Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 3:16 pm on 14 February 2023.
Thank you for that, and it's a consistent position that Jane Dodds has taken on these issues, and I appreciate it. On the point of rural areas, which I know is something that the Conservatives have been raising too, I fully accept that, in rural areas, you need a different approach to urban areas. It's entirely possible to do that. If you look at rural Switzerland or rural Sweden or rural Germany, with much deeper rural areas than ours, they manage to have, in many parts, a bus service to every village every hour. There's nothing set in stone that we can't provide alternative transport in rural areas. These are choices we've made. Of course you're more likely to be car dependent in rural areas than you are in urban areas, but there are other things that we can work together on. I published a written statement last week on rural areas, I've been holding a series of round-tables with local authorities and others who live in rural areas. It's interesting now how the Conservative benches have gone quiet and they're looking at their phones while I'm actually answering their questions, because they're denied their cheap campaign lines. The truth is that there is an answer for rural areas if we want to find it, and if we are to tackle climate change, we have to tackle it in urban and in rural Wales, and we need to work together on solutions rather than constantly saying there's nothing that can be done in rural areas.
Now, on Jane Dodds's specific point about her constituency, one of the concerns, I know, is speeds in rural areas, and our next piece of work is to review speed limits across the country. One of the key points in the roads review is that, where there are accident black spots or safety concerns, we should be looking to reduce the speed limits in those areas first, and do small-scale interventions rather than rebuilding entire corridors to make them suitable to drive at a faster rate. So, I don't think there is any tension, actually, between a viable, safe rural transport system and the climate goals—it's how we go about it.