Natasha Asghar: One year on from Wales’ 20mph default speed limit

Natasha Asghar – Shadow Transport Minister 

One year ago today, the Welsh Government’s hugely controversial and extremely costly 20mph speed limit policy came into force.

At the time, Labour ministers in Cardiff Bay assured the public that they would soon get used to the new drastic law and it would simply become the norm.

How wrong they were. Twelve months on and opposition to the scheme – which has pushed through with the help of Plaid Cymru and the sole Lib Dem in the Welsh Parliament – continues to grow.

We have seen countless protests across the country with miffed motorists regularly gathering at the Welsh Parliament to make their voices heard and a record breaking petition calling for the policy to be rescinded gaining nearly 500,000 signatures in such a short space of time.

And I must pay tribute to Mark Baker who started the petition and all of those who continue to stand up and make their voices heard. We must not give up the fight.

I have stood shoulder-to-shoulder with many of the protesters over the last 12 months and met some truly wonderful people.

They aren’t unreasonable people. They are decent, hardworking individuals, who are being seriously affected by this disastrous policy, whether that be by simply trying to get from A to B or their business is suffering as a result – and everything else in between.

The overarching message of the protesters – myself included – is that we are all for road safety, but believe this is an extremely heavy handed way of combatting the issue.

Drastic

Without a doubt there is a place for 20mph speed limits outside schools, hospitals, playgrounds, places of worship and busy high streets, but the approach taken by the Welsh Government has been far too drastic.

Even the man behind the £33m scheme originally, Lee Waters MS, has admitted mistakes were made.

If only he were in a position to rectify the long list of errors in the first place. Despite Mr Waters finally – and dare I say reluctantly –holding his hands up, it unfortunately doesn’t look like anything is really going to change.

A change in rhetoric might’ve been adopted by the powers that be in Cardiff Bay, and we are yet to see what the new First Minister has up her sleeve, but I fear it is more of the same.

Ken Skates MS, the current transport secretary, has insisted that local authorities are reviewing all feedback after more than 10,500 requests were made for roads to be reassessed, following yet another ‘listening programme’ by the Welsh Government.

It is worth noting that this is the second listening programme by the Welsh Labour Government in the space of a year, as well as the third First Minister in seven months following Vaughan Gething’s controversial tenure as First Minister where he accepted £200,000 from a convicted criminal for his leadership campaign.

So, it may be all well and good running these listening programmes as a PR exercise, but who has to pick up the work following these?

It would seem the Welsh Government think it’s our local councils responsibility – but our councils are already seriously overstretched and it seems incredibly unfair for Labour ministers to be lumbering them with their poor decisions.

This is the Welsh Government’s mess to sort out. Simply fobbing it off onto local authorities won’t wash.

Blind eye

It’s high time Labour ministers face up to their mistakes and rectify them instead of trying to turn a blind eye and pretend everything is hunky dory.

In addition, last time I checked, weren’t the government elected in Wales to be in-touch with their country, people and councils?

How have we got to a stage where the Labour Government are so out of touch and far removed from people on the ground that they have to run a listening exercise to be able to understand what people want and need?

Yet another interesting moment for Welsh Labour in 2024, after all this year hasn’t exactly been the best year for the Welsh Labour Party, as despite a Labour landslide in Westminster, Labour in Cardiff Bay have seemed more fractured than ever.

But even the cracks in the red are starting to show on the other side of the M4, with some of UK Labour’s first manoeuvres in power being to give train drivers on £65,000 a £10,000 pay rise whilst taking Winter Fuel Payments away from pensioners, failing to declare £19,000 worth of clothes for the Prime Minister’s wife and the early release of 1,750 inmates (so far) as a result of overcrowded prisons.

A somewhat controversial few weeks in office. If – like me, you are panicking about what the next 4 years under Labour look like across the UK – I would say your worries are justified.

We know all too well across Wales what 25 years of Labour can do to a country, as we have the worst NHS waiting times in the UK, worst educational outcomes and highest economic inactivity rate. To name a few.

But this is where we come in, the Welsh Conservatives. We are here to offer you a viable alternative to another 25 years of decline under Labour in Wales, and a route by which transport would be accessible, practical and efficient – and default 20mph speed limits would be no longer.

Targeted

We would revoke Labour’s policy and instead adopt a targeted, common sense, approach to get our country moving again and stop frittering money away on pet projects.

Unlike Reform UK politicians, who appear to have jumped on the anti-20mph bandwagon, the Welsh Conservatives have opposed this policy from day one.

We cannot afford another year of wide-spread 20mph speed limits. The time for talking is over. Now is the time for meaningful action.

Maybe, just maybe, the continuing fallout from the 20mph policy will serve as a wake-up call for Ministers to focus on the issues that truly matter to the people of Wales instead of pushing ahead with costly and unpopular vanity projects.

It’s not too late for Labour to chart a new course, but of course, only time will tell if they are serious about ‘listening’ to the public or whether these feedback-gathering events were just another example of ministers paying lip service.

Only time will tell.