2. What are the Welsh Government's proposals for the use of innovative technology to improve air quality in Wales? OQ56760

Thank you. Our clean air plan sets out ambitious measures to improve air quality. This includes implementation of new and cleaner technologies across a range of sectors. We're also committed to enhancing our air quality monitoring network and are considering new and emerging technologies as part of this work.

Thank you, Minister. Earlier in the year, Cardiff Bus and Stagecoach announced that it was retrofitting 49 of its most polluting buses with exhaust clean-up technology, to reduce their nitrogen oxide emissions by 97 per cent, thanks to funding from the Welsh Government. However, in England, they are now one step ahead and have started to introduce air-filtering devices, which can remove as much as 65g of pollutants from the air over a 100-day period, which equates to the cleaning of 3.5 million cubic litres of air—enough to fill 1,288 Olympic-sized swimming pools, I'm led to believe. This has been rolled out in cities such as Manchester, Newcastle and Southampton, and I'm keen to know if the Welsh Government will commit to funding similar initiatives in Wales.

Thank you. There's no doubt that decarbonising our bus stock is a huge challenge for us at the pace at which we need to do it in order to meet our net-zero emissions targets. I recently saw and got to sit behind the wheel of, in fact—a childhood dream come true—one of the new Newport electric buses. It's an incredibly impressive piece of kit—significantly more expensive than its petrol equivalent, it must be said. So, there is going to be a gap to be filled in the period. So, as Joel James rightly points out, some areas are ahead of the others.

In terms of Welsh Government funding a wholesale increase, we are looking, as part of our bus strategy, at how our relationship with the bus industry needs to change, and how that's funded. But I would note what the Welsh Affairs Select Committee said earlier today about the shortfall in funding that the Welsh Government gets because of transport consequentials, because of the way High Speed 2 is treated as an England-and-Wales project, when, in fact, as the Conservative-dominated committee notes, it is in fact an England-only project—we don't get the knock-on consequences for Wales that we need to fund all of our aspirations in transport. So, we need to scratch our head and figure out how that gap can be filled, and it's one that we want to fill, but it would help if the Conservative Government gave us a little bit more money. 

I welcome Joel's question because it does point out that there are things that we can get on right now, either with technological solutions, or other solutions, that don't require legislation. We can get on with improvements to air quality right now, and I'd be interested in the Minister's thoughts on what other things we can do. 

But the Minister will understand that there was some disappointment that the air quality Bill didn't feature within the first programme of the sixth Senedd Government. We understand there are difficult balancing acts to do, but there is a letter winging its way to the Minister, if it hasn't arrived already, from me as the Chair of the cross-party group on the air quality Bill, and the vice-chairs as well, asking for a meeting where we can discuss how we progress with other measures, but also, how we can secure, at the earliest possible opportunity in this Senedd term, at the next possible opportunity, that clean air Bill as well, because there is huge cross-party support to deliver on it. 

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.