3. Statement by the Minister for Climate Change: The Environment (Air Quality and Soundscapes) (Wales) Bill

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 3:07 pm on 21 March 2023.

Alert me about debates like this

Photo of Julie James Julie James Labour 3:07, 21 March 2023

Diolch, Jane. Just to clarify, then, as I keep saying, we're amending existing legislation in this Bill as well as introducing new things, and the important part that we're amending is that, currently, local authorities are required to review air quality in the areas from time to time. What this is doing is putting a statutory duty on them to do that in a cycle, so that they have to do an annual review of air quality henceforth, so that they keep it up to date. That's one of the big changes, actually. And then what we're doing is deploying tech in association with local authorities at spots where they think it would be the most beneficial, and then I hope that we can deploy even more tech as time goes on, as we get the data in and we know where the data gaps are. So, it will roll out over time, but local authorities will already—. There are already many air monitoring stations out there, I hasten to say. We're not starting from nothing. So, what we're doing is enabling a further roll-out, and then that will reflect the local authority plan, the data will come back in, and we expect them to do an annual review of that, and so on. So, you'd expect an exponential increase in quality as that data comes in, and people can adjust their plans accordingly. I think that's quite important.

And as I say, there isn't a safe level. We're not trying to get it below a safe level, we're trying to clean it up as fast as possible. I think that's quite an important point as well. You're not trying to get to some barrier. We're not trying to measure it everywhere and say it definitely is below whatever. We're saying, 'Get this air to be as clean as humanly possible all over the place,' and obviously target the hot-spots first. And as the plans bed in and the statutory guidance goes out, it will snowball, effectively, won't it? That's the idea. We work very closely with our local authorities. They're very keen on this, and they've worked collaboratively with us to bring it in. That's across all administrations and so on; it's not political, this. We're all agreed on doing it. And then, tech changes, doesn't it, as well, so who knows what will be available in 10 years' time to do this, in the same way as the stuff that controls emissions from vehicles has changed in all of our lifetimes? We need a Bill that's flexible enough to be able to cope with that and not have to be re-legislating all the time. So, we need to learn those lessons as this Bill goes through the Senedd, to make sure it has that future flex that delivers us the outcomes on air quality that we all need, and I share.