2. Statement by the First Minister: Coronavirus (COVID-19)

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 2:29 pm on 13 May 2020.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 2:29, 13 May 2020

Llywydd, I thank Huw Irranca-Davies for that. Can I just begin by admiring the tribute that I can see behind him to people from the Llynfi valley who lost their lives in fighting fascism during the 1930s?

He will have seen the statement that my colleague Lee Waters put out last week, inviting expressions of interest by 21 May from all local authorities to take advantage of the fact that roads are nowhere near as busy as they otherwise would be to try to lock in some of the advantages that Huw Irranca-Davies has referred to. We've all at least benefited during this crisis from the declines in air pollution and noise pollution, and we really don't want to simply go back to recreating all those difficulties if we can avoid them, because of the health impacts and the impact on climate change that we knew they had.

In that call for expressions of interest from local authorities, backed up by money from the Welsh Government, we're looking to local authorities to bring forward proposals for footway widening, temporary cycle lanes, speed restrictions, bus infrastructure improvements and other things and that local authorities, in an imaginative way, as the call for proposals makes clear, use the moment we have to try to lock into our infrastructure some of the advantages that we've seen from being a major reduction in traffic over recent weeks, with the benefits that we're getting from it now and want to be able to go on seeing those benefits in the future.