I'm very pleased to speak in this debate today. Looking at the Welsh Government amendment pointing out the significance of transport in the challenges of climate change and reducing emissions, and the UK Climate Change Committee's advice on reducing car journeys and making sure that more people make that modal shift to public transport and active travel, I'm very much reminded that we face those challenges to a great extent here in south-east Wales. Of course, that's why there was the inquiry into a possible M4 relief road; the Welsh Government's decision not to proceed; the setting up of the Burns commission; and now, of course, we have the implementation group, tasked with taking the recommendations of the commission forward.

So, in south-east Wales, around Newport, the challenges are there. The decisions have been made and the structures set up to meet those challenges. What we now await very keenly, and what people in Newport East and around await very keenly, is that actual implementation of the Burns recommendations.

There is some frustration at the moment that we're not seeing implementation at the pace and on the scale that is necessary. I've met with the commission and had discussions with various bodies with responsibility, and we really do need to find ways forward. There are some obvious possible early wins, as it were. We've seen some developments around active travel and we need to see more, because I agree with what has already been said about the importance of active travel in getting more environmentally friendly, healthy and progressive ways of moving people around.

We need to see some early developments in terms of better bus routes and ways of getting more people onto buses. There's an interesting fflecsi bus service in Newport now, which I think is gaining more support from passengers as we come out of the worst, I hope, of the pandemic, as restrictions are eased and we're getting more close to life as it was before the pandemic. But, we need to do something on a much greater scale, really, in Newport to get people back onto our buses in far greater numbers.

Of course, train services and infrastructure for trains do take quite some time to build and to develop, and it's quite difficult, perhaps, to have those early wins as far as rail is concerned. But, we're fortunate, I think, in Newport East in having in Magor a very good example of where we could make early progress in getting more people onto our trains and off the roads, and that is because there's a very committed group there that has been working towards a Magor walkway station for several years. They've had countless meetings with the UK Government, the Welsh Government, local authorities, Network Rail and many others in putting forward their proposals and seeking support and partnership. So, there is there, in Magor, the possibility to use a lot of work that's already taken place and a lot of process that's already been undergone to, perhaps, take forward an early example of how we can really meet that challenge of getting people off the roads and onto public transport.

I would hope that the Welsh Government, following this debate today, and knowing the scale of the challenges in south-east Wales, the process that we've gone through, the position that we're now in and the delivery unit that now has a major task ahead of it—that the Welsh Government will need to make sure that we do have adequate focus and pressure to make progress to ensure that we don’t slip back at all in terms of the momentum that built from the M4 relief road decision, the Burns commission, and the setting up of the delivery unit. We really do need to get on and deliver, and I hope that Welsh Government, working in partnership with others, will make sure that that happens.