6. Statement by the Deputy Minister for Climate Change: Roads review

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 5:37 pm on 22 June 2021.

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Photo of Jenny Rathbone Jenny Rathbone Labour 5:37, 22 June 2021

Thank you for the good-news story that this is eminently doable, because two thirds of all journeys less than five miles means that most of us can bicycle that short journey, and for those who live in the highlands of my constituency, we now have electric bikes, which we didn't have 50 years ago, so that's another good-news story.

I just want to ask you about something slightly different, which is that there's been a lot of talk in the last 48 hours about the shortage of lorry drivers across Britain and the missing 13,000 lorry drivers who have gone back to other parts of Europe because of the hostile environment created by the UK Government who doesn't think that these are people filling essential skills gaps. Obviously, HGVs are noisy, dangerous and very punishing on road maintenance, and that's certainly not reflected in the HGV vehicle tax. So, I just wondered if the expert roads review panel will be looking at how we use roads to distribute goods and whether we could create a more rational hub-and-spoke distribution network so that the HGVs could deposit their goods at important road interchanges or wholesale markets so that the last part of the journey could be made by small electric vehicles, or, indeed, bicycles in some cases. I just wondered if you could tell us whether that's something that you could start to institute as a matter of urgency.