back on the promise that it had made to people in Wales. He wants to ask me about public transport. Let's look at his record, at his party's record, for a moment.
As far as Cardiff Council's proposals are concerned, I am glad that Cardiff city council is responding in an imaginative and determined way to the impact of climate change and the impact of air quality here in our capital city—the most commuted capital anywhere in the United Kingdom. So, I don't think that it is right simply to dismiss proposals that the council has come up with, because they are a serious response to a serious set of issues.
But the Member is right to say that of course there is a responsibility on the Welsh Government to interrogate those proposals in a regional context. That is exactly what the Minister for transport said when those plans were announced. That's why we as a Welsh Government have set up an investigation into demand management, not just in Cardiff, but in the wider region, and the study will look at the benefits and challenges of different demand-management approaches, and we will use that to inform national and regional policy. We deserve, people in Cardiff and people around Cardiff deserve, to look at serious proposals seriously, to look at other alternatives that there may be there, and to do so in the context of the climate change emergency that faces us all. Cardiff's proposals are intended to be a serious response to that situation.