4. Will the Minister make a statement on the safety of staff on public transport? OQ55465

[Inaudible.]—to scale up public transport, Llywydd, the safety and well-being of all staff and passengers remains our priority. On 8 July, we updated our guidance for operators, helping them to understand how to provide safer workplaces and services for workers and passengers.

Thank you, Minister. I was very pleased to hear the announcement from the First Minister on Monday that face coverings will become compulsory on public transport from the end of July. I hope that we will extend that to shop workers as soon as possible, personally. It was a very welcome announcement, it was something I'd asked for, it was something trade unions like Unite the Union had campaigned hard for. But of course we recognise too that it is not a silver bullet on its own, and that it is vital that measures like hand washing et cetera go along with the wearing of those face coverings. What steps will the Government take to ensure that there is a really clear understanding of the public in relation to not just wearing face coverings but the importance of taking other steps to protect themselves and other Welsh citizens? Thank you.

Well, thank you for that. I acknowledge that Lynne Neagle has been calling for this move for some time, but as the First Minister has set out in some detail earlier, these are difficult judgments and nuanced judgments with a balance of risks. We've been liaising closely with the trade unions, with the operators and with equality groups to work through the detail of this and how to make it operational, because as buses become more heavily used, it's going to be impossible to keep the 2m guidance being observed on buses. So, we're then looking to put in place a series of mitigation measures, including engineering changes, hand washing, sanitiser availability and so on, as well as face coverings. The face coverings alone, as Lynne Neagle acknowledges, is not a silver bullet, as she puts it. So, we've been working hard with the operators to make sure that awareness is raised about the package of things that need to be done to keep people as safe as we can. 

Minister, we've known for a long time that the risks associated with air travel are lower, because of the air filtering systems that planes are fitted with, and it looks now as though that sort of technology might be more widely available for other transport. Own Buses in Warrington is thought to be the first bus company in the world to install air cleaning devices across its entire fleet in order to protect its drivers from the risk of airborne transmission of COVID-19. Eighty-six AirBubbl air cleaning devices have been fitted, which filter more than 95 per cent of airborne viruses and contaminated particulates out of the air. It strikes me, Minister, that this is the sort of innovation that would help with dealing with the current pandemic, but is also a good innovation, moving forward, for its own sake anyway. So, is this the sort of technology that perhaps the Welsh Government could look at encouraging buses and perhaps other forms of public transport to adopt moving forward, to make sure that, yes, staff and drivers are protected, but also that it's as clean an environment as possible for the passengers on public transport? 

Well, certainly we're interested in innovations and we'll be keen to look in detail at this example, and there are more low-tech innovations closer to home that have been developed. Edwards Coaches, for example, have been experimenting with plastic shields on their buses to try and get more passengers safely on them. And we're looking at all of these. As ever, the economics of the bus industry is challenging for these kinds of investments and we've been struggling with the operators to find a way to allow them to ramp up services with existing vehicles, given how fragile their business model is, how dependent they are on public subsidy, and how to balance the extra investment needed to put these measures in with their ability to trade as businesses.