Questions Without Notice from Party Spokespeople

Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Climate Change – in the Senedd at 1:40 pm on 14 July 2021.

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Photo of Lee Waters Lee Waters Labour 1:40, 14 July 2021

I think, yes, absolutely, and to apologise for not directly answering every part of her first question, let me address it now. We will absolutely be looking at air quality and what to do in situations where there is a real problem with air quality. Now, at the moment, the often default response to that is to build a bypass, and simply going on building bypasses not only diverts funding away from more sustainable forms of transport, but also cumulatively adds to the problem of a car-centric and car-dependent society. So, in the medium to long-term, that does not help the solution. Clearly, the move to electric cars, to decarbonised cars, at a tailpipe end will help areas of traffic congestion from the air quality point of view, and there are other things we can look at too. So, the panel has been explicitly asked to look at that, and it will absolutely be formed of experts. Again, we're not going for a representative body of every stakeholder; we're going for a focused team of experts who understand the evidence, understand the challenges of delivery. So, for example, I very much hope that we have a local authority representative as part of that group to understand what needs to be done at a local level.