13. Debate: Introducing 20 mph Speed Limits in Wales

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 4:47 pm on 15 July 2020.

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Photo of Lee Waters Lee Waters Labour 4:47, 15 July 2020

Diolch, Llywydd, and can I thank Members for that thoughtful discussion? I think, with one exception, there was support in principle for the proposal we've brought forward this afternoon. But Members are right, it's the job of the Senedd now to scrutinise the detail of this, to stress-test it, to kick the tyres, if you like, to make sure that this is as strong as it can be, and I'm certainly keen to work with all Members to try and answer questions and concerns they have so that we get this right.

It's the reason why I set up an expert panel over the course of a year to rigorously go through this, to understand how we can make it workable. Alongside the report today, we are publishing an evidence review by Dr Adrian Davis, as well as a report by the Public Policy Institute for Wales, also looking at the evidence. So, the claim by David Rowlands that this is based on just a few months' research and that the evidence is far from proven, I'm afraid is not the case, and I was disappointed by his contribution.

I'm just trying to work through the issues that have been raised. Russell George asked, 'Are we using a sledgehammer to crack a nut?' It's interesting, isn't it, if 800 children a year were killed or seriously injured in any other setting, I wonder what the response of the Senedd would be.FootnoteLink I wonder what the response of the newspapers and the media would be. I wonder if we'd see mass demonstrations. But somehow we've come to accept road casualties and deaths on our roads from cars as commonplace, as something we just accept as a price of doing business.

I notice the Brexit Party have put out a tweet this afternoon saying Wales can't afford to go any slower. I deprecate the tendency by some on the right to try and use this as part of the culture wars that they're trying to fight out here. I know David Rowlands—apart from the issue of Europe, which I profoundly disagree with him on—to be a reasonable man. So, to hear the speech he gave, which started off reasonable enough but turned into a contribution on a radio phone-in by the end, I thought, was surprising. 

Rhun ap Iorwerth said the evidence is clear and the evidence is strong. Janet Finch-Saunders made the point it's a commonsense and safe move, and I think the opinion polls bear this out. This is a widely welcomed and accepted intervention.

There are concerns around resources and concerns around enforcement, and I think those are legitimate concerns. At the moment, we spend an awful lot of resources but on engineering, on hard interventions, and the evidence is that we've probably achieved as much as we're going to achieve from that approach. The road casualty reduction figures have slowed and there's now a stubborn residual level of casualties that that approach does not seem to be able to tackle with any great dynamism.