What's more fundamental than the air that we breathe? It's something we should be able to take for granted as a human right, and the fact that we have to have this debate today, I'm afraid, is a damning indictment of the Government's record. We know that, in order to live healthily, everyone should have access to clean, unpolluted drinking water and nourishing food that isn't poisoned. Even then, human beings can live for weeks without food, and without water for days, but it's very difficult to go for more than a few minutes without breathing, and that air should be clean. So it's shocking—it's utterly shocking—that today, in the twenty-first century, as we've already heard, air pollution contributes to around 2,000 deaths a year in Wales, equating to around 6 per cent of all deaths. 

That an opposition party has to call a debate in our Parliament to implore our Government—a Government that prides itself and calls itself progressive and caring in many ways—to take action to grant this human right of providing clean air to our citizens is staggering. The terrible effect that air pollution has on the health of children in particular is heartbreaking, and we've heard some of this already. It just isn't right that some children are born already suffering from the effects of air pollution, essentially having been poisoned in the womb. According to Joseph Carter, the head of British Lung Foundation Wales, air pollution has a particularly harmful effect on the developing lungs of children being brought up in Wales. That isn't a legacy we should accept. I agree with Mr Carter when he said. 'We need action now', because the current system obviously isn't working or we wouldn't be having this debate.

The Welsh Government is reticent when it comes to taking a leading role, and that leaves local authorities in control, and patchy results. The most polluted road in the UK outside London is actually in my region, in Hafodyrynys. Now, the local authority, despite passing a clean air motion that was brought forward by Plaid Cymru with cross-party support, failed to act decisively, arguing that to do so would be too costly in the time of austerity. The situation, in the end, was so bad that the only thing that could be done was to buy up all the houses on that road in order to demolish them. 

Another recent example was seen last summer when Bridgend council approved a housing development next to an air quality management area, where the planning officers argued that their 2013 local development plan carried greater legal weight than the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015. Now, I'd ask the Minister what the point is of having world-leading legislation that can be ignored by local planning officers. Currently, a housing development is being considered by the same council that requires a new road to rip through local woodland; a development that officers sold to the relevant committee as a green project that meets active travel standards. So that's where we're at at the moment. The Welsh Government, as far as I'm aware, has only intervened once in order to impose central control over air pollution, and that was in Neath Port Talbot air quality management area. That has resulted in a reduction of harmful particulate matter pollutants. But clearly, one intervention is only one small step when what we need is a Wales-wide step change.

So what needs to happen? Clearly, the Welsh Government needs to take decisive action on this, rather than having yet more consultations. The Scottish Government published its clean air strategy five years ago, yet here in Wales the Labour Government is lagging behind. I read the Minister for Environment, Energy and Rural Affairs's statement from December promising yet another consultation, and I'm afraid that the lack of ambition there is just palpable. The consultation talks of taking World Health Organization clean air guidelines into account, rather than simply implementing them. It couches environmental ambitions in deference to economic growth. Surely, building a successful economy and reducing air pollution are not mutually exclusive aims. As we've already heard, economists will tell us that pollution actually costs the economy by stifling growth and lost productivity, not to mention the consequences to public health. 

The Welsh Government should bring forward clean air legislation during this term, again, as the First Minister promised to do in his leadership manifesto. It's time we had actions not words, and we should use the legislation that already exists to greater effect. The well-being of future generations Act is an ideal vehicle, if you'll forgive the horrible pun, for setting ambitious national goals with a statutory footing.

We know that road transport is the primary pollutant, so let's see a comprehensive and ambitious national green transport plan that uses electric or hybrid vehicles so that we can see a fall in the level of pollutants in our air before the end of this Senedd term. I urge the Welsh Government today, don't just wave through this motion and continue with business as usual. Heed the words of the British Lung Foundation Wales: we need action now.