Air Quality

Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Climate Change – in the Senedd at 1:36 pm on 14 July 2021.

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Photo of Lee Waters Lee Waters Labour 1:36, 14 July 2021

Well, I always look forward to receiving letters from Huw Irranca-Davies and this one will be no exception. [Laughter.] I agree with him it's a very important Bill, and it's one we're very keen to proceed with as soon as we possibly can. He alludes to the fact that there is a tension between the available time we have dealing with coronavirus regulations and Brexit regulations, and our ambitious programme for government, and we are working our way through that. 

He's absolutely right, though, to focus on what can be done in the meantime, because legislation by necessity will take a number of years to get through, and we don't have a number of years to tackle the air quality crisis. So, I'm very keen to work with him and the cross-party group to identify what can be done in the meantime. And I must add, just having hot-footed it along with him from the cross-party group on active travel, which I congratulate him again for chairing so ably, the investment this year of £75 million for active travel—the highest per head investment of any country in the UK—is a very good example of what can do to shift people out of cars onto sustainable forms of transport, which, as well as improving their health and reducing congestion, also improves air quality. And we need to look at more things we can do while we wait to legislate, and to make the legislation as ambitious as we possibly can.