Thank you. For parents with pushchairs or people in wheelchairs, pavement parking can be not just a nuisance, but a danger. I have accompanied a blind person on a journey around their housing estate and when faced with a car taking up most of the pavement, their guide dog did as it was trained to do—it led them onto the road, rather than try and squeeze through the small gap. This is an everyday occurrence for many vulnerable people. When faced with cars parked on the space meant for them, they are forced onto the road. And it's no surprise that some report that the fear of facing this danger causes them to stay indoors—the anti-social behaviour of a few causing harm for the many.

We want more people to walk for short journeys and yet we tolerate an environment that is often not pedestrian friendly—too many routes are cluttered or blocked. A recent survey found that 83 per cent of people in Wales view it as a common, large or very large problem. The current law on parking on pavements is not as clear or as helpful as it could be. There is no specific offence of parking on pavements. The police can enforce the existing criminal law of causing unnecessary obstruction of any part of the highway, but this offence is rarely enforced.

I'm glad that the Government in England have launched a consultation on what they might do to strengthen the law. The Welsh Government are further ahead, though. Last summer I convened an expert taskforce to come up with practical recommendations for tackling the problem. I was very pleased that Phil Jones took on the task of chairing the group, in parallel with the panel he chaired on 20 mph speed limits. I am very grateful to him and his panelists for all the work that they have done. Taken together, these two initiatives have real potential to save lives and to rebalance the environment in favour of pedestrians to create communities that put people before cars.

My brief to the group was clear: find a way forward that will work in practice. I don't want to create even more problems for local authorities or the police. I want something that's going to help on the ground. The expert group included the police, the fire service, the Welsh Local Government Association, the Federation of Small Businesses, the Road Haulage Association, the British Parking Association and the Freight Transport Association, alongside campaigning groups like Disability Wales, Guide Dogs, Living Streets and Sustrans.

The report, which we are publishing today, has been tested by these key groups. The Welsh pavement parking taskforce makes 10 recommendations, and the Welsh Government accepts all of them. The taskforce does not favour an outright ban on pavement parking. They looked at the experience in Scotland where a prohibition has been created in primary legislation and concluded that that is an overly complex process and could take up to five years to introduce. A quicker and better way of tackling pavement parking is to give extra powers to local authorities to tackle the problem. The taskforce report recommends that Welsh Ministers should make subordinate legislation to add 'parking on a footway' to the list of parking contraventions in the Traffic Management Act 2004. This will enable councils to carry out civil enforcement of pavement parking.

We recognise that in some streets there are too many cars for the space available. We'll be setting out in our new Wales transport strategy how we want to encourage modal shift to make it easier for people to rely less on cars for everyday journeys. But in the meantime, we don't want to penalise people who have no alternative. By giving local authorities civil enforcement powers they can make judgments of where to clamp down. They can target hotspots like schools and respond to local circumstances. We intend for these new powers of 'civil enforcement of unnecessary obstruction' to commence by July 2022.

We will now set up an implementation group with local government representatives and stakeholders to develop enforcement guidance to help ensure a consistent approach is taken across Wales. This work will sit alongside the work we are doing to introduce a 20 mph default speed limit in residential areas from April 2023. And as I previously highlighted to the Senedd in July, this is as much about changing hearts and minds as it is about hard enforcement, and we will be developing a communications campaign rooted in values to make the case for change.

Over time, Dirprwy Lywydd, this will become the norm. Just as with smoking in restaurants, organ donation, and recycling our waste, I'm convinced this will quickly become seen as a commonsense measure. And I appreciate the cross-party support that there is for taking this forward. Diolch.