Part of 1. Questions to the Minister for Climate Change – in the Senedd at 1:51 pm on 26 January 2022.
Yes, as you know, we've been waiting for the publication of the latest World Health Organization guidance on clean air in order to base our Senedd law on that standard, and that has only recently been published. We're now completing that, and there are several stages of consultation and design that it needs to go through to make sure that is robust. But the provision of the law is not the only thing that will drive progress on clean air, clearly, and we are committed to action this year, not just simply waiting for the law to be passed.
So, our active travel fund, for example, has clean air as a key component of its guidance. That's again one of the actions we have under the Wales transport strategy to achieve modal shift, so that's £75 million this year to encourage people to use walking and cycling for short journeys rather than cars. Similarly, our bus strategy, and we're hoping to publish a White Paper in the coming months, is also about achieving modal shift to have fewer polluting cars on the road. And also our electric car action plan is similarly about decarbonising the car fleet so that there are not tailpipe emissions, which again causes those dangerous toxins that are released and kill people.
So, we are committed to doing a series of actions this year and next year to tackle clean air, whilst in parallel working on as robust as possible clean air Act. Now, I've issued the invitation to the cross-party group, and I'll do it to Members again; we want to work cross-party on this. The challenge I've set the cross-party group is to identify the most robust set of measures that can command cross-party support that we can then bring to the Senedd.